5: Interview with Gladys Ridenour Schmitt

Date: April 2008

Place: Gladys Schmitt’s home north and west of Liberal

Interviewer: Donita Priefert Payne

My name is Gladys Grace Ridenour Schmitt. I was born in 1925, June 14, Flag Day, up in the northwest part of Seward County. I lived on a ranch up there until I was 13 then off and on for a couple of years. I went to high school over at Kismet. In the summertime the family would move back to their ranch in the northwest part of the county. I went to school at Ethelton School. We rode horses, my brother and I. We also drove a buggy and hauled water in the back end of the buggy in cream cans for a year or two, my brother Richard and I, for the school. We got paid a dollar and a half a month to do that. The years we didn’t haul water we rode the horses. It seems like it was about three miles to school. Now I can be wrong on that but it seemed like it. It was a long way. It seemed like it especially when it was cold. It was
bad. Then my mother, when I was in the seventh and eighth grade, got a job with a hot lunch program that was maintained by the government. She and Dad would take the food to Ethelton School and to Golden Plains School. They would bring it to Ethelton School and leave it there and the teacher and I would dish it out for the students while Mama and Daddy went on down to Golden Plains. Then they came by and picked up the boxes the food was in. They had containers for all that. But there wasn’t too many kids at Ethelton, I think about seven or eight at that time. It was an eight-grade school. I graduated from there from the eighth grade. Had to go down to the Court House and take county exams, you know. Emma Thompson was the County Superintendent.

DP: What kind of games did you play?

GS: In the wintertime fox and geese in the snow. We played anti over and black man. I don’t remember of the school having too awfully much equipment. We did play baseball. We would go to other schools and have baseball games. Some of the schools was over in Stevens County and some of them were Seward County. Some of my teachers was – I think in the first grade was Miss Helen Schmidt. Spelled with a “dt” where mine is spelled with a “tt”. They lived in Sublette I believe, I am not really sure where she was from. She was a very good teacher and I loved her very much. Then we had a man teacher whose name was Dick Allen. I did not like him. He made me write spelling words a hundred times a piece. By the time I got through writing my spelling words I didn’t have time to study my spelling lesson. He only lasted about three-fourths of the school year and then we had Aunt Annie Day. We called her Aunt Annie. She and Uncle Doug Day lived in the community. They didn’t have any children. She finished out the school year for Dick Allen. Then we had Miss Wakeman. I didn’t like her either. Harriet Downing and Evelyn Hostettler. Think Evelyn Hostettler was the teacher I graduated under in the eighth grade.

DP: Harriet Downing must have been very young at that time. Was she? I had her as my teacher.

GS: That’s right. You know, they still had to go to teacher’s college. Her and her sister Rose, Opal Moore and Evelyn Hostettler and Effie White. I never did go to Effie White. You know there was another sister, a White sister, I can’t think who it was. There was quite a few young ladies that were teachers.

DP: So they were maybe 15 years older than you at that time, what would you estimate?

GS: No, I don’t think they would be 15 years older, probably about ten. Because I was thinking Harriett and the girls were about the same age as my brother Jim . Jim was ten years older than me, nine years older than me.

DP: Who did Rose marry?

GS: A man by the name of Lester Nipple. They lived, I think at St. John. He used to come out here hunting all the time. I don’t know whether Uncle Coleman … now they lived over in Stevens County, Uncle Coleman Downing did. Harriet and Rose’s father. This Nipple came out hunting and things and then he and Rose got married.

DP: And Harriet married a Holt?

GS: Yes, Pat Holt. He was a guy who grew up there in the Golden Plains neighborhood.

DP: Rose was my first grade teacher and Harriet was my second grade teacher.

GS: How about that!

DP: They were both very fine teachers.

GS: Yes, they really were. I think all those young ladies were. I think they had the children’s interest to heart.

DP: What did you enjoy about country school?

GS: Well, I didn’t like school. [Laughing] I really didn’t. I kind of regret it no~. I know that I should have liked school a lot better but I guess I was too much of a tom boy. I don’t know what the trouble was. I just didn’t … Oh what did I enjoy most?

DP: Sounds like you enjoyed recess. [Laughing]

GS: Yes, I enjoyed recess. They always had music and things too, I liked the music. The teacher would always read a story, start a book and read a book after lunch to kind of settle us down. I liked that. I liked to read. Didn’t care so much for math. Didn’t care so much for spel ling or English. Not much left. Kind of liked history though because that was reading. DP: Did you have other students in your same class?

GS: Yes, there was two girls, Fern Hamel and Juanita Young was in my class.

