10: Interview with Clifton Browne and his wife Nancy Browne

Date: October 10, 2013

Place: Cliff and Nancy’s home in Dodge City, Kansas

Interviewer: Donita Priefert Payne

CB: I am Cliff Browne. I am 68 years old. I was born October 16, 1944. My wife is Nancy Peterson. She was born April 27, 1944. She is originally from Dodge City. I am originally from Liberal. I came here to Junior College and we met and got married. We live west of Dodge City on Burke Street. I have a daughter, Tana, she lives here, she is a hair stylist. I have a son, Kevin . He is in business and he lives in
Olathe, Kansas.

I think this is mainly for history so I will start out on my dad’s side. His name is Clifford Browne. His dad had a general store at Arkalon . It is down along the river. I still own the original plot that the property set on, the buildings set on. Past times he worked for the railroad. He would get 25 cents a day (my dad). He tried to farm on the side. I don’t really know how he and my mom met. I believe she was teaching
school when they met. They got married in, I don’t know what year. Mom was born in 1904. Dad was born in 1906. I can’t tell you where they were born. I think Dad was originally from Missouri because we had relatives in Missouri. Mom, her maiden name was Pritchard. She moved from Ocatella, Idaho to Liberal, Kansas and lived with her grandmother. I can’t tell you the name of her grandmother. As near as
I can remember, Mom’s grandmother ran a boarding house for the railroad and that may be how she met my dad. But she cooked and kept the rooms up and everything. Her mother stayed in Idaho. Then, I lost out, Mom was real secretive on that side of it so I don’t know whether her mother ever moved back down here or not. She never did say. She had a half-brother Abe Sullivan, she had another half-brother
Downy Sullivan and she had a full sister, Ruth Smith. They lived in McPherson, Kansas, and I believe Ruth’s maiden name was Harvey. But I can’t swear to that. Then she had a half-sister named Mary I believe. We stopped and visited her, and she lived in Boise, Idaho. That has been so many years ago and I have lost track of her so ran into a roadblock there. Ruth had a daughter and a son. The daughter’s
name was Vivian, she lived in Wichita and was a registered nurse and I have lost track of her. Ruth had a son by the name of Glen Galen Smith. The last I knew he lived in Denver, Colorado. I have lost track of him and his kids. Now Vivian never had kids. Galen had two or three. I think he had two girls and a boy if I am not mistaken. He drove a truck.

My dad had a brother, Dane Browne. He lived in Liberal for a while and then he moved to Moscow, Kansas. He married Mildred. I can’t think of her maiden name.

DP: Your father was also related to Roma Swan.

CGB: Yes, that was his sister. She taught school over in Stevens County, a rural school. After Charles, her husband, passed away she moved into Hugoton and taught in the Hugoton schools. Then she retired in Liberal next to one of Dane’s children. Jerry Browne. He had another son, Eugene. He lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

DP: Tell me where t he farm was. And how he got into farming.

CB: The farm place was nine-and-a-half miles north of Liberal. It was the old Studwell farmstead, or Studiaviel, I am not real sure. That is where I was born and raised . My folks both passed away living there. My dad passed away at the house and my mom passed away at the [nursing] home in Meade, Kansas. My dad was 87 when he passed away and Mom was 93.

DP: Did they live there after they married soon or when did they begin living there? Do you know?

DB: Oh no, after they got married, they lived for a while north of the home place. There was a little shack down there with a wind charger and they also lived over in our pasture for quite some time. There was a small house there. I have never seen anything but the foundation of the one over in the pasture. The one north of the home place was set up for 32-volt electricity. We would turn on the wind charger and it would charge up wet cell batteries down in a cellar and that is how we got our electricity.

The folks belonged to the Progressive Grange. They went to a rural church at the Liberty School and there was another place, I can’t remember where it was. They went to square dances on Saturday nights at the school building at Arkalon. The last I had any knowledge the school building is still standing down there at Arkalon . Frank Stebben used to own it. He has since passed away and I don’t know who owns it now. My folks are in the cemetery there at Arkalon as well as my uncle Abraham Sullivan. Downy Sullivan passed away in Shreveport, Louisiana and he is buried down there. My stillborn brother is buried there at Arkalon also. He was two years older than me, I don’t really remember now.

I went to school at Liberty School. The teachers taught all eight grades. I graduated eighth grade there and went to high school at Liberal. Graduated high school there, the old high school, in 1962. I came up here to Dodge City in ’62 to Junior College and went two years and like I said met my wife and we got married. We went back and lived on the farm for almost a year. Then moved back to Dodge City and
have been here ever since. I have done everything from construction to driving a truck, sales, worked at the Pepsi plant. I have done just about everything there is to do. Roofing.

