They started from Pennsylvania in a covered wagon and traveled through the states now known as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to Iowa. While they were going through Illinois, they lost two boys, who are buried somewhere in Illinois. They went back to Illinois to find their graves but to no avail. They had five more children after they settled in Chariton, Iowa. They were my Aunt Margarit Bradford, Helena Smith, who never married and died of TB (tuberculosis); Harry, George, and Raymond Smith.

Grandma and Grandpa Smith bought a farm southeast of Williamson, Iowa. The two boys, Harry and George, took over the farming and ran the meat market in Williamson, Iowa. It was there my dad met my mother, Hazel Wilson, and married her. Together they had six children. I was born in 1924, to Harry and Hazel Smith, the oldest of the six kids — five girls and a boy. In order of birth: Myself— Juanita, Anna Lee, Adalene, Raymond, Joanne, and Nina. Grandpa Smith passed away when he was 93 years old and Grandma Smith died at the age of 89.

We lived on a farm southeast of Williamson, Iowa. Williamson was a mining town and the mining company had mineral rights to our farm land. It was identified as #5 mine. In addition to my dad's farming, he and his brother, George, owned and operated a slaughter house and meat market. They butchered the meat they sold. There were no plastic trays or bags. Instead, there were rolls of brown paper and string above the counter. They simply pulled down and tore off what they needed as people bought the meat.

For those unfamiliar with farming, when spring came it was time to prepare the land before planting the crops. This was a process of plowing, which turned the earth, disking which leveled the earth, then harrowing which made it still smoother. Cultivating weeded the field.

Dad had horse-drawn machinery. He plowed the fields with three head of horses and a gang plow. That was a plow with a seat and two plow shovels. Then he would pull a disk with a seat on it, with four horses. Then he would harrow it down with two head of horses. He disked it down and harrowed the ground to get ready to plant corn. Dad had a two-wheel planter with two boxes to fill with seed corn. Mind you, they didn't have seed to buy in sacks like they do now. They picked the best of the ears of corn that were in the corn crib. We kids shelled the corn with a corn sheller. It had a crank on it and we put in the ears. It would shell off the corn and we saved the cobs to start a fire in the heating stove and cook stove. It was so cold when we got up in the mornings, the water bucket and dipper would be frozen solid. When the fire was going good, Mom would set the bucket on the cook stove to thaw it out.

When the corn was up so high, Dad would go in with a two-horse walking cultivator and plow the corn. It was planted so you could go across either way.

One time Dad was plowing a field to put in corn. He plowed out a nest of little skunks The horses stepped on the mother skunk and killed her. She had five baby skunks so young they didn't have their eyes open. We had a mother cat that had two kittens at that time and she claimed those little skunks and raised all five of them. We called them kitties. When they were old enough to drink milk out of a pan they came running after she weaned them. When they got big enough, they would go out hunting for grub worms. We had a field across the road that had a rotten hay stack bottom and they would go there and dig out the grub worms and when they got full they would come back over and go to sleep in the old oats bin we had.

Spring was oats sowing time. Dad had a wagon box with a seeder on it. He had one box for oat seed and again he picked the best oats out of the bin to sow. The smaller box was for alfalfa and clover seed. The seeder fit a box side wagon drawn by two head of horses. On the under side were two boxes. The big one was for oats and the small one for the seeds. On the seeder was a little metal piece to tell how many acres it would sow. The oats were sowed so that it shaded over the seeds and they wouldn't die out before they got started.

When the oats were ripe, he had a binder pulled by four head of horses. It had a seat and it held three balls of twine. The binder would make a big bundle and drop it on the ground. We kids would shock oats with so many bundles in a shock behind the binder. All neighbors sowed oats and seeds after the oats finished drying out in the shocks. We had a neighbor who had a threshing machine. He would go from neighbor to neighbor to thresh. Each farmer brought his hay rack and horses and hauled the shocked oats out of the field to the threshing machine. The farmer who had the oats had to stack his own stack. When they were done they would move on to the next neighbor.

The women would gather and prepare the noon meal. Sometimes if the men were about through, they would stay and finish, then stay for supper and move the rig to the next neighbor to thresh. When the alfalfa and clover had made the seed, Dad would thresh them for seed for the next year's seeding. They put up the hay to feed the cattle and horses.

Dad cut the hay with a cycle bar mowing machine with a seat on it, and drawn by two head of horses. When it was dry enough he had what we called a dump rake. It also had a seat on it with a handle to raise the teeth and it wind rowed the hay. Dad would rake so much hay in a day and my brother and I would bull rake the hay, then bring it to Dad to stack it. When we had it stacked, Dad would cover the top with straw. That kept the weather from spoiling the hay.

Dad plowed fields and planted potatoes for us to eat. He planted enough to last until we had new potatoes the next year. Dad also raised a lot of watemielons back in the field. We kids would go back where they were and plug the watermelons to see if they were ripe. It was hot one year, and when we plugged the watermelons they soured. We kids would go in the patch and eat the melons that were plugged and we really got sick over the watermelons that had soured. To this day I don't care for watermelon.