DP: How were the lessons done? Did you have an assignment and then …

GS: Sure. Very seldom had homework though. Did it in school.

DP: Did you prepare the lesson and then have a recitation with the teacher or discuss it with the teacher, or can you recall?

GS: No, I don’t recall. I really don’t. I know our arithmetic, you had your problems and you had to hand it in. Same way with a lot of English, sentences and things like that that you had to dissect, you had to hand them in. She also had class at the front of the room and she would explain what our next lesson would be and show you how to do it and then it was up to you to do it. I never thought about not having homework but we didn’t.

DP: How was the school heated?

GS: It had a big pot bellied stove in it. The teacher had to build a fire every morning. Coal. It seemed to suffice, I don’t remember of it ever being cold in school at all.

DP: Tell us what your home was like. What kind of lighting did you have, what kind of heating, how did your mother do the laundry, those kinds of things?

GS: In, must have been 1910 I think, my grandpa, A. P. Ridenour, built a big cement block house pretty close to the river. Now, he built it down there because he thought the main road was going to be between the river and his house. But it didn’t turn out that way. It was a mile west of his house. This was, at that time a big house. It had a bathroom in it. It had a stool and the water box was up at the top and you had a chain that you had to pull. But it worked. And then we had a lavatory, a bathtub. The water was heated from our cook stove in the kitchen. It had a water box that would heat it and put it into the hot water tank. From that hot water tank it would go to pipes and things in the bathroom. We didn’t have it in the sink in the kitchen. I don’t remember of having hot water in there, but we hc1d it in
the bathroom. [Laughing]

DP: It was easier to heat the water for the kitchen on the stove.

GS: Yeah, right, I guess. I guess that is what it was. I don’t know. It had three bedrooms. A bedroom for my brothers, a bedroom for my sister and I and a bedroom for Mom and Dad. And then we had a dining room and a front room and a kitchen. Our winter kitchen and dining room were combined and then we had a summer kitchen . It was really cold in the wintertime. In this summer kitchen we also had the separator to separate the cow’s milk and cream. Mama had a big table out there to work on and things. Many a time I had to wash the separator. [Laughing by both]

DP: I had to do that some when I was growing up too. [Everyone laughs]

GS: I didn’t like that. Rosalie did the dishes and I did the separator. It was something else again. [Laughing]

DP: Did your grandfather come to that place then?

GS: No, my grandfather, I think they came in 1886, somewhere in there. They came to Hugoton and he was – I don’t know whether the Marshall is appointed by the governor or U.S. official of some kind – he was also, some years he was sheriff, some years he was Marshall. They had a court house, a safe in their court house over there at Hugoton at that time and when some guys would get together talkin’ and things they didn’t think that he could shoot a gun, was a very good marksman. So he just pulled out his 45 and he shot that safe. I don’t know whether they still have that door of that safe or not. When they built a new courthouse, my brother at that time lived at Hugoton. He was a soil conservationist, at Stevens and Morton counties. He sold the door that my grandad had shot. He just pulled out his gun and
Bang! Then after that they bought a ranch on the Cimarron in the Seward County.

DP: That’s where your father and your family lived?

GS: That’s right. I think my dad was born in Indiana, I am not sure. That is where they came from.

DP: And your mother, where did she . . .

GS: Kansas City. Now she was a schoolteacher. She came out here to teach school, probably in 1913 or 1912, 1914. So her and Dad were married in 1915. She taught for two or three years before they were married. She did a homestead, a settlement homestead or whatever. It was a quarter of ground. She also had a brother that came out here. That was one reason why her mom and dad let her come out was because her brother, well, I think his name was ____ out here. And also – her maiden name was Wear, not Ware. It’s really pronounced Weer. I think it was English. Now I never knew my Grandpa and Grandma Wear at all. I don’t remember them one bit. I don’t know when they died or anything. Mom had nine sisters and three brothers, somethin’ like that. Three or four brothers. She had a large family. But they all lived in Kansas City, all but this one brother. Now then, her mother, I don’t remember what her name was, I haven’t thought about this for a long time. Anyway, her maiden name was Downing, my mother’s mother. She was a sister to Horace and Coleman Downing and Albert Downing.

DP: I thought that somehow you were related to the Downing sisters but I did not know how.

GS: Those three men were my mother’s uncles. I remember going to their places and having a good time.

DP: How did your mother do the laundry?