I remember we somehow or another are related to the Harveys, Dee and Nora. They lived about three miles south and about four miles east of where we lived. There is a great bunch of those Harvey kids. I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to how many there was now but during the summer we would all get together, all the whole neighborhood out there and go down along the river. Sometimes it would be on
the old Harvey ranch and sometimes it would be down at the – I can’t think ofthe name of the other Gaskell Grove. Yes, there was a Pile place next to the Harvey place.

DP So, the Harvey ranch was next to the Pile ranch?

CB: Yes. And I believe it was south along the Cimarron River. That was still when the Cimarron had water in it. And we would get down there and if the grass was short enough, we would play baseball. And then have a big picnic and have a lot of fun. That was probably – we might do that one time in a summer. Dee Harvey, I remember him, he was older than my mother. He was a lawyer. He was good with the books
and mathematics. Either a lawyer or teacher. Because he would come down ever once in a while and he would, I don’t know this is kind of conjecture on my part, that he didn’t really seem like he wanted to be around his kin folk very much. I don’t know whether there was some bad feelings there or what the deal was but he wouldn’t come down very much and then he passed away and I don’t know what happened
to his ranch down along the river. I don’t recall any stories [or “legends” as DP suggested] . No that is another roadblock. There would be a storyline going and then there would be a roadblock. Nobody seemed to want to open the door to the roadblock. It was crazy. Mom’s grandmother, as near as I can tell, her boarding house was west of Kansas Avenue on 2nd Street. About two-and-a-half or three blocks
on the north of the street. Because we would go down there and Mom would say, “I don’t know her name.” Mom was very formal about what they called her [the grandmother] and I don’t – that is another crazy deal because she was sent down there to live with her and back then that was very unusual. Usually you stayed with your own family. I don’t know too much about it.

DP: My family said that Maxine had had a very hard life, a very difficult life. Do y9u know anything about that?

DB: Well, that part was kind of what I was trying to lead into. I am wondering if that isn’t why she got sent to Liberal in the first place.

DP: Something about her own family of origin, her mother, father-

CB: Her mother and her dad or stepdad, I never did understand which, stayed in Idaho. I worked for a guy up here, he is three-fourths Cherokee, and we were visiting one day and actually the hair on the back of my neck started standing up because he was talking about his dad and his dad said his last name was Pritchard. That was my mom’s last name. She said that her dad was a traveling preacher and that is
what this guy said his dad was. So, I don’t know how that transpired.

DP: So, there is history there that no one really knows. People may not have known the particulars even then . Your mother, as a young woman, worked for my grandparents, I think housekeeping for a while. My grandmother was very ill at one point in her life and they probably needed someone there to cook and take care of the house. I know that Maxine was a person who did that, I don’t think it was very long.
I think my mother was just a little girl when that happened. Your mother was a teacher. It sounds like the Pritchard thing is just kind of vague and we don’t really know. So I think for our uses today that is probably all we can say.

Let’s go back and talk about your mother. She was a teacher. Did she have training to be a teacher? Or did she just have natural skills?

CB: Yes, she went to Emporia and graduated there as a _______. Roma also went there and graduated as a teacher. Then Mom came back to Seward County and taught at some·other schools. I don’t have any clue about what they were because here again is the brick wall.

DP: She taught at Antelope School. I can see that she would have been a masterful teacher.

CB: The Harveys – Maxine’s mother is Grace Ellen Harvey. That is where the Harveys come in. She is buried in Colorado.

DP: Was Grace a sister to Dee Harvey?

CB: Could be. There is another Sullivan in there, Frank Sullivan. That would be Lawrence, Wayne Phillips’ dad’s brother as I remember it. Lawrence is Wayne’s dad and Lawrence is brother to Frank Phillips’ half-brother.

DP: How are they related to the Harveys?

CB: Frank Sullivan, you know I am confused. Grace would be my grandmother. Her dad would be A. B. Harvey Absalom. That is why I am confused . There are two last names.

DP: Maybe they dropped the Absalom and just used the Harvey. Anyway, sounds like they go back a long way. Were they here in this area that long?

CB: Yes. My uncle Abe, his middle name is Absalom Sullivan.

DP: It sounds confusing.

CB: It is. This could be the reason for all the brick walls.

DP: I remember my grandparents talking about Dee Harvey. And my parents did also. I don’t remember what they said about him. Leon Wilson, his mother was a Jennison – Blanch. Leon Wilson and Delbert Bryant, you knew Delbert, they were cousins. Their mothers were sisters. The last time I talked to Leon he remembered he and Delbert were out wandering around over there someplace where Delbert lived
in that area. They used to go hunting for arrowheads and they somehow ran across a little cave – like something over there. They went inside and there was a still and some liquor making processes and equipment. They found out that belonged to Dee Harvey.

CB: Yeah. Sounds right. [Laughing]

DP: So that is the main story that I remember. There were conversations about Dee Harvey, but I don’t remember any of the particulars.

