11: Interview with Hugh Harnden – Liberal Memorial Library

Date: April 2008

Place: Hugh’s home in Liberal, Kansas

Interviewer: Donita Priefert Payne

HH: I’m Hugh Harnden. I am a son of Francis and Hazel Harnden. My grandparents on the Harnden side were W.G. (Grant) and Anna Harnden. I was raised most of my young life on a farm northeast of Liberal. I was born in 1926.

During the dirty ’30’s Dust Bowl, it was a very tough time because of [the] Depression and the Dust Bowl at the same time. I didn’t think too much about it because that’s what I was born into. I just thought that’s the way the world was. It didn’t bother me, but I am sure it bothered my parents a lot because it was very hard to make enough to have an existence. I can remember the dirt looked like the waves of a lake or something, just was laying there waiting to blow at any time. Just a small wind and you would have a dirt storm.

Another thing I remember of my youth, I don’t know how old I was, but I was still in the country grade school, we hand-picked maize most winters. I went to school but then when I would get home in the evening we would pick for an hour or so and on Saturdays we always did. Some years the dirt had covered it up, so you’d have to find the stalk and shake the dirt off of it and cut the head off and throw it
in the wagon. Just an awful lot of work for a little amount. But it was enough to keep us going. We was able to live through it.

After I graduated from high school, I spent two years in the Navy. Then Barbara and I got married in August 1946. We had two boys and now we have five grandchildren. I spent most of my working life working in a furniture store of some kind.

Now I am 82 years old and [am] still getting along pretty good.

DP: Your wife is here with you?

HH: Yes, Barbara is here with me. She has Alzheimer”s, but we are still getting along pretty good.

DP: What school did you go to, elementary school?

HH: Superior.

DP: Do you remember anything about those years?

HH: Oh, I don’t know. I certainly remember being in the room where there were kids in all eight grades. I think I kind of enjoyed it. But I don’t know whether I-I had some what I thought were good teachers and some of them I didn’t think was so good. That schoolhouse has been gone for years. I don’t know where it went to.

DP: Who were some of the other kids that were in that school?

HH: Well, I remember George Harvey. He passed away several years ago. Buster Smith [or Schmitt?] and he also passed away a couple of years ago. They were both in my class. Delbert would have been there and don’t hardly remember him because he was some older than I was. Yes, he would have been there. There was another Bryant or two, LaVeda Bryant was there, I think she was younger, I know she was
younger. I remember Helen Engel. She still lives here in town, but I never see her. Well, before I graduated even my twin sisters would have been there and my older sister, Nadine would have been there and my brother so all of us would have been there. And several Harveys.

DP: Tell us about your father, Francis, and your mother, Hazel Graham Harnden.

HH: I just mainly remember of them as being extremely hard workers because that was what you had to do. I think they would have been hard workers anyhow. But to survive, it wasn”t a case of working hard in order to make a lot of money, it was a case of working hard in order to survive. They both did like all adults did in those days. I used to think about it, how hard my dad worked because he really did. After I
got old enough to help a little why he would get up and start the tractor about 4 o’clock. I and my brother would get up and do the chores and eat our breakfast and then I would go out and relieve him and run it until that evening. Then he would relieve me again and I and my brother would do the chores in the evening. So basically, he worked from about 4 o’clock in the morning until 11 o’clock at night all summer long. I thought he had the worst job, but I have thought about it since. Mom also got up at 5 o’clock and really worked all day. In the summertime, when the temperature was 90 or 100 degrees, no cooling of any kind in the house, she was cooking on the stove that produced heat. I just think that would have been really hard. Anyhow, I just remember them as very hard working. Extremely honest about everything. I mean they just would rather you got more than you had coming from them than that they took advantage of you. They would have never done that at all. I think I had really good parents. But I have also thought about the fact that everybody that I came in contact with when I was young was
just really good hardworking people. A lot of them was relatives. Uncles, aunts or cousins, or some such thing. I kind of wonder about how I would have turned if I hadn’t been around people like that. I am very thankful that about everybody I came in contact with was just really a good person.

DP: When your parents weren’t working, did they like to read or did you play games or what did you do?