GS: Dad most generally supplied pretty good for Mom’s laundry. The first I can think about was a tin tub and we had to swish the water and clothes by a paddle inside there somehow. Then it had a wringer on it that you had to hand turn and so you would wring the clothes out of that water and put them into the
rinse water, two or three tubs of rinse water. The wringer swung around so that you didn’t have to wring them out by hand. That is the first I remember. Then they bought a washing machine that was run with a little motor and a belt, a gasoline motor and a belt. The gasoline motor was outside of our wash house. Whenever Mom was ready to wash Dad would go rig that up for her and start the engine and we’d wash. Had to hang them out though. We didn’t have a dryer! Didn’t have a dryer! [Laughter]

DP: What kind of lighting did you have in your house?

GS: We had kerosene lights. We did have a wind charger but it didn’t work too awfully well. I don’t remember of having electric lights at all. We might have had but I don’t remember it at all. You always had to have batteries and things like that for those wind chargers.

DP: Did you have a radio?

GS: Yeah.

DP: The wind charger may have charged the batteries for the radio.

GS: No – well now it could have. Then Dad would have to change them, every week or ever so often. That could have been. But for lights, we did not have Delco lighting or gas lighting or anything like that. I could tell you more about the grades than how old I was. I stayed out on the ranch in the summertime
and took care of my four little brothers. Four younger brothers. There were nine in our family. Four older than me and four younger than me.

DP: Were they all brothers except Rosalie?

GS: Yes. So I had seven brothers and one sister and me.

DP: No wonder you were a tomboy!

GS: [Laughing] That summer that I stayed out there on the ranch and took care of my brothers, my next youngest brother climbed up on this wind charger and, I don’t know whether the wind came up while he was up on there or what, but anyway the propeller came along and sliced him on his head right above the eye. I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I climbed up there and helped him climb down. Then I sent one of my other brothers over to the neighbor and I knew they always come to town on Saturday, this happened on Saturday. So Donald rode a horse over to Hockensmith’s, Chet Hockensmith. They come down and got Johnny Bob and took him to town. Mom was working in town at a job. He had some stitches in his head. That was terrible scary. How he stayed up there and didn’t fall off I don’t know. But he didn’t. Oh!

DP: Did you have music in your home?

GS: Yes, Mom played the piano. We had a piano. My grandfather bought my mother a piano when her first son was born . Jim Bob was his name, James Otto. She had played music in her own home. Now, Dennis and Pat, my son and his wife, has the piano. It is 80 some years old. It just sounds so good! It has had good care. Pat just enjoys it very much.

DP: I was talking to Bill Fitzgerald the other day and we were talking about the men’s quartets. Mention Chet Hockinsmith, I think he was one of the members of one of those quartets.

GS: Right, Chet Hockinsmith, Elmer Snider, Chet Snider the bass, Willard Downing.

DP: I remember hearing them when I was a little girl. They were very good.

GS: Yes they were. They sang at Mother’s funeral. I requested that. She died in 1959.

DP: Did you have a church up in that community?

GS: Yeah. The Golden Plains. I think it was a Baptist church, I am not sure. Everybody came. We had Catholics and everybody else that came there to this church.

DP: What do you remember about that?

GS: It was a long ways from home. [Laughing] But went ‘pert near every Sunday. They always had a summer picnic, we always went to Garden City. That was the day that I got the best sunburn of the year ’cause we always went swimming in the big ol’ swimming pool up there. Elmer Snider, I remember him, was a teacher for my Sunday School class. It was just a good ol’ country church. They had revivals and things. It was at a revival up there that I gave my heart to the Lord and then I was baptized down in the First Baptist Church on 2nd Street, and Grant or Sherman. The old Baptist Church there in Liberal.

DP: Did a preacher come to the Golden Plains church once in a while?

GS: Yeah, the Revival. I don’t remember whether it was the same preacher that baptized me or not.

DP: So you had Sunday school and songs. Did someone preach or give a talk?

GS: Yes, Sunday school and songs. Most generally someone preached or gave a talk. Most generally it was a man of the community. People took turns. That is the way I remember it anyway. Now, they finally built a Golden Plains church. Before, we had it in the schoolhouse, the Golden Plains School. I was never in that church. By the time they had it built I was married and we was down here.

DP: So you went to Kismet to high school? What year did you finish there?

GS: That is correct. I didn’t finish. I got married. I started my senior year but I got married in October. I didn’t go much of my senior year.

DP: Were your folks happy about that?

GS: I think Mama was relieved to get rid of me. [Lots of Laughing] I think she was ready to get rid of me. No, she knew that Ed was a good man and would take care of me and things like that. I think she was ready to get rid of me. [Laughing again] But anyway, she loved Ed very much. Ed did a lot of things for them. He liked them also.

DP: How did you meet Ed?