Dad also had hogs. He would let the sows go to the timber to have their little pigs, but we had to go and check on them or the wolves would carry off the little pigs and eat them. Dad would take the wagon, pick up the little pigs, and take them to the barn. The old sow would follow the wagon to the barn. That is how they raised hogs in those days.

Mom rendered lard off a hog that Dad butchered in the late winter. Dad had a big kettle that hung on an iron frame. Mom would build a fire under the kettle outdoors and put the fat off the hog to cook it and when it was done, she put it through a lard press. She also made her own soap out of meat fryings.

In the fall, Dad and Mom picked corn by hand, and we kids would help on Saturday and Sunday. We did that before the snow came. Again, we picked corn with a team of horses and a wagon. They didn't raise corn to see how many bushels they could raise to the acre, they just got whatever it produced. Dad took the manure piles and spread it on the fields for fertilizer. They didn't know what fertilizer was until later years. They just knew it was good for raising a crop. They either plowed it or disked it in.

The first farm where we lived had a big barn where Dad boarded horses to work on highway 34 . They used big horse-drawn wooden dump wagons to build the dirt road at that time.

While Dad's work was hard, Mom's life was at least as taxing if not more so. She baked nine loaves of bread every other day. With eight of us to care for, no indoor plumbing or electricity, she carried water to wash our clothes. I remember her hands bleeding from scrubbing the garments on a wash-board. On wash day, she put on a pot of soup beans and cooked them on the back of the stove. Then she made cornbread and we had beans and corn bread for our supper. If Mom had any corn bread left over, she would put it in a container and we had it for our supper the next night. We ate a lot of corn bread and milk. We called our meals breakfast, dinner and supper. Now they are called breakfast, lunch and dinner I still call them the old way.

On Saturdays Mom made her own pancake mix and her own syrup for the pancakes. We drank hot milk right out of the separator. Mom put the milk in big crocks to sour and make cottage cheese. She hung sweet corn to dry in a white cloth bag on the clothes lines. In the winter she took the dry corn and soaked it overnight. She cooked it the next day for our dinner or supper. Dad raised a lot of popcorn and Mom popped corn to eat in the evening. At Christmas time, Dad went to town and bought us an apple or orange. We would get one apiece. We didn't know about Christmas presents. Mom made popcorn balls to put in our stockings. We were happy to get that. Oh, how I would like to have a popcorn ball now!

There was always a way to "make do." For light, we had coal oil lamps and every morning she filled them and trimmed the wicks. For heating and cooking, she burned corncobs, which we kids gathered when we got home from school. In the summer, when the weather was too hot to sleep in the house, Mom would put a blanket over the clothesline and we kids would sleep under it at night. When my youngest sister was a baby, Mom would put her in the baby buggy and we kids would fan her with a newspaper.

One time, our cousin who was about our age, came out to play with us. We had a big rope swing with a tire tied to it and it hung from a walnut tree. When evening came and it was cooler, we would go out and swing, but we had to wash and dry the dishes first. One time we got in a hurry, so we grabbed my younger sister's diaper and dried the dishes with them. You need to know in those days we used cloth diapers. There weren't Pampers or anything like them. When our mother found out what we had used the diapers for, she made us wash the dishes over and dry them with a dish towel. We found out it didn't pay to get in a hurry.

Mom raised big flocks of chickens for eggs and meat, and she hatched baby chicks in an incubator. She raised vegetables in two big gardens and one of the things we kids liked to do was take the salt shaker to the rhubarb patch and eat raw rhubarb. Mom canned the produce in half-gallon jars instead of quart ones to carry us through the winter. In the spring we picked goose-berries off a bush and Mom would can them for pies. We used to go blackberrying, raspberrying, and dewberrying in the wild patches. Mom would can them and we would have fruit to eat in the winter. Now they don't have the wild patches. They've been sprayed and the ground used for raising crops. In the fall, we would go to the timber and pick up nuts. We picked up hickory nuts that dropped off the tree. Hazel nuts we picked off a bush. They grew in clusters.

We had a cave where we stored the food. For it they dug a hole and put cement walls and a top on it. They humped up dirt on top of that so the water would run off. They put a ring of rocks on the bottom around it and sowed grass seed on it. It had eight or nine steps down to the wooden door Dad had made and hung to keep the cave cool. That is where we stored our potatoes and apples for the winter. One time Mom sent us down to get potatoes to peel and cook. We took the top off the door to lay on a back step so it wouldn't tear off the hinges. Farther down there was another door and just before we opened the door, there laid a big bull snake stretched over the door-casing to escape the heat outside. Mom had to get the hoe and drive him out. We didn't kill bull snakes. Dad took them to the field and put them in a gopher hole. Gophers destroyed a lot of crops. The snakes would go in rat holes and swallow them whole, then they would lie around until the varmints were digested, and they would go hunting again.

Mom and I did the milking, and our "refrigerator" was the well. Dad made a pulley with a bucket on it and we lowered and raised our milk and cream as needed.

Saturday night was bath night. Mom would bathe us all in the same water in a big galvanized wash tub. Her cook stove that had a warming oven on it and a reservoir on the side. She filled it every day so we could have hot water for washing dishes or our hands and face.

