2: Interview with Norman Bloom and Geraldyne Langhofer Bloom

Lunch Interview

NB: I went to school for eight years at Sleepy Hollow School. It is a rural school 1 H miles from home. I rode a pony to school. I walked to school and part of the time the folks took us to school. I graduated from the eighth grade at Sleepy Hollow and went to Liberal and graduated as a senior from high school. At that time the war was on. I got a year’s deferment and stayed home and helped Dad with the farming. Then I was drafted but I was lucky enough to get into the Navy and I spent a year at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The thing I remember most about the drought and the dirt storms was Black Sunday. I remember that one very well because it was a beautiful day, calm, and no wind, and all of a sudden, we looked north and we could see this cloud coming, rolling in. I remember Dad running to the chicken house to get the chickens shut up and he came running back and jumped the yard fence and when he jumped the fence a curtain came down. It was just black. That lasted probably 30 minutes. You couldn’t see your finger in front of your face and then the wind come up and started stirring things up and then it got to where you could see. But that’s the thing I remember most.

And then also the time the tornado hit Liberal and tore up quite a few buildings and I think there was three people killed. I remember Dad went down the next day and I went with him. There was a hotel down by the railroad track called the Bryant Hotel. They cleaned that up for the people who had lost their homes and didn’t have any place to stay.

During the time of the Depression the best way the people had to survive was having milk cows and chickens. I know the folks would sell the milk and the eggs and that was their money to survive on during those times. It wasn’t a lot, but I remember the folks had some money saved up just off of cream checks. I had a cousin, or an uncle, that lived in Stevens County south of Hugoton and we would go out there quite often on Sundays. Talk about desolate country! It was really bad out there, much worse than it was in Seward County where we lived. I had another uncle that lived in Grant County and it was about the same up there. I remember the Cimarron River. The ground to the west was blowed down to hard pan and if we ever got a hard rain all of it run into the river. The Cimarron River was really bad about flooding in those days, course we got more and bigger rains than we do now days, but I remember the Cimarron River at high flood stage. I remember when the Rock Island lost their engine and part of a freight train in the river down by Arkalon. We got to go down and watch ’em pick up the engine out of the river.

The winds were terrific in those days and of course we didn’t have the good fence posts like we do now. After these windstorms would come through the fence lines would be rolled up and blowed out in the field. We had to go out the next day, start unrolling that wire and set the posts rebuilding fence. I can remember this happening quite a few times.

We took over a quarter of ground that had been left idle all through the bad years. It would be places where the wind would cut holes in the ground. It seemed like once it got started then it would just keep working on that same hole. I remember a guy took a tractor through those holes and you couldn’t even see over the top of ’em when you was down in the bottom of ’em. We took a harrow and rolled up the thistles and then we spent days out there burning those thistle piles to get it to where we could start farming it.

During those times most people didn’t have enough money to pay their taxes, or a lot of ’em didn’t. I remember our neighbor north of us, Mrs. Waldon, was a widow lady with, well she had four children to raise and they foreclosed on her ground. So, everybody got together and done this on just a lot of people. Nobody would bid against her. If she put in a first bid for a dime an acre, she got it. It was settled among them that nobody would bid against ’em.

DP: So that was in the middle of the Depression years?

NB: Yes. The best that I can remember, we never failed to raise enough feed to feed our milk cows and a few extra cows. We always fed the milk after it was separated to hogs so we always had hog meat. But I know there was one year that it never rained all spring and Dad and Grandad decided that since it had rained in Stevens County where my uncle lived they was going to take a lister and a tractor and plant some feed so they would have some feed that fall. Well they got already to go and that night before we was ready to leave, we got a good rain so we just unloaded and started planting. I do not remember that we didn’t raise feed. I remember one time that we went over by Fowler and bought a load of alfalfa bales for the milk cows, but other than that I think we had feed all the time. Wheat was a different story. We herded the cows on weeds and thistles a lot. I had a pony that I would go out on. We didn’t have electric fences in those days, so we just herded the cattle and made them stay on that field where we wanted them.

DP: Did your parents have to sell off cattle or that kind of thing much, or were they able to hold that part together?

NB: You probably might say they were able to hold it together. I don’t remember of any forced sales. Of course, they sold extra cattle, but as far as forced sale – l don’t know how they paid their taxes, but they must have got them paid some way. My Aunt Grace lived with us at that time and she had bought a quarter of Baca County, Colorado land. She finally had to sell that to the government when they come out and started this grass lands deal out in Baca County. I remember going out there that day that she had to go sign papers and if that wasn’t the most desolate country at that time.

DP: So, it looked very different than it did in Liberal.

NB: Oh yes.

DP: Isn’t it strange how there could be so much difference. Dalhart is south and west of Liberal, I don’t know how many miles it is.

NB: About 100 miles. ‘Cause Dalhart was a division point on the Rock Island. They had them about every 100 miles.

DP: OK, but within that distance the conditions were considerably different.

NB: Oh yes. Same was in Baca County. Even in Morton County and Stevens County it got progressively worse.

DP: Well, I noticed in the book they were still homesteading in the Dalhart area in those late, late years and I don’t think any homesteading happened in the Seward County area at the period. I think it had all been homesteaded a long while before that.

NB: Yeah, everything was homesteaded here in the “80s. Rock Island came here in 1888 and they promoted it and brought people in to homestead. Then they all left. You see my grandad bought what they call a relinquishment. He had to go ahead and prove it up, but somebody had already started. So that rather than an actual homestead he got it as a relinquishment.

DP: I am not sure, but some of my grandparents might have done that as well. Some of them did I know. Describe the difference in the land itself say between Dalhart and Baca. Is it Boco or Baca ? I don’t know how it is pronounced.