HH: I know that both of them really liked to read. Especially catching up on news. But that was kind of hard to come by. If they got a newspaper, that was a real treat to have something to read. We didn’t even have a radio at home until after WW2 started, after December 7th when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. Dad just couldn’t stand the fact that he couldn’t get any news, so he finally scraped up enough
money to go buy a battery-operated radio. ‘Course the reception was not very good most of the time. I remember seeing him get down there with his ear trying to hear what was being said. They really would have loved to have had a newspaper every day like we get here. They wanted to keep up with what was going on in the world and it was hard to do then.

DP: When did REA come to your farm? Do you remember that?

HH: Not till after I was gone. I am not sure whether they ever got it or not because they moved to town, I think in ’48. So, I don”t remember whether they got it or not. It was after the war really before that swept very much of the country. I think they moved out before.

DP: Did they have a wind charger, a generator or something to –

HH: No. Ithink your folks did have. But they didn”t have. No, a year or so ago when they were having storms around here and some people was without electricity for several weeks and somebody asked me how long I had been without electricity and I told them 18 years. [Laughing] But you could get along without it then because that’s the way it was geared to work. Now you can’t get along without it.

DP: When you had lights, what kind of lights were they?

HH: Coal oil lamp.

DP: How did your mother do the washing?

HH: Scrub board.

DP: No kidding.

HH: And of course, the other problem was getting the washing done where you could hang it on the line on a day when the dirt wasn’t blowin’.

DP: How many children were in your family?

HH: Five. Nadine was the oldest one, I was next and then Denny and then the twins. The twins was Lola and Laree.

DP: How much space between –

HH: Nadine and I was about two years, between Denny and I about two years and then it was about four years before the twins.

DP: Tell us about the twins in the Harnden family. There were lots of twins in the Harnden family.

HH: Well, Ithink so, I don’t know about all of them but the Morgans, Mildred, Dad’s sister had a set of twins. The Dunkelbergs had a set of twins. Then my sisters. I think that is all I know about.

DP: I think Vern had twins and they died.

HH: Yes, they died. You know more about it than I do. [Laughing] Vern was married to my mother’s sister.

DP: His first wife? I didn’t realize that. She died?

HH: I always thought that she died at childbirth. But it wasn’t. It was a few months later.

DP: She died of a broken heart probably. I don’t know that, but I am sure it was a very sad time for that family.

HH: It was easy to die back then. I mean they just couldn’t do things like they can now. I can’t remember the name, but I noticed it written on one of your pages there. A sister of Dad’s died when she was three or four years old. Vern told me that he left that morning and she was standing at the screen door waving good-by. When he came back that evening, she was dead. See, those kinds of things just wouldn’t
happen now. Like my grandparents that lived into their 80s, that was really getting old. Because you just had to be well most of your life, if you got sick you wouldn’t make it. Now my mother’s dad did die. I never did know him, but I think he got pneumonia. They came from Peabody and he went back there for something and when he got back, he was feeling bad. I think in a few days he died.

DP: Your mother was a sister to Clifford Graham. Were there other Grahams that lived in this community?

HH: Actually, Mama had two sisters and a brother. Nola Crawford that lived here all her life, passed away a year-and-a-half ago, was one of her sisters. The other one was Nada and they ended up living in Oregon, I think, the later part of their years. But she has passed away too.

DP: And then Clifford and your mom.

HH: Yes. Nola was the youngest and the last one to die within a couple of years ago.

DP: What were your parents like as people? Were they talkative, did they joke around, what were their personalities like?

HH: I don’t remember that they ever joked around that much. The Harndens has always been pretty serious. I also wonder if life wasn’t so tough that you wouldn’t think about joking around. I think that they constantly was thinking about how they was going to make it through the day. It was just an awful tough life.

DP: Now, there is something about your mother. She taught the adult Sunday School class, in Rural Sunday School, I think for a long time.

HH: She taught Sunday School even after they moved to town, in the Methodist Church. She taught Sunday School for a class of women for many, many years. Yes.

