9: Interview with Esther Swan – Liberal Memorial Library

Date: April 2008

Piace: Home of Esther Swan on farm north of Liberal

Interviewer: Donita Priefert Payne

ES: My name is Esther Swan. I was married to Dick Swan and I now live on the place that he was born north of Liberal. I was born in 1924. Dick was born November 1, 1921. His parents were Lee and Ruth Swan. He had three brothers, Mefford, Vernon, Allan. Vernon was killed shortly after graduation from high school in a car wreck. Dick”s uncle, Charlie Swan, who lived over by Moscow, was killed in WWI. [Note: it must have been a different Swan as Charlie was alive in the “30s and “40s and was married to Roma.] Allan, Mefford and Dick were all in the service in WW2. Dick was discharged early, he wasn’t in very long.

DP: Tell us when you and Dick met and when you were married.

ES: My parents lived east of town. His grandparents were our neighbors, Ira Swan. I had known him since I was about ten years old. I was a senior in high school when we started dating. We were married in September after we got out of high school. We were in the same class in high school. Dick was already in the service when we were married. He was in the Coast Guard. I stayed in Liberal after we were married. When he was discharged we lived in Liberal and he went to work for Panhandle Eastern out at the compressor station. He was there for two years. Then we moved to a Panhandle Eastern camp between Stinnett and Dumas, Texas. I was deputy county treasurer until we moved. I worked for Panhandle Eastern for a while down there, not too long, less than a year, I don’t remember how long it was. Then we moved further back into the hills between Dumas and Amarillo, east a ways on the Weymouth ranch. There was another camp out there, there were seven houses. It was isolated. We lived on the Weymouth Ranch and there was a creek that ran through it just a little way from our camp.
It was a lonely place but it was a nice area. We bought groceries in Dumas or Amarillo, at a corner store at Four Station. The store is gone but the area is still there but has an overpass over the highway. The place that we lived is not under water but is a part of Meredith Lake, which I think supplies water for Amarillo. We lived there for five years and then moved back to Hugoton and then Dick was transferred
to Liberal. Panhandle spun off Anadarko. Dick went to work for Anadarko and retired from Anadarko. When we lived in Hugoton, I worked in the automobile business. When we moved to Liberal, I worked for Panhandle Eastern for ten years. Panhandle moved their offices and I worked for Nash Finch in their office for about ten years.

We started in farming way back. In Texas Dick was in custom farming. He had a tractor and some kind of a plow, I don’t know what kind it was. When we moved to Hugoton, we rented some ground south of Hugoton and when we came over here we eventually, well before we moved over here, Dick”s dad had died and Dick and Larry were farming this over here. We have been farming this land for a long time. We
bought Mefford”s and Allan’s shares.

Dick died July 24, 1988. It has been 20 years. He was 66. I had been retired two years and we had been traveling. We had one son, Larry. He lives next door.

DP: Dick and Delbert Bryant were good friends.

ES: I don’t think they remembered not knowing each other. I don’t know whether Delbert was born out there [where Delbert lived] or not, he probably was, and Dick was born on this ground. They always were friends. Of course, we became friends with Delbert and Kathy particularly after we moved to Hugoton. After we came to Liberal we became very close. They were wonderful to me after Dick died.

DP: Talk about Delbert, what kind of a person he was.

ES: He was always ready to help you. Friendly. He loved to talk to people. He loved to visit. Kathy didn’t like it so much. Delbert went by himself a lot. I have a hard time describing them. They were very different. They were both wonderful to me. Took me places. Kathy, if you may remember, had fears of many things. I went on vacation with them a few times. They’d ask me to go someplace and I said, “Kathy don’t you want to go someplace by yourselves, the two of you sometimes?” She said “No l like for you to go with us because if anything happens to Delbert I can’t drive.” I said your kids could be there within three or four hours by plane or train or automobile. But she was afraid, she had funny phobias I would say. She was a very rational and intelligent person, but she just had these things she was afraid of.

