Keith Tillotson
Perry (1927)
After my parents got divorced my step-dad Perry came into the picture. And he came in, but all he was interested in was cutting down trees and selling fence posts and wood and stuff like that. But then, as the stumps were routed out – or we burned them out – we got a little bit more tillable soil. You can imagine thousands of years of just building up topsoil – the topsoil was deep. You didn't have to fertilize it or anything.
He spent all the money he made. We grew vegetables, and we'd take them to town. But you couldn't depend on him. He was supposed to supply all the potatoes for this one grocery in town. But he didn't – when it come down to it, he didn't do it. We'd haul things down to Omaha to sell them, like tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupes, muskmelons and things like that. But he couldn't stand it – start to get money coming in, he would sell everything to somebody else at a low price, so he could go buy liquor. Then he'd be drunk.
Listen to Keith tell this story
One time when I was about 12 years old, I had to drive him back from Omaha. Can you imagine me 12 years old and driving this truck? And the guy that owned the truck – they were layin' in the back, him and Dad drunk. I'm drivin' this truck, and the way home is 50 miles. I'm lucky I got out of Omaha with it. I'm scared stiff, you know – I didn't know too much about this truck. It was a big truck – today it wouldn't be a big truck – a stake truck. I'm driving this thing home – the cement roads there had curbs on them on the edge. I'm going up a hill – you never could make a hill without shiftin' gears – and I goofed around and shifted gears, and I got the thing in reverse. I was backing up – I ran off the curb, and that stopped me and woke me up. Cause I'm gettin' sleepy – exhaust was coming up through the floorboards – had a leaky exhaust. I'm gettin' sleepy, and I said, "Boy, there's something wrong here." So I opened up the windows, and I run up and down the road for a while after I stopped it. Then I started it up and got it on home. They were just layin' in the back. When I was backing up, I was probably a hundred feet from a little creek. I could have dumped them off into it, but I kept going. That's one reason I learned how to drive so young.
The Gaers and Dents were all mixed up. My grandmother was a Gaer, and she was a cousin of Perry's father. One of Perry's uncles lived right by Red Line. They called him Stub – Stub Gaer. He was Perry's uncle. So anyway, my granddad married a Gaer – that's what it amounted to. And Perry was my mother's cousin – I guess they were second cousins.
Ray Baldman [was] a friend of mine. Perry's brother Marvin married Ray Baldman's sister. They were from California. One time the whole family moved out to California – guess they didn't like it and they came back. But that's where Marvin met Dolly, Ray's sister. She was quite a bit younger than Marvin – she was about probably around 20 years younger. Marvin was probably 18 years older than Perry. Perry was one year younger than my mother. One of their daughters, Margaret, married one of the Dents. So they're gettin' mixed back together again.
But, [Perry] was an alcoholic, and that's where all the money went. He was a good gardener – he could grow vegetables. He learned how to do that when the Gaers were out in California for a few years, and they learned a lot about gardening from the Japanese, I guess. They were good gardeners out there. 'Course that was all the land we had. We didn't have but only ten acres, so you couldn't grow corn for a living or anything like that. So Perry started raising hogs, and we always had a few chickens. We had a cow, which I always milked. That was my job to milk the cow, feed the chickens and cut the hog.
I remember we had a sow and a whole bunch of pigs. I'd feed them – I liked to do that kind of stuff. He told me to pet them – scratch their bellies, and they liked that and they'd get fat. Scratch their bellies and they'd all lay down and you could stack them up like cordwood, you know. And then I'd drag them, one on top of the other and I'd have a pile of them. Just keep going – just keep scratching them and they'd just lay there – they liked that. Finally they got so big I couldn't do that anymore. And I milked the cow.
He always liked to go fishing – I don't know whether he ever caught a fish – but he liked to go fishing. At that time, he'd bought a Buick. I remember that – the one with a long nose – touring car. Kenneth was old enough then ... I never did remember what Kenneth was doing. He seemed like he never did anything – I did all the work.