Mom and Dad went to town once a week on Saturday afternoon. There wasn't room in the car for all eight of us so we didn't ever go anywhere. They took eggs, cream, and butter we made by churning the sour cream. The man they sold the dairy products to took the produce to the buyers to sell in the stores, and Dad and Mom would trade them for staples. Our winter supply was big sacks of each oatmeal, flour and sugar. (There was no boxed cereal). That lasted through the winter. Sometimes on their way home they would stop and pick up a 50# block of ice from the ice house and we would have homemade ice cream. We kids looked forward to Saturday because that treat made up for us having to stay at home.

There were no consolidated schools or school buses. We walked a mile each way to Sunnyside school, which was a mile east of Williamson. It was a one-room school house with classes from primary, first, second, and on up through eighth grade, with all the grades in that one room. Each class went in turn to the front of the room to "recite" in front of all the rest. It was not all bad because the younger kids learned from the older ones' lessons and the older ones could review from what the younger ones recited. There was one teacher, and I am not sure, but there were probably 40 kids in that school. There were no school lunches. We took our lunches from home. They were fried egg sandwiches that were cold by the time we got to school.

We kids each had one pair of shoes a year. In the summer we went barefoot. We didn't shop for our clothes, our mother made them all, down to socks and shoes, on her treadle sewing machine. After school was out in the summer, she made us girls all black sateen pants. They didn't show the dirt. We had no playground equipment, so we made our fun where we could find it. There were yellow clay banks in the ditches along the roads and we would slide down them. We were told not to do that because Mom couldn't get the yellow stain out of our pants, but we did it anyway.

Our parents were not above punishing us. I remember one time in particular when we ran off to the neighbors' to play. It was about a half-mile and all we had to do was go up the hill and down the other one, but we didn't tell our folks we were going. I never got such a spanking in all my life as I did when we got back! We really got a scorching — this time with a razor strap. And I mean, the razor strap hurt! But we learned our lesson and never did it again.

There was a time we were chased by a blue racer. We played with kids that lived across the field. If we went by the road it was two miles but when we went across the field, it wasn't far. One day we were going over to play and a big blue racer snake took after us. They are poisonous and will bite. We ran for dear life. It chased us and we escaped by getting up on the fence. I don't know what might have happened if the fence hadn't been there.

In the wintertime, when the snow was deep and hard, we'd get lanterns and set them on top of each hill and the neighbor kids and we would go sliding down the hill at night. Afterward, either my mom or the neighbor kids mom would fix hot chocolate for us.

Another fun we had was when Mom and Dad were finished raising their chickens, we kids would clean out the brooder house. It was a hard job, largely because it had a dirt floor, but we'd work until we had it all nice and clean. Then we'd make a stage and have shows. We'd take gunny sacks and put strings through them for our curtains and we strung them on baling wire so we could slide them back and forth. We wrote shows and performed them. We just had the one brother so we dressed him up like a girl. He loved it just like we did.

We also played house and we dressed up our kittens and puppies. We would take some old rags and with Mom's scissors, needle and thread, we made clothes for them. There was one time we had an old Model A Ford Pickup sitting outside the gate. It wasn't in running condition but we would push it up the little hill, then we'd all get in and ride down the hill. We did it quite a bit until Dad caught us one day. He hitched up a horse and pulled the Model A into a shed, and that was the end of that deal. After that was over, we were grown up. Then came the boyfriends. We could date but we had to be home by 10 o'clock

Our family was very close. No one was involved with organizations or anything like that so when evening came, we were at home. We played games but we also talked about what we did at school, which was the only place we ever went. In spite of how our life must seem to have been, we were all pretty healthy. My only health problem was I had an appendicitis operation when I was 17 years old. I got along just fine.

There was another time when a doctor might have been called. There was a 2x4 board lying on the ground and it had a big spike sticking up in it. It was about dark one evening, when Mom sent me out to pick up our baby sister. Mind you, I stepped on that spike and ran it through my foot. Mom had to stand on the 2x4 to pull me off of it. Well, I suffered with that. My mom never took us kids to the doctor — they didn't have the money. So my mom went to work and soaked my foot in turpentine and hot water to take out the blood poison. She took fat bacon and salt to draw the poison out as well. Mom gave us mineral oil for our constipation. Until this day we kids don't have trouble with our stomachs. We don't have polyps or ulcers. That mineral oil kept us from having those problems in later life. Mom let our bodies heal themselves. We kids don't run to the doctor with every little pain or trouble we have, which I think is the reason we are living so long. My mom was a doctor, nurse, or whatever title you might use, to keep us healthy. Nowadays they don't believe in the old way of doctoring. Some of the ways are better than the drugs and medicine the doctors give us today.

It must seem to someone reading our story, we were poor; but we really weren't aware of being poor, until the bad farming years, which started in 1929, and continued. 1934 was a really bad year for farmers. It was very dry and grasshoppers and chinch bugs took the crops.