DP: Delbert was there to help anyone who needed help. Everyone says that about him.

ES: Yes, he was. He was always friendly, even to people he didn’t like he was friendly with. [Laughing] Something a lot of us can’t say.

DP: Talk about Dick’s parents, Lee and Ruth.

ES: He was something over six feet and she was something over five feet, but not much over five feet. When Larry gets on his soap box and his face begins to get red or his neck, I tell him, “You remind me of your Grandpa Swan.” Larry’s grandmother, she liked to help people and she liked to entertain. She liked to visit with people. She had cottony white hair. Unusual I thought, at the time.

DP: What were some of Lee’s ideas or subjects?

ES:Politics and religion. [Laughing]

DP: Can you remember some of his ideas? Some of the things he talked about?

ES: Mefford’s wife at that time, Jean, belonged to the Church of Christ. Dick’s dad did not believe in a lot of the Church of Christ’s beliefs. They argued every time they were together. He argued with himself about it at other times. [Laughing] That is one thing I remember most. In politics he was staunch republican.

DP: Who were some of his favorite politicians?

ES: I really don’t remember.

DP: Did he ever talk about Franklin D. Roosevelt?

ES: My parents did. They thought he was a savior. I don’t recall that Swans did.

DP: What did your dad say about Roosevelt?

ES: He came out to Liberal in the early ’30s when times were so hard. My father did. I was born in ____, Kansas, near Salina and we came here from Hutchinson when I was five years old, 1929. We lived various places but for quite a while we were east of Liberal. I went to Green Valley School, the same school that Dick”s dad went to, but different times.

DP: What did your father think about politics and Roosevelt? It”s hard to remember, you may need to think about it a while.

ES: Franklin Roosevelt did put a little bit of money in people”s pockets. Of course, I think the war was what got the economy jump started. That’s a bad way to start the economy but I didn’t know it at the time. I don’t know if many people realized it even.

DP: Do you remember anything about the Depression and the Dust Bowl?

ES: It was April 14th, my birthday, and I think I was 13. We were out for a ride in the country. It was a Sunday afternoon. In 1933 we had that big duster that rolled in, I think it was Black Sunday. (Was it 1935?) We were out on the road, it just came from the north, just enveloped us. It was black of course. My mother was sure it was the end of the world. I knew it was a dirt storm, had been through a lot of them. After a while it cleared up enough for us to go home. I don’t recall if there was any wind at first, probably there was. We were so accustomed to wind we didn’t realize. That certainly made an impression on me, I think most anyone who was out in it.

Other memories? Dirt everyplace. Our house wasn’t very tight. The dust came in. It was awful. I walked to school, it was two miles to and from school. Usually the road was blown shut with dirt. You couldn’t get through except with a tractor. People hated to get their tractors out. Mostly I walked by myself. When I was a little kid on what is now Pine Street, my parents took me to school when I was in the second grade. They moved to town for a while and then we were back out in that area.

DP: It was probably really bad out east of town. It is so sandy there.

ES: It was awful. The place where we lived last, I know, Wayne Cope owned it. It is irrigated ground. Irrigation has done a lot. I hope the irrigation water lasts. I am a little bit of an environmentalist. My father was a farmer.

DP: The book, The Worst Hard Times – have you read it? [No Esther had not read it.] Timothy Egan is the author. It is about the Dust Bowl. It centers on Dalhart, Texas, Boise City, Olahoma and Springfield, Colorado. When I read that book my reaction was that I had never heard my parents tell stories as severe as a lot of the stories in that book. That is the thing that triggered my coming back here and talking to people.

ES: It couldn’t have been much worse than it was here.

DP: Did you know anyone who died of dust pneumonia?