CB: The Harveys were known for being a rough bunch.

DP: Yes, they were.

CB: I don’t mean that disrespectful.

DP: Just a fact.

CB: Yes. You didn’t mess with them. I was reading here that I was wrong on my mom’s other sister, Mary Thelma.

DP: Was her last name, Pritchard or something else?

CB: I am going to assume that it was Pritchard.

DP: Sounds like her mother had several different marriages.

CB: Yes, she did. I tried to find out a lot of stuff and tracing the Native American side and I can’t find out anything.

DP: Delbert Bryant is part Indian. You probably knew that. It was common knowledge.

CB: Some of the deep-down things have happened to me that I can remember and the things that I can do, say and hear. I am fully convinced that I am part Native American. But I just tell people that I am there in spirit because I can’t prove a thing. But there has been a lot of things happen that it’s just uncanny. When my mom’s, well, when the home place caught fire down in the garage, the fire department called me, the sheriff called me. We drove down and they had dragged Mom’s car out backwards and that is what they were saying was the cause of the fire and yadda yadda. Well the car hadn’t been driven in five years so that wasn’t the cause of the fire. But one of the firemen come bringing out a coiled rattle snake that had set in that fire and died. I thought that very unusual because normally snakes will get away from things like that and they don’t coil unless they are threatened. So, it’s crazy little things like that. And when the house burnt the fire department and the sheriffs department tried to accuse me of burning it, setting it on fire. And luckily, I had had to work late that night so I had a good excuse. What burned it down was that it had a bunch of meth heads had set up a meth lab. It had asbestos shingles on it and when we went down to see the place the asbestos shingles had burned, it was that hot. There was nothing left but the footing. That was it. It even burnt the sink and the stove. It takes quite a bit to melt a stove and things like that. It was crazy.

DP: Let’s go back and talk about what your father, what he was like, what his personality was like, did he like being a father, something about him as a person.

CB: He enjoyed farming. He enjoyed handcrafts. He liked to carve, I mean with a pocketknife. He would take peach seeds and make baskets out of them. He would take vertebrae out of a rack of ribs that Mom would buy. He would take the bones out of the rack and carve little things out of them. When he got to where couldn’t hold a knife anymore he got a shop smith and started making stuff on the lathe. When he couldn’t do that anymore, arthritis got in his hands and he couldn’t hold a tool, he basically went in the house and ate himself to death. He just gave up. He would probably tip on the scales at 270. He was puffy, had a bad heart.

Around other people he was a joker. He liked to tell jokes on people and pull jokes on people. Homelife, he was very strict. He wasn’t the jolly person then. There was a lot of strained relation there between my dad and myself. If Dad and Mom didn’t get along, Dad would go to the garage or the shed and work with his crafts. That’s what he liked to do and passed the time. We never could go on vacation because
you took vacation during the summertime and that’s when all the farm work needs to be done. Our vacations were few and far between. I only remember two vacations the whole time I was growing up. We went to the Black Hills and one to Los Angeles. That’s the only two I remember. The farm was Dad’s life. Mom tried to pick up little things here and there, crafts. She liked to paint. She liked to write poetry.
She liked to study genealogy. She was good at that. She could remember stuff like that. Played the piano. She liked to play several instruments. She had her own accordion, had an old pump organ that came out from Michigan on a covered wagon. The piano got stolen as did the accordion. The organ did not get stolen. I have that out here.

DP: She was very active in Grange. One of the descriptions that could be used of Maxine is that she was a mover and a shaker.

CB: Yeah . She was always secretary, treasurer of the Grange. We all went to the twenty-fifth degree in Grange. Grange used to be held downtown in the Blue Bonnet Counts in the west part of Liberal. They have been torn down. And they moved it out to the Liberty School and then they built their own Grange hall. Bought the school building in Richfield, Kansas and moved it over there. After I moved to Dodge City the Grange hall burnt. That is when they built the new hall I don’t know what caused the fire.

DP: The years that I remember, Grange was at Liberty School. I am ten years older than you are so that might have been before you were born. [Discussion about the BBC location} The things that I remember about Grange are the programs. Your mother was always involved in those. I remember your mother reciting these long poems. Do you remember what poems your mother loved to recite? They were
familiar poems but she –

CB: She put together a book of them and First National Bank at Liberal published it for her. Some of the poems she had written. Some of them are real close to being copied off of something that she had read somewhere. Even then to have the memory remembered.

DP: I remember one of my mother’s and dad’s wedding anniversaries – 60 something – and we had a big celebration. We hadn’t planned it but your mother said she would like to recite a poem, and she stood and recited this poem. It was absolutely beautiful. Her presentation from memory was perfect but it wasn’t just that, it was her whole presentation as if she were a trained actor. It was breathtaking. One
time I had been visiting in Liberal and on my way home to Kansas City, she was in Meade in that nursing home and I stopped to see her. She was in a wheelchair and I visited with her for an hour or so and she recited probably that same poem and again perfectly. Her voice and her presentation were just – I wish I had a recording of that.

