Keith Tillotson
Working (1933)
Anyway, we got back to Grandmother's funeral. And then Perry and Mom are back on the home place – our 35 acres. And Kenneth started high school – the tenth grade. We furnished the money for him to go to school. Even I – what I earned went to help him pay for where he boarded. This was a regular high school, but he had to have a place to live. It was 15 miles to town, so everybody always that went to high school moved to Harlan to board with somebody.
Kenneth had a friend – a guy that lived two blocks about from where my grandmother lived. So his father had a house there. His friend – a real nice guy – had a small house. They had three boys that I remember, and the oldest one got killed in an automobile accident. And in World War II the other two got killed. Anyway, this was before the war of course, and that's where Kenneth boarded.
So we'd furnish them with food – all the vegetables and stuff like that we could give them, and a little money. 'Course Kenneth could earn money during the summer plowin' corn. He could make a little money with that. It didn't take a lot of money. But this guy was very generous. You coulda' probably lived there for nothing – that's the way he was. Anyway, that's how Kenneth got through high school. We helped him – I helped him. I just worked on different farms – 50 cents a day at that time. Then when you'd get bigger you could get about a dollar a day.
So now we're back in Iowa, and Mom and Dad were back on our original farm that we had. So, Kenneth decided he needed to overhaul the carburetor and the engine on the Model T – I don't know why, 'cause it made about 40 miles a gallon gettin' there. Only took about three gallons of gas to go those 120 miles. After that it didn't do too good on gas – I remember that. After he fixed it. He had the engine out of it – he stood on top and picked up the whole engine out of it. We had that layin' out there, and I don't know what he was doin' to it. I do remember that he forgot to check the oil when we started it up – it didn't have any oil in it. To check the oil on an old Model T, you had three pet-cocks. They'd just dip in like this – was no pressure – no oil pumps. Dipping – like a lawnmower, just dips into it. On the pan, there's three pet-cocks. You could open the top one, and the next one down to see how much oil you have in there. Well, we drained the oil out of it, but forgot to put any back in. So we pushed her off the hill there by the house, went up the road and the engine froze up. But he got it goin' again after that – put oil in it. And he used that when he went to high school. That was his car – he claimed it. Well, he was older than me, bigger than me, and he claimed the car – it was his.
Kenneth was always a little arrogant, a little belligerent – he liked to beat everybody up. Like the first year of school he beat up this black kid in Colorado – the only one in school, and he had to beat him up. And then the other time – I guess about the fourth grade – and the neighbor kid, he popped him right in the eye when he was walkin' home. Just the way he was, you know. He beat me up a couple of times. Gave me a black eye one time. He was 180-190 pounds – over six feet – six-one. Here I am, you know, five-seven or five-eight.
So, while Kenneth went through high school, I got jobs around working. We worked on our farm, you know, growing vegetables. Perry – he was good, he was a hard worker. But the only problem he had was that he spent it all on liquor. So I'd have to steal the money off him. We'd go to town with a load of vegetables – just walk down the street and the women would come out to buy your vegetables. And you'd just canvass – go to another little town and do the same thing. But if I was selling something, I'd try to slip a quarter or two in my pocket. Seemed like he'd always catch me doin' that, you know, even though he'd be drunk. He's driving usually when we're doing this, and I'm trying to sell vegetables to the customers along the street.
I remember one time he rented a place – they had a fair, a county fair. You'd rent spaces to sell stuff. Well, he wanted to be the first one there with watermelons. And he's pickin' green watermelons. I told him, "They're green – they're not ripe yet!" Now in those days you used to plug a melon – cut a little hole, pull out a plug to see if it's ripe. None of these were ripe. You can also tell if it's on the bottom – turns white, it's usually ripe. Or, you can thump it and get some idea. So, a lot of those melons weren't ripe. We're down there sellin' these melons in the fair. We're doin' pretty good, 'til somebody decided they wanted to eat one there. It was green – and they started comin' back. So, we had to pull up stakes and leave.
He was pretty tricky. Like, he found out what you call "stovepiping" potatoes. You'd sell potatoes by maybe 50 pounds or 100 pounds in a burlap bag. What he'd do, he'd put this stovepipe down there, which was about this big. Put it down the middle, and you'd put all the little potatoes in there and put all the big ones on the outside. Somebody's feelin' the bag, "Oh, these are nice potatoes – nice, big potatoes." Just one of his little tricks.