DP: I heard her, I wish I could remember the occasion, but I don’t remember what it was. But I heard her give a talk or teach a class and I thought she was an amazing woman. She was so gifted in speaking and expression

HH: I don”t even think she went to high school. I’ve never been real sure whether she went to a little bit of it or what, or if she did have to quit school. I thought she did real well considering that she didn’t have any education at all. Now Dad went to Liberal High School, but he didn’t quite graduate because of the 1918 flu. Ithink he got sick or so many in the family got sick, he lacked a few months of graduating. But
he did go to school.

DP: There is a story, some of these books that Mildred, his sister, wrote about some of their Quite interesting stories. Do you have those stories?

HH: No.

DP: I will be sure and get you some of those. A copy of anything that is there.

HH: I do know that they started out in Iowa, I think, when all the kids was young. They went to Missouri, I think spent a year there and then went to Barton County, Kansas and spent probably a year there, I am not sure. I think there were some Jennisons there. But anyhow, ‘course that is the way they done then. I think Vern told me there was a section of ground. One family lived say on the west side, one family on the north side, four families lived there, and the school was in the middle, so that they could all walk about a half mile to school. And it was all relatives, Ithink. Ithink Jennisons.

DP: The Jennisons were just half a mile north of, a quarter mile on the next section, across the road from where your grandparents lived.

HH: Yes, here, I knew. But I think they was in Barton County too.

DP: Probably so.

HH: Vern told me about the trip down here from Barton County. They of course came in wagons because that was the transportation then. He said that Dad was eight years old and he drove a team with a wagon. Vern was 12 and he was in charge of the cattle. He said he worried all the way about what he was going to do when they got to Dodge City because he thought the cattle would just get scared and
just go everyplace. When he got there, he said it just worked out great. I guess they had this happen quite a bit in Dodge City, so people got at intersections, so cattle just had to go right on through town.

[Laughing] Then they got outside of town and a train whistle scared them and they took off. He knew it was his responsibility to get them to Liberal so followed them and he even had to spend the night out there by himself. Then they got rejoined the next day. And I thought my goodness, what would a 12-year-old do now? He wouldn’t have any idea what to do. Then another thing that I heard Dad say was
that all the spare time he had, he and Vern and Willard broke ground in the wintertime or anytime they had extra time. It was just a walking plow, just takes forever. Dad said it wasn’t anything unusual to kill 12 or so rattlesnakes every day. Then, where they lived out there in the country had a one room house on it. But they had too big a family for one room. There was a sod house a quarter mile north so the
three brothers went down there to sleep overnight.

DP: I hadn’t heard that story before.

HH: That was just for one year because they was building that two-story house. They built a big house after that one year. Dad said that it had openings for windows but no window in it so if it snowed it snowed in on top of them. But he said they was never sick all winter. Next year when they got in the house with heat in it, he said they was all sick about all winter. [Laughing]

DP: How many children were in your father’s family? How many siblings did he have and who were they?

HH: Well, I told you about that one that died, I don’t remember her name. It’s listed in that book. Let’s see the boys was Dad, Vern, and Willard. And the girls was Margaret, Vera, Mildred, so that would be six.

DP: Did you know your grandparents?

HH: Oh yes. They lived about a mile-and-a-half from us. Well, Ithink they was about like my folks. As I understand it when they first moved there, there was a little bit of prosperity I think, for a little while. They had some good crops. I guess the price was decent. They had a nice two-story house plus they kept that one-room house that they lived in for a while and had a nice big barn and granary. lt was just really
a nice place. There is just one tree left there now. The house is here in Liberal.

DP: Is it? I wondered what happed to that house.

HH: Yes, on East Oak here in Liberal. At the time I knew them, of course, was during the Dust Bowl and the Depression and they had a struggle just like everybody else did. I think they just spent most of their time just trying to exist. They were just real good people. Extremely honest, and helpful, all that. Just like if you was going to try to make somebody, that is the kind of person you would want to make. I
thought they were great. Since I have got older, I thought about the fact that whenever we would go up to their place you drove in and they had a back porch there and by the time we would get around back, my grandmother would always be standing out there and she would have the biggest grin on her face. You know they lived weeks without seeing anybody, and I just bet – seeing family made it a little better,
but just seeing anybody would have been great for them. Had to have been lonely at times.

DP: Well, they had a lot of children to take care of for quite a few years.

