3: Interview with Beulah Gleeson Ratzlaff

Narratives of Our Lives

Family Stories from the rural community north of Liberal, Kansas from the early 20th century to 2020
Interviews and writings compiled by Donita Priefert Payne

Date: October 9, 2013

Place: Plains, Kansas

Interviewer: Donita Payne

DP: Beulah grew up on a farm north of Liberal. She attended Sleepy Hollow School as did her brother, Pat, and her sister, Nadine. I saw Beulah at a high school reunion for several classes and I asked her if she would do this interview. She was very happy to do so.

BGR: I am Beulah Gleeson Ratzlaff. I was born in 1934 on Christmas Day on the farm northwest of Liberal. My family is probably one of the oldest families in Seward County. There would be some older but not much older. My grandparents, Patsy and Mary Gleeson, moved with their seven children to about half-mile south of where the farm is now in the fall of 1903. They lived in a tent during the winter and the next spring they bought what they called a relinquishment. A relinquishment is the other person did the homesteading and then they bought the homestead from that person. They moved there in the fall, spring of 1904 to the farm that is still owned by my brother and his family. My brother has died. The farm has had the Gleeson name since 1903.

My grandad was born in Ireland. He was six years old when he came across the ocean. His dad was buried in the Atlantic Ocean on the way over. My grandmother was born in Pennsylvania. My grandad’s mother remarried so there are no other brothers that he had. He was an only child when they came over. She had another child by the name of Gillespie and that was in Illinois. Joliet, Illinois is where they landed at that time. How he and my grandmother met I do not know that part. They were married in Beloit, Kansas. My grandfather’s name was Patsy, his wife was Mary. Her maiden name was Courter. They moved to Kansas City where their first child was born. Then they moved to Oberlin, Kansas, where that child died and six children were born, including my dad. When he was about 1 1/2 they moved to
Silom Springs, Arkansas. Another daughter was born there. In 1903 they moved to Seward County. There were seven children and my dad was the only boy. He was Patsy John Gleeson, Sr. When my brother was born, he was Patsy John Jr. My dad was 11 years old when his family came to Seward County. My Grandad Patsy and my Dad Patsy built railroad beds and they also built streets and roads. They built the road next to the farm. They also built Kansas Avenue in Liberal. Dad and Grandad built the road to the silica mine north of Meade. I really don’t know-I know they were all in southwest Kansas and the Panhandle of Oklahoma but those three I know specifically that they did build.

My grandad died in 1919 and my grandmother in 1921. By that time all the girls were married and gone, and Dad got the farm. He did not go ahead and do the building of railroads tracks and things. He took over the farming part after that.

Mother and Daddy were married in 1920. We always had to laugh about how they met. Her sister lived just half of a mile south where Fred and Kathy Bloom now live. She went out to visit her sister. She was from Pratt County. Her sister’s name was Mary Loffland – Mary and Bob Loffland. My dad needed some bolts for something that he was building, and he went down to ask Uncle Bob if he had a bolt and Uncle Bob said let’s go in the house, I have a bolt in there. He introduced him to my mother and that was history. Three or four years later they got married. They corresponded with each other. We always had to laugh and say that Daddy had to have a bolt and he found one. [Laughing] We thought that was funny.

Daddy raised wheat and milo mainly, also hogs and chickens. Basically, the farm took care of itself, they didn’t have to do a lot of trading except for the necessities like flour and things like that because they had their own cream and butter, milk and eggs and meat. They had a hard time of living because we were poor. We didn’t realize we were poor. They had the three kids. My sister Nadine, my brother Patsy John Jr., and myself Beulah.

The earliest recollection that I can remember was the dust storm probably in 1938 or ’39. It would have been one of the last of the really bad dust storms. I can remember the dirt really rolling in and Daddy had us out trying to chase the chickens into the chicken house. Finally he said get to the house, don’t worry about the chickens. So, we all rushed to the house and went to the basement. I can remember sitting on his lap and not even being able to see his face. It was so black at that time. I don’t remember how long it lasted but I can remember not being able to see my own dad, sitting on his lap. That was quite traumatic for me at that time.

I was not quite seven years old when the war started. The farm was directly north of the air base and directly north of the two main runways – north and south runways. Actually, the house would have been in between the runways. Every house south of us had to be moved due to the airplanes. We got to stay. Night and day from the time the B-24s went over it was total noise. Beds would rattle, shake. The dishes rattled in the cupboards. Even on bad days, even on stormy days most of the time they were practicing flying. I can remember standing out on the porch front and waving to the pilots as they went up and as they came down. I imagine it was quite interesting to them, this little blond headed skinny girl standing out there on the porch waving to them. The biggest part of the pilots waved back to me. They were probably 18, 19, 20 years old. Some might have been a little older than that.

