Memories of Leland Denton

Leland had written about 8 pages of his autobiography before his death. This is beginning of that book, recounting stories from his childhood.

MY STORY

LELAND G. DENTON

PRE-SCHOOL YEARS

Mom and Me

My story begins on October 2, 1924. I was born in a farm house just west and south of Garland, Kansas. This was the farm belonging to my grandparents, John & Jennie B. Thompson. My mother and dad were Robert B. and Effie Denton. Needless to say, I really don’t remember much of these first few years. I am sure that my memories of these years came out of shock--because the first thing that I really can recall was August 4, 1927. That was the birth of my brother Robert Marion. My dad, Uncle Bill Thompson, and Grandpa Thomson were sitting on the back porch when Dr. Albright came in carrying a little black bag, and I couldn’t go inside to visit with him. It wasn’t long after that, that I heard a baby crying from inside the house. Now that!!!! really puzzled me, but I was told that Doc must have brought it in that mysterious little black bag that he was carrying. Sounded good to me, enough said. Soon I got to go into the house and meet my brother Bob. So now my story really begins because I remember the little old weather-worn house and the barn yard with a wire corn crib that stood out near the barn. I still sense that I can recall the odor of the corn lying there in that crib. It always smelled so good to me. I guess I just liked the old corn crib.

Before I forget about it, I will put these pictures of me and my cousin Russell Denton:

Leland on our Patio Leland playing with Russell

Leland at about eighteen months.

Fall was the time I remember when Mom and Grandma prepared for winter by canning fruits and vegetables for the winter months that were not too far away. It seems to me that we managed to have a garden and fruit trees around. I remember Apples, Pears and Peaches were the fruits we had a lot of in the winter. We always had a supply of canned fruits and vegetables, as well as preserved meat. They would start by getting out the old copper cloths boiler and put a wooden rack in the bottom of the boiler. They filled the boiler up with water and placed it on the wood burning stove. When the water was boiling, the jars were placed inside to make them germ-free and ready to put the fruit or vegetables to be sealed in jars and stored in The Cave Cellar.

Before I get too far along, I want to go back to pre-memory days. I didn’t know Grandpa Denton as he passed away in 1920, but I do remember seeing Grandma Denton once when she was very sick in bed at Uncle Charlie’s house at LaHarpe, Kansas. She died in 1927. I do have a few pictures that might be useful at this point in the story.

Grandpa and Grandma Denton

This picture had to have been taken sometime before 1920. I was unable to find the exact date on which it was taken. At the time I saw Grandma, she was very sick with tuberculosis. I must have been about three years of age.

These pictures were taken at the farm house about 3 miles north of Garland Kansas. Dad always referred to the farm as “The Home Place.” He had a lot of stories about Uncle Henry and himself as they grew up there. They had to have been quite a pair. There was a large round barn that I remember seeing after we moved back to the Garland area in about 1932. Apparently they had some great times playing around the old barn.

Grandpa Ephriam Denton

The weather was still warm, and I remember being barefooted and running down that dusty road, I would guess about a quarter of a mile, to Aunt Kate’s house. I still don’t know why I liked to do it, because it was to get a glass of warm, just separated milk to drink. They had a separator that was used to get the cream out of the fresh milk so that the cream could be sold for money for purchasing groceries, etc. It is a mystery to me why anyone would want to drink a glass of that warm blue john milk from that separator, but I did. I really did make a lot of trips down that road to do that very thing. Not too picky about what I drank, I guess.

One of my early favorite memories is this one: as the weather got cooler and a little bit snappy, it was time to butcher our winter supply of meat. Grandpa Thompson, Dad, Uncle Bill Williams, and Uncle Charlie Denton would prepare to butcher their hogs and steers. Large oil drums were filled with water and heated to boiling over a large wood-burning fire. After the animals were killed, they would be lifted by block and tackle devices and lowered into the hot water so that the hair could be scraped off, and the butchering and dressing the meat would begin. This was a big task--at least it sure looked that way to me. After the meat was cut up, hams were brined and put in the smoke house to cure, and the tenderloins and chops were fried down by Mom, Grandma and Aunt Nettie, mom’s sister. When that was done, they would place the cooked meat in a ten-gallon crock jar, the drippings were poured over the meat to seal it, and a weight was placed on the top to keep it all compressed in the jar, and they stored it in the cellar with the canned fruits and vegetables. The beef would be cooked and canned in large half-gallon jars. There were probably other things done, but I really don’t remember what that might have been. So you can see, we depended on the cellar just about the same way that we do the refrigerator now days. This must have been a very important time for our families. As a small child, I do remember how hard they all worked these two or three days, at least. One of the last things from the butchering operation was when the lard was rendered and stored. A large part of it was made into soap--lye soap. You have probably heard of Grandma's lye soap. Well, that’s what it was: soap made by grandma in the old iron kettle over a wood fire. I wish that I could remember a little more about it, but I don’t--must have made a great impression on me. I do remember that the fire was very hot, and the fat was bubbling pretty hard. Then at some point in the process, they poured in the lye, and it did its thing. The next part of the process was to pour the mixture into large pans three inches deep where the mixture hardened, and then they would cut it into bars of soap. Now that is a very scientific explanation of Grandma’s lye soap. I hope that now you can now make your own soap and save a lot of money.