HH: Yeah, when they were young, they was really busy, I don’t know that they was particularly lonely then, but as they got older, I would have thought they would have been. Now at least we have T\/ to look at.

DP: My mother talked about when she was a little girl, she was born in 1915. What year would you have been born? 1926, so there is ten years’ difference. You wouldn’t even have been born then. She said then Jennisons used to get together on Sunday afternoon. The Jennisons were pretty big Methodists. Your grandparents were too, I think, weren’t they – very strong Methodists? She said they would get
together and have Sunday dinner and then talk about religious topics. Of course, this was around the time of the First World War and they used to talk about “Is the world really getting better and better?” You know the theology of that day said, it was kind of liberal theology actually, and it said the world was getting better and better. But the people were looking at the times and the things that were happening
and they were questioning whether it was really getting better and better. She said that was the main topic of conversation at those Jennison Sunday afternoon gatherings.

HH: And was that around here?

DP: That would have been your grandparents and their family, and my mother’s parents and her Grandmother Jennison and her uncle Ernest Jennison. Grandmother Jennison and Ernest lived in the Jennison house. What year was your father born ? 1898. Okay, so he was older than my mother by quite a lot. He and my grandmother would have been the same generation. A lot of them got together for
Sunday dinner and they discussed these questions for a good while in the afternoon.

HH: Actually, I don’t know but I don’t think that happened too much after I – I just think everything made that stuff so difficult.

DP: She was a little girl when this was going on, so it would have been 1920 or so.

HH: I think there was a period in there when things was kind of prosperous around [the] 1920s. That is when people built those big barns and all that. And then they didn’t know what to do with them after it turned dirty.

DP: Well, that big barn out on the Priefert farm, we don’t know what to do with it today.

HH: Don”t have any plays out there anymore?

DP: No. The kinds of agricultural purposes they originally had for those barns are just a very different situation now.

Do you remember anything about the Rural Sunday School that met in Liberty School or in some of the other____?

HH: Oh, I remember going because I think we regularly went. I don’t remember missing. I suppose we did maybe, but I don’t remember of it. I remember it as something that I enjoyed. Now days a lot of people don’t seem to want to go to church much. I suppose the fellowship is what I enjoyed. I don’t remember a whole lot about it. I remember Lydia [Graham] standing up there and leading us in singing
and that type of thing. The last Sunday School teacher that I remember was Henry Franz. I remember that pastors from churches here in town would come out on some Sundays. It was a nice thing, I thought.

DP: There was also something called Christian Endeavor.

HH: I don’t remember that.

DP: I don’t know if that was a part of the Rural Sunday School organization. Ithink it was something separate because I knew people who lived in Indiana who lived in the city who had done that in their youth.

HH: Seems like we had something we went to on Sunday evening that may have been what it was but I don’t know what we done or anything.

DP: Nadine, your sister, Delbert, Swans, that generation that went off to the war, I think it was still going at that time but obviously ceased when so many of them left for the service. You were one of the younger ones of that group.

HH: I don’t even remember when they quit having Sunday School out there. Probably at WW2.

DP: It was still going when I was a little kid for a while.

HH: That was real handy for you.

DP: The people who went to Rural Sunday School were still members of particular churches in Liberal. And different ones. Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ, Friends.

HH: Those preachers who came out was from most churches. There wasn”t any certain church, it was just whoever was available. We got to hear them all once in a while.

DP: It seems like once a month we would all go together to one of the churches in town. When I was a little kid.

HH: When I was really young, our transportation was a Model-T truck. We didn’t go much distance. That is probably one reason why we liked to go to that Sunday School, it was only about half as far as it was going clear to Liberal.

DP: How often did your folks go to town to buy groceries and do things they needed to do in town?

HH: You know, I don’t know, but it wasn’t very often.

DP: Your mother baked the bread and everything?

HH: Oh yes, yes. I suppose they had to go to town every ten days or so at least, but, and I say “they,” I think Dad just went by himself. Got whatever was needed.

DP: Who were the neighbors that lived around you at that time?

HH: Actually, there was somebody by the name of Davis that lived about a half mile from us. 0. D. Davis. Swans lived, well as the crow flies just over a mile, but it was two-and-a-half miles from us. And Ernest Jennison, just south of us.