ES: Yes. We had a neighbor whose daughter died. The name was Brooks, I have forgotten the daughter’s name. I think the one who died was married to a Grimsley who lived out there. Dick’s dad’s stepsister, Sarah Mahoney, had dust pneumonia. In later years. I did not take care of her financially, but when she was unable to care for herself and take care of her affairs, I took care of those for her. She was in a rest
home and I went to see her every day and if l didn’t she called it to my attention. [Laughing] She was 96 when she died. She had a right to get a little cross now and then I thought.

DP: Did your father have any cattle during those years?

ES: Some but not a lot. It was mostly poor dirt farming. We didn’t have much grass so couldn’t do anything with cattle. He had feed for the cattle he had. Or else he sold them.

DP: How did your parents manage during those years, financially?

ES: Meagerly. We had very little.

DP: Did your father work for any of the government programs?

ES: One winter or two, he called it WPA.

DP: My father did something like that for a period of time. I don’t think it was too long. My parents were married in 1932.

ES: Dick worked for your grandfather. And your dad offered him a little bit more per day, it was either that or vice versa, but I believe it was your dad that paid him a little more. [Laughing]

DP: I was driving around over the land recently with Fred Bloom who farms it now and I thought, you know my grandad only owned the south half of that section. I don’t know if they were farming that half section east of where their house was or not. I wondered how they ever made a living That land is poor land. There wasn’t that much.

ES: That’s the way with Dick’s folks, they owned this quarter and rented several around. It wasn’t very much compared to what people farm now. But they had horses remember. A quarter or two was about all they could handle.

DP: Then when you got a tractor you could manage more. Tell me more about Lee and Ruth Swan. I remember Lee as liking talking. He had very strong opinions, I remember this as a little kid. Seems that he liked to read, was quite a reader. At Grange they had debates and he participated in those and gave speeches. Seems like he also sang in a quartet. Do you remember that?

ES: I have only been to Grange a time or two. I don’t remember Lee being in a quartet. It must have been before my time. I don’t recall anybody talking about it. There is an old two-bottom plow that Larry has pulled up in front of his shed that he said instead of bearings in it, it has barbed wire wrapped around it. I know he had an old International truck that Dick used to come to see me in. They got a new car, I think it was after the war. Probably a ’46 or a ’47 model. I worked at Ford Lincoln Mercury at that time. They usually had Pontiacs. I think they still had a Mercury when she died.

DP: They were very active in Grange –

ES: Yes.

For a number of years Dick’s dad worked in the same office where my son’s wife works. FSA office. He was the director many years ago. It wasn’t called FSA, I can’t remember what it was called. [One of the sons] did most of the farming and Lee worked in the office. Several years during the war. The sons were home [to do the farming] but one by one they left [to go to the service].

DP: Now, Dick is gone, but he lived here, Vernon was killed in an accident. I knew that one of their sons had died andl didn’t recall how that happened. Mefford and Allan…

ES:Allan took a long route. He was in Pampa, Texas for a while with a parts company and he ended up in Sacramento and then to Portland. Most of his time was spent in and around Portland. He had a parts business there. Then he sold that and went to commercial salmon fishing. He died of cancer, probably around 1980.

DP: So, he had a boat and was fishing on the ocean! That is interesting. And then Mefford –

ES: Mefford lived in Kansas City. I think he worked for an insurance firm. He graduated from KU and worked for a while in insurance, not sure what capacity. Then they moved to Portland where Allan was and then he and his wife divorced. Ithink he moved back to Kansas City, then back to Portland, then divorced, then back to Kansas City and remarried. He was married to Jean, and she belonged to the Church of Christ. Jean got in touch with me about two months ago. Her husband had died and she was trying to get social security on Mefford’s account and for some reason couldn’t find the marriage records in Abilene, Texas where they were married. Dick and I were at the wedding so I wrote an account for her.l had kept up with all of Allan’s ex-wives but… [Laughing]

DP: It sounds like your husband was the most stable of them all!

ES: I believe so. [Laughing] I got the prize.

DP: What about Charlie and Roma Swan? I knew them from Grange when I was a kid.