On this particular day, the workers shown in the picture are, from the left,

Grandpa John Thompson, Uncle Charlie Denton and Dad, Robert B. Denton.

As I remember, they would work about all day to do three hogs and a steer or two. I really am not sure about the time involved.

I must be about five years of age now. I believe that it would be close to March 1929. I say this because, in those days, farmers generally would change their location in March because new crops would be planted during this time. It just starts the farming cycle over each year. Uncle Dan Dillman, that is the husband of Dad’s sister Aunt Nora, lived in Iola, Kansas, and worked for the American Service Ice Company as an engineer. His boss was Mr. Grover, who owned a farm just west and south of Iola, and he needed someone to farm that land for him. Uncle Dan got in touch with Dad, and away we went to the farm in Iola. When you go west out of Iola and cross the Neosho River bridge, right at the end of that bridge was a dirt road that went south about a mile of two. At the very end of that road, there was our house. It was a four room home. Bobby and I slept in one room, Mom and Dad had a bedroom, and that left a living room and a kitchen.

As I remember, on this farm, we had four big brown mules, two Jersey cows, pigs, and many chickens that provided food for us to eat. Dad and Mom planted a garden, and soon it would be time for the crops to be planted. I believe mainly it was corn and some oats to feed the animals.

Bobby, Dad, and Leland

Bobby, Leland, and Thunder

While Dad was doing the farming, we were around the house playing with our dog, a German Shepherd, and Mom alone would know what else we did. Dad had purchased pocket knives for us, and they fastened to the bib of our overalls. As the picture on the above shows, they are dangling from the bibs. We really thought we were big guys. The house that I mentioned in the above paragraph is shown in the background of this picture.

These pictures were taken about 1929 or the mid 1930’s. I would have been about six and Bobby three. See the patches on the overalls. We thought that was really great because it looked like Dad’s. This was about the time of the market crash, and we sure didn’t have much to go on: corn meal mush for supper and fried mush with sugar syrup for breakfast, but it was still good. If we had a little salt pork, rabbit, or a squirrel, we were really living high on the proverbial hog. Now the time is about mid-1930, and everything is drying up. Dust Bowl days had arrived in grand style. Wells were going dry as well as the ponds and small streams. Mom would put a wet bandana over our mouths and noses to keep the dust from our lungs. When the dust came, you could see it coming from the southwest. It looked like a huge black wall coming, and when it arrived, it was like night. We had kerosene lamps, and I do remember Mom lighting them up so that we had light to eat supper.

It was about this time in my life that I got to know Grandpa Thompson pretty well. He came to Iola one time to help Dad with the crops--what there was left of the corn crop. Dad used the mules on the cultivator to take the weed out of the rows of corn, and Grandpa followed up with a hoe to get the weed out from between the stalks of corn. When he came in from the field, we would set on the well curb and have a cool peach that we pulled up out of the well where they were hung to keep cool. The well was used like a refrigerator so that food would stay cool and not spoil too soon. He was always soaked with perspiration, and of course dust covered him from head to toe. That was always a special time that I think that I shall always have in my memories.

August 26, 1930, brother Elmer arrived on the scene. This was another exciting time in our lives. Bob and I were so happy to have a baby brother to play with. He even got a new baby crib to stay in. Bobby and I thought that was really neat. It was during this time that dad had trout lines set in the Neosho river. It was about three-fourths of a mile south of the house. When Dad went to run the lines, Bobby and I would go alone. Well, as you might expect, we generally would catch some snapping turtles, and Dad would take them off the hook and release them into the boat. That’s not bad in itself, but Bobby and I were bare footed, and to have two or three turtles coming toward you wasn’t much fun. However, we did survive with all our toes intact. We nearly always caught some catfish and maybe a carp or two. Our meals were made up of our catch, and it was always good. Most of the time when we had fish, Mom would call Aunt Nora and Uncle Dan, and they would come out for supper with us. I mention this because they were very important in our lives during these times. Aunt Nora would come out to the farm once or twice a week. She took me to see my first movie. It was one of the first talking movies and it was call “Skippy” a film made in the likeness of the cartoon strip called “Skippy.” That was really something to see, that big silver screen, and it talked to us, Wow!!! Also, it was about this time that Dad informed us that Christmas was going to be a no show for Santa Claus because of the financial conditions at that time. Christmas morning came, and almost before we out of bed, there was Aunt Nora with a drummer boy for me and another toy for Bobby. I will never forget that time and how, in retrospect, important that was to Bobby and to me.

