19: Interview with Joe Brown – Liberal Memorial Library

Date: April 2008

Place: Home of Joe and Dorothy Brown on Roosevelt Street in Liberal, Kansas

Interviewer: Donita Priefert Payne

JB: I am Joe Brown, Joseph, but I go by Joe. I was born September 6, 1926. Lived in Hooker, Oklahoma at the time. My folks had moved from back in Protection, Kansas. My dad worked for the power company. I guess it kind of run in the family because, later on, that is what I done also. I grew up in and went to school in Hooker. My dad, when I was probably eight or nine years old, he made a little car, it had a little
gasoline engine on it and back in those days they didn’t worry too much about runnin’ around on the streets, certain automobile regulations etc. We stayed pretty well in our neighborhood. We lived out on the west edge of Hooker and we didn’t really get too far from home. We stayed in our own area. I remember one day I was out riding down the road in that little car and saw this dust storm comin’ and I
kept putting off getting back to the house. Finally, I decided I needed to get back to the house. So, I run up in the yard, just parked on the edge of the yard. We had a curb in front of our house and just as I parked in front of the ___, next to the curb, this dirt storm come a rollin’ in and it just blacked all of a sudden and I couldn’t see anything. I knew where the house was so I found the curb and I crawled on my
hands and knees along the curb so I wouldn’t get lost ’till I come to the sidewalk on to the house and I crawled up to the house probably about 30 or 40 feet from the curb, until I come to the porch. I crawled up the steps and then I eased a foot or so to the house and I thought if I just go right straight ahead, I’d come to the door and I did. I got in the house. It is kind of an awful feeling when you are in the house
and can just see the dirt coming in the house. The house wasn’t very tight that we lived in, I don’t think any of them were in those days. The dirt just kind of coming in and everything. The lights we had was just one bulb hanging down from the ceiling. We didn’t have all modern lights that we have now days. That dirt began to gather around the light and it just became a yellow glow. It is kind of depressing when
you see that yellow glow up there and you ____, the dirt just keeps coming in, just keeps coming in. Seemed like there was no end to it. Everybody hung stuff around, a lot of wet towels and sheets, whatever they could find to put over the windows and doors to keep the dirt from coming in. But it didn’t seem to help a whole lot. When you go to bed at night ___, when you get up in the morning where you laid in bed was the only place you see anything that was white. On the sheets it was just dirt come in and there wasn’t anything you could do, you couldn’t really see enough, the dirt was so thick in the house you couldn’t even see. Had linoleum on all the floors, and the dirt would just cover the linoleum ’till you couldn’t see what pattern it was. Finally, the dirt quit and the blowin’ and the wind would go down and it was just back to normal again. Except you had to clean out all that dust. I remember the old vacuum cleaner we had. It didn’t have the bag that when it got full you threw it away, you had to just shake it out and start all over. When you’d empty that bag you about choked to death on the dust as you would throw it away. That is really about all I remember. Just seemed like we’d get just enough of a shower when it was about over to where all that dirt and stuff would just ___ all the buildings and stuff would look like you had painted it with dust. That is really about all I can remember about the dirt storms. They was all about the same.

As I was growing up, I remember one time when I went with my dad out to ____, he had a transformer go bad and I went with him. The cutouts they had on the transformers at the time was kind of a, they called them plugs, and he was getting ready, it had blown a fuse, to fuse it up. He had fallen back in his earlier days and broke his leg so he never was able to climb poles after that, but he always carried a ladder. He put that ladder up there on the pole and he said, “Hold the ladder for me.” So I was standin’ there holding the bottom of the ladder. He had his rubber gloves but he didn’t use his hand to push this plug in the cutout. He started in there and then he took a board to tap it in there and when he did the fire just flew everwhere. I didn’t know whether to run, afraid if I run the ladder would fall over, I was afraid if I stayed there-I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I stayed. They had to change transformers.

