Keith Tillotson
Moving (1928 – 1930)
Going to school became a problem. I just wasn't interested in school anymore. We moved so often, I didn't have time to graduate anything, outside of the third grade. Seemed like we were just moving all the time. I think we moved about ten times in a few years. So I'd go into another school and they say, "Which grade you in?" "Oh, I'm in fourth grade," I'd tell 'em. I just lied to 'em. I'd start there, and it'd probably be a month there, and then we'd move to another place. Finally we moved to Kirkman, right near where Inona and Clifford live now. So I went to that school – they had a basement where you could play basketball and all that kinda stuff. I kinda liked that. So I just told 'em there, "I'm in the fifth grade." That one only lasted about a month or two, then we'd be somewhere else. I went to two schools in Harlan, one on one side of the town and one on the other.
I don't know why [Perry was moving us around all the time] – he'd get a little job here and there. He had one in Kirkman working in a rendering plant. A rendering plant is where you drag in all the diseased dead animals that die on the farm and cook 'em up. I even worked in that. Drag in a cow, skin it if it wasn't too dead – been dead too long. I could dissect a hog in about one minute. I learned how to do that – anything that was work, seemed like I loved to do that. Boy, I'm telling you – you really reeked when you got out of that place.
I would skip school to go work. Then we'd move somewhere else. I went to school in some little town up along the Raccoon River. I don't know why we moved up there. I remember it was the wintertime. That was probably 30 miles from our place in Red Line.
Couple of times in Harlan they'd send someone to find me and make me go to school. And then we'd move, and I'm not there anymore. That's just the way it went along for years. I guess we moved about eight or ten times in just a few years. So I never got any education, you see.
When you was workin' in a place like that [the rendering plant] I wouldn't get any pay there. The only time you'd get paid was if you were working for a farmer. When I was about 12 years – 13 years old – they'd give you 50 cents a day.
[In the rendering plant] they'd pay Perry, and he'd spend all the money on liquor. That's all that was. We'd just get enough to eat on. The rest of it always – always – went for liquor.
I used to have to, when we were selling vegetables – he was pretty good at growing things, you know, and he'd stay sober sometimes for a couple of months. But quick as the harvest comes in, that was it. When the money started coming in, he'd spend it all.
'Course they sometimes would be back on the farm again. So it went along that way until I was about 13 years old. I never graduated anything outside of the third grade.
I figured out the other day, I moved nine times while I was goin' to school. That's why I always lied to everybody where I started a new school about what grade I was in. I moved three times with Dad. When we first moved back to Iowa, I'd started the second grade. That was in Manning. Could be 20 miles from Harlan. I'm not sure how far it is – I'd have to look at a map.
Being a little squirt – I was always tiny – all kids liked to pick on me, no matter what school I went to. I wasn't big – I guess I was skinny. Five-eight was my total height – five-eight-and-a-half when I grew up. So I was small, and there were always some bigger kids that liked to pick on you. That was just my life through school.
I got mad once and left home to live with my grandmother in town. She was still alive, you know – Grandmother Dent. Everybody bought her a little house that had two stories – two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs. A kitchen and a living room and a pot-bellied stove. She burned coal in there, and I used to do all the fire – I'd take care of all that for her, and I planted her a garden. And I went to school there for a little while. No – that was the summertime. School was over with, I guess. Kenneth graduated from the tenth grade – high school. By the way, that's where a lot of the money went. Went to help pay for his boarding to go to high school. Usually that was done with vegetables – you know, give people vegetables. 'Course we furnished vegetables for my grandmother. But that's about the money we got – wasn't too much money exchanged there, 'cause all my uncles took care of the money part of it.
Then summer came – I remember Uncle Lester wanted somebody to come out and cultivate corn. All the boys – Kenneth got jobs like that, too. In the summer you'd cultivate corn for 50 cents a day. This one year I did that for Uncle Lester. And quick as I got done with him, I got another job with one of his neighbors that whole summer. We was harvesting oats, and I remember Kenneth and I were both stacking ... you know they bundled oats – it was called a binder. They come in and bind it, and you stacked these little things up – about six of them. You've probably seen it – a shock. They lay one on top to keep the rain off. 'Course my uncle run the machine around, and we'd stack 'em try to keep up with him. That was hot work. We're talkin' about August now.
You'd work all day long – eight hours, ten hours. Usually you worked ten hours on a farm. You'd get up early – take care of the animals, harness the horses. I remember this particular time Uncle Lester had this big horse – about 800 pound horse. And I'm harnessin' this horse, and the horse stepped on my foot. It wouldn't get off! I mean, you can imagine – 800 pound horse steppin' on your foot! Oh boy, I'm tellin' you – that hurt! I remember that – that, I remember.
We get done with that job – that was in the fall – Kenneth decided he wanted to skip a year of school, so that he'd be bigger for football next year. And my cousin – Paul Gaer was Perry's uncle's son, Paul – he did the same thing. A lot of the kids did that – the football players. So, they decided to skip that year so they'd be bigger, stronger, for football.