We would go to church on Sundays and we always picked up either two enlisted men or pilots and their wives and take them home for the afternoon. We did a lot of visiting and a lot of playing games. I didn’t remember too many of them. One pilot and his wife, I don’t remember their name, but I do know that for a long time Mother kept correspondence with them after they left. One of the interesting things is several pilots we had several times, not just once, until they were transferred out. We had two great big spotlights out in the yard but at night we would turn these off and when these pilots that we knew would fly over us they would dip their lights so we would know it was them that was flying by. We would sit out in the yard and wonder if they were flying by that night. Knowing who they were made it quite interesting.

There were a lot of wrecks [plane accidents] in the area. We were close to one. The wrecks were several miles from us. We happened to be lucky enough that we never knew of the ones that were killed. Although several men were killed in the wrecks. The closest we ever came was as one plane went over, there were two motors on each wing, and the two motors on one wing were out and I could see that they were frantically trying to get the motors started and they weren’t able to. That is why the plane went down. I can remember that plane very vividly, how the pilots were working. They weren’t paying any attention to me that time, that is for sure. Another time – the barn was directly north of the house – one morning my dad and my brother went out and there were deep ruts in the field north of the barn.
Until about 20 some years later they had no idea what caused those. My brother happened to be at a meeting where he met someone who had been a pilot at that time, and they got to talking and this pilot said that they came in and they misjudged where they were trying to land. They hit the ground, made the ruts and were able to come up and miss the barn. If they had hit the barn, they would have taken the house at the same time. Twenty-some years later we thought we were a pretty lucky family that we didn’t have to worry about that part.

The war rationing did not affect us like it did a lot of people because we did not bave to buy some of the things. Although [there was] gas rationing-we only went to town once a week on Saturday afternoon. Sugar was rationed . I remember shoes were rationed. We got one pair a year per person in the family. I remember the folks had rationing coupons, but I don’t know for sure what all they used for. I know sugar and shoes. A lot of them talked about Oleo and different things that we weren’t involved in. We would buy stamps. I think the stamps cost like 25 cents apiece and when we got a card that was enough to make $17.50, we were able to buy a $25 savings bond. So, we would try to each week or maybe ever two weeks to buy a stamp that would go on our card.

I don’t remember a lot about the war because my brother was not old enough to be in the war, my dad was too old to be in the war besides he was a farmer and they wouldn’t have taken him anyway as young as I was.

We didn’t have electricity at the time. All we had was the battery radios so we really didn’t keep up like we would today. Today you would hear about everything that happens.

I started school at Sleepy Hollow District 22. My dad was on the school board. I think they said when he died that he had been on the school board like 30 or 40 years. He definitely knew what it was like to have a school. The school was ¼ mile north and two mile west of us. Of course, there were no buses. You had to figure out how to go. My brother and I went to school together. My sister had already graduated from the eighth grade before I started school. When I was in the fourth grade, my brother was in the eighth grade. So, we went four years together. The teacher lived in town and she had to stop and pick us up because we had to take a five-gallon cream can of water to school for the water that was used at the school. That was our drinking water, our water to wash our hands with or clean up or anything else. But every day we took the five-gallon can of water with us. We walked home sometimes in nice weather. Some of the kids rode horses and the school had a horse barn that they could put their horses in. Other people brought their kids to school. A lot of them just walked. The teacher taught all eight grades and I don’t know for sure, but I would say that when I was in first grade there were 20 to 25 kids in all eight gra·des. We had no electricity. We had a coal furnace in the basement that if you were close enough to the vents you could stay warm . Otherwise you got a little cold in the winter. We used kerosene for lights and the entire west side of the school was windows, so we had light. Only one of the four years that I went there we had hot lunches that the government supplied food someway and one of the neighbor ladies came in and cooked the meal. We ate in the basement for that. That was just one year out of four. The older kids played with the younger kids just as much as anything. We were taken care of by the older kids. We played games during recess. I remember playing jacks, I remember taking dolls to school so we could play with dolls. In the wintertime it seemed like there was always snow on the ground from about Thanksgiving until March so we had our snow forts and snow houses, snowball fights. There was a little hill not far from the school we would take our sleds and sled up and down the hill. Played crack the whip, baseball and all kinds of things that the kids enjoyed. Usually the younger kids were involved just as much as the older kids. There was no bathroom. The outhouses were out north of the school. Everybody took their lunch except for the one year. Lunches were carried either in paper sacks or if the family was half-way able to do it, we got regular lunch boxes. I remember one year I actually got a lunch box. There was also a lot of syrup cans. You could buy Karo syrup in quart cans and when those were empty that became your lunch box.