NB: I don’t know either. I have always pronounced it Baca. Some do pronounce it Boca.

DP: Okay. As compared to Seward County, is the land a lot different or what is it like?

NB: Well now that I can’t tell you because I haven’t been around that much. I know that the ground out that a way is ashy because of the volcanoes out that a way. So it is a lighter soil. I noticed in that book they talked about they would tape their doors and tape their windows, but it would still seep through. It was such a fine dust. We had plenty of that here but not nearly as bad as they talk about. I remember that we taped our windows and our doors with this brown tape they you had to wet one side of it, you know. We done that everywhere and would take it off in the spring. I remember one year, I don’t know how it worked out, Mom said I think that was about ’36 or ’37, it started blowing every night. It would be pretty nice during the day and she said, “Well at least we don’t have to watch it.” [Laughing]

DP: Could you talk a little more about what the soil is like here in Seward County. I know there is a lot of variance. Within a five-mile square you can have many conditions of soil.

NB: Yeah. The soil north of the Cimarron River is very heavy in places but you get other places like up around Satanta and up in that area it turns back to sand. Most of the soil south of the Cimarron is a lighter soil, some of it is really sandy, and some of it is medium sand. I don’t know that there is any actual heavy soil. Right around Liberal, in that basin of Liberal the soil is dark and heavy. But you get into Oklahoma then just south of the state line and soil gets ashy from the volcanoes again. The heavier soil is not as hard to control but if it ever starts blowin’ then it is worse to control. The sandier soil seems easier to control. Sandier soil will raise a crop on less moisture. I don’t know whether it holds moisture better or whether the roots go down better or what but that was one thing that kind of actually made it
better for Seward County because it was sandy. ‘Course Baca County is too. But the crops didn’t burn up as quick on the sand.

DP: Were there other foreclosures in the community that you recall?

NB: I don’t recall, but I am sure there was a lot of ’em. That’s the only one I recall because the folks were talking about it and the people were able to keep their place because of that.

DP: The lady was able to keep it then. Well you know, all my grandparents were here and my parents were just newly married during that period and I don’t think anybody in that part of the community went bankrupt. I think everyone stayed through it and got through it. Somehow. The people that left had gone before this time. My mother said when she was a little girl people had lived on every quarter. They had come out and had stayed about four or five years and they found out that you could not make a living on a quarter like you could farther east. So, they were here four or five years and they left.

NB: Yeah. And they had a dry spell about that time.

DP: Yeah. But you know the same people, the families that are in that community now, for the most part, their ancestors go back to the early 1900s or the teens at least.

NB: Yeah. I know there was a settlement, around 1888, along in there. There was a lot of settlements because they had good years right in there. And I don’t know when they started raising watermelons. Then I don’t know what happened they had to quit the watermelons. Then it turned dry and everybody left. That is what I was talking about, my grandad bought this relinquishment because they had left. So then they didn’t resettle it ’till about the 1900s. From there till about 1910 is when they resettled it again. Then they had some real good years during the ’20s. Everything was really going strong until that hit, until the drought hit in about ’32 or ’33, along in there.

DP: So, your folks stayed with it and they probably became better established as the years went by.

NB: Oh yeah. [Something about his grandad which is not distinguishable on the recording.]

DP: Let’s talk about the Depression. Is there anything else that you think of about those Dustbowl years? Any other experiences that you can recall?

NB: This wasn’t an experience of mine. I think you heard probably of the Banker’s Holiday where Roosevelt, as president, declared a Banker’s Holiday. They shut all the banks down for three days. You couldn’t cash a check, you couldn’t withdraw any funds. Well they was just closed and they kind of reworked the banks to see where they stood because there had been a run on the banks, you know I remember Gerry’s dad telling that they come to town on Saturday evening. Blakemores had the store there in Liberal at that time, which was Ideal, but anyhow one of the Blakemore boys met Fred at the door and said, “Fred, we cannot cash your check tonight.” Well that just devastated them because they had come to town to get groceries. They started using script of some kind to get them through until the banks opened again but I know that was quite a blow on some people until the banks opened again.

DP: Did any of the banks in Liberal go under?

NB: I don’t think so. I don’t think Liberal lost a bank. Now a bank closed here but I don’t know why, I imagine they just had too much of a run on it.

DP: Do you recall Liberal as being a pretty stable community at that time?

NB: I was too young to really know, but yes, it seems like it was.

DP: You had a brother, Thiel. Was it just the two of you?

NB: Yes, yes.

DP: Your grandad’s family included who – all of his children? Your father’s siblings.

NB: He had there sisters and one brother, Edna, Merle, Wilma and Nellie.

DP: Wilma lived in Liberal. Did the others also live here?

NB: Aunt Edna lived here until she died. Well, they started in Stevens County. It was so bad out there that they moved over here. She was married to Roy Headrick. Clyde Headrick, another uncle, lived here. Things was so much better here than they were out there even west of Liberal where we lived, and he got on the place over here and they moved over here. So Edna lived here. Wilma lived in Liberal. Uncle Merle lived in Chicago, Dallas, different places during those bad years because he changed jobs quite a few times. But he seemed to always get a job. And Nellie, they lived in Mullinville for a while. He worked for the gas company and they transferred him to California. So she lived in California and in Boise, Idaho.

DP: And your parents’ names were –

NB: Louis and Mildred. Mildred’s maiden name was Headrick.

DP: And then your grandparents –

NB: Willis and Rose.

DP: And where did they come from?