ES: Charlie was a dapper dresser and Aunt Roma saw to it that he was and enjoyed that. Of course, Aunt Roma taught school for as long as they would let her. She had retired and she was on a trip with a bunch of other senior citizens I believe in Corsicana, Texas, and died down there. She lived a pretty full life, and goodness she was active. She just did everything all the time. She was just like a grasshopper. I think she died at 78. Charlie had died years before that. She taught in Hugoton. I believe she had retired from teaching before she moved to Liberal. She lived next door to a nephew on the Browne’s side. She and Cliff Browne were brother and sister.

DP: I didn’t remember that.

ES: Maxine (Browne) thought Dick was wonderful. I was embarrassed once when I took something back to Maxine’s. Allan’s widow was with me at the time. I think maybe it was after Dick died, she came and stayed with me for a while, took something back to Maxine and she spent the whole time telling me how wonderful Dick was. I felt badly for Doris because Allan was pretty mischievous. Dick was too but he was a little slyer. Dick did a lot for Maxine. Larry did too. She would call about plowing her road. Larry would put it off just as long as he could. He said, “That old lady doesn’t have any business out in this snow.”

DP: Charlie and Roma were very active in the Grange.

ES: Yes. She was in her teaching organizations. I believe he was a Mason, belonged to the Masonic Lodge. Dick belonged to the Masonic Lodge. I don’t think any of the other Swans did. Dick was only active when we lived in Hugoton. When we came over here, he never was active.

DP: The original Swans, the grandparents, their names again were –

ES: I can’t remember. [lra and ?]

DP: Where did they come from?

ES: Someplace around Pratt and then from Newton or in that area. I think there are still some Swans at Newton.

DP: Do you have any idea what year they came to this part of the country?

ES: No I don’t. The first Mrs. Ira Swan had died and he moved out here. They were there east of town when we moved there. He had married, I think she was Minnie Snow. That is the relationship with Sarah Mahoney, Sarah was Minnie’s daughter. Ira is buried in the Swan plot in Liberal Cemetery. Lee and Ruth are also buried in the Swan plot. And Roma and Charlie and Vernon, Joe [Lee’s brother], Dick, and I will be and there is a place for Larry.

DP: Did Dick ever talk about the Rural Sunday School or the Christian Endeavor?

ES: Oh I remember that. I don’t remember very much. I wasn’t there very much. Was it Marlene Franz who played the piano there? I believe she did.

DP: Or it might have been Gaylene Graham. My mother could have some too until Gaylene was grown.

ES: I remember there was a young girl and somehow I thought it was Marlene but it might not have been.

DP: I know that Gaylene played. She was excellent. Marlene Franz played the piano too, I expect. Did Dick ever talk about CE?

ES: Yes, I think they were pretty regular. I really don’t know anything about that.

DP: There were a lot of young people in the neighborhood in that era. A lot of them went to the war. That was the age that all those young men went to the service. CE was actually a national movement.

You mentioned Maxine Browne, what kind of stories can you tell me about Maxine?

ES: Mine or somebody else’s ? Larry said that every time I [Larry] say anything, I say, “I don’t care, Ilike Maxine.”

DP: I want all of those stories. Everything.

ES: I don’t think I can think of anything off hand.

DP: Just talk about her as a person.

ES: Well, she was bossy. And I liked her and she liked me for some reason. We always got along well. They were good neighbors. Cliff was very different from Maxine. Maxine was not the world’s best housekeeper.

DP: I think that is probably an understatement. [Laughing] I have been in that house, I remember.

ES: Cliff built onto that house. It was pretty nice. They kept the front of it pretty clean but the back was something else. I think it is a shame that when she died, I don’t think that Clifton Max ever took anything out of that house. Maybe you know about that.