It wasn’t anything exciting happened in my life ’till later on. When WW2 came along I worked in a service station part-time. I kind of was – done about whatever I wanted to really, done this and done that. Rather than be drafted into the Army I quit high school and went into the Navy. I spent about 18 months in the Navy and then I hit it about the right time because the war was really over by the time I was ready to get involved. They signed the peace treaty in Japan, so we just went in as [the] occupation force. I was over there for nine months before I came back home. It was just about 60 miles south of Tokyo at a base there. It was in the wintertime. The temperature wasn’t so cold, but it was always so wet and so damp that it always seemed like it was cold. We come back. ‘Course I started goin’ with Dorothy when she was 13 years old. We didn’t go together, we was just friends. I’d come up here to Liberal to go to the show or something,I’d stop by and pick her up and she’d come and we’d go and I’d take her back home. My sister was married to her cousin, actually that is the way we met. I lived with
my sister and her husband there in Hooker for a couple or three years. When I went into the service she would always write to me and everything. I’d come back home and I was always glad to see her. Next thing I knew we was just pretty close. l kind of blame her for keeping me going all the time cause she…I was kind of down sometimes, and she would write a letter. I would get a letter about every day from
her. I always looked for mail call, it was just a good thing. When I come back home, Mother and Dad were separated. I was livin’ at Adams, Oklahoma just across the line from Liberal. Me and Charlie and Julie and Speedy and Pat, my brother and sisters. My mother lived in Adams. I was drawin’ $90 a month from the government for going to school. I was driving a school bus. Back then you could drive a school
bus. So I was making $50 a month on driving a school bus and we was getting along pretty good. Mother worked on a ___ that was down there. My two younger brothers were old enough that they could drive a school bus too. So we had $90 a month plus $150 income. We thought we was doing pretty good. That was 1948 or ’47 actually. I graduated high school in ’48. Then after we got out of high school, we decided that we’d get married. We was really on top of the world. I think I had $80 and she probably had $50 or 60. [Laughing] Kids get married now days that way we’d have a fit.

DP: You know what my parents did? They had five dollars in their pocket and they gave that to the preacher that married them. So they had zero dollars!

JB: We went to Perryton and got married, I gave the preacher $20 and I thought he’d give me some change but he just said “Thank you” and stuck it in his pocket so I knew that was gone. We didn’t even have a car. We finally found a car. Over a period of time, Dorothy’s folks helped us off and on for a while. Finally, I had a job with a power company, Western Line Telephone at the time I went to work for them. I think they changed names five or six times before I retired. We had this car and we were doing pretty good and had a real nice car, a Ford. I and Dorothy had the opportunity to buy this house that we are living in now. There was friends of Dorothy’s that went to school with her and they said that if we could get the money they wanted us to have the house. We had to have $2,000 down payment. We didn’t have $2,000. We decided if we could sell the car and get enough money out of it we would sell the car to get the down payment. I knew the dealer down at Perryton real well, my brother-in-law Les worked for him. I went down there and told him that I needed $2,000 and I need it today and would he take my car and see if he can sell it. ‘”‘Course I thought surely it was worth that at the time. He said “Yeah.” So he just wrote me out a check for $2,000. A guy standing there said, “I”ll give you that for it.” I said, “You’ll have to talk to him ’cause it’s his car.” So we came back and got the house but we didn’t have a car then. I went down and looked around and found an old’ ’41 Ford. It didn’t have a window in
the left driver’s door. I looked it over, they wanted $I00 for it. I thought it looks good and sounds good so I had $100 for this car. It was a good car. I put a piece of plywood with a hole in it so that I could roll it up and down. [Laughing] That was a good old car. We didn’t have a bit of trouble with it. Had a brother that lived in ____, New Mexico we’d wanted to go down there but we still didn’t have enough money
to really – so I called him and told him. I said, “I’ll come and see you if you will feed me for a week.” He said, “Come on down.” We had $20. We drove to Amarillo and got us a hamburger and Coke and “course gasoline, 25 cents a gallon at the time. We drove on down to ___, parked the car and we stayed with them for a week. Got ready to come home, I filled up, drove back to Amarillo and had another
hamburger and Coke, filled up with gas. Had a dollar and some cents left. Couldn’t take a week’s vacation now on that much money! That is just kind of the things I remember.

We have been living in this house now, we will be married 60 years in August 2008. I used to think 60 years would be awful long time, but it seemed like it has gone by in a hurry. I couldn’t do without Dorothy now.