NB: Well, they met and married in Canyon City, Colorado. They were both raised in Clay County. Grandad followed the railroad to Colorado and worked out there as a freighter, tried to find some gold mine, different things. Grandma, she was having trouble breathing so the doctor told her to go to Colorado, so they met. I think they met before they went, but anyhow after she got out there, they got married.

DP: What year was that Do you have any idea, or about when?

NB: Well, let’s see it would have been 1898. Approximately, well, Aunt Edna was born there. My dad was born in Colorado. And then they had one that died at birth. Dad was born in 1900. So then they came back to Clay Center and then, where was it they went from there? Anyhow, they farmed in a little town north of Clay Center for a while. I think it was my great grandad, when he got discharged from the Army in the Civil War, walked across this country and told him about it and so they decided to come out here and try it.

DP: Well, that is interesting.

NB: They come out in ’07.

DP: How much land did they have to start with?

NB: They could homestead, like I said it was a relinquishment, they just had a quarter to start with and then my grandma’s brother homesteaded another quarter for him, so he had a half-section. At that time, they could rent land. So he rented land and broke it out and raised wheat on it and I think wheat and corn. They was raising corn at that time.

DP: Wow that is unusual.

NB: Yeah, but they did raise corn at that time. During those first few years it was really good.

DP: He farmed until he was how old?

NB: 86, well no, he pretty well farmed “till he died but probably he was 84 when he quit farming completely.

DP: Do you remember your grandparents?

NB: Oh yeah.

DP: What kind of personalities did they have? What were they like as people?

NB: My grandmother was a very religious person and she didn’t want any of us grandkids to dance or go with girls or anything else. [Laughing] And Grandad, he was a prince of a person. Well, I don’t know that I can remember too much.

GB: He liked to work on –

NB: Yeah, he was quite a tinker and an inventor. If he needed something to make his work easier, he would invent it. And I think that is where my Uncle Merle got his because he was for Sears & Roebuck, he would make the rototillers and that little tractor they had to work your gardens with and things like that. He was the one that invented that for them.

DP: Was he a talkative person? Or was he –

NB: No – just so-so.

DP: Did he tell jokes?

NB: Not really. I don’t remember of him ever telling a joke.

GB: He was just really good natured.

DP: Even-tempered person?

NB: Oh yeah. Very even tempered. The big thing I remember about him, I’d always worked for the folks when I was a kid, you know. Well I always said I’d like to work or somebody else to see what it was like, so they sent me over to work for Grandad for a day and he gave me a $20 bill. And at that time, I swear, that was a lot of money. [Laughing]

DP: He sounds like a typical grandpa. That was a huge amount of money in those days.

GB: They wanted to be sure the kids were all raised right you know, they towed the mark.

DP: Was Wilma like her mother?

NB: No.

GB: No, no. They were more like their dad. They were good natured.

DP: Wilma was a lovely person. I knew her when I was growing up.

GB: She was very talented. She played the piano, sang. She had sparkling blue eyes. Her eyes were like her dad”s. Edna was quieter than Wilma.

NB: Well, I don’t know. I was going to say, Grandma wasn’t mean about it, but you could tell when they didn’t toe the line. Picture shows, dances, anything like that was a no-no.

GB: She had a lot of ornery grandchildren. Boys. [Laughing] She was more of a disciplinarian.

NB: Oh yeah. There was two girls, granddaughters, and about eight or 12 boys.

DP: Did they belong to a particular church?

NB: Well there was a church building just across the road from where the Wide A Wake School was. That was their church. I think it was Lutheran when it was out in the country. After they sold that there was a church in Wide A Wake School and then they went to town and they went to the Methodist Church. Now, I think when she grew up she was a Lutheran in Clay County. But I am not sure about that.

DP: Did any Blooms ever go to the Rural Sunday School? There was a name for that and I can’t recall it, and also, they had Christian Endeavor that a lot of the young people were active in.

NB: Oh yeah. You’re talking about over at Liberty School.

DP: Did they have that over in the other schools? Do you know?

NB: Well, we had church at Wide A Wake. I went to CE over at Liberty.

DP: You were in that group that had a lot of those boys going into the service in WW2. A lot of them. So that was a generation when there were a lot of young people in the community.

NB: I can’t say who all was going. I know our friends, Hugh Harnden, Delbert Bryant, other Harndens, Swans Grahams. Mrs. Graham was one of the leaders of CE [Christian Endeavor].

DP: Those were very active community days. The Grange was strong, the Rural Sunday School in some of the rural churches. Was your family involved in the Grange?

NB: Oh yes, very much. Well, my Grandad, Willis, organized the Wide A Wake Grange. He was the first Master of that Grange. There was Clodfelters and Hubert Browns. They lived a little south of Wide A Wake. Longs, Kilgore, Guttridges lived a little north and I don’t think they came as much. But I am pretty sure they were members. Henry Guttridge, his wife was a Brown. There were a lot of people, I can’t remember now.

DP: Swans were at the Liberty Grange.

NB: When we [Norman and Gerry] joined, the two granges had come together. We joined the Liberty Grange. [Progressive Grange]

NB & GB: Fitzgeralds, JoAnne and Bill. Henry Franz was one of the leaders in CE.

DP: CE was a big organization, I think. My husband’s folks, the Baboos, back in Gary, Indiana belonged to CE so it must have been a nationwide movement.

GB: We used to say that Sunday was go to church all day and evening, SS and church, home for dinner and then go back to church for services. It seemed like you were there all day.

NB: I never was. But they used to do that. That was before my time.

DP: Did you have family that got together for Sunday dinner and that kind of thing?

NB: In those days we would either go to my uncle in Stevens County or they would come to our place.

Seemed like Sunday was the day for people to get together that a way.