My first grade teacher was a Mrs. Bruns. That was the only year that she taught. Later I learned that she had been pregnant part of the time and the next fall she died in childbirth. Second, third and fourth grade teacher was Rose Downing. Her sister taught at the Liberty School which was about four miles east and about that much north of our school. The sisters got the schools together different times for holiday special occasions that we would have, especially Halloween. I remember one year going to the Liberty School for Halloween.

Names of some of the kids in the school: Theil Bloom, Jimmy and Bobby Keating, the Scotts – Lilly, Ben, Don, Larabell and Dewey Scott, John and Bob Morrison, my brother Pat, Gene Hall, Joann Williamson, Wardel and Margaret Volden, Donita Priefert. I am sure there were others that maybe were there for just one year.

At home we did not have electricity until I was probably about 12 years old. Mother cooked on a kerosene stove. We had kerosene lamps. We had a coal stove in a corner of the dining room. It got pretty cold in the bedrooms at night, but we had lots of quilts. Hurry up and get to the stove in the morning to get warm! I can remember an ice box, not a refrigerator, that Mother put her chunk of ice in. I don’t know where she got the ice.

DP: There was an ice plant in Liberal.

BG: There was an ice plant in Liberal, but we didn’t go to town but once a week. Well we would go on Saturday afternoon and then on Sunday. And I remember in the summertime going by the ice plant and getting ice and taking it home and making ice cream. Whether we had ice enough to last a week or where she got it, I don’t know. They also had a little shed out about 100 feet from the house that had well water running through it. It had a cement tank-like deal and it was a basement under this little shed. That is where she would keep her water and her milk and her cream and things. She sold cream at least once a week. Just once a week as far as I know, they would take cream to town to the creamery and then it would be sent I think to Topeka and processed and then the cream cans would come back and they would trade cream cans. She traded eggs at the grocery store for other groceries. She remembered at least 24 dozen eggs every week and sometimes 36 dozen eggs that she would take to the grocery store to trade.

DP: That is a lot of eggs.

BG: She had a lot of chickens. We ate a lot of chicken. She would buy baby chickens in the spring and then we had fried chicken when they got big enough and then the hens that she kept for eggs and the roosters always we got to eat as older chickens.

After she had the kerosene stove, they put in a propane tank and she got a propane refrigerator and a propane stove. We still did not have electric lights at that time. Sometime after that they got a gas well and one of the conditions of the lease was that they got free gas. They got a natural gas refrigerator and a natural gas stove. About that same time Daddy put in what was called a Koehler diesel machine for electricity. It took about five seconds for the Kohler to come on. It looked like a big engine really. It was in the little shed out where they had had the milk. We had electricity about three or four years before the CMS came through . We did our studying by kerosene light. We went to bed early because we weren’t allowed to run the kerosene lamps all that long. We had no bathroom in the house until after I got married and the folks finally put a bathroom in the house. Typical farm homes at that time, I would say.

4-H was very important to my parents and to me. The folks had belonged to a Grange. I don’t remember that much about it. Just once or twice I remember them going to a Grange meeting and soup supper. They made sure we all belonged to 4-H. We belonged to the Wide Awake 4-H. I was a member for ten years. My sister at one time became leader of that club while I was still there. I had all kinds of projects, cooking to sheep, cattle, hogs and chickens and rabbits. Same way with my brother. I think I held all the offices, but I became president of the club and then I was also president of the County Council of 4-H clubs for several years. My parents were never leaders of 4-H as actual leaders, but they always made sure that all three of us were in it and active. It was very important to them that we be active, not joining and nothing happening.

DP: Someone remarked, we belonged to Sunset 4-H, about how we learned so many kinds of things. We had the projects. You learned a lot about leadership. You had to keep your record books on the projects.

BG: You gave demonstrations on your projects. You learned to talk before people. Through my 4-H experience I feel like I can talk to groups even now. It doesn’t bother me. I went to 4-H Roundup due to the fact that I had given speeches. Went to Roundup two years. I Went to Rock Springs Camp for two years – one time for health camp and one time for safety camp. 4-H wasn’t just taking care of an animal, it was learning how to work with other people, how to teach the younger ones. It is very much a leadership deal for any kids. Even yet, my kids when they were younger joined when we lived in Liberal. They joined the Sunset Club which upset me because I had been a Wide Awake 4-Her. [Laughing] They didn’t know anybody in it, and they did in the Sunset Club so that was the one they joined. Then we moved to Meade and they joined the Town and County 4-H club in Meade. The younger boy became a Scout. He had more friends in the Boy Scouts.