DP: Talk about other things you have done, your hobbies and interests. You have built things. You’ve done a lot of work on this house.

JB: We have built on to the house, more than doubled the size of the house. I did everything but cabinet work. My brother was a cabinet maker so he done all the cabinet work. As far as the sheetrock and stuff like that we did ourselves. Dorothy could tell you about washing dishes in the bathtub rather than having a kitchen to work in.

Dorothy got me started. She ordered a kit for a dulcimer. I put it together and I didn’t even know what it was. I told her that I could make something better looking than that. I didn’t have any tools. The first dulcimer I made, it took me just two weeks to get the thickness on the wood “cause I was just using a plain and a sander and stuff like that. But it was kind of interesting and it turned out pretty good. So I
started making more of them. Whenever Christmas time would come around she’d buy me a new tool of some sort until finally I had enough equipment I could make a plainer or turn out the top and sides and all that in about an hour or so and have it ready to go. Interesting part was I thought when you had to bend the sides, it is kind of an hourglass shape, and to bend them I thought all you had to do was just wet the wood and then you bend it however you want it. Made most of them out of walnut and cherry. Have made several different kinds. I soaked the wood, I tried to bend it and it would break every time. So, went down to the library and asked them, I said, “Do you have a book on how to bend the wood?” And they said yes they did. So I read the book and got to readin’ that you have to have heat with it. So I started experimenting. I made me a heating iron, you could buy an electric one for about $108 or something like that. I didn’t have $108 to do that with so I took a piece of two-inch stenwall conduit and put me a propane torch in the end of it just to experiment with. I went by the directions – you just kind of rock it back and forth. Drew my curve out on a board. Sure enough the wood started bending like it said it would and I kept a doin’ that and it worked so good that I never did get a [electric heating iron]-I still use that same thing today. It works real good. I really only wanted to make 400 before I quit making them. I am up to 380. I don’t know whether I will ever get the rest made or not. [Laughing]

DP: I think that is pretty close to your goal.

JB: Anyhow, I’d come home from work. Like I say I was line foreman for 30 years for the power company after I had learned the trade and everything. I’d come home from work and kinda be a little tense.

Sometimes why I’d go out in the shop and work and I’d work “till 10 or 11 o’clock. She”d holler at me and ask me if I was going to come to bed. I really enjoyed making those dulcimers. There was a lady called from Michigan and on eBay she had seen one for sale. She called me to ask about it, and this and that. She bought it. Then she called back later on and she said she really appreciated it. That’s the thing I like
about it. People that had them didn’t have problems with them. They’re good dulcimers. We have a friend, Jeff Curry in Kansas City, he has the old-time music shop and he sells them, plays all kinds of instruments. We stopped in to visit him one day and he said, “This is the best dulcimer in the United States!” I appreciated that. That is what I like best about them, the people that have them don’t have any trouble.
Today I really don’t do much of anything except set around and play with the dog. We get along pretty good.

DP: You also helped Terry build a house.

JB: Well, yes. I’ve done a lot of work for him, helped him. We just wired his garage the last time we were out there to see him in La Veta. I did build a grandfather clock. Did you see it? Dorothy kept telling me she wanted a grandfather clock so one year she said, “l got your birthday present.” She said, “l enrolled you in Vo-Tech woodworking shop.”

DP: That was great! You could probably teach the class.

