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actionsandreflections-blog · 7 years

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Transcribed Interview: Family History

I decided to interview my grandma. She has always been a storyteller and I know a lot about my family’s history already, but I wanted to dig deeper and create a written record of her knowledge. My grandma is a poet, a photographer, and an active member in her community. For work she farmed for most of her life, and was also a janitor for her local school district, and a mother of three boys, as well as many foster kids. I would like to make this paper into a written record of her stories.

ME: Yea I was supposed to come up with questions, but I didn't.

GMA: Oh well just go by that.

ME: I guess I kind of wanted to know more about the dairy industry, and what it was like being a part of that.

GMA: You want when I was born, my age?

ME: I guess I want to start on how we got this farm.

GMA: Ok, well let's do the beginning so you got a got a little bit of trace, I was born in San Diego, March 17th, 1946, and when I was a year we moved to Newberg Oregon and had 15 dairy cows, and that would've been...1947, and then in 1948 we moved up to the lower farm, and share-farmed with my uncle and aunt, and we...

ME: Did they own the farm?

GMA: No, Walt Mavis did. We lived in the little house, and they milked about probably 35 cows by hand, no machines, probably for about the first 5 years and then they got milking machines, and we didn’t have power down there either.

ME: What year was that? How old were you?

GMA: 18 months old when we came to my uncles place in the Wynoochee, and they had no electricity for the first 2 years probably, and then they had a generator, and then they had two milking machines, and mom would have electricity in the house from a little wire that led from the milking barn to the house, and she always knew when dad was coming up for dinner because they cut the generator and it would be back to no electricity.

ME: So, you... when, did your family buy the farm?

GMA: yea, ok, when I was 9 in 1955, my mom told my dad (she was Depression Dust Bowl Oklahoman, my dad was Kansas/Colorado) that she wanted her own farm, she wanted to buy this farm, Parker and Margaret Askew's place and Dad said "Rachel we don’t have two dimes to rub together" and she said "well go to the federal land bank in Chehalis and get a loan" and he goes "you have to have money down" and the place cost $24,500 it was 185 acres, the barn was built in 1931 so it was, not old, and this house was built in the '20's....Anyway, so dad said "we don’t have two dimes to rub together" and she said "I have money" and he goes "well where might that be? it’s not in the bank." and she said "it’s in a rusty can on top the cupboards in the kitchen!"

ME: I think you've told me this one before!

GMA: yep on top the cupboard, and so he gets a big ladder (cuz those old cupboards were so tall) and it was behind all this other stuff in front, and she had saved... everything from babysitting’ the neighbors kid, from selling cream and vegetables, everything she made from when they got married in 1944, till 1955, 11 years… she had over $500 in that can! And she knew if she put it in the bank that my uncle and my dad would have spent it on something for my uncles place, and so they took that money down to the federal land bank and the man said "Rachel! you got way more than enough money here for a down on that place, you can go home and buy frank somethin’ rusty for your new farm!" and that’s how they got this farm, 185 acres, and $24,500 which in ‘55 was a lot of money, but this house, when the homesteaders came to this farm, when the homesteaders came up this valley there was no road, it was called Chehalis county not grays harbor, and they thought if a road was ever put in it would be on the west side of the Wynoochee, well it was put on the eastside. So there were 8 or 9 swinging bridges that those farmers would carry their 80 lb. cans of milk across those swinging bridges to meet the milk truck and then the Askews’ built this big barn, its 80 some feet by 40 some big, it’s a gothic, and I can give you pictures, it was built in ‘31, and in ‘35 they brought this farm house with two teams of horses from across the river up the incline and set it on this basement and it’s not off a half an inch. And that was before they had power, that was in 1935 I think, or ‘37. So there was no power until 1955 we lived up here, we moved up here in 55, I’m sorry, in 1952 when we were still down at my uncles place the PUD told the farmers that if they would cut and skin and plant the cedar poles that they would bring the wire, and that’s when we got electricity in 1952. so we moved up here to the other place on December 20th, 1948, and then Christmas Eve of 1955, we moved the last batch of calves up the road to this farm, and she was having a lot of trouble walking and so much pain and mom took her to the emergency and she had appendicitis Christmas eve! That’s when we got our last animals moved up to the farm. Then, I was raised here I learned to swim in the Wynoochee, but it was just 7 days a week, 12-16 hours a day depending on time of year, ya know, the crops... and my dad, we had a big manure shed out there that he would haul all the manure from the barn and dump by hand with the wheelbarrow, and in the spring, he would unload it all by hand, into a manure wagon and spread it on the fields, and when I was I think a junior in high school, I musta been about 16, he got a John Deere tractor with a loader and he was able to unload it with the loader instead of doin’ it by pitchfork, it was amazing the work they did... I have pictures of that.