GS: Oh, that’s a long story I don’t think I will tell. [Laughing]

DP: Well, just tell us a little bit.

GS: I was walking home from a skating rink and he and Lawrence and Kenneth Brown [pause] picked me up. [Laughing] I was working at Roseberry Hatchery in Liberal. I was working that summer at Roseberry’s as a maid and that evening I met Ed. I don’t know we just clicked. Didn’t go with anybody else after that.

DP: Did he grow up on this place where you have been living?

GS: No, he grew up on a place where Ray and Edna Brown lived and about a mile south of that. There are no buildings or anything there now but there used to be. I think there might be a tree. When his family first come to this country, here to Seward County to a place about a mile east of here, I don’t know who owned it, it was a square house. That was 1906. Their names were John J. Schmitt and Elizabeth was her name. Originally I think they came from Darts, Kansas. I think maybe they lived at Maxwell, wherever that is. I don’t have any idea. They would have had August and Claire and Bertha and Jill and Nick. So they would have had four or five children when they came. For that time of the century Ed’s dad was a big farmer. It was more cattle, but he did raise some corn and things like that. I think he knew your Grandpa Fraim and your Grandpa Priefert too.

DP: What year was Ed born?

GS: In 1916. Going to have a birthday soon. He had a large family too. There were ten in his family. There was three girls.
DP: Where did those children go to school?

GS: Happy Hollow – Sleepy Hollow. They moved to this house north of Ray and Edna Brown’s, Ray and Edna did not live there at that time. I have pictures of their farm right there on the wall. I do have another picture that was sent to me. It is all rolled up in the —. Mrs. Lowell Sandy was Ed’s teacher
when he graduated out of the eighth grade. She was also the teacher to my kids at Liberty. Janet didn’t graduate from Liberty because they disbanded school before that. I think that Terry and Larry and maybe Dennis and Lynn did but I don’t think Janet did, and Betty. Because I remember [them] getting on the bus and going to high school.

DP: You and Ed were married what year?

GS: 1942 in October. Kind of a whirlwind courtship. I think we had met in July. Ed had a brother that lived with him, Lawrence. We got along real well. They worked together. I had two husbands. [Laughing]

DP: Lawrence helped with the children a lot –

GS: Oh yeah. Definitely. He sure did, he sure did.

DP: He was a very kindly man as I remember him.

GS: He was, yes. I don’t know whether we could have raised the kids without him or not. You don’t know. Of course, we would have but it was just a lot easier with him being here.

DP: The kids think highly of him –

GS: Oh yeah . He was just another dad to them. He really was.

DP: He died, not as a young man, but –

GS: Yes, he was 58 or 59. He died in ’67. He was born in I’m going to say 1912. He was older than Ed. There was a sister in between, Katherine.

DP: So the Dust Bowl was over by the time you moved here where you live. The early ’40s were pretty good crop years.

GS: Yes . Those years were pretty good crop years. We had it pretty good . I didn’t know any different so I guess we did. I was satisfied. Kept busy ’cause we just had kid after kid, we had six of them. It kept me busy. But there again, Ed and Lawrence helped so much. They changed diapers and everything else. It was nothing unusual for them to —. I’d take some of the kids to church and they’d stay home with the baby and give her a bath. We managed.

DP: So what do you remember? You were a young person during those Dust Bowl years?

GS: Yes, I was probably nine and ten. We were living up on the ranch. The one they always talk about as so bad, that Sunday storm that was so bad. I was at the neighbor’s house. We had gone to church at Ethelton and I had gone home with one of the neighbors. They had a basement in their house and we went down in the basement. I don’t remember too much about having to clean up or anything like that. I guess it was just an everyday thing mostly. You know we got more rain during those dust storms than what we do now. You think about – you know they say the drought and everything- but our farming systems and implements are so much better now than it was then. We don’t need so much rain. But we need it! But that bad storm, I was down in the basement, I had kids to play with, the mother and father and the whole family was down in the basement and we kind of more or less had a picnic. So, I don’t remember of it being so terrible bad.

DP: If you lived on the ranch there was probably a lot of grass where you lived so there wouldn’t have been so much ground blowing immediately where you were.

GS: That’s true. But the dirt did come in. It was April when that happened wasn’t it?

DP: Yes, the 14th, 1935 I think.

GS: I really don’t know.

DP: The book that I was referring to, The Worst Hard Time, centered in Dalhart and Boise City and Springfield, Colorado, talked about a lot of people having dust pneumonia, dying from that. People had no food, nothing. Do you recall things being that intense?

GS: No. I don’t remember not having any food. We always had food. It might have been jack rabbit, but we always had food.