Seems like all the farmers went to town on Saturday afternoons. The folks visited with people then. I usually spent my Saturday afternoons either at the library or when I got a little older would go to the movies. We went to church. We belonged to the Presbyterian Church in Liberal. I was not really active because for the kids, being five miles out of town at that time was a long way and you didn’t just run your kids back and forth to town. So we didn’t really get into the youth activities although, when I was a teenager, that particular church did not have a youth group anyway. For Pat and Nadine, they didn’t get to do things like that either.

After I got out of high school, I went to work for Blakemore Brothers which was the head of the Ideal Food Stores. I worked there for about 18 months and I met Lee. He went to work in the warehouse for them. The warehouse, the bakery, the ice cream department and the office were all under one roof which was a full square block in Liberal. He went to work in the warehouse, and we met and that was history and six months later we were married. When we got married, he was working in the oil field, so we moved to central Kansas, Augusta, Great Bend, McPherson. About ten months we were there. He was in a bad car wreck and was unable to work in the oil field any longer, so we went back to Liberal. He had been working for the Tradewind Industries which built truck beds. He had worked for them before the oil fields so they hired him back although he could not even take the physical because of his condition at that time. When he finally healed from his injuries, they let him take his physical to go to work for them. After that he worked for a mechanic and then moved to Meade. For nine years he worked for two different farmers over there. Then he went to work for the John Deere dealership, and he worked for them for 22 years. He was working for them when he died. It was in Meade to start with and then they moved the shop to Plains. He drove back and forth.

We had three boys when we lived in Liberal. Rodney was the oldest, born in 1955, David in 1957 and Farley born in 1966. Farley was nine months old when we moved to Meade so that is the only town he knew anything about until he was older. We tried to make sure the boys were active in Cub Scouts, 4-H, school. They all played football. They all played kids incorporated basketball. Dave became quite a tennis player. Farley was the athletic of the three boys. He played football and basketball, became a star basketball player. Dave was the only one who played tennis. They all graduated from Meade High School. All got married. Two got divorced and remarried. I have six grandchildren, at this point seven great-grandchildren. Rodney died in 1999, two years after his dad died. Farley lives in Diamond, Missouri which is close to Joplin. He has his own truck. Drives over the road every week in his 18-wheeler. Dave lives here in Plains. He is the city superintendent of the city. He is also chief ofthe fire department which is a volunteer fire department.

I worked for an insurance company, Farm Bureau Insurance Company, part-time for eight years. I worked as secretary of the Methodist Church in Meade. It was part-time. I worked for a total of 28 years for the Methodist church as secretary. I had to give it up because of my health.

Lee died of cancer in September 1996. Age 61. He had lost a sister, three brothers and a nephew and my mother within three years before he died. When he started losing weight and not feeling good, we just put it on to stress. He got sick and we took him to the doctor the next day. They said he had cancer and might have four weeks to live. He survived for five months. They got it into remission. When he quit taking chemo, they said it will come back and with a vengeance and there was nothing they could do. They were right. It was okay for about a month after he quit taking chemo. About two weeks before he died, I could see every day he was getting lower. He died the 26th of September.

Rodney played two doctors against each other for prescription drugs and medicine shots and when the doctors figured out what was wrong they cut him off, which they should not have cut him off quite that quick and he had a stroke and they said he would have another stroke. He was partially disabled but not completely and seven years later he sat down in his recliner, took an afternoon nap like he did everything else and when his wife got home from work, he was dead. So, it was very peaceful. Stroke issue was the only problem. And killed him.

All my family have had health issues but nothing major and anything that we can’t get by with. A lot of people are a lot worse than we are. Daddy had health issues for a long time. He had ulcers and had been sick when Mother married him in 1920. She took care of the farm a lot because he was sick a lot. It meant that she had to take care of the chores. It was an ulcer condition and then he had a tumor on his back, and he had prostate problems, just a lot of different things wrong with him. She basically did as much farming as he did. She never drove a tractor but as far as taking care of the animals it was mostly her job. He died of an aneurism at 82 years old. Mother lived for another 19 years. She was in very good health all her life. Had a couple minor surgeries. Basically, a very healthy person, took care of herself, lived on the farm until about 18 months before she died. She had a fall and broke her hip. She had a life alert necklace, saved her life because she used it, got help for an ambulance almost immediately. The ambulance called me before they left her house because she wouldn’t leave the house until I was called. She lived in the nursing home at Meade for about 18 months.

