Keith Tillotson
Nebraska (1931)
In 1931, Kenneth and I decided to go back to see Dad. So, we went to Nebraska to stay with Dad for winter. We just skipped a year – that's it. You see, those days, eighth grade was like the average person's – especially the generation above us, our folks – eighth grade was about as much education as you had. Our generation, a lot of kids went to high school – quite a few. Maybe out here more than they did back there – I don't know.
We got on a train in Harlan – just a little branch line. You go down to the main line probably 20 miles south. Train was goin' really slow. Had about three cars on it – a caboose and a couple of other cars. Kenneth and I were hangin' over the back, runnin' along hangin' on the train and runnin' on the tracks. That was fun. 'Course the conductor didn't like that too well. I remember he looked at me, and I had a lot of pimples, you know. I guess I was about 14. And the conductor says, "You get those from playin' with yourself." That bothered me somewhat.
We got to Nebraska – we took the main train I guess to around Hastings, I think was the name of it. Then they'd get on another branch line to go down to Alma. Dad was married of course, and we lived in that place about a half a mile up the creek from my grandfolks' place.
So, we went to stay with Dad, and he was living about five miles from Alma on a little rented place with his new wife. A little farm – mostly timber, very little tillable soil. Some guy that lived in Alma owned it – had a cow, and he left the cow there. He had to stake it 'cause the cow would overeat, you know. Bloat up – so we always had to stake the cow.
My half-brother Gayle was there, crawlin' around on the floor. So he was probably six months or seven months old. Verlene was born, so Dad had to get to town and get to the doctor. But Dad was left-handed, and he forgot and he cranked the car – and it kicked back on him and broke his arm. But he got to town anyway and brought the doctor back. Got there too late, 'cause ... Verlene was born I think even before the doctor got there. My job, of course, was to run up to the neighbor close by – our friends, named Gregory – Elmore Gregory and his wife. And I run up there and told 'em "We're havin' a baby!" They always kidded me about that – "We're havin' a baby!"
After she was born, my job was to bury the afterbirth. So I had to go out and dig a hole so we could bury it about two feet underground. Can you imagine that? That was my job.
While I was there, I worked for an old friend of his Cleve Batton – lived about a half a mile. This creek that I was tellin' you about went through our old place – we were just upstream from it. It went down through his friend's property, then on down to our property, where our grandfolks lived. He was a pretty well-to-do farmer. During the Depression, he found out he could collect up mortgages on all the farms he could. And he foreclosed on 'em. Oh yeah, he became rich. I really don't know what a farm was worth in those days. You probably could sell one for 25 dollars an acre. We got 50 dollars an acre for one in Iowa when we sold it. I wish I'd have never sold it.
He ended up with some oil wells in Oklahoma. But anyway, he'd collect all the iron and stuff he could find around the country. He owned a car, but he couldn't drive a car – Dad always had to drive him. His two sisters lived with him, and the old man was still alive. I remember he used to come out when he was makin' some signs to put up on all his properties. "No Trespassee," he said. Made up all these signs and put 'em on posts and trees all around all these properties.
But anyway, this guy was considered pretty rich. And I worked for him, and he was supposed to pay me a dollar a day workin' in his blacksmith shop. I did other things for him. I remember along the railroad track he owned the – where you took all the grain – what do you call it? Grainery – he owned that. That was his. You could weigh – had a scale there. He had this corrugated metal on the outside. This one cold winter day we had to put some on. I had to crawl up a long ladder and drive nails through this thing. Boy, if you'd miss it and hit your thumb it'd really hurt in the wintertime. Cold winter day – I was 13 then, I guess, or 14.
While I was workin' in his blacksmith shop, Dad was fixing up an old steam engine for him 'cause he wanted that to run a sawmill he had. I remember where he got it – down at Republican, which is south of Alma. Down the river. I remember he got it going, and when we took it down towards Alma about five miles Dad let me steer a little bit. One time it started to run off the road. 'Cause it's one of those things you got to crank like this, see, to get the wheels turned. We're on a dirt road, you know. We got as far as Alma, and from there on I didn't have anything to do with it. Where the sawmill was, was probably another five miles from there.
One of my jobs workin' in the blacksmith shop was making the spikes to hold down the rails. In the meantime I'd make tools – chisels, screwdrivers, all that kinda' stuff – 'cause he had all this junk out there. Take a magnet out of an old Ford – I got one down here – and you straighten it out then you make it into a chisel. Make a cold chisel or a hot chisel. Now, it wouldn't be no longer a magnet after you got done heatin' it up. The magnet is what takes care of your spark – magneto, that's part of the magneto. You know, of course, in those days you had six-volt batteries, but you didn't have self-starters or anything in those – you had to crank 'em.