GB: Norman’s dad’s sister married Grandma’s brother. Edna married Rod Headrick. He was Mildred’s brother. They were double cousins.

DP: I knew that you were related to the Headricks in a pretty strong way but I didn’t remember how.

And Grace Headrick was the County School Superintendent and a teacher.

NB: Yes, for years she was County Superintendent. During the time I was in high school.

DP: Now I have a story to tell about Sleepy Hollow School. I went to school there, started when I was five years old. My folks lived in that little house west of where Dean Brown lives. That house isn’t there anymore. That was the Fincham place. It was a little square house, which is where my folks lived for several years. Rose Downing was the teacher at Sleepy Hollow. Rose was the teacher in one place and Harriet Downing was the teacher in another place. Rose was at Sleepy Hollow. There were a fair number of kids in school that year. Of course, I was the littlest one. But I remember at recess time Thiel, your brother, would give me a ride on the handlebars of his bicycle. One day I got my feet caught in the spokes of the wheel. That is one of my memories of that. [Laughing] He was probably a sixth grader and I was in first grade.

NB: One of the Downings was the teacher when I was in school there.

DP: I think Harriet Downing was the teacher at Liberty because after that year my folks moved over to where they lived for years and I went to school at Liberty and Harriet was the teacher there for a year or two when I was there.

GB: When we were married, we lived out west where the folks lived. Aunt Grace was teaching Pleasant Valley School.

NB: WellI always thought your folks lived up by the Star Ranch. They had ground up there.

DP: No, I don’t remember where the Star Ranch was. But my Grandparent Prieferts lived in the big house there on Highway 83 where the big barn is. My folks rented the Fincham place. They had purchased some land (now where Wayne Wettstein lives). They had purchased that land and had moved a schoolhouse from someplace, I don’t remember where, down to that property and they were going to make a house out of it. My grandparents decided they were going to move to Eastern Kansas, to Emporia, and so my folks never proceeded with turning that building into a house. My folks moved to where my dad had grown up (the house on Highway 83).

My other grandparents, the Fraims, lived close. Their place was located from the cemetery two miles east and one mile north. That is where they had landed. My Grandad Fraim’s father came there about 1906 or 1907, and the Jennisons, my Grandmother Fraim’s parents, had lived on what is now the Rice farm. They all came about that same era. My Priefert ancestors were all from the Chester, Nebraska area. Everybody was looking for some land to own.

GB: Well Grandpa was the oldest of 13 wasn’t he?

NB: Yes.

GB: The rest of them stayed around Clay Center. He was the only one who came west.

NB: Well you know when I said the Star Ranch, you know where Wayne Wettstein lives, and about 3/4 mile west was the Star Ranch on the north side of the road.

DP: Okay. What was the name of the man who lived there? That was the man my dad bought that property from.

NB: That’s why I thought you lived there.

DP: No, we never lived there. One of his daughters lived there. She married a McGill and they lived there. I think my dad had 400 acres there. That is good land.

NB: That is pretty heavy land there. You get just a mile south of there and it is real sandy. Mrs. Walden lived there. That ground is awful sandy.

DP: Well my dad sold that ground. He put in some irrigation over there and I guess it was more than he could handle by himself and he had a hard time finding somebody else to farm it to suit him. And he wound up selling that land. I think that was the worst business decision he ever made – to sell that land. [Laughing by all]

DP: During those war years, after the Depression, they had continued to farm the Fincham land. They paid that land over west off in just a short while. Those were good crop years.

DP: So you have been a farmer here all your life?

NB: Oh yeah.

GB: Well I think, what year was it, we had gone to Colorado, where your dad was farming the land there and he raised such good milo, those two, three years.

NB: Dad never did go into any irrigation. He always did dry land but he had some good crops.

DP: There wasn’t much irrigation during that period.

NB: No, right in this area we haven’t irrigated until about seven, eight years ago now.

DP: Well, has it been longer than that?

NB: I know your dad did. Right over in here there just wasn’t hardly any wells. Over at our place, where Fred lives, we put all that in that we have got in the last 10 years.

DP: Well, Fred is quite the farmer isn’t he?

NB: Yeah. Ithink he keeps busy.

DP: Oh yes. I bet you are proud of him.

NB: Oh yes.

GB: We just celebrated our 100th Century Farm and Fred is the fourth generation and when Will goes ahead, he will be the fifth on the farm.

DP: The families in that neighborhood that are there, their families have been there for that long. All of them.

NB: Yeah.

DP: Gerry, tell us something about your family, where you grew up, what their name was.

GB: I am Geraldyne Langhofer. I was born in Kismet in 1928 and then my folks moved down on the ranch. Just like we always said, the third ranch down the Cimarron. There were two ranches, the Davies ranch and then our ranch. I went to school here at Kismet and graduated from Kismet schools. Then when Norman came back from the Navy we got married and we moved over west of Liberal on the folk’s place. We lived there 3 1/2 years and then moved to Colorado. We were out there till ’62 and we came back and built a house here in Kismet so the children could go to school. We were first on the bus in the morning and the last off at night.

DP: What was the town in Colorado?