Mother was in the nursing home, and the evening before Mother’s Day 1994, there was vandalism at the farm, the house and outbuildings were badly damaged. We knew the group that did the damage, but no charges were ever brought due to the sheriffs office refusing. My mother became very depressed and two weeks later she died, from depression. She was 96.

My brother died at the age of 77. He had Alzheimer’s for about ten years. He worked for Panhandle Eastern. He went to college and then got on with PE at Liberal. They moved him, he lived in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and then to Kansas City where he retired. He started out in the land division where he went from area to area leasing ground for Panhandle. Later, he worked from the office, I am not sure what. When he retired, he was one of the top PE bigwig’s employee. They wanted to move him to Houston. He was old enough and had enough years to retire. He retired and stayed in KC. His wife still lives there. He was in the nursing home for about four years from the Alzheimer’s. He died. He was married to a girl from southeast Oklahoma who happened to go to work at Panhandle in Liberal when he did. They had a boy and a girl. The boy had two boys. The girl never had children of her own. The girl lives in Chicago and is getting ready to move back to Lawrence, Kansas. The boy lives in Lawrence, works in Topeka in the court systems. Their daughter is a schoolteacher.

Nadine married a man that had been in the service and moved back to Liberal. They had a boy and a girl. After they both retired from their jobs they moved to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and then to Alabama off the coast on an island. They were there about five years and then moved to Colorado Springs. He eventually went into an independent living place for about two months before he died. He had Alzheimer’s. He was 90 years old when he died. Nadine currently lives in an assisted living place in Colorado Springs and she is 87. Beulah is 78 now.

DP: Go back and talk about your mother. She was a notable character, wasn’t she?

BG: Well, she was very independent. Probably the fact that Daddy was ill as much as he was, she had to be independent. She was very active in church. I don’t know. I had a different outlook on her than my brother and sister did. I think she enjoyed life. She was raised in kind of a harsh atmosphere from what little I knew of my grandparents. She made sure that all of us kids were loved, that we could enter as much stuff as possible. She wasn’t a fantastic cook, but we had all we needed to eat. She kept a good house.

DP: It takes a mother of some ambition to be sure that her children are involved in things like 4-H. That takes commitment on the part of the parents.

BG: She and Daddy made sure that we were involved in things. Although my brother was involved in things in high school, my sister and I were not allowed to be involved in high school. I never figured that one out. Except a boy against two girls. I never remember my mother raising her voice to any of us, or my dad either. We just knew we had to obey without any real punishment. lt was just one of those things that you were told you couldn’t do. And you didn’t argue about it. As for spankings or time outs, we didn’t have them. We were just what we thought of as normal kids. By the time I was old enough to do anything, Nadine was away from home. Part of her high school years she lived with an aunt in town because of the roads and no way to get back and forth. Pat drove to town. At that time, I went to school in the fifth grade. From fifth through eighth Pat drove me, I went to Washington for fifth and sixth grade and then to the Junior High and High School. I graduated in 1952. I went to 4-H Roundup that year before I went to work.

DP: Did your father tell any Irish stories? Did those come down through this family?

BG: Not really because for some reason they didn’t seem to think it was important. His mother, I am not even sure, was English, Pennsylvania English. She came from Pennsylvania. That is about all I know about her. I don’t know that much about him. By the time I got interested in genealogy nobody was around to tell anybody. I was the youngest grandchild. The oldest grandchild was 33 years older than I was. At the time my grandfather and grandmother died they really didn’t care one way or other what happened. Except the story came down that when they came across the ocean the dad had died and was buried in the ocean. There was even a question as what his name was. Some said it was John and some said it was Patsy. Nobody seemed to agree on what his name was. Nobody has had much say about the mother.

Dad was not much of a storyteller or a talker. He read. Mostly magazines, newspapers. Sometimes a book. I can remember Mother sitting by the kerosene light reading her Bible. She read magazines. I remember taking Cappers Weekly. They always read it completely. I am the reader in the family. I love to read whether it is a magazine or a book. As a child we took books from the library every two weeks. I have read all my life. Had a marvelous teacher in the fifth grade, Miss Hatcher, that had us read as a group out loud. I think she just gave me a love of reading. That was at Washington School.

DP: Talk about Lee’s family. Talk about Lee, what kind of person he was.