ME: What was it like being a girl?

GMA: we just all worked hard, there was no difference, us girls, worked as hard as the boys, we weren’t as strong as the boys physically, but I threw bales, drove hay truck, washed milkers, my sister washed the barn, and when she got married I had to do that… I ran baler, I never mowed hay much, dad always did that, but, I raked a lotta hay, we did pretty much everything the boys did, we just weren’t as physically strong, but, we were real respected there were never put downs, and then as your grandpa jerry and I got married, we moved to Alaska for ‘67-‘69 from Coffman Cove, Alaska and took over the farm again and then I ran the hay crews, and when we came back we always had girls on the crew, and boys, and everybody got along good, if there were any kind of put downs they got fired, I only fired one boy and that was because he was kept tormenting the other kids and fighting with ‘em so I told ‘em he just need to get his paycheck and go home... and the other kid I fired he just wasn’t pulling his weight, and he was staying with grandma and grandpa, he was so embarrassed! he begged me to hire him back and which I did that same afternoon, and then he worked, because he was too embarrassed to tell grandma! Fred was his name, but out of all the kids, and they wanted to work, the kids would be calling us, coming by, calling me on the phone, you know, wanting farm work, to work, make money.

ME: So, when was that around?

GMA: That would been in the 70's, cuz we came back in ‘69 and that’s when we took over the farm in the 70's and 80's and then we quit dairy farming in 1982, but we started switching to beef cattle and then we still put in bales of hay for alotta years. We still hired kids to work, and they were all wonderful. But the best help, the best workers we ever had was your dad, and your uncles. Jerrod, Kevin, Arnie, they were the best. Yep.

ME: What was it like working with Darigold? Was it a contract?

yea it was and we got paid if your milk was always clean and never, if you had dirty milk or ever got antibiotics in it or something you were degraded, and so you got lot less price and we always kept everything clean, and so we were grade A and we had a base that you, it was like shares I guess and you got paid really top dollar for that, and then if you had over that base then you got a little less, but we were always grad A dairy with Darigold and they were a fine outfit to sell for. We always milked with 3 milk buckets on the flat, you called it, cuz you always locked your cows in the stanchions, and you carried bucket from cow to cow. but, well in ‘73 we had to switch to a bulk milk tank, which was more sanitary, instead of cans. And then we were having to choose to go either milking parlor or pipeline and that’s when we decided to get outta business, and we got out when the price of dairy cattle were real high so we got out at a good time and then we started raising beef.

When you were raising beef were they just over there (across the river)?

We had em over here, and we had an old cow named Red. I went to Badgett’s, they had a big auction and we bought, mom and I did, 48 calves, raised em on the buckets, powdered milk, and that was the tame herd, and the one calf we named her red, she would moo in the spring and take the whole herd across the river, and in the fall she would come over here and moo at the gate and we would let her into the pastures. and when she dies, that’s when the rest of ‘em wouldn’t come back and that’s how i ended up with the wild cows...and they came back the first year or two but as their new calves came on, they just didn’t have this leadership of old Red, so that’s how we got all those wild cows across the river. They wouldn’t come over to the barn anymore.

ME: That’s crazy!

GMA: It was crazy. and we trapped 26 with Kevin and H&H meat Co. and so we trapped 26 in the round pen, and I think 15 didn’t get trapped. and there was originally 43 of ‘em... and so they started reproducing again and we trapped some more, and then the rest of ‘em...people hunted them because we couldn’t catch ‘em. pretty crazy.

ME: So people hunted them? Did you let them?

I let them they paid me cheap, I didn’t charge ‘em very much, and they would get over...like you would a elk. and it was work. and then we had 3 really crazy ones and I had a hunting party goin’ in because they kept going down to the neighbors, they didn’t want em with their cows cuz they were purebred Saler's and they didn’t want our cows, ya know, breeding their Saler show cows. And Sue called and said "call off your hunters we got the game department going in" and they got the last 3. and they were gone and I was so relieved, I mean the weight off my back… no more worries.