GB: Siebert. The county seat is Burlington and that is just 20 miles from Goodland, on west towards Denver. Our farm is just 118 miles east of Denver. We still farm there, we go back in the summer and during May and stay all summer and still farm and then come back here for the winter usually the last of October, first of November. My dad raised cattle. He always had Hereford cows and calves and I always helped him with the cows and calves. I rode horses and helped him gather up cattle and everything in the spring. I can remember during the drought, how he would walk the floor at night because the cows were bawling and there wasn’t anything to eat. The only time that I can remember the black, black dirt storm, I took my pony, the folks had sent me out after the milk cow and she was probably, oh two miles away. They always get as far away as they can you know. But she wasn’t that far of course, but I rode out to get her to bring her in and all of a sudden coming back when this storm came in and it was just as dark as night all of a sudden and of course you couldn’t see where you were going. Ijust let my pony loose and she found her way home. The folks were quite nervous about me getting lost out there in that storm and they were out in the car with the lights trying to find me. Another time I can remember, my grandma and grandad lived here in Kismet, and we were visiting, and it got real bad that afternoon. Mom and Grandma put wet sheets hanging around. It was so hard to breathe. That would help hold the dirt so a person could breathe a little easier. I was probably seven years old. That’s all I can remember.

DP: In the book, it talked about people having to dig out their cars and even their houses sometimes. Do you remember anything like that?

NB: The one uncle that lived in Stevens County I remember the dirt banking up agin” his house, but it never did get that bad. No, I don’t remember that here at all. You go west, I kind of remember seeing that there.

DP: Gerry, when did your family come to this part of the country?

GB: Mom came in 1914. She was from Missouri. She married her first husband and came out on the train. They lived on the ranch at that time. Then he died of TB. I think she met my dad later on and after they married, they moved to Plains and they farmed south of Plains for a while. Then they moved to Kismet, I was born in Kismet. And then we moved down to the ranch. My dad’s folks came from Germany, from Russia and settled at Offerle and lived there for a while and then they bought land south of Plains, just a mile south and east of Plains. Their name was Langhofer.

DP: That is a German name. Were they Russian or German?

GB: Well it’s German but I can’t think of what part of Germany and Russia together. I have it all down in a history.

DP: Were they Russians or Germans who brought wheat to this part of the country?

NB: I would imagine they did. Now whether they brought wheat or not, but they were early settlers.

GB: My dad was only about 14 years old when he and his older brother would come from Offerle to Plains and farm and they farmed with horses. They would live there until they got the house built. Grandad built the house there and then they moved from Offerle to Plains.

DP: Where is Offerle?

NB: By Dodge City. Near Spearville and then Offerle.

DP: You are both old-timers here. Your families are.

GB: I know my grandma didn’t speak English too well. She talked real broken English and it was hard to understand her. But of course, I said to her well why. My daddy had six brothers and two Sisters and when we would go for family dinners, she and the boys would all speak German. None of the rest of us grandkids could speak German and I asked him one time how come they didn’t teach the grandchildren to speak German. All they ever did was some little songs or prayers. And they said well you know at that time German wasn’t very popular.That was during the world war, WW2.

DP: During WWI it was the same.

GB: None of the grandchildren ever learned German. I wish that we could have.

DP: Did you know Dr. Kappler?

NB: Oh yeah.

DP: He was a German immigrant. He was a good friend of the Jennisons. He experienced quite a lot of persecution during the first world war. The Jennisons befriended him. He went to Chicago to study to be an osteopathic doctor and then came back to Liberal. My Grandmother Priefert was an Eickman. Her father was born in this country. They lived at Chester, Nebraska. One of the stories told at the Eickman reunion just last weekend was that someone burned a cross in their front yard because they were German. There weren’t many Germans in that immediate community, apparently.

GB: Grandma and Grandpa got on that boat when their first child, Aunt Molly, was six weeks old. I have the story of when they came over. They rode a train to Offerle. Grandad worked for farmers until he got some ground here at Plains. They built a big two-story house, he and the boys. Beautiful, it is still there on the homestead on the farm. My aunt lived there. My uncle passed away about two years ago and my aunt just passed away. They’ve always lived there. No one lives there now but their daughter lives about a mile away and she doesn’t want to rent or have anyone living there.

DP: Okay, so Fred is farming, Bob Keating is farming. Are there other family members who farm in this part of the country?

GB: Bob’s children have all left.

NB: Some shirt-tail relatives, but they are Headricks and live west of Liberal. That’s the only ones left.

Tom Lives in Loveland, Sandra is in Norman, Oklahoma, and Fred is the only one left around here.

GB: Tom’s boy is in his second year in junior college in agriculture school in Sterling, Colorado. He has helped us in the summer since he was 14. He plans to take the farm over in Colorado. Will will farm. He will graduate from Vo-Tech in Liberal. He will go in with his dad. Now he works on diesels.

DP: How do you feel about the life of a farmer?

NB: We have really enjoyed it. We have been very fortunate that we haven’t had too much crises as far as farming. I found some old checks that I had written when we first started that I had wrote for $1 and I would get an overdraft for that. But we have been very fortunate that we have gained all through the years.

DP: When you came back from the service were you anxious to get back to the farm?

NB: Oh yeah. I couldn’t wait to get back. “Course that was a big thing in those days, to be a farmer. Now it’s not so much a big thing.

DP: Tell me how you feel about the land and the farmer’s relationship to the land.

NB: Well, mainly he’s got to take care of it if you figure on it taking care of you.

GB: You got the conservation award in Colorado. And I think your folks did here. Master Farmer and Homemaker – his folks did. The last year, your dad was already gone then but your mom and he got the Master Farmers Award.

DP: It seems to me that to be a good farmer, it is not a totally logical relationship. There’s something deeper than just logic.

NB: Oh yeah.

DP: The man wants to be a farmer and to do this kind of work.

NB: You have to want to do it.

GB: It is not something you really learn. I don’t know, you see our grandson, he is going to have to learn it out of a book. The one in Colorado. Where Will has grown up with it. Our grandson in Colorado has worked every summer with his grandad and he likes it there. But he also knows the city part. The computer part. I think he is going to try it maybe.

DP: Farming is a very complicated business anymore. You have to know so much about so many things.