BG: His mother was from Seward County. She belonged to the Nix family. Her name was Iva May Nix. I don’t remember the details of how they met. He had been in Burton which is up by Hutchinson. He was Ike, Isaac. Their first six kids were born in Liberal. Then they moved to Burton and that is where Lee was born. Then they moved back to Liberal when he was about seven years old. He went to the Arkalon school. First, they lived in the country by Arkalon – about a mile west of Arkalon. They worked for a farmer there. Then they rented land nine miles north and three miles west of Liberal. They rented from Charles Marcelles. He had the house moving business. That is where Ike died. After he died, she moved to town, rented the little house in town for about four years before she died.

Lee’s brother lived in Liberal. Their dad was very abusive. Lee never told me that. His [Lee’s] sister-in-law told me about how abusive his dad was. He was an alcoholic. Lee lived with this brother and his wife for several years. I never knew how long they lived together. The sister-in-law was like a mother to Lee, more than his own mother. She became like a grandmother to my kids. That was John and Margie Ratzlaff. John died before Lee did and Margie died about eight or nine years ago.

Lee’s height was what attracted me to start with. He was 61 6″. It was the first time in my life that I got to look up at a boy. [Laughing] I was 5′ 11″ at the time. It was thrilling to think that I could wear my heals and still go out with a boy. We didn’t date a lot because he went to work in the oil fields. We had a few dates but most of it was by correspondence. He was very kind. I think back and I think with an abusive father like he had, I am surprised it didn’t come down, but it did not. I don’t think he ever abused the kids. Rodney was a hard child to raise. He had temper tantrums. But Lee was never abusive to him even when he did that. Dave and Farley were both R-H factor babies, so we almost lost them, but we were lucky that we had a doctor that saved them.

We had all kinds of problems. We were poor but I don’t think we ever went without the necessities of life. We enjoyed things together. That was one thing that Lee always wanted me to do the things that he did. We went camping together. We went to the lakes close here, Meade Lake and out by Lakin and down by Canton, Oklahoma. We went to the Rocky Mountains and camped. It was something that he liked, and he wanted to make sure I liked, and I did although I had never done it before. We went into black powder shooting. He started out and got, the oldest boy never got into it, but Dave and Farley did, and they enjoyed it. Dave’s father-in-law teased me one day to come on and shoot and so to shut him up I finally said okay I will shoot, and I beat him. It was a target practice where you shot different types of targets and got points for each one. After I got started in that Lee bought me my own gun and as long as I could beat Martin, I was happy, which I did most of the time. [Laughing] We went square dancing, I think about eight years before my back gave out on me and I couldn’t dance anymore. It didn’t matter what we did at home, we did puzzles together, we did paint number paintings. He worked in the shed, he was a marvelous welder. He welded a lot and he did carpentry and he did electrical work, he did plumbing work, all for us, not outside. He was one of these guys that he could do anything he got ready to do. If he didn’t know how to do it, he’d find out. If we were building something, remodeling the house or something he wanted me there working with him, so we were together on that part. Quite a shock when you do something with somebody for 43 years and then they are gone, all at once. You don’t have anybody to do things with anymore. He would be out in his shop doing something and I would just sit there and watch him. He wanted me to do that a lot. He wasn’t overpowering or anything like that, it was just that he wanted the company. We enjoyed each other.

He was a marvelous musician. He could play about anything except the fiddle. He never mastered that. He mostly played the steel guitar. He played the regular steel guitar for a long time and then he got a pedal steel guitar which he played with both the hands and the pedals. He played country-western music. He could sing, he didn’t do a lot of it, but he could sing. When we were at Liberal and at Meade, we got together with a couple almost every Saturday night. Lee would play steel guitar. At Meade another guy played a regular guitar. At Liberal there were two of them that played steel guitar with him. Sometimes there were two or three and sometimes there might be a dozen. They just played for their own enjoyment. It was amazing the people that would show up just to stand around and listen but not as a competition or anything like that. I can’t play anything. I know my notes. Lee never knew one note from another. He played by ear. I was disappointed because I don’t know how many times we taped the deals while we were around. There was a guy, I can’t remember his name, from Guymon that we got together with sometimes and he really taught Lee the steel guitar. I still have some of the tapes, but I can’t tell which is Lee or this other guy. After Lee died, I went back to the tapes and I was going to make tapes off for the kids. Then I thought if I didn’t know which it was it didn’t mean anything. There were certain songs that I thought were Lee’s songs, but I couldn’t tell. I thought he was that good because that guy he learned from was – he was good. Lee became very good with him.