DP: Your father was both a farmer and a rancher? Did he ever have to kill any of his cattle off?

GS: Yes, he was. No, I don’t recall him ever having to kill any of them. Why would he have to kill them?

DP: The government had a program to come around and pay the farmers for cattle that they killed. There wasn’t enough cattle food for them.

GS: No, I don’t remember them ever talking about it, I don’t think so. I don’t think Dad ever had to kill any cattle, only just to feed us, for our own use. They may not have been real nice and fat! Seemed like he most generally had cattle feed. I know sometimes he didn’t raise any but somehow they got it. It amazes me, they had life insurances. They always made sure [the premiums] got paid. I remember her voice saying, “We’ve got to pay the life insurance.” Now that I think about it, it amazes me that they would have the money to pay the premium on the life insurance. I don’t understand it. [Laughing] But when they passed away we had life insurance. I can remember Mom kind of scratching around her head, we had an old calendar thing. It must have been from Hartford or something because I remember a
picture of the big old stag on it, you know, and then down below it had a fold out thing to hold bills and stuff, a pocket thing. That is where she always put her insurance premium due payments.

DP: They probably had Hartford Life Insurance.

GS: Could have been, I don’t remember. I didn’t get in on that end of the deal, I don’t know. But I sure remember that big old stag up there! [Laughing]

DP: What was going to the doctor like or what was the medical care like? What kind of illness did you have?

GS: I had shingles when I was probably ten or something like that. We went to a Doctor Smith down here over Smith’s Drug Store on 2nd and Kansas, upstairs. He gave me something to drink. I think it was iron, I am not sure, but anyway, I got to drink it out of a straw. [Laughing] Now, that was something. Mom went to the drug store got some straws. The doctor said, “Don’t let her get it against her teeth.” They [the shingles] didn’t last too awful long. I guess I was too ornery for them to do much at that age. [Laughing] I did a dirty trick on my sister. She was washing the dishes and I was washing the separator and we were fussin ‘ and for some reason she hit me on my back between my shoulder blades. The shingles were down lower than that. And man did I holler and cry and I really got her in a lot of trouble.
That was very mean of me. I regret it every time I think about it. That was a terrible thing for me to do. But I sure got the best of her. She was four years older than I am, her name was Rosalie Ann. Mom was a teacher and she started Rosalie out in school, she home taught her for a year or two because there wasn’t any other kids that would have been in her grade when she started if she had not done that. So all the other kids were older. Mom homeschooled her first and second grade and then she sent her to school. She rode horses again with her two big brothers.

DP: Tell about the personalities of your parents. What were they like?

GS: Oh my. Well, Mom was not mechanical. She knew nothing about mechanics. Anything went wrong with her sewing machine Dad always had to fix it. And he did a good job. Mom was, [pause] she enjoyed her family. She was always wanting the best for us. They sent the two older brothers to college. How they did it, I don’t know. With all of us other kids at home, the two older boys went to college. Their names were James Otto was the oldest one, and Walter Lauren was the younger one. They were close together, and then Rosalie came. Rosalie got married when she got out of high school. She graduated when she was 16 or 17 because she was homeschooled when she was four. She graduated from Liberal. When he [the younger of the two brothers) got to college, they called him Walt, they always go by the first name in college. They graduated from high school at Moscow. They drove to high school to Moscow every day. Again, I don’t know how my parents
swung it. I mean really and truly, because that was just coming out of the Depression. I know Mom didn’t know what to do with Jim when he graduated from high school. And they had the CCC camps and things you know. Anyway, Mom and Dad banked at the First National Bank down here in Liberal so she
went in and talked to Mr. Law about Jim and things. I don’t know what he told her except he said, “Anybody can join the CCC, Jim is a better boy than that. Send him to college .” So he went to Manhattan [Kansas], all on his own up there. Now parents have to take the kids up to school and get them settled and things. They did it on their own then. I don’t know how they did it but they did. The boys worked, they had jobs. I don’t know what all Jim did. He did housekeeping, he babysat professors’ kids. I don’t know what all he did. He did a lot of extra jobs so that he could get through school. Between him and Mom and Dad they made it through school. He joined the ROTC and when he graduated he was an officer. He was a service man until he died. However, it was the Reserves. After he got out of the Army
he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. By that time Dad and Mom had moved to Kansas City, I think. They moved to Kansas City in 1945 from Kismet. I think Jim was out of the Army and married by then. Then he went to Topeka and worked for Union Pacific Railroad.

DP: Tell me about your children.