GB: So much more about it than reading it in a pile of books.

DP: When you hear about these big corporate farming farms, I don’t know how that is possible because every quarter section of ground is different, and I think you just have to have some personal interaction.

NB: Were you here when Gates River Company bought all that ground in Colorado and put an irrigation well on every quarter? You know how big sugar beets are, but when they dug them they looked like carrots. After two years they sold it back to the farmers. There are still corporations that are doing it but they have more gumption than this one did. They would start an irrigation well, dry it off, and if it didn’t run they didn’t go back until the next day.

DP: Even on the same section of ground there can be a lot of variance.

NB: Oh yeah. My grandad’s place over there in Liberal, the quarter that he homesteaded, is a very sandy quarter. The north quarter of that half section is a tight quarter and it just shuts off down that half section line. I don’t know whether some of that blew off that quarter to the other one. It is just a sandier ground.

GB: Five miles on west it is so sandy. Where Greens lived.

DP: Do you think the Ogallala is going to hold out for a long time?

NB: Oh, I don”t know. I helped a fellow in Colorado who was drilling wells when we was living out there. He said, “You’ll never run it dry. You take a sponge, you cannot wring all the water out of it. It is just like a sponge.” But it may not hold a supply the way they are pumping it out. So I am afraid it will get to the point to where if there is enough for people to drink we may be lucky.

DP: Well, it is sure being used. I guess we are all guilty of putting down wells.

GB: West of Highway 83 there are no trees along the river. They say it is because during the drought the irrigation has made it dry. Now along the Cimarron where our ranch is there are still beautiful cottonwood trees and groves, but we are getting more irrigation along those hills and you wonder how long it will take to drain all that dry.

DP: I don’t know if this country is getting 20 inches of rainfall a year or not. It doesn’t seem like it.

NB: No I don’t think so, the last few years.

DP: I don’t know if you or I will live long enough to see what the final result is going to be.

NB: They say it will last longer than we will. But it is sure going down in a hurry. In places.

DP: In places, it seems that is true. Now over east it seems like those wells, you know where our land is, over where the Rice land is, in that general area, it seems like the water level there is not going down much. I don’t know what it has done the last couple of years but Fred was saying that they did test some of those spots and they had gone down a little but not very significantly.

GB: When we first moved to Colorado, they built Bonny Dam Reservoir, this wonderful lake just 50 miles from us. We could go boating and fishing there and the trees were so big and beautiful, but they are talking about draining Bonny Dam because –

NB: Some contract with Kansas. They have to furnish so much water to Kansas. I guess that is the only way they can do it, let the water out of that.

DP: The Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas laws are not uniform in regard to this water.

NB: The different states have different pacts and I don’t know the differences between then. Colorado is supposed to furnish so much water to Kansas whether they got it or not. It has been so dry the last few years they just don’t have it.

[Some discussion of a pipeline for water.]

DP: Coming back to the book, at the end, the last few pages, he makes one of his observations or conclusions. Do you remember some of the statements he made?

NB: No, no.

DP: Well let”s look. At the very end, I am going to read a few sentences. “The United States was founded as a nation of farmers, but less than 1% of all jobs are in agriculture now. On the plains the farm population has shrunk by more than 80%.” This is the part I want your reaction to. “The government props up the heartland, ensuring that the most politically connected farms will remain profitable. Huge sections of mid-America no longer function as working, living communities. The subsidy system that was started in the New Deal to help people such as the Lucas family stay on the land has become something entirely different: a pay-off to corporate farms growing crops that are already in over supply, pushing small operators out of business. Some farms get as much as $360,000 a year in subsidies. The money has almost nothing to do with keeping people on the land or feeding the average American” (from pg. 310 of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan).

DP: Okay. What is your reaction to that?

NB: Well, I am not in favor of corporate farms, but the subsidies, we can’t control the price we’re going to get and I feel like that is the only way we got of having any control of what we will get for the costs of what we raise. It’s not our control, it’s the government doing it, but you try to get a whole bunch of farmers to get together and do one thing you’re not agoin’ to get it done. So we got to have something to prop up the prices.

DP: So, explain how the subsidy works for you in your farming.

NB: Well, it changes so much. At one time they guaranteed you a certain price for your grain. If the market didn’t support that price, they’d store the grain for a year or two. Now they have changed all that around and they guarantee – it’s mostly through insurance. They guarantee you a certain amount of profit on what you raise but this is more or less insurance rather than government hand-out, because we pay a premium for this insurance.

DP: Is that insurance premium subsidized?

NB: Part of the premium is paid by the government. I can’t remember just how much of it is, but part of that insurance premium is subsidized.

DP: I remember some years ago, I asked Fred, and this has been before fertilizer and fuel costs went up so much. I asked him, “What is a price you need to get for wheat to be able to survive?” And he said if you get $3 a bushel you can manage on that. You don’t have a lot of profit but you have enough that you can keep things hanging together. I kept my folks farm records before they died and that was back when there were more farm program parts than there are now. I remember there were three different elements of that farm program. So, at the end of the year I would add up what the crop sold for and all those government payments. For year after year it came, all of that together, to about $3 a bushel. Now that doesn’t exactly fit the idea of what we just read in these sentences here. It seems to me that a lot of people have the idea that huge, rich farmers are getting these subsidies. I know that the government program varies a lot depending on the kind of farm, the kind of product, and I don’t begin to understand it. The only thing that I know a little about is the grain crops that are grown here in western Kansas.

NB: Yeah. That’s the way with me. I don’t know about cotton and tobacco. I don’t know how those are paid. The subsidies on them are pretty good.

DP: I don’t know any farmers who have gotten rich on subsidies.