But anyway, we went on a fishing trip. We stopped along the road – in those days you traveled 20 miles in a car and it's time to stop and eat or something. Gravel roads, some of them were just dirt roads. So, we're headed north to a lake up in northern Iowa, which is probably a hundred miles almost. We parked along side of the road, under a tree. By this time my step-dad was sitting there getting drunk. We were eating, and down the road about a half a mile or a quarter of a mile was a wreck – a two-car wreck. And, so Kenneth and I run down there to take a look at it. But then the sheriff came out to investigate and he saw Perry up there on the side of the road, drunk. So he arrested Perry for being drunk. They wouldn't let Kenneth drive the car – he was only about 12. They wouldn't let him drive, so they drove it into this town. For him to get out of jail, they fined him. So Perry called up somebody and sold all the animals for probably nothing – just to pay the fine so we could go home.
While we were there, we were staying in a little tourist camp or something. Kenneth took all the liquor he had – he had it in among all the clothing and stuff – and he threw it down a toilet. Kenneth could drive the car at that time, but I wasn't quite old enough to do that – about [10 years old], I guess. That's how we lost all the animals. Now we're back home with no animals. So, it was just garden.
He was always cutting wood – that was one of his things he could do pretty good. He had this job cutting down a few trees on the top of a little hill for a neighbor a couple of miles away. It was during the winter. He had a Model T Ford with a box on the back, like a pickup thing. So we went over there to pick up the wood. It was a cold winter day – not cold, but you had ice on the hill, you know. And snow – but it melted some. And so, you had to back up the hill so you could get it up there. It was a foggy day, and he was trying to get up normally, you know, get back and get a run up to get up this hill. And he'd slip and go back down. So I got out of the car and tried to find a spot for him, 'cause you couldn't see over about a hundred yards. And he'd back up, come shootin' at it, and he couldn't make it. Then he'd back up again and come a flyin' up the hill. And finally, after a few tries he backed up and never come back. Where is he? So, I went back, and he'd backed off into a ditch – a little creek. Here he is – the truck is settin' in its end like this, and he's in there – rollin' a cigarette. I don't know whether he was drunk that day or not – I can't remember. But if you could just push it, like that, it'd a fell over on its back, you know. So, I had to hang on to it – my weight – so he could get out of the thing. And of course, the guy we were doin' the wood for got a team of horses and we pulled the truck out of the ditch. That was an interesting day. There was no top on this thing – just an open thing. I don't know whether that was the one that didn't have a windshield or not – I can't remember.
The church there at Red Line, where everybody went – for some reason he decided to stop there one day. He's drunk. And he walked into the church, went up to the pulpit – shoved the preacher aside and started preachin' himself. He was tellin' them "You're a hypocrite – you did this, and you did that ..." So they had to throw him out of the church. And the cousin that was in there – that was his cousin. That was Perry's father's brother's boy. And he's about a year older than me. He was tellin' me about what happened inside the church. That was pretty interesting, I guess – got thrown out of a church.
Did I tell you about the one where the sheriff had to come and get him when he went over to start a fight with one of my uncles – Robert? I can't remember how old I was, but I was old enough to drive a car. I may have been 13 years old, 14 – I'm not sure. But I didn't know what he was gonna do. He made a pair of lead knucks to put on his hand. Hewed that thing out – ripped it like that. Had to be wintertime – cold weather, sort of. 'Cause I remember he had a glove over the top of it. He went in there to my uncle's place and parked the car out in the road. And he was arguing with him, and looked like he was tryin' to start a fight. So Uncle Lester lived about less than a quarter of a mile away, and he came down. Uncle Leonard maybe came down – they were close by. But anyway, Uncle Robert's wife called the sheriff. We thought we were gonna leave, 'cause he didn't get into a fight yet. But the sheriff arrived and I went out to the car – I thought I'd start it up. But the keys weren't in it – he'd taken the keys out of it. So the sheriff arrived and he noticed Perry's hand looked a little big. And so he checked it and found his lead knucks. So he hauled him off to jail – arrested him. But I had to go with him, 'cause we didn't have the keys to the car. I remember it was quite a thrill for me to ride in this big Buick, so I asked the sheriff, "How fast will this go?" Late model Buick – that what I remember, about the nice ride. But I had to stay there overnight – 'course they didn't lock me up, you know. I guess they must have taken me home the next day, I don't know. But I picked up the car and drove it back to the house. I can't remember how long he had to stay in jail. He was there more than overnight.
Even my Dad got into a fight with a couple of my uncles. Two of them jumped on him, I remember – Perry remembers that he just shook 'em off like a bear. Took care of them real quick. Dad was – he was always in trouble, too. Hotheaded – he usually won his scraps.