He had a standard guitar and he had a dulcimer, an autoharp, a harmonica. We had a lot of different things. He had a banjo. He wasn’t very good on that, but he could play it. When I moved over here I finally gave one of my grandsons the musical instruments that he was interested in. He hasn’t learned to play them yet. That is Dave’s youngest boy. The other boy is a very beautiful singer. He sang at a lot of competitions. He took second at the talent contest at Liberal last spring. His name is Jared Ratzlaff. He is a sergeant on the police force at Liberal. Clayton lives here at Plains, is assistant manager for the Home Lumber Company here in Plains. The other two grandkids live in northern New Mexico and one grandaughter lives in Arkansas City and one in Great Bend. The great grandchildren live in New Mexico and one in Garden City and the others live here in Plains.

Beulah continues recalling incidents from her earlier life.

When I was little all we had was a battery radio so it didn’t get played a lot. But we had a windmill that charged up the batteries. Wind chargers. I can remember listening to Fibber Magee and Molly, the Joe Lewis Fights. I was a big fan of Joe Lewis. Mother got a chicken one time when she went to the hatchery to get her chickens and the man gave me a little black chicken. It was a hen but it was named Joe Lewis. (Laughing) I was really a fan of Joe Lewis. I am not into fighting now but I can remember sitting with the radio with Daddy and listening to Joe Lewis fights. But we didn’t run the radio much because it ran the batteries down. We listened to the news and just particular programs. Lee and I had been married probably 5 years when the folks got TV. They both enjoyed TV programs, I can’t remember which ones.

BG : I think we had a good life. It was nothing fantastic, but it wasn’t a bad life.

DP: It sounds like a very good life to me.

BG: Everybody at that time was poor. Nobody realized it.

DP: Didn’t have a lot of cash.

BG: Had a lot of love and that is what made the difference. Other things that I just now think about –

We did not wear slacks to school. If you wore a pair of slacks you wore a dress over it. In the wintertime you could wear jeans or slacks in grade school. I don’t remember ever being able to wear them at the high school. You wore a dress. I was allowed to wear a pair of shorts around the house but if somebody drove in the driveway, I was demanded to go in the house and put on a dress.

DP: Do you ever wear a dress now? I don’t even own a dress!

BG: I haven’t worn a dress for ages. I have three that I don’t want to get rid of.

DP: Let me tell you a story about a dress. My mother had sewn this lovely plaid dress for me. I was in first grade at Sleepy Hollow. I hated that dress. I didn’t ever want to wear that dress and of course I had to wear it. One day I was sitting at my desk and I thought, “If I take my scissors and cut little holes in this dress then I won’t have to wear it anymore.” So that is exactly what I did. My mother never did figure out what in the world caused the holes in that dress. Many, many years later I told her, and she said, “That’s what it was!” She had never thought that I would have done something like that.

BG: Another thing, just before school started, we would go buy chicken feed. It came in printed fabric bags. I got to pick out the sacks that Mother then used to make two new dresses for school.

DP: Lanora Webb talks about that same thing.

BG : I had two dresses to go to school in. I didn’t have one for every day. We always dressed up to go to church. I almost laugh now because they go every which way from t-shirts to suits. At that time Daddy always wore a suit. We always wore a nice dress, nice shoes, we took our purse, we wore our hats, we wore gloves. We dressed up to go to church . You don’t now. I guess it doesn’t make any difference as far as that goes, you are supposed to get whatever you get out of church anyway.

DP: It bothers me to see people come to church in their shorts. They could at least wear long denims.

BG: Back when I milked a cow, a cow stepped on my foot and broke it. At that time, you didn’t go to a doctor for everything and so now I have a very flat foot. Several years ago, the doctor put me in a brace for my feet. The brace went to.my knee. I had to wear a dress because of that so I started wearing slacks.

I did not have to do the chores like Nadine and Pat did. They milked morning and evening. I never milked in the morning, only of an evening. I gathered the eggs part of the time, but Mother usually took care of the chickens. I had to wash the separator and milk buckets. I really got away with a lot that I probably should not have. My brother and sister say I was spoiled, and I say I was ignored. My parents did not make me do what I feel like now I should have been made to do some.

Daddy had the pigs. I had the lambs and I had to take care of them. When I had steers in 4-H I had to take care of those. Pat and Nadine pretty well did all the chores, but I didn’t. Pat of course did a lot of tractor work. When he left, Daddy would let me go out and run the tractor for an hour at noon and an hour towards evening. He would not let me drive the tractor all day. He could rest when I drove the tractor for an hour.

BG: Nadine graduated from high school. The air base was still there, and she went into service work at the air base. She worked at the Extension office for a while then she worked for Byron Bird several years. She married Eugene Hoskinson. His parents were Wilfred and Gladys Hoskinson. They lived in Liberal. They came from Ulysses. Nadine and Eugene had a boy who lives in Monument, Colorado and a girl who lives in Mississippi.