NB: No, not really.

DP: Maybe it just helps you to hold together and that is about it.

NB: That”s just about it.

DP: I think the man who wrote this book has done a lot of research so I am sure he is taking that information from some authentic source. I don’t know how those statistics are put together. Fred is a pretty big farmer and back in some of those years his total subsidy payment might have looked pretty good but you gotta know what his expenses were.

NB: Yeah.

GB: That’s the problem that people don’t understand, your expenses.

DP: And furthermore the terrific investment! To me the question is: do we want food raised in this country so do we need to make sure our farmers stay in business or do we want to have to import our food? Because if the farmer doesn’t make some profit he is going to go out of business.

NB: They ought to see what is happening if you have to import the oil.

DP: You do hear stories about how people have cheated on insurance and they plant a crop and then sort ofintentionally let it destroy so they can just sit and collect the insurance. I am sure that happens but I don’t think it is very common. Have you known anybody that did that?

NB: Well, not lately. Back when we first went to Colorado I knew of a couple or three that did. But I don’t know that it was actually intentional either because there in the ’50s you just couldn’t raise a crop.

DP: That’s right. Times were lean in the ’50s. There were dust storms then, and hail.

NB: We were very fortunate. We only lost one crop during those years.

GB: Talk about your folks living on their cream and eggs. We did that several years in Colorado too. We milked cows and took the cream to town to sell it. And our eggs.

DP: Another thing he writes about in the book is the suitcase farmers, where during that wheat crop bubble time people would come in. I don’t know if they bought the land or just rented it, but they would plant these crops. You got the impression they would plant and then go back to wherever they came from or back to their other jobs. They would come and harvest the crop. But when it came into the bad years they just abandoned the whole thing. I don’t recall anything like that happening around Liberal.

NB: No, I don’t either. In Eastern Colorado there was quite a bit of that. In fact, they kind of called us suitcase farmers!

DP: Well, but you were different. You actually lived there and that was your main occupation and you didn’t abandon things.

NB: Yeah.

GB: Well now, “Last Chance to Denver,” that happened there. They came and broke all that pastureland, that beautiful pastureland, rolling hills. What did they pay them? They broke all that out and then they abandoned all that.

DP: Has it gone back to grass land now?

NB: No, they are still farming it.

GB: Several years they didn’t farm it and they collected the money on it.

DP: There probably is land that should be grass.

NB: Oh yeah.

GB: Oh definitely should have been left.

DP: And there still is some of that. If the Ogallala goes out we will see some of that land go back to grass.

NB: Yes. In Colorado right now they are paying them to abandon their wells and go back to dry land. You see quite a little of that in Colorado. In this deal with Kansas they got to get some water.

DP: Do you have more rain out there than Liberal has?

NB: No, we are about the same. Averages just about the same. Now this year we have because we are in good shape this year. But normally we run just about the same.

DP: It seems to me this country is not getting the quantity of rain it was getting even when I was growing up here.

NB: I don’t think so either. I have a note in my notes about when we went to visit my uncle in Satanta. Looked up and here come a big old dark cloud, we jumped in the car and headed home. Got home and we had chickens just about half grown and they were all piled up in a corner and they were drowned. It was a gully washer. We just don’t get those kinds of rains anymore. Another time they was talking about the Cimarron being a floodin’. Do you remember Edmonds Bridge? It is the one north over 83. It was a wooden bridge at that time. I think everybody in Liberal was standing on that bridge and that thing was a rockin’ and them trees were hittin” it, water was just right up to the bottom of it. If that had went, everybody in Liberal would have drowned. But here we was, right out in the middle of it.

DP: I remember going down to the Cimarron River to watch when the river was riding high. Because it was not too common that it happened, it was something to go see when it did happen.

GB: How well I remember the floods. We have seen our cattle, their little heads just bobbin’, they would be caught in the river, bobbin’ up and down as they go down the river. You see those huge big cottonwood trees cut out big banks and the trees just fall in the river. It was very treacherous.

DP: Is there any water in the Cimarron River now?

NB: Yeah. From about the bridge here on 83 going southeast, you get down to Highway 27 there is a good flow of water. Down here it is pretty stagnant but there is water. The further east you go the better it gets.

DP: My mother and dad talked about during the Depression and those dry years people would get together at somebody’s house and play cards. They played Rook. Did any of the Blooms ever join in on those parties? Did Wilma and Jimmie Keating join in?

NB: I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you for sure.

DP: You don”t remember your folks doing that?

NB: No, I don’t.

DP: They still had some of their Grandma Bloom’s words hanging over their heads. [Everyone Iaughs] Here again, they played Rook because those were numbered cards and not the “other” kinds of cards. You could play with the numbered cards, even though the games were about the same!

NB: It seemed like to me I heard people talking about playing Rook.

GB: I remember playing Rook.

NB: I remember them talking about Rook. That’s about all I remember.

DP: Do you remember the big barn at my Grandpa Priefert’s house?

GB: I remember going to a play there one year. What were the players?

DP: My grandad lived there when that barn was first built. My dad was born in 1911 so it was built probably in the early ’20s, maybe late teens. My Grandad Priefert loved to dance so they had Saturday night dances up in the haymow in that barn.

GB: That’s how my parents met. Not there but down on the ranch where mother lived, and they had dances on the ranch in the big barn loft and that’s the way my parents met. My dad went to one of those dances. She was a widow with a 5-year-old boy. She and her brother kept the ranch going and my grandparents lived with them at the time. But they had dances in the hayloft. I remember them saying that was where they met, down at the barn in the hayloft.

DP: Rolling in the hay! [Laughing by everyone] Well, not quite. That came a little later.