Cleve Batton really promised me a dollar and a half a day, but he gave me a dollar a day. And I complained about it, and he sorta' kicked me off the farm, you know. He said, "You little bastard – get out of here!" He kinda' surprised me, and I'm home cryin' – told Dad about it. Dad really – that's when they fell out, and never talked to each other again.
We're going to town after Dad had this falling out. Dad was a pretty hot-headed guy. Cleve Batton didn't have anybody to drive him, so he got Dad's brother, which lived up in Orleans, a little farther north – about seven or eight, ten miles north of Alma. No, that's not it – that's not the name of the town. Orleans was right up the Republican River from Alma, so it was west of Alma. But the town where Dad's brother lived was north of Alma.
So anyway, we're going to town in Dad's Ford, and here comes Cleve Batton and Dad's brother drivin' his car. Passin' em on the road. You see, to pass on those roads you don't pass fast. You have to almost get in the ditch to get by somebody. So Dad waved him down, and he went over there – 'cause he was really peed off at Batton. Dad jumped on the right hand fender and started beatin' this guy. With his right hand – 'course now Dad had a broken left arm! So he was beatin' him with his right arm, and then they speeded up so Dad had to jump off.
What happened was then, after that, Dad with a broken arm and Kenneth was playing over at the neighbors across the road. Up on a hay mound, he jumped off and broke his leg. So, that left me to make the living. I'm the only one that can work now.
So, I got the job pickin' corn. Kenneth was limpin' around on a crutch, Dad with his broken arm, and me pickin' corn for another neighbor. Dad would even come out and help me, though. Even though he had a broken arm he was tryin' to help me. So, we got through the winter. We had enough money for bullets for the .22 rifle. And we had an old shotgun that somebody had given him. One barrel worked – it was a two-barrel, but one barrel worked. We'd go out and shoot pheasants.
Dad went out one time at Thanksgiving and he shot three or four pheasants with a .22 rifle. You can imagine that? I went hunting with him one time. I was using a shotgun, with this one barrel. A pheasant would go up, and "boom!" But every pheasant we got down that day also had a .22 bullet in it. He'd carry it cocked, you know, and he could shoot so fast. He'd shoot with both eyes open – I don't know how he could do it. He was quick with that. Dad was very quick, even though he weighed – he had a pot-belly on him – and he weighed probably 190 pounds. Pretty husky, broad-shouldered. His wrists were twice as wide as mine – strong hands. Most farmers had strong hands – milking cows and all that stuff.
We went to a dance one night at a neighbor's. They'd get together and have a dance – somebody playin' a saw for music. They were doin' a square dance. We went to that. One time this kid in Harlan when I was in about the third or fourth grade told me about kissing a girl, you know. Said, "You don't want to kiss her – you'll get sick!" I always remembered that one – that stuck with me. So I didn't want to get kissed by any girl. But we went to this little dance – had a big kitchen, I guess – they just moved everything aside and had a little bench along the wall there, and I got sleepy and I laid down on that. Square dancing, that's what they were doing, and I couldn't do it – the women would grab me and drag me around. So I laid on the bench and tried to go to sleep, and this girl about 16 years old come over and really plants one right on my mouth. And that was a big deal – everybody laughed, and I wanted to go home. I didn't get sick, I found out.
We got through the winter there. It's amazing with not havin' much money, we were able to buy certain things. Like, I remember – long boots. They must not have cost very much, 'cause we weren't makin' much money. I don't know what Dad was getting paid by his old friend. But, it probably wasn't too much. So we went on through the winter, shooting rabbits. Jackrabbits – they had a lot of jackrabbits out there in Nebraska. The farmers used to – there was so many of them – they would spread out over about a ten mile area and start walkin' in and chasin' 'em into one pile and killing them. There was just too many rabbits eatin' up things – rabbits and prairie dogs. They were always poisoning the prairie dogs.
I remember one time I was working for this friend – we had this .22 rifle, and I saw a prairie dog out there and I shot it. 'Course I had to skin it to keep the hide. But they're pretty hard to shoot, because they jump in a hole just like that. They can almost hear the bullet comin' at 'em, I guess. They just dig, and just tear up the whole pasture. I thought I'd just stretch the hide out, and have a prairie dog hide, you know – for no reason.
This friend, he was always tryin' to figure a way to invent perpetual motion. He had all kinds of ideas. He had a cancer on his lip, so he had a whole part of his lip cut out. He used to chew tobacco, but he quit doin' that. He had a mustache to cover it up.
Somebody came over one day and wanted to recruit Kenneth to play football for a little town named Holdridge, or something like that. But he wasn't interested in that – he was interested in goin' back to Iowa to finish high school.
As kids, we were interested in athletics, you know – the neighbor across the road was a miler – run a mile in school. I always noticed his stomach – you could see his abs, and that impressed me.