DP: Was Grandma Jennison still alive then?

HH: I don’t think so.

DP: Did the Wyatts live out on their farm at that time?

HH: Yes, they did, and they lived only a mile but there wasn’t any road through there so to get through there you had to drive three-and-a-half miles or something. Of course, the Wyatt boys was quite a bit older than I was.

DP: They were my mother’s age and older. Eldon was about my mother’s age.

HH: Eldon and I became real good friends after we got older. He went to Superior grade school too but he was nine years older than I was, so he was gone by the time I got there.

DP: The Fraims, my grandparents.

HH: They lived a little over two miles south of us. When I was really young, there had to really be a reason if you went two miles. I mean that was quite a ways. Now you wouldn’t think anything about it. The point I am making is you didn’t just decide I am going to visit somebody and go two mile to do it. You just about had to have a reason to do that. Some kind of a get-together to do that.

DP: Were there activities at Superior School? Was it just the school or were there other things going on?

HH: Just the school I think.

DP: Did the school do plays and have programs?

HH: Oh, I think we had a program at Christmas time. I don’t remember anything about it, but yes, I think we did have. That is the only one I think we had in the year.

DP: Was your family active in the Grange?

HH: No, I don’t think so but we did attend the Grange a little and we went to Arkalon, which is about five miles from our house and again we rode in the Model-T truck and my folks and the twins rode in front and the three older ones of us rode in back. We’d take blankets and cover up and try to keep half-way warm. Even in the front it wasn’t very warm ’cause there wasn”t a heater in the truck. It was really an
ordeal to get there. I kind of have a feeling that my folks, because they didn’t have contact with other people very much, probably thought the effort was worth it just to be able to see somebody else. But the Grange, I don’t know what it was all for. I know that –

DP: They went to Arkalon to Grange, they didn’t go to Progressive Grange at Liberty School? Was it the same Grange that my Grandparent Fraims were in?

HH: I just don’t know. You know Cliff and Maxine, they were into Grange a great deal. I think they were in Progressive. Now, on that highway that goes to Hugoton, there is a building on the north side. That’s where the Grange used to be.

DP: But they met in a school mostly for years and years.

HH: I know that adults would get up and tell this kind of a story some or that kind of a story some, I don’t know what a Grange was for. l imagine it was just a place for a little fellowship mainly.

DP: They did have particular things that they did. Bill Fitzgerald said that the things he remembers about Grange is that the kids were just running around outside playing, about 30 kids he said, playing hide and seek, mostly the boys just wrestled.

HH: I know that we did play, but most of the time when we went was in the wintertime. In the summertime they was probably too busy to go. The school at Arkalon had a basement and I think we played down there while they had their meeting. I enjoyed it too except for the ride, riding in the back of that truck when it was cold was not too comfortable.

DP: Did your grandparents always live on the farm or did they at some point move into Liberal?

HH: They did move into Liberal, but it was just the last two or three years of their lives.

DP: Where are they buried?

HH: Buried at Liberal Cemetery.

DP: Do you remember any stories of why they came to Seward County?

HH: Oh, I think they was just looking for a way to make a living. That is why everybody progressed from the east to the west. Hoping for something better. Probably to own land. I think it was in lowa where they started from. You know it was probably hard to acquire land there because there [were] so many people already established there. People always went to where they had relatives and they had relatives
in Missouri, but I guess they didn’t find any way to make a living there. Then they went to Barton County, Kansas, had several relatives there but probably hardly any way to acquire land so that is why they kept moving on. I think we already had some relatives here when they moved here.

DP: Did you ever hear anything about your grandmother’s father, Elias Jennison?

HH: No.

DP: I understand he homesteaded the quarter where Satanta is, but he didn’t stay there. He was in this area for a while but then he went back someplace else where he came from.

HH: I think Vern told me that story.

DP: I heard my family wonder why they left Barton County? My grandmother’s parents even lived in a stone house in Barton County. Why would they leave that nice stone house?

HH: They wanted something more.