DP: Well, I know that she was living there in terrible conditions and it didn’t seem that she was going to do anything about it. My mother and Laree Rice went to visit her one day and they said, “Maxine, let’s go for a ride.” They got her in the car. They had arranged with the nursing home in Meade so they took her up there that day – that was the ride. Somehow they got her to stay.

ES: She needed to have been there a long time before that. She used to call Larry almost daily for a while that something was wrong here or there. She wasn’t afraid, she had a gun. That was scary in itself! She was independent. One day she called me, it was after Dick had died. She still cleaned up and looked nice when she went out in public at that time. I did a lot of traveling after Dick died and kind of lost track of
her. One day she called me and asked if I was busy and I said that no I wasn’t. What she meant was that she wanted to talk. “Do you have time to come to lunch with me?” she asked. Her mind was working pretty well most of the time. I knew she wasn’t thinking well [at the end when she still lived here]. She never had anything fixed. Things were in pieces.

DP: Tell us some stories that you have heard about her. Kathy Bryant told me that she didn’t like her because she [Maxine] always knew the facts and you would come to find out she was right. Something to that effect. [Laughing] I think that is an interesting thing.

ES: I remember when Dick was in the first or second grade he was sick a lot. In fact he missed a whole year of school almost with ear aches and things like that. Maxine sat him on her knee at the desk. [She was the teacher.] She liked Dick. I think it was called Antelope Valley School.

DP: My parents had known her always, and my grandparents. She was somehow related to the Harveys. I thought that she was a Harvey but I was over at the Arkalon Cemetery just yesterday and her name was Maxine Pritchard Brown.

ES: I think her mother was married several times.

DP: I called up Wayne Phillips. He was out of town but his son was there. Wayne is 66 years old. He was related to Maxine so next time I come I want to talk to him.

ES: Yes, Betty Phillips cleaned house for me. She was very nice.

DP: There was a Lawrence Phillips, he was probably Wayne’s father.

ES: Yes, they had the two boys, one is deaf. I can’t remember their names anymore.

DP: My folks and grandparents had known Maxine from the time she was a young person. My folks thought that Maxine was a genius. She was domineering, she was opinionated, she was vocal, very difficult to get along with, but at the same time she was a very gifted, very intelligent person.

ES: I always got along with her. Maybe we were two of a kind. I am not as outgoing as Maxine, that is for sure.

DP: My folks got along with her too. If you didn’t take her too seriously you could probably get along with her. [Laughing] Of course, she was extremely active in Grange. They did a lot of things together. There was a period when Grange was a very active and very important part of the community and there were a number of families that were very involved at that time. It was very much a center of community activity for several years.

ES: Now, we know our neighbors sort of. We speak and that’s it. We don’t visit, which is partly my fault, I imagine. Like I said I am not an outgoing person particularly.

DP: I hope to get some information on Maxine. Does her son still live in Dodge City?

ES: Yes. I think there were a lot of hard feelings.

DP: Well, he wasn’t born until they were pretty old. Both Cliff and Maxine were volatile personalities.

ES: Well, I don’t know about Cliff.

DP: Oh, I think he was too. [Omitted comments about Clifton Max as I know nothing about him.]

ES: Clifton Max always seemed like kind of a quiet kid. I was around him just a little. DP: Cliff and Maxine were an important part of this community and I would like to get some accurate information on their background.

ES: Have you talked to Lanora Webb?

DP: They came into the community after that period.

ES: I couldn’t think of anybody else.

DP: I talked to Norman Bloom. He grew up kind of in this community. And Bill Fitzgerald, Lanora. That is about all who are left in the community. I talked to the Grahams today. Leon is gone. The things they remember are a little after those very early times. Talked to Karen and then we were on the telephone with Gaylene. She lives in the eastern side of Oklahoma. They have a lot to say and we could have gone
on for longer. Very interesting.