CB: She could recite her poetry just word for word, but she would lose out on reality. She revolved back into her poems. I didn’t think much of it at the time but since then I have been thinking about her. You know the Lord works in strange ways. That was her forte you might say, so that is where He put her, to protect her.

DP: Those early things that you learn, sometimes those are the things that are real to you in your last days.

CB: She was the same way with my dad. He had gone through everything that he enjoyed – that was his life. Eating wasn’t his life. Okay, the dear Lord could say, this wasn’t going anywhere. I have seen since then people just like that have lasted and lasted and lasted. He chose different for my dad and He took him quick. Very little pain – just gone. You couldn’t ask for any better way to go.

DP: Do you have anything else to say about your dad? I think that your mother’s birthday and my dad’s birthday were close to the same date and they would go out to eat to celebrate their birthdays. This is my imagination and I could be completely wrong. My speculation. Your dad and mom were very strong individuals, both of them. I can imagine there was a fair amount of controversy between the two of them.

CB: Sure. This is the reason Dad, they would get into it in the house. Even in the dead of winter Dad would leave, put on his coat. He had made a big furnace out in his shed and he would stay out there and do his whittling and whatever, sitting there by the furnace.

DP: Your mother was a very determined person, very strong person. I just can’t imagine either one of them giving in. [Laughing]

CB: No, they didn’t. It made for a tough childhood because Dad was very demanding. Demanding of me. He would tell you once to pay attention. The second time he told you to pay attention you were picking yourself up off the ground. People today say that is a hard way to live but I haven’t grown up and killed anyone. You know what I mean.

DP: Physical discipline of children was much more common in previous days.

CB: Back then we didn’t have kids shooting up kids in school either.

DP: Would you say you had a good relationship with your dad then?

CB: I think we tolerated each other. I really hate to say that because it kind of hurts to think that. But he had his ways and I had mine and I knew that I would not treat my kids and my family the way that I was treated.

DP: Yes, I have heard that story in other situations.

DB: My wife can attest to this. I haven’t hit a woman in my life, and I hope to God I never do.

DP: Your dad was a very intelligent man.

CB: Oh yes. He had a quick temper. I think that would go along. Mom said that when he was younger, he had red hair so that would go along with his red hair. [DP laughing]

I can remember I would get so upset. He would drive and Mom would navigate and in the meantime we would get lost. When I got to driving, Mom would try to navigate and more than once I’ve stopped the car and told that her either she or I would have to get out and walk. I was driving the car and if I got lost I knew how to get back. [Laughing]

DP: My family and your family had known one another for many, many years. They worked in Grange and community events and they were friends for a long time. They knew each other’s families, they knew each other’s backgrounds. I said Maxine was bossy, she was dominating, she could be very difficult to get along with, pretty much want her way about things. My parents thought that she was a genius, that she was very gifted and that in many ways she had a heart of gold. Now maybe sometimes that didn’t show –

CB: To everybody but those close to her –

DP: But underneath it all, and your father probably also had a heart of gold. I think we have to see people’s lives in the day that they were in and in their experiences. I think that today we understand a lot more, we have had more formal teaching on how to get along with people and how to work these things out. Certainly, people in our parents’ age were extremely intelligent and they had a natural way of knowing a lot of those things. We have to look back and be a little forgiving and understanding, I think. People in the community were very aware that your mother would have been difficult to live with but they loved her and they respected her abilities and her as a person. I have heard people say how exasperated they were with Maxine, oh dear, Maxine is just so impossible. My parents always got along with your parents fine. The reason was, this is my speculation, that they probably didn’t pay too much attention to all the fusing and fuming.

CB: Exactly!

DP: They just didn’t take all that seriously. Would that be a proper interpretation?

CB: Yeah. Like I try to tell people, like I told you over the phone when you first called, there are people in Liberal that I know hate my guts because of my parents. My only consolation now is that I am the one that lived with them, they didn’t. Until such time that they lived with them they have no right to judge me.

DP: But people in the community that knew your parents well would understand. They would understand. And they would take your hand and they would give you a hug. Yeah, they would.

Nancy: That is nice to know.

DP: I know my parents would. My grandparents would. [Speaking with some tears] I hope that this can be a healing experience for you thinking about all this. Esther Swan liked your mother. I interviewed Esther. And she said, “I like Maxine.” Maxine was always very good to her. Esther has a lot of respect and honor for your mother.

CB: Yeah. Is Esther still living by Dick?

DP: Yes, she is. Dick’s wife is seriously ill with cancer right now. She is at Houston at the cancer center for treatment.