DP: Somebody said that Rufus [Opal Jennison’s father] thought there were getting to be too many people back there. I think there were a lot of Russian people coming to that part of the country and he felt he was living too close to the Russian people. He wanted to get farther west. My mother said when she was a little girl there was a lot of population in the community. People that she knew. They came and they found that they couldn’t make a living on 160 acres in this part of the country. That was enough in lowa, but it was not enough here so they were here four or five years and then they left. She talked about different people and their names – long gone. Ithink the population to start with probably was a lot more, but it didn’t last too long.

HH : I heard someone talk about the schools – of course, you probably couldn’t go too far to school very easy because you had to ride a horse or walk. I think there was even a schoolhouse somewhere in the area not too far from where Graham’s farm –

DP: I think so. There is some information about the Prairie Rose School, and I think that may have been the one.

HH: As I understand, the farmers would just get together and build a schoolhouse and have school there. They had large families then so there was several kids but they didn”t want them to have to go to school a long ways.

DP: What kind of food did your family eat when you were growing up?

HH: Just the basic stuff. We about always had beef because we raised it. After the chickens would get big enough to eat, that’s all we would eat until we would run out of ’em, about. At least twice a day and it was good too. Potatoes and gravy and all that unhealthy stuff.

DP: Did you have a garden?

HH: We tried. But you had to get some water to it and all the water we had was the windmill and so usually we wasn’t very successful at that. Yeah, we kept trying. Could raise a little stuff but couldn’t do too well.

DP: Did your mother can food?

HH: I don’t remember whether she did or not. I think she did, but I don’t know. Seemed like she bought food to can but I am not sure about that. I am sure that that had to have been a big concern all the time.

DP: How did you heat your house?

HH: Coal or wood.

DP: Did you have stoves or furnace?

HH: Stove, sat in the middle of the living room. You didn’t hardly get any heat in the bedroom. Coal or wood, not kerosene. “Course, the schoolhouse was that way. Was you ever around one of those? They would get red hot and if it was close you would almost burn and on the other side it was freezing.

DP: You went to the service right out of high school. What branch?

HH: Yes. I graduated high school in ’44. I was swore into the Navy on the first day of June. I was a draftee, I didn’t volunteer. Actually, they delayed calling me until I graduated, they could have called me on my birthday in February. I spent just a day or two less than two years in the Navy.

DP: Where did you train?

HH: Great Lakes – Chicago.

DP: Did you go overseas or what did you do?

HH: After that it was probably three or four weeks before I got overseas. I went over around the Philippines. I was there 19 months.

DP: Did you have any interesting experiences there?

HH: Oh, I don”t know. We were never in heavy combat. We was in a little bit of combat but not anything too dangerous I don’t think. I was on a boat that wasn’t all that big. It was in what they called the amphibious because it could run up to the beach and unload things onto the beach or take things off the beach. It wasn”t a bad experience, but I don’t know that there was anything very exciting about it. Just
sitting out there on the water. Day after day. I enjoyed the guys I was with. I don’t remember that it was all that boring. We got in the edge of a typhoon a time or two, and of course then the sea is really rough. That isn”t exactly a pleasant experience.

DP: Were the Japanese in the Philippines at that time? Or was that later?

HH: They were already there when I got there.

DP: Did you have some direct encounters with Japanese?

HH: Not really, well, of course this wasn’t a dangerous encounter. After the war they sent us to some of those islands to get Japanese, but they didn’t even know the war was over. When you hauled some of them around, that was kind of interesting because some of them could actually speak English. You could kind of see them as a human being instead of the enemy, you could see that they were basically just like
we were. They were not out there because they disliked us, they were there because they were ordered to be there. Most of them that we picked up had been there for years. From the very start of the war. And they had no communication with home, they didn’t know whether it still existed or not. I really felt sorry for them. And they were all eager of course to get home and see what . And the people at
home had been the same deal. They didn’t know whether they was still alive or not. Like I say, they didn’t know the war was over until somebody told them. No communication.