On December 17, 1932, when I was eight years old, our house caught on fire. Early on a Saturday morning our breakfast was over and Mom was out feeding the chickens, when she looked up and saw the house on fire. Dad was wearing a sheep-skin lined coat to chore in and he wrapped up the younger kids so they wouldn't freeze. The roads were drifted full fence-post high. There weren't any machines that could move that amount of snow so our house burnt to the ground. Mom pulled her old gas engine washing machine out back where it was safe enough, and I pulled my mother's treadle sewing machine to the front porch where it was safe

We stayed at the neighbor's house that night. The next night we went to stay with Grandpa and Grandma. In order to tend to the stock, Dad stayed in the oats bin lined with cardboard and had a stove to keep him warm. In the meantime, he found a house to rent until he could move a house onto the farm. That gave us a house to move into in the spring. They put the house on jacks and rollers to move it. It was on rollers until later in the year before he could put it on the ground before putting the crops in.

Dad lost the farm in 1936, so we moved to Evergreen Corner, north of the Jay community in Clarke County. When we lived on Evergreen Corner, a tornado came through and went through Liberty Center, also. We kids went after the cows to milk and our pasture was across the road. We had to drive them through a large tube or culvert under the rock road to the barn, and that is where we took shelter from the tornado.

The folks who lived there before us raised chickens in the pantry, and Mom had the worst time cleaning that pantry so we could live. She had to use a scoop shovel, a hoe, and finally lye water to clean up the hardened chicken do-do. They also had bedbugs. So there are different ways of being poor. We didn't have a lot of things but Mom saw to it we were always clean and lived clean.

CLAYTON HOFFMAN

We lived there for two years, until 1938, and moved to a place near Chariton. Before we left the old farm we lived on before we moved to Clarke County I graduated out of eighth grade in a rural school in Clarke County. We had to pass a test to be admitted to high school. When my parents moved to Chariton, I babysat for some folks that lived on the farm south of Chariton. I would stay all week. They would bring me home on Saturday night and come after me on Sunday evening. I worked there all summer until school started in the fall, when I started to high school. I used to walk to high school. Dad didn't have the money for me to stay in town.

After my 11th grade I met Clayton Hoffman whom I married on May 22, 1946. We started housekeeping. We were as poor as Job's turkey. We had two chairs and a table, a bed and a cook stove. For our cupboard we had orange crates. You could buy them for 5¢ apiece. We bought four crates for our dishes. We bought four more crates, put a board across the top, and put a sawed off broomstick to hang up our clothes. We didn't have many.

For my dressing table we had two crates with a board across the top to put our under­clothes. We lived in an old house with three rooms in it. I papered with oil cloth so the plaster wouldn't fall off. We had to make the money go as far as possible because there were no jobs. We had an old Model A Ford car. It wasn't very good to look at but it got us there. We lived on a farm. We had three cows, an old sow and pigs. I raised chickens. I set the old hens and raised my chickens. That way I had chicken coops. It would take about three weeks for them to hatch out. I would tie a string on one of their legs so they couldn't drag the chicks off in the woods and put them somewhere the varmints would get them.

We didn't have electricity so we had kerosene lamps. We would fill them every morning and trim the wicks for the next night. On Sunday night I would carry water to heat on the kerosene oil stove for my washing on Monday. Mind you, I didn't have a washing machine. I washed on a board. What a big event it was when we got electricity in 1948! I didn't have a washing machine until then and by that time I had two kids.

In April of 1950, my husband got sick. They thought he had ulcers so gave him medicine for that. In the meantime I got pregnant with my third baby. By August of that year he was getting worse so we took him to Mayo Clinic and found he had stomach cancer. They gave him four months to live, so we sold the farm and moved to a house we bought in Russell, Iowa. We moved in October, and lived in Russell for two years. There was no such thing as welfare as there is now. I took in washings and ironings, and mowed lawns in the summer. I mowed the depot yard with a lawn mower that I pushed and the blades turned around and around to cut the grass. I would put Linda in the stroller and two other girls would walk along beside the stroller. I took a blanket and some snacks and set them on the corner of a blanket while I mowed. When I was through, I put the mower away until it was time to mow again. I saved every dime I could to buy food and fuel. I got along as well as I could. I raised a garden in the spring and summer.

We had what was called a privy until they started calling them outdoor toilets. They were separate small buildings made of lumber with three holes to sit on. We didn't have toilet paper. We used pages of old catalogues. For the kids, I had a potty chair. I would empty it in what we called a slop pail in the morning in the toilet. I remember how I used to hate to go out in the winter time when it was cold.

One inevitable consequence of living a long time is losing our dear ones. I married Clayton Hoffman in 1946, and I lost him in 1950. We had two children and one on the way when he died. The baby was born six weeks later. I remember we had a lot of ice and snow that winter.

Johnny was always faithful to his brothers and sisters. He took over his brother's responsibility to care for his mother. In 1952, his mother died on February 7, his brother on July 3, and Johnny were married December 20 of the same year. I lost my dad in 1954.