ME: I kind of wanted to know more about grandpa, when did you meet him?

GMA: Ok, I was workin’ in the restaurant, my first job was washin’ dishes in the smoke shop restaurant in Aberdeen and his sister in law was there as a waitress and she introduced him to me, and he kept asking me out and I didn’t want to, and then finally i went out with him and then we just started going fishing and he took me over to meet his grandparents and it was probably a 9 month friendship, nothing serious, I mean holding hands maybe, after 6 months! (laughs) I was kind of done on guys, I mean I was like snail slow… (laughs) And so finally he won me over and we got married on my 21st birthday on march 17th of ‘67, went to Alaska ‘til you know, ‘til your dad was born up there, and then we came back to farm. but he was in Vietnam, see he woulda been, oh gosh, I think he got outta Vietnam in '65 so... and he was in there what ‘63 to ‘65 he was in Vietnam, but he was only there 10 months, he wasn’t like today’s kids that go 3 and 4 times to Iraq or wherever, he was there for 10 months and then he came out. It messed him up, his mother said all three of her sons were never the same, one brother was in Cuba, his other brother Dave was in panama, and Jerry was in Vietnam and she said "I wish you could’ve known them before they went in the service because they were completely different human beings then when they came out" they were... um... never the same. and we had a good life here, it was ya know.... 7 days a week, 12-16 hours a day (laughs) pretty much depending on the season... I mean in winter you had a little more down time to relax but summer was just sun up to sun down. and then we took your dad and uncles when we quit dairy, we took em camping out to Sequim, did a road trip for three nights, and then um, I think it was 1985 we went to Yellowstone, so that’s basically the only trips we had in 16 years... And we did go to a few couple funerals in Yakima and two weddings overnight in Yakima and that’s pretty much it. (laughs)

ME: Wow, yea in class we are talking a lot about labor movements and stuff like that although you weren’t really wage earners I guess since you had property and stuff?

GMA: Yea oh gosh when we started, it mighta been $7 for a hundred pounds, and when we quit it I think in the spring in 82 we were up to 12$ per hundred pounds... and I don’t know what they get now I read somewhere in 2014 they were getting 18 per hundred pounds but their prices, to their prices today, it must be like 8x more, so what these farmers get today, comparison to what we got is... they have way more problems, way more cost than we had.

ME: What did you do when you were in Alaska?

GMA: Well he drove dump truck and logging truck, and we lived in a logging camp... and they only hired on the ability of the workers not what they were like as people, and we had some not very nice people in the beginning, and then they left after that first year, some of the more undesirable families or drinking people left the camp because it was not a law that you couldn’t drink in camp but they wanted to develop it as a family camp which they ended up with a really neat family camp but after the first year or two those people left, and then they started hiring relatives and friends of the people that stayed and they developed a really neat family logging camp. But we came back to farm, because grandpa Ziegler had made a deal with your grandpa Jerry so we moved back here to farm the place. we actually took it over in ‘69 when we moved back but legally we took it over in ’72, I think paper wise.

ME: So, you did dairy cows and then you did beef, and then I think you worked at the school?