DP: This has been very interesting. You have made wonderful notes that help you remember.

BG: As I made notes it helped many things come to memory and also as we have been talking.

DP: I have a few memories of WW2 that I will include when I do my family story.

BG: As far as my younger days that is really what I remember. More than anything else. I guess I was so impressed with the airplanes and that, I would stand outside for I don’t know how long, and it was just zoom, zoom, zoom . . .

DP: Service families stayed at my family’s home too. I can remember at least three different couples. There was just no housing available for everyone. There was a Captain –, a couple from the South, a man from either North or South Dakota and his wife. My folks kept in contact with some of those people over the years.

BG: I remember Mother keeping in contact with one in New York.

DP: There were two airplane wrecks I remember. One, I was riding a horse towards Grahams’, it seems like a foggy Thanksgiving Day, and on the section north of where Fitzgeralds live there was a major crash. Two planes crashed together, there was fire. There were at least two major accidents in that field.

BG: It seemed like all of them were north and east of us when they happened. We didn’t happen to know any of the men that were killed in the wrecks.

DP: Lee was in the country school one year either at Liberty or after it was moved north a little way.

BG: He went to eighth grade there.

DP: He was as big as a man then. Very quiet. He sat at the back and over at the side. I just remember he was very quiet. I don’t remember much about him. Seemed like he didn’t want to be there.

BG: You are probably right. I am sure he didn’t like school. He graduated from eighth grade and didn’t go any further in school.

DP: But it sounds like he had an interesting life and a lot of things he njoyed doing and a lot of things he was very good at.

BG: Anything he did. He was in leather working one time. Everybody in the family got something made of leather. He did woodworking. He got me a band saw and I did woodworking. He helped me with it. It didn’t matter what it was, he completely rewired one of our houses. He completely replumbed the kitchen one time. He shingled the roof. It didn’t matter what it was. Dave is pretty much like him. He’d put his mind to it and just do it. Dave and Farley are like that.

DP: Thank you very much for your contribution to our interview project. I am looking forward to getting it transcribed and bound. Yours is a wonderful contribution to that and I appreciate it.

BG: I hope they are all interesting.

DP: The interviews are all very interesting and they are all different. There are many similar things, but they are unique and different.

Beulah describes a time her extended family got together and took pictures. Beulah wrote a booklet which gave a history of the family. Why did she do this I asked? She said that Nadine wanted her to do it.

BG: I was so shocked the kids were thrilled with it. “Aunt Beulah will you send me a copy of this?” the kids asked. There is interest but if we don’t put it down on paper it is gone.

DP: It is up to our generation to do that. People are so interested in the stories. Talking about everyday life. Things that were so common to us, but our grandchildren say, “This is really strange. I have never heard of this.” The phone hung on the wall. When I was a little girl, I had to climb up on a stool and answer the telephone. There is a story about WW2 which I very clearly remember. We lived in the house, the Priefert house there on the highway. That old telephone with the handle that you had to know your ring, one short and two long or whatever, I answered the phone and it was my grandmother and she said, “The war is over!” I will always remember that moment. I was so little I had to get up on that stool and of course I ran quickly and found my mother and told her.

BG : Yes, a lot of little things. When Farley was married his wife asked where we went to the bathroom. I said you know that little building south of the house, that was our bathroom. She was absolutely stunned. We had a water pump when I was little but then had running water. Mother had her washing machine in the basement. There was a faucet there for her water. She heated the water on an oil stove. She had a Maytag washer and wringer. Several tubs. Before she had that she had a board. I don’t remember that. There was water and there was also a drain in the basement. A lot of memories. I can remember asking Mother questions about family and she would ask why I wanted to know that. That is ancient history. She did answer me and there are things that I would not know if she had not told me. I guess I like family history.

DP: Thank you, thank you.

Update October 2019:

Nadine died in January 2015. She was 88.

Dave’s son, Jared, was in the police at Liberal and is now in Wathena, Kansas and is Chief of Police there.

Dave’s son, Clayton, is now manager at the Home Lumber in Plains, Kansas.

Farley is married and lives near Paola, Kansas. They own the S&S Stables and give trail rides into the Hillsdale Lake area and board horses and work with groups of Boy and Girl Scouts with Trail Rides and helping them get badges.

Beulah broke her ankle in 2015. She now uses a walker. She lives in her own home, still drives and goes out quite a bit. She will soon be 85. She feels blessed to be able to do what she can.