Johnny took me and my three kids and raised them like they were his own. We had to take a blood test before we could be married. My two girls, Sharon and Evelyn were in Russell School before we were married. Evelyn was a little homebody. She didn't like school and would run off and come back home. I would take her by the hand and march her back to school. I didn't have a car so we walked. I didn't learn to drive until in the summer of the first year I was widowed. I took AMTRAK to Chariton to visit my folks every now and then. It cost a quarter, and the kids rode free. We did that until I saved enough money to buy a car. In the second summer, I bought a car and a lady named Sarah Repls taught me to drive. When Johnny and I met, I had a good friend Carrie Patterson. I would make supper and she and I would take it to him. He was picking corn at that time. I guess my cooking won him. My mom taught all of us to cook and take care of the house.

We had been married 15 months when we had the youngest girl on March 15, 1954. She was the first baby born in the new hospital. Helen Marker was the nurse that helped Dr. Stroy deliver her. Johnny's sister, Edna Kimzey, came down from New Virginia to help Johnny take care of the other girls until I could take care of them myself. We didn't have any more after her. I nursed all my kids because in those times we had no way to keep milk sweet. Besides, I didn't have time to make formula.

Two years went by and in 1956, we had another drought. Johnny took a job on the railroad for three years and I took a job at Snowdon's. That is how we made it. When things were better, Johnny would go to the sale barn and buy stock — cows to have calves. We would sell the steers and buy more stock cows. That is how we started farming. We got a government loan to buy the old folks' farms. We had to pay off the heirs, which took us 25 years. In the meantime, Johnny and I bought another 120 acres of land across the road from the school, the Catholic Church, and the Christian Church. We used it for pasture for the stock cows. We would drive the cattle down the road to the pasture. The neighbors would ride their horses to make sure the cattle went down the right road.

Johnny's brother went to the sale barn in Humeston and bought the girls a pony and three baby goats. I don't know why he bought the goats but he did and the kids had fun with them. We put a chain on them and let them run back and forth on the clothes-line. I had an old wash tub that had sprung a leak. I turned it upside down and my youngest girl, who was about three, decided she would get up on it and play with the goats. They chewed on her hair and it wadded so badly I couldn't do anything with it but cut it off. It didn't make either one of us feel good.

When fall came and the corn was picked and in the bin, Johnny brought the cattle home to clean up the cornfields and have them closer to the barn when winter came. We had five milk cows to begin our married life. We bought milk cows when the money was there. We finally got a herd of milk cows which gave us enough to buy a milking machine.

Our sows had little pigs about six months out of the year. We had a big hog shed. Part of it was penned off for little pigs and sows. The rest of the hog house was a loafing shed for fattening hogs. We raised a lot of hogs to pay off the mortgage on the farm. We didn't sell any corn, oats, or hay. We kept it to feed the livestock.

Johnny bought a little Ferguson tractor and equipment to farm with instead of hiring the combines to do the work. Our neighbor, Merrill McKinnie, and Johnny bought a combine and a hay baler. They exchanged work with one anothr. They would rake the straw and bale it for bedding for the milk cows, livestock and hogs. Then Johnny took the manure to the field and spread it in the spring before it was time to plow, sow oats, or put up hay. That was the fertilizer they used when Johnny and I were married. As time progressed, farmers started using manufactured fertilizer. They raised bushels of corn by using fertilizer, and they also fertilized the hay fields and pastures for more grass and crops.

I made a compost bin for my gardens. I put in all the potato peelings, tops of vegetables, and all the left-overs out of the garden. We had to put lime on the compost pile so it wouldn't attract lots of flies. This kept the swarms of flies down.

We lived on the farm south of Woodburn, Iowa. When Sharon and Evelyn went through the 6th grade, they began sending the 6th grade to Osceola to finish their 7th and 8th grades before they entered high school. By that time they had busses. It wasn't too many years until they closed the Woodburn school. We had stores in Woodburn — a grocery store, feed store, restaurant, fire station, and Community Center.

While we lived there, I had two big gardens and a big strawberry bed. A lot of people came in to pick them on shares. I would come home after work, stem strawberries, and prepare them for the freezer. I made lots of frozen jam. One night it rained and the hogs got out. They rooted up my big strawberry bed. I never planted another garden there.

I planted a potato patch and waternelon patch on the west side of the barn. We had feeding steers next to the garden. Something scared them. They broke down the fence and trampled my potatoes and watemelons into the wet ground. I never again planted a garden there, but brought it closer to the house. In it I put a strawberry patch and every kind of vegetable I could.

In April our stock cows started to have their little calves. Johnny usually checked the cows that were to have calves by the number on their ear tags. He always put them on the calendar to keep them in the barn. One April the ground was still frozen, and he didn't have this cow's number down for calling. Johnny and I were choring and found she had the little calf, born on frozen ground. Johnny picked up the calf, brought it to the house, and put it in the bath tub. He ran warm water over it to warm it up, then dried it off and gave it a shot of whiskey. We went back to finish choring and when we came back in, the kids were up on the table crying. The calf was trying to get out of the tub and they thought the calf was going to get them. We had a good laugh over that.

Johnny and I and the kids went up to his niece's family for an evening visit. The girls decided to make a snack before we went home. They hadn't gathered eggs very often. They went to the barn and picked up some to make brownies and when they were ready for the eggs they didn't crack them to see if they were all right. They just put them in the cake mixture and discovered there were little chickens formed in the shell. That taught everybody to crack the eggs in a bowl before putting them in the mix.