ES: Somehow, weren’t the Harndens, the Grahams, the Kenneth Browns –

DP: Yes, Kenneth Brown and my dad were first cousins, their mothers were sisters. Della Eickman Priefert and Edna Eickman Brown. They grew up in Chester, Nebraska area, north of Salina right on the Kansas-Nebraska line. My Grandad Priefert came from there also. My grandmother, Opal Fraim, was Opal Jennison. Where Rices live, that is where the Jennisons lived. Anna Harnden was Anna Jennison
Harnden. She was a sister to my grandmother’s father. Francis Harnden was married to Hazel Graham, Clifford Graham”s sister. I had forgotten that Vern Harnden’s first wife, Hattie, was also a Graham. They had twins, she died either in childbirth or shortly thereafter. So brothers had married sisters. The mother and twins both died. I am not sure whether it was all at the same time or just when. This person
is related to that person and that one to this one-it goes on and on.

ES: In Hugoton I found out that everybody in that small town was related to everyone else. You had to be very careful. Some of them were related to my sister-in-law so I had to be doubly careful as I didn’t really know them.

DP: I have always said that in these communities there has to be a real sense of manners. You are close to the people, you know them well, but still there is a certain distance and very much a manner custom that is maintained and has to be maintained because you know these people all your lives.

ES: We don’t just pop in on one another. Of course, we are all related. My granddaughter lives in the old farm house. Larry has two children from his first wife. He adopted Jamie, she belonged to Paula. He adopted her when she was pretty small.

DP: Italk to Paula on the telephone when I call the USDA office. She has worked there for many years. She seems to be very efficient.

ES: Yes, she has worked there many years. She is a real intelligent person.

DP: What has it been like, being a farm wife and living here in the country?

ES: I always thought I didn’t want to be into farming or the oil business. I ended up in both, all my life. [Laughing] It is not too bad a life. It could have been worse. The oil business was the best. I enjoyed working for Panhandle Eastern. I worked in Kansas City for a while. The office I was in in Liberal moved to Kansas City, they moved me up there. I stayed in a hotel for a long time. They flew me home on
weekends. I think they got tired of that, I was tired of it. So I resigned. I then worked for Nash Finch for a while. Stayed because I thought I was too old to get another job and I was afraid to quit and thought that I would not like not working. I have found I can do nothing with the best of them. (Those that do nothing.) I don’t know if you remember how energetic Dick was. He couldn’t be still, he was always having to do something. I thought when he retires I don’t know what I will do. When we traveled we had a fifth wheel. He used the pickup at home around here. We didn’t do as much [traveling] as we had wanted to. We had come home for my granddaughter’s graduation from college. He was helping with the farm and he was burned. He was priming a carburetor and he jumped and the truck backfired. He lived for about five weeks, was in the hospital, the burn unit at St. Francis in Wichita most of that time. There was really no hope for him after he was burned. He went into a coma after about five days.

DP: Tragedies –

ES: Yes, they happen. It is kind of an irony that Dick was in the oil business, oil and gas, which is very dangerous business and came out of that and into a simple farm accident that he knew better. That’s the way things seem to happen.

DP: It is a difficult adjustment after your husband dies, someone you have been with years and years and you have to make a life of your own and it is not easy.

ES: Well, I was fortunate to have Delbert and Kathy and relatives around. There used to be a lot of Swans and Cassidys who thought I was one of them. I had been in the family so long. They were very thoughtful of me. After Delbert and Kathy died, my sister-in-law died about the same time Delbert did. Kathy moved to town and Kathy’s thinking became skewed.

DP: Yes, her paranoia became intensified. I would try to see her when I came here to visit. I remember a couple of times I had a very nice visit with her. It was in her apartment.

ES: She always couldn’t see anybody because she was afraid of infection. She would always tell me, “Now when you are feeling real good come and see me.”

DP: The people at the retirement home said for me to go see her. They took me up and knocked at the door and she was glad to see me. But if I had called ahead I don’t know if she would have seen me or not.