GS: [Laughs] Get me started on that. They have been very important in my life. It has almost been my life. Ed and I were married in October. I don’t know whether anybody remembers Dr. Pierce from Moscow, the veterinarian. He had some of the ugliest smelling liniment stuff that he doctored everything with, people and animals. [Laughing] One time Ed and I were down doctoring some pigs, we had moved on to this place. We moved on here in December of 1942. At that time it was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, their son owned the Kelly and Ravenscroft Men’s Wear in Liberal. Anyway, so they moved to town and we moved here in their house.
We were down at the barn doctoring some pigs and man I got sick, I got so sick I threw up. I couldn’t imagine what in the world was wrong with me, was it that stinking medicine that Dr. Pierce had? [Laughing] Ed said you better go to the doctor. So I went to the doctor and found out I was pregnant. I think that was December. Then the kids started coming. Terry was born September 18, 1943, Larry on August 5, 1944, Betty November 15, 1945 – one a year. Then Lynn April 26, 1947, Dennis July 28, 1948 and Janet March 18, 1950. They all went to school at Liberty. We drove them to Liberty all the time. We milked cows, separated the cream and sold cream in town for a while. The kids-Terry and Larry would come from high school and pick up the other three kids and bring them home. That is when they had their wreck, Terry and Larry, about two miles east of here on Highway 83. Larry was killed. Terry was in the hospital for a little while. He wasn’t hurt too awfully much. He did have a splint in the socket of his arm. I have forgotten now. His arm was in a sling for a while.

DP: So Terry then went on to school?

GS: Yes, Terry went on to school. He went to Panhandle for a semester, he went to Hays for a semester. Then he went to Manhattan the rest of the time. Larry was gone. Betty didn’t go to college. She went one semester at Hays, she didn’t like it so she came home. Then Lynn graduated from Panhandle, Dennis
went to Vo Tech school. I don’t think he went to college, I don’t think the college was set up yet here. He got a degree at Vo Tech out of that, agriculture of some kind. Terry graduated from Veterinary School. He got married one day and graduated the next day. He married Jean Murrat from Winfield. They had two children. They adopted a son and then they had a son. They [the sons] are not married yet but they are both engaged.

DP: Where does Terry practice veterinary medicine?

GS: First practiced in Hoisington with a doctor there. Then he bought in with Dr. Taylor __ in Great Bend . They moved to Great Bend. That is where their kids graduated high school. Jason went on to Warsaw and he graduated the highest of his class in a Master’s business degree in Warsaw, Poland. He is now setting up a laboratory to grow crystals like onyx, rubies, and stuff like that. He wants it done yesterday, but it is not happening yesterday. They are such a joy. Lynn’s kids, he has Mike who works for AT&T at Oklahoma City. Lynn got married in 1969, or ’70. Terry and Jean got married in ’69. Lynn married Luanne from Liberal. Lynn lives just a quarter of a mile north of me, he farms. He started farming with his dad and as Ed gave up he took over. Jennifer is a pharmacist, has half interest in a pharmacy in Garden City. Jamie is a heart echo specialist in Colorado Springs. He has got some other name besides that and I don’t know what it is. Then Jason is an optometrist in Kansas City. They all have houses, they’ve all bought their own houses. Jamie hasn’t bought hers yet, she moves around too much. [Laughing] But she is looking. Jennifer sold a house in Garden City and bought a bigger house, one person. None of these kids are married. Fact is I have 12 grandkids and only three of them are married.

DP: There is still time. [Laughing]

GS: Dennis and Pat live in Liberal on South Grant as far south as you can get. Dennis for a while worked for a co-op over at Fowler and over at Westcan doing agriculture spraying and things like that. He doesn’t do work related to agriculture anymore. Then he worked for a uniform company where they take rugs and uniforms and things around to different businesses in Liberal. Then he worked for Prestige Coffee Company out of Wichita. He had big routes. He went way down in Oklahoma, to Perryton, Texas. He drove tremendously lot. He quit that. He just got fed up with it. He would work up a big route and then they would divide it with somebody, then he would work up another one. It happened several times. He just got fed up with it so he handed the keys to them and said there it is you can have it. He got a job with Dillons, everything that had to be done. He also handed them the keys and said there it is. Then he started his own lawn service. That is what he is doing now, he and Pat. Doing his own business now. They really like it. It is a pretty good business in Liberal only it is seasonal. But he cleans sidewalks and things during snows. “We just need more snow” he says. His two sons, Brian is a buyer for a house building company in Atlanta, Georgia. He not only buys all kinds of material for the houses, but he goes to different offices and sets them straight, tells them what they are doing wrong so that they know what they are doing. A lot of the offices don’t know what is happening and things like that, in South Carolina, South California. He flies a lot. Mark is married, he has three kids. The cutest kids, three boys. He lives in Denver. He works for a communication company. I don’t know what it is. He helped to set it up and to start it. He lives at Parker, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.