CB: I might add that Dad was of Irish descent. I would assume that we don’t have any relations left in Missouri. It was up around the Trenton, Chillicothe communities. Vivian, Mom’s sister’s daughter, I haven’t heard from her in years. None of Galen’s kids – that’s about it.

DP: You are the end of the Brownes it sounds like.

CB: I keep bringing it up, whenever these brick walls keep jumping up you just don’t remember a whole lot.

DP: Were your parents readers?

CB: Yeah, because, see this is hard for my family to understand, because I was either a freshman or a sophomore in high school before we even had a TV. We listened to radio mostly and then my Uncle Abe, he bought an old junk tube type TV and put the tubes in it and we could get snow and a few figures ever once in a while.

DP: Did you grow up being a reader yourself?

CB: Yeah, I enjoyed reading. I am mostly a hands-on type of individual.

DP: Kind of like your dad, making things with your hands.

CB: I can set and read the instructions all day long and still not understand them, but if I can stand here and watch somebody put it together, I can put it together the next time.

DP: Did your dad read? Was he a reader?

CB: Not a whole lot.

DP: How about your mom?

CB: Yes, she always had her nose stuck in a book somewhere.

DP: What kinds of things did she read?

CB: She read the Bible every day. Good Housekeeping, Copper’s Weekly . We would get the Copper’s Weekly because Dad would always save the old batteries and we’d have a guy that would come by and pick up the old batteries for a subscription to Copper’s Weekly. She would read that and Farm Journal, Saturday Evening Post. They would both go through the seed outfit, order seed. I can remember a
couple of times driving to Dodge to pick up baby chickens. We’d raise our own chickens. Dad and I would kill them and pick them and then Mom and I would cut them up.

DP: Did you have a freezer by the time you were –

CB: No, we had an ice box.

DP: Do you remember when electricity came? I don’t know what year it came to that part of the community. Did you have any kind of electrical generation?

CB: No. We used ice box and kerosene lamps until we got electricity. I remember them running the wire out there to the house for electricity. For the life of me I cannot tell you what year it was.

DP: Probably in the ’40s.

CB: Well, it would have to be after ’44 when the folks got it. Because I was born in ’44.

DP: So, you had an ice box?

CB: And then we had a cistern. We didn’t have any pressurized water. It was just gravity water.

DP: Did you have a windmill with the pump and the storage supply tank?

CB: Yes. I can remember working on that with Dad. We had a pond for the ducks and the geese. We had tame ducks and geese, big geese. Mom had the guineas.

DP: Was this just for amusement purposes or did you sometimes eat some of those?

CB: Well, we ate the chickens. I don’t remember ever eating any of the ducks or guineas or geese. In the back of my mind I think maybe the guineas went back to the Native American because the NA lore is that if you have guineas you won’t have snakes. Mom would have 15 – 20 guineas. They were always raising young. I think every coyote in that part of the country knew our place, ’cause they would come
over and get the guineas and the chickens.

DP: Did you have a lot of rattle snakes?

CB: Yes, yes. I remember two summers in a row, I was in high school then, that I personally killed over 200 rattle snakes. Then the next summer, it was like 125. We had three quart jars full of rattles. I think we were the only ones that would save them.

DP: Well, my dad would save rattles.

CB: It was quite a deal. After moving up here, I worked with a lady at Pepsi and she found out I had rattle snake rattles. I made her a necklace and ear rings out of the rattles.

DP: [Laughing] Oh dear!

CB: She was quite a character.

DP: My parents had some land about five miles west of where we lived. There had been a prairie dog town. Where you had those, you also had a lot of rattle snakes. My dad wore high boots to protect himself. He often brought home rattles off the snakes, especially over there on that land.

CB: I can remember one afternoon Dad and I went over to Ben Jerman’s place and he had a prairie dog town. We drove out there and he and Dad sat there, emptied two boxes of shells, 22 shells. That would be 200 rounds. And they sat there and shot snakes. You couldn’t get out of the pick-up. The ground would move.

DP: Where was Ben Jerman’s place?

CB: From our place – where Scott’s lived on Highway 83, the next intersection north you go west.

DP: That is really close to the river –

CB: Yes, go west on that two miles and then come back south a mile. He was on the east side of the road.

DP: Harrel – what was the Harrel’s name – Bud, is that right? Billie?

CB: Billie was the wife. They had Judy, Nancy – daughters.

DP: So, the Jerman land joined the Harrel land?

CB: Yes, right behind them, west.

DP: Then Roma and Charley Swan – where did they live?

CB: You go to Woods on the highway that goes to Hugoton then go north to Fred Moore’s place. Probably five or six miles, then turn back west and – it’s three miles.

DP: That is quite a few miles up there. Is that getting close to Moscow?

CB: They were within, at night you could see Moscow. I am going to say three to five miles from Moscow.