Doug Day was my sister's boy. He used to come down from Des Moines to stay with our kids in the summertime. During a summer when he was staying with us, a storm came up one night. We didn't know he was afraid of storms but with that one there was a lot of wind, lightning, and rain. He got scared and went into the clothes closet to hide. We couldn't find him until we found him asleep in the closet.

JAKE

Jake was an important member of the family who came to us as a puppy. His mother was with us first. We named her Fluffy because she was pure white with long hair. We had her five years and she'd had no puppies, but one time when Johnny was in the hospital, I did the chores. When I went to the barn to milk, I could hear little puppies. I looked around the far length of the manger and found two puppies alive. We gave one to the neighbors' kids and kept one. This was our dog named Jake. We thought we should Fluffy spayed and she didn't live through it.

Jake was a cross between a border collie and some other kind of dog. He was a good stock dog and helped Johnny drive the cattle and hogs through the gates. All Johnny had to do was to point to the cow or hog he wanted kept out of the lot, and Jake would keep that animal out. One night a storm came up. He was afraid of storms and if we didn't let him into the basement, he would tear up the screen door and come right in. One time a storm came up during the night and we didn't hear it in time to let him in. He went through the screen door into the house.

Jake protected our property in different ways. One night when the sweet corn was ready to pick, here came the coons to help themselves. They tried to steal the sweet corn, our dog Jake treed a coon on a fence post, and didn't let up until Johnny went out with a gun and shot it. They like sweet corn; and they like chickens, too. One rainy evening, they came up and got in the chicken house. They were really having a hey-day killing the chickens until Johnny took the gun out and shot one of them. Another time on the farm we heard the chickens in the chicken house making a lot of noise, so Johnny got up and took his gun to the chicken house. He opened the door, turned on the light, and there was a fat coon killing my chickens. Johnny shot him and from then on we turned on the light because a coon doesn't bother the chickens if the light is on. On the farm we learned something new every day. We had all kinds of varmints roaming around. We had to make everything animal proof.

Jake liked to hunt, and one morning when he didn't come home, we thought that was the reason. When he didn't come back we knew what happened. Our neighbor's son teased him every chance he got, which Jake responded to, so the neighbor didn't like him. He told us if he ever caught him around his house, he would shoot him. That must have happened.

BAD TIMES AND GOOD

In June 1970, lightning struck the Woodburn Christian Church and burned it to the ground. The Board and members of the church met to decide whether or not to rebuild and they were in favor of building a new church. It took four years to build it. My daughter had met a college friend in Colorado and was planning to be married in the Woodburn church, but the Osceola Christian Church said she could be married there. Johnny had surgery for a strangulated hernia and just got out of the hospital the day before the wedding. He wasn't able to walk her down the aisle, so Darrel Morris, my son-in-law, took his place. This year (2010) September 19th, she will have been married 40 years.

In 1972, my youngest daughter graduated from high school and by fall she was married in the new church — hers was the first wedding in the new church. Her wedding colors were red, white, and blue. I crocheted the wedding dress and train, the two bridesmaid's dresses, and those of the little flower girls. If I do say so myself, it was a beautiful wedding. She will have been married 38 years this September 30th. She lives in Blackwell, Oklahoma. The two girls don't get up to see me very often because they have jobs. They also have grandchildren. Sharon has great-grandchildren, and I have great-great grandchildren. Matter of fact, I have seven great-great grandchildren.

In June 1972, Johnny went to help put up hay for a neighbor who had passed away with a heart attack. The neighbors went in to take care of the hay for his widow and his daughter. When he came from the neighbors, I was fixing my brooder house for the next week for my little chicks. It was rather warm and cloudy that day, and about 6:00 o'clock in the evening — mind you, our barn was full of new hay at that time — the lightning struck the barn and set the old barn on fire.

We were in the house and thought it had struck the house. A neighbor came driving in and asked if we knew our barn was on fire. He saw it strike from where he lived. The fire trucks came from Woodburn, Osceola, and Lucas to fight the fire but to no avail. Finally they got the fire under control and Johnny took the tractor and put the hay on the ground so it would burn faster.

We lost a barn full of hay that night. They sprayed the other buildings so they wouldn't catch fire. They fought it until early in the morning. We made sandwiches and coffee for them while they were fighting the fire. In the meantime we didn't have any place to put our cows, and we had to let the hens out because it was too hot in there for them.

When Linda was in high school, she worked for A & W where Casey's store is now located on West McLane. This was June 1969. It was the last day before Snowdon's employees would go on vacation for two weeks. I had to work that Saturday morning until noon. It was so hot and steamy we could hardly stand to work. I finished the job and went home. Johnny baled hay and had put part of it in the hay shed. We got two loads of hay in and the clouds began to form, and it got real still. A tornado struck west of Osceola, came down 34 highway and went across the fields toward Woodburn. We just lived one mile south of Woodburn.