Janet lives in Liberal. She was here today fertilizing my roses and things around. She isn’t married anymore. Her first husband was Joseph Dennis. His parents lived at Plains. They lived in Wyoming. They were divorced. We moved her back here. She needed help. We had a trailer house between Lynn’s and us and she lived in that for a while. They had three boys, Joseph, Jessie, Jonathan. Joe works for Betel, a company in Columbus, Ohio. He is not married, he is divorced. His ex-wife works for B. of A. and she travels a lot. I don’t think Joe traveled much. He graduated from Ogden, Utah with a aeronautical engineering degree. Jessie is married, has two girls, and lives in Houston. He didn’t go to college. Now he works in heating and air-conditioning. He goes to businesses and works on their conditioners. Jonathan
is in the Air Force. He is an instructor for teaching kids, young men, how to fix computers that sight guns. He is in Shreveport, Alabama.

GS: You have a lot of family members. Can you keep track of all of them?

GS: Pretty well. I don’t talk to them very much, but yeah, I know where they are and what is happening. Janet, with her second husband had a daughter, Tabitha.

DP: Sometimes you can’t do anything about that.

GS: No, grandparents keep their mouth zipped.

DP: Yes.

GS: Let’s see, who did I leave out?

DP: That’s more than I can keep track of.

[Laughing]

DP: So you have lost –

GS: Three children, Larry and Betty and Terry. Larry was killed in 1959, Betty died in 1969 and Terry in 2006.

DP: It is difficult to lose your children, isn’t it?

GS: You know, I’ll tell you what, yes, it is very difficult. But I had somebody to lean on, to help me through it, and I helped him through it with the other two. With Terry I didn’t. It is different. Of course, the good Lord always takes care of you . ix weeks after Terry died, my mother died so then I learned that God helped you through everything. You know, you just had to.

DP: Well, Terry lived a good life.

GS: He did.

DP: He had a remarkable family it sounds like.

GS: He did. He was a good Christian man. They were Methodists. Every so often whenever he would work on an animal of some kind, he said, “This one is for Jesus.” Whatever they paid he gave to the church. Jean is a lovely girl, she really is. We had a few of our differences … You know, I never did have a mother-in-law. Ed’s daddy died in 1936 and his mother died in 1942, April, Ed’s birthday. He forgot he I had that birthday. Then we were married in October ’42. I never did meet them. So I never did have a mother-in-law. I didn’t know what mother-in-law was all about. I just didn’t know so I am sure that my daughters-in-law had a lot to put up with. [Laughing] I am sure they did! They are all so sweet, I don’t know how they did it.

DP: I imagine you were a pretty sweet mother-in-law.

GS: I think I put them through some trials they would probably like to forget. [Laughing]

DP: You are living here on the farm?

GS: Yes, if I have to move I will do that. Lynn says no need to do that until you fall down. I haven’t fell down for three or four years now. I walk with a cane. I do alright.

DP: Were you ever a member of Grange?

GS: No. We were never a member of Grange. They asked us several times. Now then, my mom and dad were, up at Golden Plains. My dad made several, you know they had implements in a box, a small box. My dad made several sets of those. I wanted to get a set of those so bad when Progressive Grange broke up here. The building burned and I didn’t get them . They burned up with the building. It would have been just something else to have around.

DP: True, your kids would not know what to do with them.

GS: They knew my daddy. He lived with us for a while, after Mother died. He had a stroke and he lived with us for a while.

DP: We talked about your mother. Going back to your parents, what was your father like as a person?

GS: He was a man that could do anything. He was a carpenter, he was a farmer, and I think he could do anything. He had a walk about him, a stride that could really get over the ground. When he would work on the fences when he was on the ranch, he had that stride. It was something to keep up with. After they moved to Kansas City I would go up and visit them. At one time he and I had to walk four or five blocks. He set out that stride and I could not keep up. I was a young person and he was old. [Laughing] Well, he was a cowboy when he was young, he had done quite a lot of things. He had worked in coal fields in Alaska, he had hauled freight. I don’t know. He was a good man. His personality [pause] I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it. He was a loving father. He loved his kids. However, the way I remember it, Mom did most of the bossing, telling us what to do. It might have been different with the two older boys. Now then, I didn’t ever tell that we lost a brother in WW2. He was my playmate, two years older than me. He was killed over in France.