In September 1931, I started to school at Union District No. 1. The school was about 4 miles west of Iola on Highway 54. My teacher was a Mrs. Schuester and I got 100% on all my subjects. You might say that I was a very model 1^st grader. Well, as you might expect, March 1^st was coming up, and you are correct: we got to move again. This time, we moved to a home on Highway 54 about ¾ of a mile east of my school. Classes would be out in April, and my teacher was going to take a vacation away from Iola. She had three goats and asked for someone to take care of them for the summer. Of course, good ole’ little Leland volunteered to do the task. Needless to say, Dad wasn’t very happy about that executive decision which I made. He said, "OK! You milk them and take care of the three goats. It will be your responsibility." Fair enough; I would be happy to do that. Everything went well, and in late summer, Dad put hay in the hay loft, and we had a ladder that went up to the door in the loft. Low and behold, those goats scampered up that ladder to get to the hay. Guess what? I couldn’t get them down before Dad came home. My, but that wasn’t a real happy time. Fortunately, there was a big door on at the end of the barn where there was a hay fork that was used to lift hay into the barn loft. Dad made a sling out of burlap sacks, wrapped them around the goats, and let them down on the hay hook one at a time. Now that’s probably the only reason that I am able to write this little episode. I did all the milking of the animals and was surprised that those rascals would actually turn their heads around and spit on me. What a mess to contend with. Anyway, we all survived and all lived happily ever after. Needless to say, after that, I never volunteered to take care of anyone’s goats again.

I started my second year there, and of course March1932 came, and we moved again. This time we moved to Swartz, Mo. It is just a few miles from Garland and not far from Grandma Thompson and Aunt Nettie (Mom’s sister). I began school in another one room school not far from our house. Dad went to work for a Mr. Rutherford, who was a cattle man, and Dad took care of the cattle. I did my second grade class in that school. It was in that year that I fell in love with a very pretty little girl named Bernita. Unfortunately, another bruiser did, too, so naturally I had to defend myself. This is the first and only time that I ever had a fight with someone on the playground--probably because I had to stay after school and write on the blackboard “I WILL NOT FIGHT ON THE PLAYGROUND AGAIN” one hundred times, though since I was the teacher's pet, I only had to do fifty. But, I had to go home. There’s where it really hit the fan. Dad was pretty handy with the razor strop. He always folded it up so that it made a lot of noise when landed. So I survived that ordeal, but I didn’t have a girlfriend anymore. There were no more events other than the normal kid stuff. It was winter, and we lived in a two-story house, and our bedrooms were upstairs, and it was cold. Mom would heat up the irons on the stove, wrap them in towels, and put them in bed with us, cover us up with big goose feather comforter, and we were quit cozy. At least we thought we were ok.

In the spring of 1933, we moved into Garland, and I went to the Garland school for my 3^rd& 4^th grade classes. Also, we now were close to Uncle Henry & Aunt Annabelle’s home, so we could play with cousins Homer, Don, and Nadine Denton. We did have some very enjoyable times. My grandkids oft times asked "What did you play with?" We didn’t have cell phones, I-Pods, radios, computers, etc., but we were good at making our own toys. We had coaster wagons and tri-cycles, but our best ones were those toys we made for ourselves. One of them was when we took a board, usually a lathe, cut it about 32” in length, then another piece cut about 10” long and nailed it to end of the longer piece. This made a T-shaped handle that could be held at the opposite end of the crosspiece. We would then find a wagon wheel or some other small wheel, set it on its rim, and roll the wheel down the road. By twisting our hand, we could turn the wheel in all directions. Now we could have contests, races, obstacle courses, and other neat activities with our wheel pusher. Another thing we did was have rubber gun fights. Using lathe once more, we would cut a piece about 12” long for the barrel of the gun, then cut pistol grips to fasten to one end, and then we fastened a clothes-pin on the pistol grip. We always had a lot of inner tubes that were not usable on the car any more, cut them to form rubber bands about ¼ inch wide, place the band over the muzzle of the gun, and stretched and clamped it into the clothes-pin. Now all you had to do was find your victim, squeeze the pistol grip and zip, the rubber band would fly right to the target. Now, doesn’t that sound mighty exciting compared to the play things of this day and age? I wonder what the next seventy years will do for toys, etc.

In the later part of 1933 & 1934, Dad worked on the WPA (Work Progress Administration), Roosevelt's version of Obama’s stimulus package. He helped build the Million Dollar Highway. That is US 69 between Ft. Scott & Pittsburg, Ks.. He made a $1.00 a day doing this construction work. Needless to say, it was pretty tough going for all of us. We still did a lot of fishing and hunting to put food on the table. Our home was next to the railroad, and we boys would go down the tracks where there were wild straw berries and lots of gooseberries on the shoulders of the right of way. We picked greens for salads, and things of that kind were there, also.