DP: Ben and Lu Jerman, Charlie and Roma Swan, Opal and Sam Pittman, Moores. Those people were members of Progressive Grange. They were very active.

CB: Trotman was their last name, they had a nice place by Aunt Roma.

DP: They might have never been Grange members. I knew these people through the Grange, they were all active. Opal Pittman played the piano. The Sniders and the Hockinsmiths, I don’t know where they lived. Some of them were from that northerly direction too. Do you know which ones?

CB: I used to know where the Trotmans lived. Elmer and Chet Snider were over on another road from Aunt Roma. They lived probably two mile. Chet Hockinsmith, I remember the name, but I don’t remember where they lived.

DP: Talking about this with some of the other people I have talked with, everybody remembers the wonderful men’s quartet. The two Sniders, Chet Hockinsmith, and Willard Downing.

CB: They could harmonize.They were the old barbershop.

DP: I remembered that Lee Swan sang in a quartet. Esther said she didn’t remember that. Karen Graham and Dale Kapp both remembered that Lee and my dad and Henry Franz and Pete Gentzler had a men’s quartet that sang at the Sunday School. The rural Sunday School. They said how much they loved to hear those men sing. I don’t recall that your mother was a singer particularly.

CB: Mom sang.

DP: Do you remember the time the women at the Grange got together a Black Face presentation, jokes, songs, little stunts. Probably a half-an-hour show. My grandmother was musical, they sang and they played and they told jokes. They did this at the Kansas State Grange Meeting, I don’t remember where that was, but I remember going for that.

CB: It was up around KC.

DP: Of course, that is not politically correct today. They wrote and created everything themselves. They often did stunts and that kind of thing at Grange, they made most of those. Lloyd Chance, they were part of Grange.

CB: There is another family – I almost – Nora or Nola was the mother, and Maggie – he was in on the barbershop thing. [Could not recall any more particulars about these people.]

DP: Was Mary Lee still alive when you were a kid? And her brother, they lived together. Neither one had ever married. Mary taught school at Antelope Valley for a long time. [George was his name.]

CB: Mom had mentioned. Mom would have known them. They lived north of us.

DP: What else would you like to say about your mom? She was a mover shaker, the one to get things going and to get other people to do their part.

CB: It is like I said earlier, whenever she would get on a rant it was best to just stay out of her way. Let her do her thing and listen to her. If somebody crossed her, then you listened to her gripe all the way home. She was good at that. [Donita, laughed] She basically taught herself how to paint and then she wanted to take painting lessons. I don’t know why. She went down to the school, which always kind of ticked me off because she went to painting classes, yet she wouldn’t let me take art classes in high school. I think of what I actually can do now, what if I had had a little guidance when I was younger. If you want the gut level truth, everything that I know now so far as hobbies, what I can do and what I can’t do, I self-taught myself. Which I think is very sad because Mom and Dad were so good at it. I mean, my word, I had a jump start at this whole thing and it passed me by. Here again, that is the reason I say that I wasn’t going to treat my family the way I was done. I think if you have a talent, or even an inkling of a talent, let’s try to go with it until such time that you either lose interest in it or the dear Lord steps in and says, hey you don’t need to be doing this anymore. And shows you, you know. You are not to be doing this or you are not qualified to do this. I feel sorry for people that have a talent, it is so sad because they got this ta lent and it is a God given talent and they don’t do anything with it. I was friends with a guy, he was a salesman. He had a book that looked like it was ten inches thick and he didn’t know diddly about that book but yet he could meet you and talk to you for five minutes and in a year, meet you again and he would know your name, where you lived, your telephone number, your kids, how old they were, what school they went to, and I would set there and I would – he would just blow me away that he could do things like that. My son is a name person. He can remember names. I told him, my
word, it took me 21 years to remember mine.

DP: Tell me your son’s name again.

CB: Kevin . He lives in Olathe. He is, basically, he started up his own businesses. He starts and then gets them going good and then sells them.

DP: Okay. That is what you call an entrepreneur.

CB: Yes. He is very good at what he does. I tell people he talks in millions of dollars like I talk in nickels and dimes.

DP: What is his training? Education?

CB: He went to school at KU. Yes, he has schooling in business. He has a Master’s in business, business administration, communication –

DP: Sounds like he may have some of that mover-shaker talent that his grandmother had.

CB: Yeah. He and Mom got along pretty good.

DP: That is interesting isn’t it?

CB: Yeah. He has a real nice family. He has two sons and a daughter. His wife is a wedding planner. Our daughter lives here in Dodge and she is a hairdresser. She is very good at what she does. She has a daughter and she just had a daughter, so we are great grandparents. That’s the reason for all this grey hair. [Laughing by all]

DP: I am not a great grandparent and look – my hair is a lot whiter than yours!

CB: I inherited mine because Dad was white headed when he was 21. My hair turned silver probably in my 20s. I was pretty light-headed all through high school.