People would invite us over to do a little touch football, or whatever. On the Dixon place, right across the creek, they always had a ball field – play ball. Everybody played ball in those old days. Baseball was it. So, we went over there, and I'm say I guess about 14 years old. Well, all the kids are there, and my little girlfriend – prettier than ever. She was about my age. And I wanted to make an impression. They made me pitch the game – I'm gonna be a pitcher. So, what have I gotta do – I'm not a ballplayer, but I can throw a ball. So, I think the only thing I could do is just see how hard I could throw it. Fast, you know – I gotta impress my girlfriend. She paid no attention to me then, but I noticed her. And I pitched three innings, and my arm got a little tired. You know, the next day I couldn't even hold up my arm, it was so sore. Almost ruined my arm – wow, I'll never forget that.
Touch ball – you'd have just a few kids playin', you know, and somebody'd try to run. There was one kid there could make about ten seconds – a hundred yards. So, he just run away with the ball when he got it.
Kenneth was a pretty fast runner. With a football suit on – he could run 11 seconds with a football suit on. He was pretty good. Football suits weren't like they are today – they didn't have all those shoulder pads, you know. They had a helmet, no shoulder pads. I know a cousin of mine run into some goalposts and broke his shoulder.
We dammed up a creek. 'Bout a hundred feet from the house – to swim in. And that caused a little furor – all the farmers below, 'cause it shut their water off for a while. We had a footbridge across there – the barns were on the other side.
When I was stayin' at my grandmother's, a civet cat got in the little shed out behind. The shed out there – 'bout as far as this shed here from the house, I guess – a civet cat got in there. A civet cat, you know, is a small skunk. Like a skunk. Stinks, you know. Look you right in the eye, and turn it up and squirt right in your face – lookin' right at you. They can do that – just like a skunk. Well, I just opened the door and I shot this skunk with a .22 rifle. Or, civet cat. That night I went to basketball game in a high school. And, people were kinda' lookin' at me. Pretty soon, they kinda' just settin' away from me. I smelled like a civet cat – I didn't know I had anything on me. I didn't think I did, because I was quite a few feet from it. Kenneth come up and says, "You better leave – you smell like a civet cat!"
You know, you run over one in a car, you can smell the car for a while. It's powerful stuff. We used to trap those things, too. And skunks, and all that stuff. Perry was a trapper and his brother was a trapper – trappin' muskrats, skunk, civet cats, mink. You'd sell those. Send 'em off to Montgomery Ward in Des Moines, and get your money back. Skin 'em, stretch 'em, dry 'em, you know. That's how we made money in the wintertime outside of cutting timber, selling fenceposts.
Our front yard was beautiful. That coulda' been like a little Winterthur place, if it had been kept with the timber on it. Beautiful – bluegrass under the trees, not shrubs like you got around here. Cows could pasture right under the trees. In fact, I used to go out there at night 'cause I got afraid of the dark. What was the reason I was afraid of the dark – I can't remember. Same reason, I guess, I was afraid of kissing girls or swimming, 'cause the kids tried to drown me almost, in Nebraska. I had to go down and learn how to swim all by myself.
We brought a dog back with us, from Nebraska that time when we came home. He became a real squirrel dog. If you couldn't see a squirrel, he'd go on the other side of the tree and bark. He'd chase the squirrel around to your side so you could shoot it. He got lost one time. We were makin' the rounds one time from town to town sellin' vegetables. Had the dog with us – suddenly he's gone. Went on home. Just made a big circle and came back. Three days later, he came back in there. I don't know how he ever found it – unless the tires had a particular smell to 'em or somethin'. Three days later, he came walkin' in.
We went through the winter. Dad planted potatoes in the garden – we had a pretty good place for gardening – had strawberries, asparagus. And I just loved asparagus.
In the spring, Dad's wife, Iva – I think her first name was Iva – her brother came up and rented a place for corn in the spring. They lived in Kansas, across the Republican River. He came up – I remember he always wore gloves to keep his hands clean. I think we used one team with four horses. In the spring Dad used two of those horses to plow some garden to plant potatoes. So Dad planted potatoes – you plant potatoes early in the spring, you know. Quite early – January if you can.
When he got done planting the corn, he wanted to take his horses back to – he commuted by car, he had a car – he wanted to take his horses back to Kansas. That's across the river. So he asked Kenneth and I to take 'em down. Probably it was about ten miles or so. So we had to take these horses and lead 'em down toward the river – no bridges in that area – and that took us all day to do this. After we got across the river, we're goin' down the road and there was an old farmhouse there – abandoned farmhouse. We stopped in there to eat our lunch that we took with us. And we had to, of course, explore the house. I remember on the shelf that was there, some kind of newspaper that was layin' there was something about Abraham Lincoln. 'Course that didn't mean anything to us, you know. How old the paper was, I don't know.
So we took the horses on home. I can remember the lay of the buildings where her brother lived with his parents. When we got back we got a notice that my grandmother died – Grandmother Dent.