DP: That barn [the Priefert barn] actually burned down. They always figured that a hobo had come up after one of those dances and slept there, and probably had a cigarette or something and the barn caught on fire. They rebuilt the barn so the barn that is there is the rebuilt barn, almost identical to the first one. But they didn’t have dances after that.

GB: Well ours burnt down too. My brother’s wife, one of her little nephews was visiting and he would go down and play in the loft. We didn’t know how or why it burnt down.

DP: Where was your ranch from the Hunt Ranch? It was the Pile ranch when I was a little kid and I think maybe the Hunt”s bought that after the Piles lived there. So where was your ranch from that?

NB: Their ranch – you go across the bridge on 54.

GB: Our ranch is down from 54. You know where the Davis ranch is? And the next ranch on down about a couple of miles on down that road is our ranch.
DP: Did you do farming as well as cattle ranching?

GB: Oh, I don’t think Dad farmed more than a quarter up over the hills east. He and my uncle used to farm together here at Plains. Grandad Langhofer bought all the land here and they farmed that ground until he married Mother. After he and Mother were married, he started ranching.

DP: I took violin lessons from Mrs. Naylor in Liberal. There was another girl who also took lessons from Mrs. Naylor, and it seems like her name was Langhofer.

GB: Vella Mae.

DP: And how was she related to you?

GB: She is my cousin. Now that is the brother that was just a couple of years older than my dad. That is the one that my dad and he would come out and do the farming at Plains until the family could build a house and all of them move and that was Vella Mae’s dad. He was just two years older than my dad. His name was Dave.

DP: She was older than 1. She was a wonderful musician. She was also a singerIthink, wasn’t she?

GB: Yes. Did you get to see her play Dolly when it was on at the college here? Where is it her husband is from?

DP: Jamaica.

GB: Yes. She performed in a lot of plays and things.

DP: Music was her profession then?

GB: Yes, and her brother both. He played the marimba and they both played the piano and she sang. I don’t think in high school she acted but after she was married and went off to Jamaica is when she started performing more.

DP: Is she still alive?

GB: They live in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Her husband is a dentist. He is retired now. She did participate in plays in Oklahoma City some. She gives music lessons.

DP: She was a beautiful girl as I recall. It was quite unusual for a white girl to marry a black man in those days. I imagine there was a lot of discomfort about it in the family for a while.

GB: He [her father] disowned her for a while you know.

DP: Did they reconcile after a while?

GB: Well, yes, they – when was that shakeup in Jamaica and they had to leave? Her husband had quite a nice practice there and a nice home and everything. I don’t know what happened, but they had to just leave Jamaica and left all their belongings there, everything, to get out. Then they came back to Plains and lived at Plains.

DP: Were they accepted well in the community?

GB: Yes, her dad accepted them. After he got sick he went down to a nursing home in Guthrie and was there a year or so. He died there. And then Aunt Medlin lived with them for several years in Guthrie. Vennie is two years younger than me, so she is 77. How old are you?

DP: I am 71. Mrs. Naylor was a very good violin teacher.

GB: I never knew she played the violin. I knew she sang. I remember her playing Dolly here at Liberal. She helped the man with the costumes. Ithink that was one of the first plays I went to – there at the college and Veela was Dolly. Then she played a Jewish mother in a play in Oklahoma City and I went to it. And I said if she didn’t portray my aunt to a tee! Ijust sat there and just laughed untilI could cry. She was very much a performer.

DP: She was several years older than I, but I remember just her presence was very dignified and very beautiful.

DP: Western Kansas is made up of people like your families. It is a pretty good place to be isn’t it?

NB: Yeah.

GB: Now Theil, Norman’s brother, his two boys, both are doctors in Wichita. Theil is a doctor, a radiologist. One is a diabetes specialist and Barry is a neonatal specialist. Jim the younger boy did have the paper at Garden City and then at Hutchinson. He was editor. Now he has decided to go back to school, something in management. They still own some of the farm, Theil owns a quarter, but has never done any of the farming. But Theil still maintains an interest. They come out here. His wife’s father was a big farmer at Dighton. She is quite interested in the farm.

DP: My kids have spent a lot of time with their grandparents here in Liberal. So even though they are not here they know something about the farm. When they were kids, they were here in the summer. Andrew helped Fred one summer. The girls are a little older than Andrew and came and worked with my dad from the time they were junior high kids clear through college. They have worked on the farm a fair amount, so they have some familiarity with it.

GB: Our kids all still do. Our daughter from Norman, Oklahoma married a boy who was in the Air Force until he retired. They come out in the summer and help during harvest. In fact Bill, her husband, has drilled our wheat for us the last two years in Colorado. They always come out to the farm, she likes to be there through harvest, and she helps me. The boy in Loveland helps every weekend he can get off. We couldn’t manage it without their help “cause we haven’t had help. Well, Norman’s always had boys, we counted a list one time, how many boys has helped us. How many did we count that time they said that Norman has helped teach “how to farm” over the years? Right now, one of the first boys that helped us when we first moved to Colorado, he was probably a junior or senior in high school, he is married and
lives on the farm just north of us. He takes care of our place for us when we are gone in the winter. When Norman needs some help and no one can come out, he always helps. He drives through the place of a morning and at night and checks everything for us.

DP: Somebody needs to be around. I appreciate your time today. We will get a CD made of all this so you can listen to yourselves and furthermore so your families can hear your voices and hear you talk about your lives and your roots.

At the end of the interview Gerry showed pictures of the family and of the lOO’hyear farm celebration.

Postscript: Norman Bloom died in December of 2015. Geraldyne Bloom died in May of 2018.