GMA: To make extra money when times were really hard I picked daffodils at the daffodil farm, I worked seasonal at heather acres, planting chutes of heather in Elma, daffodils in Satsop, Leisha Creswell, my friend, we picked daffodils together, and we would drive over to Grayland, Westport, and weed cranberry bogs and that’s when you would string up these two foot wide strips of the bog and you just get on your knees very carefully go down in the bog pullin’ out weeds with a regular screwdriver or something, and your dad and uncles would go with us on weekends, sometimes her kids went with us on weekends to make extra money, and we peeled cascara bark, picked evergreen blackberries, and in the 40's and 50's, Esse's berry shed would drive up the Wynoochee and they had wooden flats they would give us (and I did this from when I was 4 or 5 years old) and I always got to keep my money but they would drive to each farm and pick up the flats of berries that the farm women had picked during the day and they would pay us in silver coins, because their paper money would fly around. and then, later in my teens, the neighbors were a buying station for fir cones and hemlock and spruce for Simpson timber, and we would go out and get fir cones that the squirrels and chipmunks were throwin' down, in bags, and then we would sell ‘em. and when your dad and uncles were little I was a buying station for Simpson for two years and they paid me to take in the sacks and you have to keep records of the elevation that the cones were got, because they replanted, and they would heat them in a facility and shake all the seeds out and then whatever elevation that batch was from they would go to that area in the mountains or flatlands and re-seed by air and that’s how they planted in those days. let’s see what else, I milked for the neighbors, I milked for Baylous's (your aunt Audrey and uncle Gary) I milked for them for about 10 months and when we sold our cows your grandpa jerry took over milking for em, it was a milking parlor. And then in '88 I had volunteered so much at the high school that the staff kept saying "why don’t you just get a job down here and make money?" and so, Bill, the superintendent called me on this really hot august day, it was in the 90's (Fahrenheit) and anyway I put in for janitor, teacher's aide we called em then, or cook (I got my food service license) and it was really hot and I ran into the house and he goes "hey pat, yo its bill here, you still want a job down here at this place?" and i said "sure what’ve you got?" and he said "janitor" and I said "sure I can do that it’s just cleanin' up alotta... just like farming cleanin' up alotta messes and poop!" and he laughed and I said "when do I need to come down and train?" and he said " you better get down this afternoon school starts tomorrow" and that’s how I got hired in 1988, and there was no background check, no interview, no nothin’, just come on down! The janitor who I was taking his place, he was movin’ to California, gave me the job description, showed me the janitor closet the mop bucket in the bathrooms and said there you go, good luck! and then I thought I would just be there a couple years or til the boys graduated and then, I was really grateful for that job because grandpa passed away in '01 so i don’t know what I woulda done if i hadn’t of had something to fall back on. and I started out at 7 something an hour, and that was in '88, until the 60 days passed and then I got a raise to 8, and then I ended in 2012, on 16 something an hour which I thought was fabulous money. And all the benefits and retirement so I thought I was very fortunate.

ME: Weren’t you a lunch lady too?

GMA: No I was just the clean-up, I worked in the lunchroom with the kids, I monitored them and cleaned up, and I loved ‘em all and I was like a hurting kid magnet any kid that had a problem or was hurting just flocked to me, and ya know, or they'd be cryin, I don’t know why, I loved the kids, I loved the staff, they were neat people. Yea, I don’t miss the job, but I still miss the kids and staff.

ME: So you were kind of like a counselor?

GMA: oh yea, counselor, I was a teacher. "pick that up, i saw you do that!" I taught in my own way... "I saw you throw that garbage on the floor! I saw you spill that milk and not mop it up now clean up after yourself, didn’t your mother teach you anything!"(laughs) I loved ‘em.

ME: How did you experience the civil rights movement and women’s movements in the 60's? like how did that affect your life?

My parents were probably more democrat, because in the early times democrats weren’t as liberal as they are today, it’s gone way in the other direction, because in the beginning they helped the Depression, they helped the poor a lot, so they were probably democrats, but we never talked about it. and then when I was 16 is when they had the march on Montgomery, about Rosie ya know, and I was appalled, it made me sick to my stomach that a certain color of people couldn’t drink out the same fountain or use the bathroom, and I woulda been there marching, now I was a northerner, north westerner, now if i had been raised in the deep south by southern people maybe I woulda had a different attitude I don’t know, hopefully not, but I woulda been marching with them if I could have. and then we had the free love hippie days, and I was really against Vietnam, I would not have gone I would have gone to Canada, no offense to my country but, I was very stubborn and hated war, and I thought "nobody is gonna make me kill people that I don’t think need killin!" and if they had attacked my family, I always said I could shoot ‘em or defend my own country here, but to go over there and stick my nose in some little country like they were, I wouldn’t have done it I would’ve gone to Canada... and then my folks were fiercely patriotic because of WW2, it was a whole different scenario, because it was the war effort and it was the whole...all the countries. What else, I loved Kennedy, everybody loved Kennedy, he was cute and his kids were cute, and his wife was beautiful, ya know, and I never paid attention to if he was a good president or not I just thought he was really cute and his wife was beautiful and they had cute kids! (laughs)

ME: I was wondering if you knew much about grandma Ziegler during ww2 and like her childhood and growin' up in Oklahoma?