ES: I had been in that apartment many times when she was more herself. You could hear the doorbell all over that little apartment. I think the last time I visited her we had visited a long time, and she said, “You are Dick’s wife aren’t you?” Whenever she was off on a tangent her eyes looked funny.

DP: Did you know Ruth, her sister?

ES: Yes I did.

DP: She was just the opposite of Kathy.

ES: Oh my goodness she was. They looked a lot alike. Their personalities were so different.

DP: When I think of Kathy and Ruth as little girls, I am sure that Ruth was always this bouncy, outgoing vivacious child while Kathy was much quieter. It would be difficult to compete with a sister who was this person like Ruth.

ES: You know she was in the Army, I suppose the Wax’s, I don’t really know.

DP: Yes, she was, I don”t know the details either.

ES: I think she was in a wreck and was discharged, I don’t think she was seriously injured. I think she got a little bit of disability for that.

DP: Stanley and Gary would know that history. I haven’t been in contact with them for a while. Paul, my brother, heard from them within the last year or so. They are both in Oklahoma City. I need to get in contact with them. I am going to Kansas City soon. I have been here almost two weeks. I had not planned on staying here that long but there have been a lot of things that I needed to do so it has turned out to be about two weeks. I appreciate visiting with you today.

ES: I enjoyed talking to you. I don’t think I have been very much help.

DP: I knew that you would not know a lot about the particulars but that you would know something about the Swan family. They were such good friends of my grandparents. They used to get together to play cards. They played a lot of Rook. I don’t know what other games. My grandad liked games. He and Lee liked to talk.

ES: When they were younger they all played baseball. Sunday afternoons. Lee was involved in that.

DP: Yes. My grandad loved to play baseball I know. So that friendship went back a long way. Probably from the time they were young married couples.

ES: I think that Dick’s parents moved out here when they were just first married. This place in the first place was in the name of Ira Swan. He never lived here. I imagine Lee was not of age. He was not of age when they were married. Dick’s mother was a year older than his dad. I am sure that his grandfather must have put it in his name and then later transfer it to Lee. I had a receipt for certain. I think it is on the abstract, there is only one owner before the Swans. I can’t remember the name of the people, ordinarily I would but it doesn’t come to me now.

DP: So it was homesteaded and then maybe one owner and then the Swans.

ES: Seems like it was Owens but I am not sure. But it has been in the family something less than 100 years.

DP: But close to 100 years. That is pretty typical for this community.

ES: I believe it is too.

DP: My grandparents came around 1908. The records are there, but just now I don’t remember exactly.

ES: But your line is kind of like the Swan line is going to be. I don’t think any of Larry”s kids are interested. I know his son isn’t, he is a computer nerd. He taught computers in Garden high school for a while, about ten-12 years, and then he went to work for Sunflower Electric as a ____. None of his [Larry’s] sons-in-law are interested in farming.

DP: The farmers that are here become bigger and bigger because the old families don’t come back. You have irrigation going now.

ES: Yes. Dick and I put that in. As I said I am an environmentalist. I guess I feel guilty about it more than anything because I feel like we are using the water we may need but then, to keep up with the world I guess it is necessary thing. I have mixed feelings about it.

DP: I think a lot of people do actually. Bill Fitzgerald thought that before the water gave out that the price of energy would stop irrigation.

ES: It is already putting a damper on it. That is one reason people have started raising cotton in this country because it takes less water than corn.

DP: They can always raise wheat here.

ES: In this country we have hot winds, high winds and hail. All those are enemies of wheat.

DP: Wheat is certainly one of the best adapted crops for here.

ES: Yes, it takes less water. With irrigated corn or milo you are fairly certain of a crop and you insure against hail. Wheat, you have other things that happen to it.

DP: With wheat you insure for hail too. It has been pleasant talking to with you today. I appreciate your time.

ES: My time is not very valuable these days.