One time, we went to an island, the only way during the war that you could get there was by air and so nobody came in or out. We went up there and dropped the ramp down and the natives that lived there swarmed aboard and they were wanting to buy just anything we had. They seemed to have money. So, we all sold all our clothes except what we was wearing. [Laughing] They didn’t care what it was like,
even if it was dirty clothes, they still bought it. But the thing that we found kind of interesting was that we was on the beach and we spent the night there and when we got up the next morning the tide had gone out so far that we was about at least 100 yards from water. Couldn’t do anything until the tide came back in. I had seen the tide go in and out before but not to that extent. But we was never in a whole lot of danger, not direct in a line of fire. We was kind of close to it sometimes but that was about it.

DP: Did you feel that you had had an opportunity to learn some new skills or was it a maturing or learning experience for you or was –

HH: No, I don’t think it was and I didn’t care. AllI was wanting to do was do whatever I needed to do and to go home. I wasn’t worried about whether I got a promotion or anything. I just wanted to get it over with and go home. I don’t know of any opportunity to learn anything. It wasn’t a very big boat and it had a crew of about a dozen people and we never did go ashore, we just floated around out there in the
water. That makes it sound almost like it was a bad experience and I don’t think that it was I was young enough that I didn’t mind it. I didn’t want to make a career of it either.

DP: Were your sons in the service?

HH: No.

DP: You got out of the service, then what?

HH: Oh, I went to work in a furniture store. Got out in June and we got married in August and went on from there.

DP: So, you knew each other before you went into the service? Were you classmates in school?

HH: No, she is younger than I am. But we were in high school at the same time. We wrote letters during that time, some. Actually, there was a lot of time when there would be a month or six weeks out there between times when you could mail letters. We was kind of isolated out there in the middle of the ocean. You had to find a big ship or something and then it took forever. Now, I don’t mean those people
in Iraq have it made or anything but that is one thing they can do, they can communicate with home. Every day almost. Then, it just took weeks. Imagine it was kind of hard on the people at home because it would just be so long, they wouldn’t hear anything.

DP: Goodness knows there was enough very bad news during those days.

HH: The people on land could mail regularly, but we couldn’t. I thought that could be pretty rough, but I never did hear my folks say anything about it.

DP: Your parents moved to Liberal. I don’t know when they did that.

HH: I believe it was 1948. Dad continued farming until he was 89.

DP: He got tractors etc. so farming was a different situation.

HH: 89 was probably too old to farm but –

DP: Dennis farmed out there too didn’t he?

HH: Yes. But then he, I don’t know how many years he done that, and then they moved to Colorado Springs. When Dad was like 65 a lady called me and said you got to get your dad off that farm. He is too old to be doing that and he is going to kill himself. But there wasn’t much of any way I could make that happen. Then he ended up quittin’ finally at 89. That’s the only life he had. f he wasn’t doing that what
would he do?

DP: It had gotten easier with the kind of equipment –

HH: Oh yes, much easier than when I was young. At the end I think he was only farming six quarters. Now days that is nothing.

DP: But that was a fair amount at that period.

HH: Yes, for that period. He done it by himself. In the summertime it kept him busy.

DP: I think my dad said once that one farmer could handle about 1000 acres and that was about all you could do with just one person.

HH: In each period of time, it got better because if you went back to when I was really young, one person couldn’t have come close to that. I even drove a team of horses a little bit in the field, but I was pretty young. Prior to that, that is mostly what they was using, horses.

DP: Do you remember what year your dad got a tractor?

HH: Oh, they had an old one when I was real young, steel wheel thing, and I don’t know when they got that. The first rubber tire tractor he got I think was ’39 or ’40. Then I could drive a steel wheel, but I just wasn’t strong enough to turn it.

DP: Those things were something else.

HH: Oh yes, brutal.

DP: Your Uncle Vern was also a farmer, wasn’t he?

HH: Yes, actually he worked in town quite a bit. At the time when I was in high school, I worked for him some because he was managing the grocery wholesale called ______. He worked there until 5 o’clock in the evening and then he would come out farming. Not too many years after that he went strictly to farming.

DP: He lived in Liberal always didn’t he?

HH: When they were first married, I think they lived in the country but probably lived in Liberal all the time he was married to his second wife, Josie. Vern and Josie.

DP: Do the Harndens own land in this area?

HH: Vern owned a half section and Dad owned a quarter. Most of it was rented ground.

DP: How much did your grandparents own when they lived there?

