Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Farming and Motherhood

Welcome to the final of four posts sharing the transcription of Grandma Merle’s tape recorded memories. If you need to catch up, see:

Our Witter family was impacted deeply by the 1918 influenza pandemic, which occurred near the end of the first World War. Grandma Merles begins this section by talking about that, and how she had to rely on her sisters, Bertha Sample (nicknamed “Bercie”) and Iva More.

Was during the winter of 18 when we had the flu so bad, and Roy [Sample], my brother-in-law, contracted the flu, as well as Dick’s father [Abe Witter] in Kansas. And it was at Christmas time, just a few weeks before Christmas, and I think it must have been in 18 that Roy passed away, and it was about that same time that Dick got word that his father had passed away. And he couldn’t get any furlough to go back to his father’s funeral, much less his brother-in-law’s, so we didn’t attend either one of them.

But then, when we came back, after it was over, the Armistice was signed, and we got out of the Army the first of the year, they thought it would be a help to Bertha and the children if Dick and I went to their house to stay…at Bercie’s house, until we could get possession of our own place up the ranch and get that in living condition again. It had been rented while we were gone and … that was south of town and we didn’t find it in too good of shape.

But anyway, I was sick, and it seemed to be…bother Bertha, and instead of helping her, why, we decided I was a hindrance to her, so we moved over to Iva’s place. Am I supposed to tell you…?

(The tape stopped here, probably so Merle could ask her daughter, my grandma Nancy, whether she should talk about her miscarriage. Then the recording resumed.)

It was probably while I was at Iva’s place that I lost the first baby.

A short time after that, we got possession after going over the house, and we moved back out there. We had our own furniture at our place in town there, so we didn’t have to buy all new stuff again.

And then we put in a crop of cotton. Cotton had gone so good that half of the people in the valley, the farmers, had become millionaires, that last year with cotton, there was such a demand for it. So we put in a full acreage of cotton. I think we had our own 20, and we had another 20 beside us, we had grandpa and grandma’s place, they had 10 acres, and our neighbor had 30 acres, and we had the slaughterhouse 10 acres all in cotton. We were gonna get rich fast to make up for lost time. The War was over, there wasn’t any particular demand for cotton, and cotton went kaboom. And we went kaboom with it, and lost the ranch.

(Another brief interruption.)

Nancy wants to know where grandpa’s 10 acres was. Well it was out on Palm Lane, I’m not sure it want’ very far out of town, about during that first mile I guess, and there was a row of olive trees west of Palm Lane, and there was a row of olive trees and palms along there, right beside his 20 acres.

The year that we had our lovely cotton crop and eventually the bust, Richard was born in Febraury the 23rd [1921], and when he was about …well, the cotton had already gone kerflooey the summer before, the year before he was born in February, and Dick had rented a acreage quite a way south of town, never can remember the locations of anything. And when Richard was about six weeks old, we moved into the old house, an old house down there where the … that was down in the Cartwright neighborhood and close to the Cartwright church at the canal along there… and we stayed down there then until after he’d harvested his wheat crop. It was quite a ways to go drive back and forth from where we was to down there two or three times a day. So after that was harvest then, well we moved back to our own place.

But soon after that we gave up the place for the cotton debts and we moved to the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse … northern avenue and east of grand avenue… or west of grand avenue. And Richard was about 2 …I guess he was 2 in February when we moved out there, just a little bit before the fourth of July. We left there wasn’t… we wasn’t fully move yet, and we had some things in the chicken-burger house stored in there. We’d moved the busiest necessary things out, and we was taking our time about getting the rest of it over to the place, I guess.

When there come a sort of a hurricane wind storm through there, and moved the house a little bit, and felled one of the trees right at the house – our house south of town. Why, we got grandpa and grandma in the car with us, and Richard and I, and we was gonna go down Grand Avenue, that was where it hit hardest, the row of big trees down there, and we was gonna go down to see the damage that was done.

We was a-drivin’ along, grandpa and grandma was in the back seat and Richard was standing between em, and he looked up at grandma and says, “Grandma, that old wind just de-libately just blowed all our trees over.”

(Earlier, when Merle referred to “grandpa’s 10 acres,” she was referring to land owned by her father, Albert Huff, who had moved back to Kansas about 1913. Judging from Merle’s recollection below, Albert and Rosa returned to Arizona in 1921 or 1922.)