DP: Do you know which battle?

GS: No, he wasn’t in a battle. He was crushed between a truck, two trucks or something, ammunition trucks or something. Mom and Dad were still living over at Kismet at that time.

DP: Was your father a quiet man?

GS: Yes. He was quiet, I never remember of him raising his voice. But he could spank. [Laughing] I remember one time Richard and I went swimming in the Cimarron River and it is kind of known for its quick sand. When we came home, we got a good larruping with a razor strap. [Laughing] I guess we deserved it. I don’t know, we came home anyway.

DP: They were probably concern,.ed for your safety.

GS: Oh I know, yes. That is the way you taught kids, with a spanking. As far as raising his voice, he might have raised his hand.

DP: People were so busy working those days.

GS: That’s true. Daddy had four horses that he used, a two-row planter, I think, a lister. That is what he worked. He never had a tractor. He just had horses.

DP: So when did he quit farming and ranching?

GS: Probably in 1942 or ’43. He was more a rancher than a farmer. Didn’t have too much farmland on the ranch . Just more for feed and things like that. Come to think about it, his mother died in January 1928 and then his daddy died in July 1928. So, he kind of got hit hard too didn’t he? Daddy was born in 1883 so he had been a little bit older. He was a little older when he got married. He was nine years older than Mother.

DP: Those were times long ago.

GS: It was. You just really don’t stop and think about a lot of things.

DP: Are there lines or traits that have carried forward to the generations? From you parents?

GS: I can’t think of any. Not really, I am not very much of a person to look for things like that.

DP: You were too busy working and raising children to think about that!

[Laughing]

GS: I think other people see it more than I do. I know a lot of times Luanne will tell me, “You’re just like your dad.” She sees it and I don’t.

DP: And how about that?

GS: I don’t know, what, stubbornness, I don’t know.

DP: Sometimes the way people walk, or the way they think about things resembles their parents in a lot of ways.

GS: That’s right. Ed was the kind of person who could do everything. I think all farmers can do everything. Lynn can do nearly anything. I am amazed sometimes of all the things that he can do. I am happy he can do them. He and Luanne have raised a great family. Those kids just need to get married!

DP: So there can be more family! I have been interviewing people in this community and also relatives from various places. The thought has been this is certainly how the earth is getting populated! Expand and expand.

GS: Ed and I was just two and then we had six and now I think there’s twenty – well I haven’t counted up how many, last count there was 22 . That was grandkids and kids and us. Now I have eight great grandkids, three girls, the rest boys.

DP: Lots of boys in your family.

GS: Boys were dominant on both sides. Ed had three sisters and I had one.”

DP: It has been delightful visiting you today. I thank you so much. I learned a lot about you that I didn’t know before. [Laughing]

GS: I’m glad I told it rather than somebody else.

DP: Thank you a lot.

GS: Well, you are just welcome. I am happy to do it.

The tape is turned off briefly, then continues.

DP: I was just sharing with Gladys that I remember when she and Ed came to visit my mother just after my father had died in a tractor accident actually. He had fallen off the tractor. Gladys said Ed said, “That’s the way we farmers want to go – doing something we enjoy doing.” And Gladys said she was going to go right home and put a seat belt on the tractor so Ed at least doesn’t fall off the tractor.

[Laughing]

GS: Ed, when he was 80 years old was running a combine in the wheat field . He and Lynn cut the harvest that summer. When he was 86, Lynn had just bought a different combine, a big red combine with a lot of stairs and high up and a lot of gadgets inside and things. Lynn came home out of the wheat field, got
his dad and says, “Come on Dad, you’re going to take a ride in my combine.” And Lynn took him out to the field. I went with them and Lynn helped his dad up into that big combine. Ed was stiff and could hardly climb, didn’t have much strength, but Lynn helped his dad up into that combine and they cut wheat that summer. That is one joy that we still have left. It is a memory, it is really good. Lynn was good to his dad. He would come and get him and take him places. Lynn is so good to me. If he don’t see me every day, he calls me at least. It’s good. That is a memory we like. I have pictures of Ed driving that combine. It is good. Yeah.

Postscript Note:

I talked with Luann in September 2013 and asked about Gladys. She is now 88 years old, lives in the house on the farm. It is difficult for her to get around. She fixes lunch for Lynn every day and they have lunch together. She still loves watching football on the TV. She is as sharp as a tack.

Gladys died in March 2016. She was 90 years and nine months old. Her obituary was written by a grandson, “. . . Gladys Grace (Ridenour) Schmitt laid aside the burdens of life to enter the peaceful rest of her Savior . . . “