HH:That half section.

DP: That is the better land in that section. Far better than the south quarters. I was driving over that ground with Fred in this four-wheeled-drive thing. The south half of that section is awfully rough. Not very productive. I don’t know how my grandparents made a living. I don’t know how much they farmed.

They had a half section east. I don’t even know when they got that land.

HH: I am not too sure they didn’t get that right after WW2. I don’t think when your mother was young, they was farming that.

DP: I don’t know what they were farming but where did they have any cash income? I don’t know.

HH: I don’t know, it is amazing that they seemed to make it on almost nothing.

DP: I don’t know if my grandad rented land.

HH: He probably did, most farmers did.

DP: I don’t know who owned that half section east, I don”t know if Charlie Bryant, Delbert”s dad, owned some land over there. Charlie owned that land where Delbert lived.

HH: I know he didn’t own that quarter north of them, so I suppose all they owned was where Delbert was. It is a little bit interesting, that half section you own, east quarter across the road, the half section that you own now, section 34, that northeast quarter of that section was broke out by Dad. A Harnden farmed that all the time until Dad quit. It is owned by two sisters they don’t live here.

DP: You know my mother sold that quarter where those two houses are, the attorney and the doctor. She sold it because it had no agriculture use.

HH: Yoxall sold it. Farmers still live there.

DP: We sold that and Rosell bought that and then he turned around and sold it to Yoxall and Farmer. My mother with the sales proceeds of that set up a charitable trust through Wheaton College. They owned it and then they sold it. Paul and I both have income off that Trust for our lifetimes. It is not a huge amount, but it is nice to have that check coming in. For the number of years, it certainly has brought in
more than farmland that is worth nothing.

You wanted to come back to Liberal. Did you have any desire to go someplace else to live when you came back from the service?

HH: No, not particularly. I don’t know whether I really thought about it or not. We moved to Wichita about six years ago but only stayed there three years and moved back. I kind of like a small town. I think life is a lot simpler. I guess that is the main reason we moved back. We moved up there, we had a son there and we have a son here, so I didn’t think it made much difference which place we lived.

DP: Much easier to drive and get around in a smaller place.

HH: That’s right, ten minutes you are on the other side of town. Wichita you’d still be sitting at a stop light.

DP: Were you active in the Methodist Church then when you moved to town?

HH: Well, I have been active in the Methodist Church, on committees and that type of thing. I am not now because most of the time the meetings are at night and I don’t leave at night, so I am able to go on Sunday, but I am not on any committees or anything.

DP: The Methodist Church was very important in the history of the Jennisons. They were active in the temperance movement. I remember my grandmother talking about that. They were great readers of the Bible and the commentary literature and this kind of thing. Those kinds of things carry forward to the generations it seems. I appreciate your sharing the stories and the stories of your life today. It has been very helpful.

HH: I wish I knew something exciting. [Laughing]

DP: Exciting can be either good or bad.

HH: My life has not been exciting, I don’t think.

DP: But would you say it has been a good life?

HH: Oh, yes. I would say that. Has your life been exciting?

DP: Well, I am a pretty even-tempered person and I don’t get excited about much of anything. I have moved around some to different places but, you know our life routines are kind of the same wherever we are.

HH: I know you have kids in Seattle, but would you still live there if you didn’t have?

DP: No. I would have stayed in Kansas City. Ilived in Kansas City for 27 years. Kansas City is a nice place to live. Seattle is fine too, but I would not choose to live there unless I had a reason.

Thank you for your contribution and I appreciate it very much.

HH: Well, you are welcome.

Postscript:l visited with Hugh again at a later time. His wife, Barbara, had been in the care facility in Liberal as her Alzheimer’s disease had intensified. She had died before this visit. Hugh had spent time with her every day at the nursing home. After her death, Hugh continued visiting patients at the nursing home every day. He said, “Those people really need someone to visit them and to be a friend.”

My thought was to be thankful for quiet angels like Hugh who make this earth a better place.

Hugh’s son, Ronald H. Harnden, lives in Wichita and is an attorney there. I spoke with him in 2019. Hugh now lives in Wichita in a retirement apartment. He is active and drives very confidently. He is 93.