JB: I went out there and he said, “What do you want to do?” And I said I want to make a grandfather clock. I had ordered the plans for it. I went out there a couple or three times. “Course there were several guys in there working. You had to wait so long if you needed to use the table saw, you had to wait for somebody to get through and different things so after about the third time I said, “I’m just going to do this at home.” In my own shop. So I went out there and I started making everything. The base for it is, you make it in three pieces. You make the base and then the waist, the up and down part and then the hood. I got the base made. I took it out there and showed him what I had done, the instructor. He said, “Looks good to me.” So then I made the waist and the waist slips down inside the base and it fit so good that you could slide it down in there but you couldn’t put a piece of paper in there, it was just that close. When I got through with that I started on the hood. The plans called for the clock to be mounted in the hood. I thought I would make a frame for the clock work and then just make a hood that slides over it so you can slide the hood off and get to the clock work. I made that and the piece that goes over the door on the hood is made with three pieces and I didn’t want three pieces, I wanted to make it out of one piece. So I asked the instructor how I could do that. He said, “Well, you can’t.” I said there had to be a way you can do it. So I asked my brother, the cabinet maker, and he said you can’t. You have to use three pieces. I said, “No, I am going to use one.” Finally, I was out in the shop, do this and do this experiment. Finally, I decided if I build the guide on the router itself I could do it. So I had to make four different bases or four different guides for the router. When I got all through, I had one piece. The miter joints and things just fit perfect. I was just tickled to death. When I got everything done and put together
the instructor came out to the house to see it and Dorothy asked him, “Did he get an A?” He said, “Yes, he got an A.” I am proud of it. I have had a lot of comments. One of the guys I worked with looked at it and he said, “My sister has been wanting one of those.” Later on he said that she wants you to build her one. I said, “No she couldn’t afford me building her one.” He said that oh, yes she can. I said that I’m not
a goin’ to do it. I made a violin for Terrin, our granddaughter. She lives in Kansas City now. She took lessons for just a little while. Entered a contest, she won $50. She just called the other day and said that she’s playing in the Kansas City Symphony and she is playing drum. Now she wants to take violin lessons and play the violin. I feel good about that. She is proud of it. I told her I will never make any more. It took me from the first of May to the last of September to get it. It is made from maple wood – what they use for musical instruments.

DP: Did you have instructions, patterns?

JB: Yes. I had a pattern I ordered. I didn’t really have the right tools – you have to vary the top and the bottom and instead of having the planes and things you use, I used rough sand paper and my thumb. I didn’t have any feeling from the joint down to the end of my finger when I got all through. As I got down closer to the thickness I wanted I’d use finer sand paper. But it turned out real good. The fret board
sticks out over the body about three or four inches or maybe more, I don’t remember now. It took me two weeks to mount that, get the right angle and everything on that fret board. When I got all done I was off a 64th of an inch on the depth and I was just tickled to death about that. So that turned out good too.

I guess looking back over my life I kind of get busy all the time doing something.

DP: It seems that I recall that when your son was that age you were active in scouts as a scout leader.

JB: Yes, I was assistant scout master for several years. A cub master for seven years. Then assistant scout master probably for that many more. One of our best things was when we took the boys on a canoe trip up in Canada. We had a good time up there. The Lord was with us all the time Ithink. One of the good things was when we got back, one of the fellows, we camped together and in the canoe together we
paddled together and all that. When we came back he accepted Christ as his savior. I was pretty pleased with that. It wasn’t anything I did, we just talked about how things were. So that turned out real good.

DP: You must have been the ideal scout leader. You would have enjoyed everything you did. The boys would have enjoyed it because you enjoyed it. You would have had a lot of good ideas. Things to do, how to do it.

JB: We had a good time. We had our own, the scout leaders, what we called the Ponderosa Patrol. I was Little Joe. Scout master Bob Griffin was Adam, and Hop Sing was Helmer. He was German and blondheaded so we had a blond-headed Hop Sing. Fred Helmer, he lived next door to us for a while. He was in the scouts too. We had the whole Platoon. We even had Sheriff ____. We had a good time. One time we was camped out up in Alvarado campground up in Colorado. We had this big old army tent we had set up and that was where we would eat our meals. We cooked this big old pot of burger scotch pudding. It must have been two foot in diameter and two foot tall or so. We was having a meeting there and one of the boys sat down on that pot and the lid flipped out from under him and he sat right down in it. I thought we was all going to die laughing. The same time when we was up there we had this ______ all the men had decided we wasn’t going to shave until we come back home. Dorothy and Fred’s wife had come and stayed in the campground across from where we was camping so after about three days I told Fred, “I can’t stand this any longer. I’ll buy the hamburger.” ‘Cause whoever shaved first had to buy the hamburgers. He said he would help me so we both shaved. That night we had the kangaroo court and one of the boys he was _____ and he was telling _____ said “He didn’t shave, he is just a young boy and just wasn’t able to grow a beard.” We went on for over an hour and finally Bob Griffin, our scoutmaster, got him up on the stand and he was asking him questions. Bob said, “I know he shaved ’cause I don”t see any whiskers.” He said, “You wouldn’t expect a young man like that to have whiskers like you, a forty-year-old man.” Of course, Bob was probably 32 years old at the time. He let out a big yell, “Forty!” We just had a good time wherever we went whatever we did. We worked with the young people at church with the puppets and one thing and another. We’re still feeding them I guess.