Grandma and Grandpa, after all of us kids came out here one by one, I came back out here because I liked it better out here, and my two sisters were out here, and soon after that, Bert sold out his place back in Kansas and he came out here. So grandpa and grandma got discouraged and sold off their place and they really sold the place that time. And they moved out here, and I don’t remember what year it was. I think Richard was about 4 or 5 months old when they came. They bought the 20 acres, the acreage, they wanted to invest their money in something and land was all they knew to invest it in, when they bought the lot on A avenue… it was A then… and I imagine that they must have stayed at Bertha’s or with Iva, I don’t know which or part both, while their house was being built.

And they moved and they lived in that last house until each one of them, first daddy, and they about seven years later, mother passed away. During World War… oh…

(Another brief interruption.)

Grandpa passed about seven years before mother did, and mother passed away in 1943. And that was during World War… Vickie was about three months old, and Richard was over in the islands… well, they weren’t in Australia, but they were around… New Guinea, when she passed away.

I think when I left off, we were living at the slaughterhouse, and we… daddy got a job as janitor at the Glendale Grammar school. It was at unit one, and we bought a little house there, and we lived right next to the grammar school. There was a vacant lot between us and there. We lived on Harlan place, and D avenue. That’s where Richard got started at kindergarten very young, because the teacher, Mrs. Meredith came by every morning, and would say, “Dickie, get your hat, and come on to school.” And so finally one morning, he got his hat and went to school without notifying anybody else. And when I missed him, I was frantic. I went in every direction and eventually, all of the neighbors was a huntin’.

And finally somebody went over to the school and asked Dick, he was working over.. He’d seen anything of him, and he said no, he hadn’t. But he says, “Did you look around in the Kindergarten?”

Well no one had, we’d run to lateral 18 and every place else, frantically looking. So Dick walked over and tiptoed so he could look down in the kindergarten, and there was Richard as big as life right up beside Mrs. Meredith just enjoying every minute of it.

So after that, I let him start to school. So it come along, that was before Christmas. So he started to school, and in February, when his birthday came along, I had baked him a birthday cake and he wanted to take a piece to his teacher. So I didn’t know that the kids took birthday cakes, full cakes, there, so I just sent a piece of cake to his teacher. And she divided it up a bite or two for each one of em, and she says, “Dickie is five years old.”

Richard says, “No, four.” And she went ahead with her work a little bit, and she says, “Dickie is five years old.” And he said , “No, four.” And he put up his four fingers to show her that he was four. But she couldn’t out-talk him, and that was something because she was a good talker. But she kept saying he was five and every time he corrected her and said he was four.

So she stayed at school after the children had gone and waited until dad came to janitor her room just to ask him how old Richard was. Daddy told her that he was four, and she says, “No wonder, all of this winter, when I been trying to get him to come to school, his mother kept saying he wasn’t old enough.”

And while we was still at that house, and Richard had his kindergarten, he went the rest of that year and all of the next, before he was really old enough to start school And that year, the next March, 1925, Nancy was born.

And she didn’t get started to school as early as Richard did. But we lived there in that little house until about 2 or 3 years more. We were still leiving there when she was about 2. So we must have live there about 2 or three years more. And then we went …we moved back out… we sold that house and moved back out to the slaughterhouse, rented that, and we started the Witters Jersey Dairy. We had that for 2 or 3 years.

By the time we sold that, we sold that or traded to the uh… We sold the dairy then to the Bennet brothers, or rather we used the dairy for a down payment to 60 acres north of town, about 3 and ⅝’s miles north of town. And we were living there, when Nancy started to kindergarten her first year. We …she could of in the Peoria district, she could have gone to the first grade, but we had already enrolled her in the kindergarten at Glendale before we made the move, so we took here… and Richard also that first year. After that, they went on the bus to the Peoria school.

(Long time readers might remember the Famous Playmate Richard and Nancy met riding that bus!)

And after we’d been up on that other place north of town, we farmed at first, we decided to start another dairy, and that was …Okay Jersey Dairy. This was a bottle dairy, glass bottles, and we peddled and delivered our milk to our customers in Glendale.

Thanks for following along with Grandma Merle’s Travelogue! And thanks to our cousin, Pat Witter (Richard’s son) for providing the cassette!

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