My Uncle Abe was a good electrician, welder. He was a hands-on person. I think really going back, that the whole family was a hands-on type. There were certain ones who could read and get it from their head to their hands and others that couldn’t.

DP: Do you think of anything else before we wrap this up today? Everyone in that community, I think, understood Cliff and Maxine. I don’t think there were any secrets. Not really.

CB: Uh – huh [in agreement].

DP: I think people really appreciated all the gifts and all the energy that your parents put into those community activities, they invested a lot of themselves, a lot of their time, a lot of their gifts to that community. People recognize that. As I said earlier, they would embrace you and say they knew you had a difficult family to get along with, “We are on your side.” [Laughing by everyone]

Nancy: That is nice to hear, that isn’t how we felt.

CB: We got lonesome –

DP: Well, you didn’t have playmates, were kind of isolated.

CB: I was my own gruesome threesome. [Everyone laughs]

DP: It sounds like you have made a good life for yourself. A lovely family, a lovely wife.

CB: Thank you.

DP: We haven’t heard much about her. What would you like to say?

Nancy: My name is Nancy. I am not really good at this.

DP: That is okay.

Nancy: We met when Cliff was going to college here. I was a senior in high school. We went together a year before we got married. I was never ever really comfortable around his mother. His dad, I liked him really well. But his mother was kind of – critical, very much so. When we would go down and farm, I helped her and I enjoyed doing that, helping her around the house. I would go to the doctor with her. I can remember when we went walking down the road . I enjoyed doing that.with her. But then it was nice to come home. She taught me what to put together when you set your table if you wanted decorations, centerpieces. I learned that from her. I also learned how not to be – I always said that I had the mother-in-law I had so that when my son got married and had a family, I wouldn’t treat my daughter-in-law the way that she treated me. I had to look for the good, so that is what I see that God gave me so that I would not treat someone like sometimes I was treated. So that was the good that came out of that. Cliff has been a good husband and he was good to the kids, always good to the kids. I am very thankful and very blessed with what I have.

DP: You both have spoken about thanking God, recognizing God’s hand in whatever, do you have anything more to say about that?

Nancy: Well, we just wouldn’t be where we are without Him.

CB: Mother, well she pretty much had the Bible memorized but she would still read it. Somebody would misquote a scripture and it would just fire her up in a heart-beat and she could quote it word for word and also say what scripture it was. If you doubted that she was right, you could go look it up. There had been a few that had tried to prove her wrong but that was hard to do.

DP: She was probably a genius. Something about her memory.

Nancy: But she didn’t always have people skills.

DP: No, she didn’t

Nancy: I think she sometimes spoke before she thought.

DP: She was probably frustrated because she did have such vast knowledge and had problems communicating that in a way that people would accept.

CB: Yes. I can remember she would go down and talk to the lawyer and whatever after Dad passed away. I took her after she called me, so I took off and went down. I will never forget this. We went in there and she wanted me to come in with her, so I said okay. The first thing he said, he looked up at me and he said, “I don’t know why you are here, he didn’t leave anything to you so why are you here?” I didn’t say anything then. I got up and left and went outside but I think if it had been now, I probably would have got up and hit him.

DP: He wasn’t people skilled either.

CB: No. I have a hard time thinking back on that. I wonder if as adamant as Mom was about me going in, there is a lot of times I wonder if I wasn’t set up. But you don’t like to think that. I did inherit from my parents.

DP: They probably felt very possessive. You were their only child, they wanted to possess you.

CB: Yeah. It was crazy. There was a lot of things that happened that you just try to let float on down the river and forget about it. There are times that you think well okay that is gone. But there will be times that something will click and you remember it. I think that happens for a reason . There was a lot of times that we hear the phrase, “God works in strange ways.” Well, I think He reminds us of our frailty because we aren’t anything in His spectrum. We are products of Him, but we aren’t anything to compare to Him, I guess is what I am trying to say.

DP: The working of God can be that somehow there is a gift to us to be able to take those unhappy things and still make something good and useful out of it. We can all become bitter about who knows what at times, but we don’t have to dwell on that bitterness. There is a hymn that I love, I will have to send that to you. Are you musical?

CB: Used to be until I lost my teeth. I got hit in the mouth with a bat in grade school and that kind of changed my musical ability.

DP: This is a hymn that goes, “Heal me hands of Jesus.” There are four stanzas and each one, to me, incorporates the Christian living and the Christian life and I think for people who have had difficult experiences it is one of the most healing things I have ever run across.

CB: I always think when I get down and blue, I think of the words to “Now the Day is Over.” Dad liked that. He liked “Come Home,” “Amazing Grace.” I can always hear him singing that. Then he loved to whistle.

DP: Now that you mention that rings a bell way back in my memory.