DP: Talk about your church affiliation and how you have been involved.

JB: Dorothy has gone to the First Baptist Church whenever we got married here in Liberal. I was converted at the Adams First Baptist Church. We moved to Liberal and I went to work for the power company. Over the years of course we was always active in the church and everything that went on, seemed like. The pastor of the church, Dr. Thorn, came to the house one day and wanted to know if I would serve as a deacon. I was kind of surprised and I asked him, “Why did you ask me to serve as a deacon?” And he said, “Well, we look at the wives of everybody that we are thinking about and if they are good cooks, we ask their husbands to serve as a deacon.” [Laughing]

DP: I remember him. He had a very dry sense of humor as I recall. He was one of the best pastors that church ever had I think.

JB: He was, he really was. I became one of the deacons in the church and I guess I served in every – we don’t have all the boards now that we used to have-I was on the trustees one time. I was president of the, or the chairman of the education committee, been on search committees for pastors. Just about anything. Worked with the young people all those years. We don’t have the interest that we used to
have, seems like, in our church. At one time we had about 85 young people just in the junior high department alone. That didn”t include the senior high. Seems to me like we just don’t, not as dedicated or something anymore. Personally, I am getting kind of wore out. We still serve on the funeral dinners and stuff like that, wherever they need help or something. I taught Sunday School class I don’t know how many years. I don’t want to do that anymore. We have a very good Sunday School teacher. We still do whatever we can.

DP: So, your faith has been an important part of your life?

JB: Oh yes. I don’t know what – I feel like the Lord has kept me alive for some reason or other. I look back, one night I was out in a storm and it had taken some stuff off of the top of the pole right outside of one of our substations and it was lightning and thundering and raining, wind blowing and l had to incline my pole to open some switches to check to see which way the trouble was and as I started to climb the pole l heard them call me on the radio so l just laid my ____ stick up against the pickup, got in the pickup and answered. They were giving me the address where they were out of power so then I repeated back what our instructions were so they would know we had it right. While I was repeating it back on the radio, lightning hit that pole that I was getting ready to climb and knocked about six foot out of the top of the pole. If he hadn’t of called me on the radio I would have been up on that pole. Whenever I finally turned loose, the operator said, “Joe, Joe, are you alright, what is going on?” Finally, I said, when he quit talking, I was alright but that pole I was getting ready to climb about six foot is gone
out of the top of it. If he hadn’t called me I don’t know what would have happened. It wouldn’t have been very good. That lightning when it hits a pole like that it just splits it and goes right down the pole. It just seems that things like that the Lord seemed to come through and take care of me. I am thankful for that.

DP: How has your faith experience affected your personality, the way you think about things, how you have conducted your life, just what does it mean to you to have faith in Christ?

JB: Well, I am thankful really for everything. I am thankful for Dorothy. I am thankful for a good warm bed at night. Thankful that the Lord has provided for us. I really can’t say enough in the way of being thankful. I still look forward someday-I am waiting for the Rapture where we can go together. But even that, I wouldn’t say I wish it was today because I think of other people that’s still lost and still need Christ. Each day I am just glad that the Lord is still in control. Other people don’t think that but I do.

DP: You seem like a very peaceful, gracious person.

JB: Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.

DP: I think Dorothy would go that far.

Dorothy: He has put up with a lot.

DP: I think our faith can make us more forgiving, more accepting and hopeful. All those things are part of our faith Ithink. Don’t you?

JB: Oh, Ithink so. There is no way that you can say this or that, you just have to believe. If I wasn’t here today, I would be perfectly satisfied other than the fact that I was goin’ off and leaving Dorothy. Yeah, it is kind of one you wish you would and you wish you wouldn’t. I guess whenever the Lord is ready, it’s time to come home. Until then, I guess I’ll do whatever I can do. I’m glad I don’t have to do it all over
again. [Laughing]

DP: One thing you didn’t talk about much was your family of origin. We had lunch together yesterday and your sister came into the restaurant and you said she was your baby sister. Tell us about your family and your brothers and sisters. Did your father continue to have work during those Depression years?