DP: Oh, I don’t know! [Laughing]

ES: lt was yesterday that I had such a terrible day. The electricity went off. We are hardly ever without electricity, it is very unusual. I waited a while. I had an appointment with a doctor in Garden City at two o’clock and I had thought I would go early and get my errands done because I always feel like coming home after seeing the doctor. I waited a while and called CMS electric and they said they had turned it off to do some repairs. It would be on in one-and-a-half hours. I figured two hours would give me plenty of time to get there, I won’t have to hurry. I always leave about 12:30. Larry stopped by to muscle the garage door up for me. The electricity didn’t come on so I muscled up that garage door. I pushed it a little but I did not speed [driving on the way to Garden City].

DP: Speaking of electricity, I forgot to mention to you. Do you remember how your parents when you were growing up and how Lee and Ruth –

ES: We [her parents] had a six-volt system, so did the Swans, and a wind charger. We had electricity. It operated a few little single very small bulbs and a radio when we had enough battery power. When we didn’t, we didn’t listen to the radio. I remember, I think my parents didn’t have electricity until after my dad died and moved to town. They had the wind charger but they didn’t have electricity. My dad died when I was 22.

DP: How did your mom do the laundry?

ES: We had a wash board and a tub. She finally got a Maytag which put the exhaust out the door, outside. Had to leave the door open. A gasoline motor on it.

DP: How about Lee and Ruth?

ES: She went to town all of her days of the family, she went to the Help-Yourself-Laundry and enjoyed every minute of it. She didn’t want a washer and dryer.

DP: When her boys were young and growing up did she also do that then?

ES: Yes. I don’t know when they were very small if there were such places. Probably had a wash tub and a board like other people. I don’t know. I have scrubbed some on the washboard myself. Larry and I were talking yesterday how very much we depend on electricity. Everything. We got rid of outdoor toilets. I think it is wonderful. I thank the Lord every day for what I have.

DP: One summer I was here working on the house where my grandparents had lived, it had been rented for years but really needed some work. So I came to work on it and I stayed in that house while the work was being done. It was kind of like camping out. There were some days I didn’t have electricity. I would come and go between KC and here. Finally, I brought a little refrigerator that I could get into the car. I
didn’t have water in the bathroom for a while but I could get a pitcher of water and pour that over me, I called it a pour-over. But being without refrigeration was a major inconvenience, more so than anything else.

Again, I will say thank you a lot.

ES: I enjoyed seeing you. I would not have known you.

DP: I have white hair am a little fatter.

In a later conversation Esther talked a bit more about the death of Vernon Swan, Dick’s brother. Vernon and Pauline Chance were killed in an auto accident. They had dated in high school. The accident happened soon after they had graduated. Pauline was the daughter of Lloyd and Leona Chance. The Chance family lived for many years on a farm north and west of Liberal, across the road from the Henry Guttridge farm (west on the Hugoton highway at the Marteney Road intersection). The Chances moved into Liberal later. In the interview with Dale Kapp he remembers Virginia Chance doing chalk drawings at the Sunday School. Virginia was also part of this Chance family. Another Chance daughter, Jouette, married Jerry Salley. They had three sons. Jouette had lupus disease which caused her death.

Lloyd and Leona were very active Grange members for several years.

Esther Swan provided some details about her family of origin. Her parents were James C.Altland and Kathrine Miller Heckman Altland. Esther has a brother, Robert Lee Altland.

Esther had a half-brother and two half-sisters, James H. Altland, Christine Altland Swafford and Mary Altland.

There were two other half-brothers, Lawrence Heckman and Edwin Heckman. Lawrence had a son, Steve Heckman, who lived in Liberal and was a recognized artist and teacher.

Other persons mentioned in Esthe’s interview were Charles and Roma Swan. Charles was a brother of Lee Swan, Esther’s father-in-law. Roma was a sister of Cliff Browne.

Delbert and Kathy Bryant were also mentioned. Delbert is part of the Fraim and Jennison family and
details about him are in the chapter written by Donita Priefert Payne.