It came across our farm. And did a lot of damage that time. It tore down barns, electric lines and poles. When it reached our place, it took our new garage and carried it away. We never found it. It tore off the barn doors and carried our corn crib out in the middle of the cornfield. It tore a limb off a tree and drove it through the picture window.

The two kids and Johnny were in the basement and I was out on the front porch shutting the windows. I got them shut but couldn't get back in the house. The suction of the storm sucked the door shut so I couldn't get in. There I was out there all alone. I watched the storm take the garage, break the window, tear off the barn doors and carry off the corn crib. This night Linda was supposed to work at A & W but we only got as far as the edge of Osceola when they stopped us. The electric lines and poles were all down. There was no electricity in town. We turned around and went back home. The tornado had torn down power lines and poles across to Humeston, Iowa and we waited several days before they got the poles set and wires up for lights again. So I have been through two tornadoes.

Another time while Linda worked at A & W, she worked until 10:00 at night when I would go in and get her. This night just before I had to drive to get her, it clouded up and rained. It was dark and cloudy that night and I got part way up the road when a cow came up on the road and ran in front of the car. It happened so fast I couldn't stop. I hit and killed her, and she rolled me over the bank. There I was, pinned in the car and couldn't get out. The neighbor heard a big, loud noise and got in his car to see what happened. He found his dead cow in the road and went looking for the car that hit her. He found me in the car. They had to take crowbars to pry the door open because the car was lying on its top, smashed down on the seat and I was pinned on the floorboard of my car. I was bleeding from the broken windshield glass. I was pretty badly banged up and with bruises. They took me to the hospital and made me stay three days for observations. Of course, Linda had waited for me to come for her. I can't remember who picked her up and took her home. That was June 22, 1968.

My sister-in-law Carol Davenport died shortly after that. Carol was Johnny's older sister. In 1966, Johnny's sister Arlene Dodd was dying of ovarian cancer. We sisters-in-law took turns taking care of her until she passed away April 14, 1966. We were sewing oats the day before her funeral and were hurrying to finish. I always ran the seeder putting the oats and seeds in the seeder boxes, when we were on the last round, as we were finishing up I brushed the oats on the scoop and ran a big, long splinter under the nail of my fourth finger on my right hand. I had to go to the doctor to have it taken out.

Most of it came out but the doctor didn't get it all. That was April 13th. I soaked my finger and kept soaking it until Decoration Day. That was Monday, wash day, and my hands were in hot water all the while I did the washing. When I finished, my hand hurt tenibly, and my finger was turning blue. I looked to see what was going on and saw a little white spot come out. I sterilized a needle, opened it up, pressed it and out popped the rest of the splinter! My finger healed right up.

Johnny and I lived together 54 years. We had lived on the farm for 25 years and milked a lot of cows. We had milking machines. The job I took at Snowdon's Lingerie Factory in Osceola was in 1957. From that time, we would get up at 3:30 in the morning, milk the cows and wash the milker. I got breakfast for the kids and made sure they got on the school bus. Then I'd dress and go to work. I did that from 1957 to 1974, when Johnnie retired. We moved into town December 4, 1976. We moved first into the split level house on highway 34, beside the Junction Creamery. We lived there 23 years. I have lived in this house at 114 North Dewey for ten years.

When I was working at Snowdon's, there was a lady named Pat Green, who was always playing tricks. I thought I would get even with her. She was always ready to be the first to clock out and this Friday she had her purse lying on the table ready to take off. I had a long tie string that we used to tie up bundles to fold and box to send out. I tied her purse handles to the string and tied it to the table where she was working. I dropped the extra string down next to the table leg. Well, the bell rang indicating it was time to quit for the day. She started to run. When she got to the end of the string, it jerked her back. Did she ever get mad over that! She wasn't the first to clock out that night!

When we moved to town Johnny worked for his nephew in his feed store, and I babysat for two grand kids. Sheila and Jim worked in Des Moines. I kept the children until they started to school. Even then they stayed with us. Johnny took them to school in the morning and I would go get them. They stayed with us until the parents came for them. When they were older, they hired a baby-sitter to stay with them. Johnny and I mowed yards through the week. We finally quit that and did the things we wanted to do.

RETIREMENT

Johnny liked to go to the Humeston sales, or to horse sales at Waverly, Iowa. He went with friends Bob Ryan, Charles Pearcy, Barney Engler and his nephew Ronnie Woods. They would stay a couple of days. I stayed home and raised a garden and lots of flowers. I also made a lot of underpants for ladies. I bought bundles of scrap material used by Snowdon's Lingerie Factory. I always tried to keep busy doing something. For awhile I did sawing, and made wooden toys and sanded them for kids. I drew my own patterns. I also made wooden yard ornaments — little wooden rocking horses and dolls with clothes to put on them. I made wooden tricycles and dolls for them.

I got into making dolls to sell. I bought the faces, made bodies out of cloth, and put hair on them. I made doll clothes and dressed them. I made their shoes out of plastic material, and lots of toys which I sold. I bought Cabbage Patch doll faces, then I started making Care Bears. I sold every one I made.