JB: He worked, he had a good job. He worked for the Southwestern Public Service. We didn’t have a lot as far as-I don’t remember ever being hungry. We had a lot of beans and potatoes and stuff like that. I don’t remember not having clothes or going barefooted when I was really young. There were 13 kids in the family. There was nine boys and four girls. I was seventh down. The older ones were actually gone
by the time I got old enough to really realize. I knew they was my brothers. I didn’t have anything as far as playing with them.

I remember we had a little dog called Bruno. He was a terrier. One of my older brothers got playing with me and sicked that dog onto me and that dog was really protective. If we was wrestling each other he’d sit there and growl and bark at us but if one of the neighbor boys got to wrestling with us, why we had to quit ’cause he’d bite. He got hold of my pant leg, my overalls, and ripped the pant leg clear up.
“Course I was crying because my overalls were ruined you know. He was working, he had a job and he went and bought me a new pair of overalls.

When I was younger in grade school, I don’t know whether people felt sorry for us. Fran Roberts – the Roberts Brothers funeral home was right across the street from us – she grew up right across the street from us. She was an only child. Her dad was the druggist and had worked in the drug store in Hooker. Dad had let the older boys dig a cave. He supervised it and made sure it was safe and everything. He
went into the barn and dug under the foundation and the druggist dug into this cave and they had an old ice 300-pound bucket from the plant. That was our stove. Had a stovepipe sticken’ up. We’d crawl down in there and Fran she’d come over and everybody just had a good time playing. In the wintertime when it would get so cold we’d go down in that cave and build us a fire. Her dad bought peanuts by the
bushel. I don’t know where he got them. This had been at times a cow shed, a milking shed. ‘Course they hadn’t used it for milking for years and years. It was all cleaned out and everything. But he would store these peanuts, they was raw peanuts, out there. We’d go over there and get us a five-gallon bucket or a three-gallon bucket of peanuts. Then we’d take them down in that cave and we’d built us a fire and lay them on top and roast those peanuts. We’d always go over and get them at night. [Laughing] Come to find out later he was buying them for us to start with.

DP: It would have spoiled your fun if you had known that.

JB: We thought we were really getting by with something. Anyhow when it’d come time to get a meal, she’d sit down. She laughed one time and said, “l don’t think your mother knows she has an extra kid at the table.” Anyhow, we had a family reunion one time and she said, “I’m coming.” Every time we see her today, she still feels like she’s part of the family.

Everybody grew up and scattered, went here and there. Pat is the youngest of the family, the youngest of the 13. Everybody thought we grew our own baseball team. Pat was a basketball player. How she could play basketball! She could play circles around any of the boys.

DP: As I recall girls basketball was a big thing in Oklahoma.

JB: It was. She had an offer of a scholarship to go to Wayland College when the Wayland Queens was number one in the nation. But she was too _____[beat up?] by that time.

DP: Too many brothers.

Dorothy: She could outplay the brothers.

JB: She’s not very tall, but she could dribble that ball just like a professional does now. She lives in Liberal now. She has two boys, one of them, Bob, lives with her and works at First National Bank. The other one is an engineer, he lives in Tulsa. We just kind of – just getting old I guess.

We have one son, Terry. He lives in La Vita, Colorado. He was born in 1952.

Dorothy: He was born on Joe’s birthday.

JB: I just called my family and said, “Well, I got my birthday present.” We got married in 1948. We lived in the same house, well, we lived in Blue Bonnets Court first of all. You’re not anybody if you haven’t lived in Blue Bonnet Courts! We bought this house and then built on to it and have lived here ever since.

DP: This has been a wonderful story, Joe.

JB: Well, I don’t know about that.

DP: Oh, it has, you have always been a special person and many people think of you as a special person.

JB: You’re going to embarrass me.

DP: No, you just need to be grateful. I’m sure you are.

JB: I am thankful for the friends we have.

DP: You have been a wonderful contribution to the family and to the community. You are a much loved person.

JB: Thank you.