CB: He was always whistling. I guess that is how he thought. Everybody has to have something. A lot of people take a pencil and tap on the desk while they are thinking. Drive everybody else bats, but they are thinking. I think that is how Dad thought, he would whistle and go about what he was doing. Maybe it made the day shorter for him. Or maybe he might have drowned Mom out part of the time. [Laughter]
DP: It is good that we can laugh about these kinds of things. [More Laughing]

CB: There are probably times that Nancy hopes the phone will ring and drown me out.

Nancy: No, you are not like your mother, you don’t mean that. I can remember that after his dad passed away, for four years before she went to the home, we would go down one day, and we would no more than get home and she would call. Or else the next day she would call, and she was sick. We would go back down. She wasn’t sick. There she stood all ready to go to town. So, we would take her to town. We
did this a lot. We didn’t gripe about it. This is just what we did. Then it got to where she would call the ambulance to come and get her and they finally told her that she had to stop that.

CB: We set her up on Life Watch, but she wouldn’t wear it. [Cliff had made the arrangements with the nursing home in Meade but had been unable to get her to go there.]

DP: I am sure you know the story of how they got her to the nursing home. People had tried to do something with her. I am sure you had tried, and no one had had any success.

CB: We were behind that.

DP: Laree Rice and my mother went up to see her one day and said, “Maxine, let’s go for a ride.” They got her in the car and the ride was to Meade. They said we have made arrangements for you to stay. Of course, she didn’t want to, but she did stay. She loved being there after a while.

Nancy: I was so thankful for that. We could never get her in the car for that.

CB: I tried to get her to move to town. She would have lasted longer. She could have found friends, been closer to walk, or even drive down to have lunch.

DP: It was a difficult situation.

Nancy: I was so glad when all that took place.

DP: Here again it was the community friends that totally understood the situation.

Nancy: Looking back, she must have been very unhappy.

DP: Esther Swan said that she wasn’t in her right awareness of mind towards the end.

Nancy: In her younger days she had to work to where her friends could go do things. I remember her talking about when she was in school the kids wouldn’t have anything to do with her and she decided she was going to be at the top in the class, so she outdid them. That gave her more incentive to just keep going and be better.

DP: She probably had to support herself as a young person.

Nancy: I think she did.

CB: I think there is a lot more to her being sent down to Grandma’s there in Liberal than anybody will ever know.
DP: Yes, I think so.

CB: Whenever you think about something like that, you try to put your thinking in that time period. There are only certain things that would warrant that type of situation. Not all of them were good. So you try not to bring it up but I wish she had of because that would have of maybe helped me now with trying to find out different things.

DP: You may never find out. Maybe that is just as well.

CB: See some of the things that have happened, I worked with a guy that went t? Colorado quite a bit and he said there is a valley there in Colorado that I can go up to. You have to work yourself between rocks to get into this valley. I can see it through the rocks, but I can get right to the edge of the rocks and then it is just like a hand comes up and pushes on me, I can’t get in . I said, “Okay Tom, I will do something for you, you try it.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “I am going to make you a talisman and you take it out there and when you get out there, it will be blessed. When you get there you put it on, you show it the four directions. Then when you feel that hand on your chest you tell them that Bird sent you and you have a right to be here.” He said, “Okay.” I said, “You won’t get hurt. If it don’t work, you will still feel the hand on your chest.” He said, “Okay.” It was two or three weeks, maybe a month and he looked me up and said you would not believe how beautiful that valley is. I kind of smiled and he said, “You got me through. Through the guards, that is spiritually guarded.” Different things like this. We kind
of watch what we tell people because people start looking at us like we smoke dope or whatever, drink a lot or whatever, you know. We don’t. This is things that, I hate to say it, but I have started picking this up really since Mom passed away.

DP: That is Native Indian.

CB: Yes, he described where it is at and what it is, it is the last stronghold of Cochise, the Apache chief. That was the valley him and his people were in. They were known as the rock dwellers, and it just made me feel good, and boy he was happy. I said did you take any pictures. And he said that is one part I regret. I forgot my camera.

DP: Sometimes it is best not to have pictures.

CB: He fully believed that I was part Indian from a lot of the things that I could do. I could work with the clientele there at Arrowhead West and we were kind of one-on-one. I understood them, they understood me, and we all got along. He was quite a character. Then he went off the deep end, left his wife, wore his hair down to the middle of his back. He drinks. Kind of lost him . I don’t know what happened to him.

DP: I appreciate your time, your contribution. I hope it has been a good experience for you.

CB: I think it has. It has helped me remember a lot of things.

DP: Somehow these things have a way of coming together. Bringing some peace. Thank you very much.

CB: You bet. Thank you.

DP: And thank you Nancy.

NB: You are more than welcome. Glad that you came. I enjoyed it.

DP: It has been an honor to get to know both of you .Thank you.