When the hospital held their show they offered to sell our homemade things for Christmas. The show was held in November before Thanksgiving. People came from far and near. I showed lots of articles at the 4-H Fair, and was honored to send some to the State Fair. I won lots of ribbons. I designed a bedspread after the 1976 State Fair. I won honorable-mention, and I got a double blue ribbon for the bedspread. The bedspread is in the Historical Museum in Des Moines. I took my things to the State Fair every year and came home with blue ribbons. After those years, I decided to do something else — I got into making quilts. I sewed the pieces together by hand. I cut and pieced by hand 19 quilts for my kids, grandkids and myself. I quilted them all by hand on a quilting frame that was my mother's quilting frames. They were getting real old and fmally dry rotted so I couldn't use them anymore.

When our kids were little, we would take them to the rodeo to watch the bull riding and bucking horses. The rodeo arena was on the ground where the 4-H buildings were. They had a large parking lot for cars to park to have the event and hold the 4-H Clubs County Fair. The kids were in 4-H at the time, too. They would make things and I would bake pies for them to serve to the Fair-goers. I did that every year.

After Snowdon's had gone, I still lived on the farm. I would make all kinds of pies for the restaurant run by Opal Smith. Sometimes I didn't know how many pies I made in a week to serve the customers. The favorite pie they sold was my recipe for chocolate pie. In fact, I won first on my chocolate pie at a pie contest.

At the County 4-H Fair I won a gold watch for guessing the weight of a hog in the pen. I wouldn't wear the watch because I was allergic to metal. I kept it for years until I gave it to my youngest daughter after her dad passed away.

One year we went to Branson, Missouri to the music shows. We traveled with a bus load from Clarke County and stayed four days and three nights. That was in November, and when we got back we had to wade snow.

We went to Army Reunions every other year. Each Army guy took a turn having it. We enjoyed going to those. We went twice to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, twice to Norfolk, Nebraska; to Ottumwa, Iowa; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Marshall, Minnesota; and twice to Garden City, Kansas. The last time we went to Garden City, one of Johnny's Army buddies wanted him to go over to Colorado. We weren't far from there, so we went with them. We went through Estes Park and saw where the water went down the Thompson Canyon. After the trip, we went home with them and stayed over-night. We went up into northern Colorado through the Divide, and up into Wyoming. From there we went to the monument in North Dakota and saw the four presidents chiseled out of stone. We also saw the Corn Palace made of corn. On our way home, we went through an Antique Museum. We saw Roy Roger's horse, and some of the clothes Roy Rogers wore. It took us a week to get home that time. Our little dog Cricket was so homesick for us she wouldn't have anything to do with Evelyn who had fed and watered her every day.

HOLIDAYS

After Johnny and I were married, the brothers and sisters would get together every so often to have a family dinner and tell stories of what happened over the years. Our families were close to each other.

Decoration Day each year was when his family got together for their reunions, Johnny and I and the kids would go. They would come from far and near to the reunion, which met at the Liberty Church on highway 65. They gathered together with their baskets of food and then go to the cemeteries to decorate the graves. It finally petered out when the family got old and couldn't travel anymore. The family grew less and less each year until they didn't go at all.

Johnny and I, however, continued to go every Decoration Day and decorate each family grave. Some were buried at Woodburn Cemetery, Liberty Center, Chariton, New Virginia, and Osceola. We made the rounds every year until we got too old to do it. Now our kids do it for us. Thank God we have kids that will do the decorating for us.

On the 4th of July, when our kids were young, my Grandma and Grandpa, aunts and uncles on my mom's side would take a basket of food to the courtyard in Chariton, Iowa, and have a picnic at the 4th of July celebration. We watched the parade and all the activities. We didn't get on any of rides but we could watch others that rode the ferris wheel and merry-go-round. We enjoyed it because we got to go. That seemed to happen only on special occasions. When we lived on Evergreen corner, we went to Woodburn's homecoming where they had home talent shows, country music and a small parade.

I had four children, the oldest, Sharon Hoffman, married Darrell Morris; Evelyn Hoffman married David Carlson; Linda Hoffman married Joseph (Jody) Watts; Sheila Woods married James Landers. Linda now lives in Englewood, Colorado; Sheila lives in Blackwell, Oklahoma. Sharon and Evelyn live in Clarke County. We all stay in pretty close touch most of the time. I made all their wedding gowns and bridesmaid's dresses, and my oldest granddaughter's, Shelly Morris' wedding gown also. She lives in Osceola. The granddaughter who lives in Mississippi is the one who suggested I write the book.

Of my original family, we all married. Anna Lee died 16 years ago in March 1994, of kidney failure. All the rest are still living, none in Iowa. Joanne is a beauty operator in old Mexico. My brother worked as a fireman at a fire station in Eugene, Oregon and is retired. Nina lives in Eugene, Oregon in on a farm. Adalene and I were married in the same year — 1946. She lives in Apache Junction, Arizona. She worked for K-Mart and is now retired — she will be 83 in August. She and I each had four children. Our brother had two, Joanne had one, and Nina had three. So I have kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and seven great-great-grandkids. I have three great grandsons in the service — one in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

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Last Revised January 6, 2015