GMA: She was born in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, very poor, they were share-croppers on farms that’s why she wanted her own farm someday, and I think there were 9 kids, same as my dad there were originally 9 I think, anyway she was born in Fort Cobb Oklahoma, she survived the dust bowl, Depression, it was during the Depression a dust storm, and she said she was laid in the root cellar, for like 10 days, and grandpa went clear into town, team and wagon, and got her some real, store bought pork and beans, and grape juice that she was askin’ for, and she said when he brought that home, she ate the beans and drank the grape juice and started gettin’ better, but a lot of people died from that, the dust, and when she was 16 they came out to California, and then, she picked a lot of vegetables and fruit to make money, very poor times, if you’ve ever read the book Grapes of Wrath that was her story, but she had a sister Jule, who married Slim Lians, he had a farm in Chino, California. And so, they had a place to stay, they didn’t have to stay in the migrant camps, like the other people did, and then they eventually just got jobs.... They were all called Oakies, horribly, a terrible put down. Anybody from South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, it didn’t matter, they were all considered Oakies and they were very put down, extremely looked down on, but all through those states they had signs that said "Come to Golden California!" "Thousands of jobs!" and when they got there, there weren’t any. There were no jobs. And if there were, the different farmers cheated them outta money, they were bad conditions, maybe 1 or 2 outhouses per hundreds of people. If you read the Grapes of Wrath, that’s probably the best story told of those times, because that author went to those camps and wrote that book. And then when the war broke out she went to work for solar aircraft, as a riveter, but she hated the noise so they transferred her into welding, and that’s where she met my dad, he was the supervisor, and he thought she was the cutest thing that ever walked, and he used to throw orange peelings at her, being a supervisor! He tried to get her attention, at lunch, and she didn’t want anything to do with him. And so finally she came around and went to have tea with him and they started dating. He was a welder also but he supervised and he said she was one of the best welders he'd ever seen down there at that plant, they worked for solar aircraft and consolidated, and they built warplanes. and then when the war was over, my uncle worked at the shipyards, my uncle Walt, and that’s when they went to Newberg and bought that little 15 acre place and mom and dad came to visit and Walt Mavis said "well, why don’t you guys move and take over this little place because we’re going to this other place called Wynoochee valley" and so in the spring of '48 we moved there to Newberg and in '48 we came to visit up here in Washington and they just fell in love with it so Walt Mavis said "well let’s get rid of the little farm and you guys can live in the little house, we'll co-farm this place" so that’s how we got up here. And dad was born in Harveyville, Kansas, your great grandpa Ziegler, he was born in 1906 and your great grandma was born in 1921. And he graduated high school at Colorado Springs in 1924.

ME: Did great grandma ever graduate high school?

GMA: No, she had to drop out because of their lack of money, of how many kids there were to feed she LOVED school, we have an award, I have it down at the museum, that she got a really nice certificate for having a hundred straight perfect spelling tests, and she loved school. When she was in 9th grade she had to quit to go help make money to give to the family, because they were so poor. And that’s as far as she went through school. All her life she had insecurity about not finishing high school and not graduating, and she was one of the most well read and educated people by just doing it on her own, she read everything. Very smart, she’s what kept this farm in such good shape and the bills paid, she was meticulous in her bill paying and record keeping... and so, it didn’t matter, but it mattered to her that she didn’t have a high school graduation diploma, always bothered her. And my dad was no good at the bookkeeping, he always did the income taxes, but she was really more educated than he was even though he graduated from high school, because she wanted to be. You can be anything you want!

When I look back upon my grandmother’s version of history, I see the world through her eyes and the eyes of her generation. And although my grandma only ever finished high school, and has barely left her town in Grays Harbor, she has a wealth of real world experience that informs her upon the social and economic problems that she and her parents faced throughout their lives. My grandma and great-grandma, although most likely would not describe themselves as feminists, proved to the world that they could be fiercely strong, smart, and autonomous in times where history assumes women weren’t. Without them, my family’s livelihood, our farm, may have been lost long ago. Though their hard work and talents may have gone unnoticed under the guise of a woman’s duty, I hope that these stories can shed light on my grandmothers’ unique and amazing stories sprung from the lives of ordinary people.

#familyhistory #oralhistory #grandma #pnwhistory #dustbowl #grays harbor #montesano

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