~Memories~WHAT LIFE WAS REALLY LIKE IN THOSE GOOD OLD DAYS
I was born on a small farm in Floyd County, Virginia. The year was 1931 and Floyd County, as well as the nation, was in a deep economic depression. My father and mother had gone deeply in debt in 1928 and purchased a 227 acre farm. Because of the depression and the unavailability of money to pay the mortgage, there was the danger of a bank foreclosure. The Peoples Bank of Floyd County, which was operated by local people, agreed to defer payments on the loan for a short time while dad applied for and received a farm loan from the Federal Land Bank of Baltimore. It was this loan that almost certainly saved the farm from foreclosure.
When I think back the farm was a wonderful place to live. All members of the family worked together to get the jobs done. In contrast to our lives today, the 1930’s were serious, tough times for farmers but those days instilled in us the value of work, thrift, faith and that you cannot give up hope. I reflect back on those difficult times and think that it was because of the love and concern of my parents and neighbors and their sacrifices then that has helped me through the years. Because of the love and concern I can now look back on those good old days with deep affection and appreciation. I can say this in spite of the fact that they were indeed very difficult.
We lived in a big old farm house which was built around 1900. The house had four large rooms and a pantry on the first floor and an additional four rooms on the second floor. Wide hallways on both the first and second floors bisected the house from front to back. A screened in porch and a “spring house” were attached to the kitchen. The “spring house” had a large open cement tank which we would fill with cold water to serve as a cool place to store milk, butter and other food items which needed to be kept cool. The water tank which probably held at least 50 gallons was refilled once and sometimes more each day with fresh cool 50 degree water hand pumped from the well. This water tank was the closest thing to refrigeration we had since we did not have an ice house or electricity until World War II ended. Kerosene lamps provided the lighting although dad had rigged up a 6-volt. 15-watt light for the kitchen powered by a car battery and a wind charger.
Mother and dad’s bedroom which was on the first floor of the house also served as a living room. The large kitchen served both as a kitchen and a dining room even though one of the first floor rooms was really a dining room. A seldom used parlor completed the first floor layout. Two kid’s bedrooms, a guest bedroom and a “pack” room were located on the second floor. The “pack” room contained the overflow furniture and other items that needed storage. A large unfinished attic was also available for additional storage.
Wood burning stoves were used for heating and cooking. A large wood burning heating stove was in the living room. A through the ceiling vent above the heating stove allowed heat to rise to the bedroom immediately above the living room. A woodshed was only about 50 feet from the kitchen door. A ready supply of wood was laid in each fall where it was kept dry and easily available. It was the boy’s job to bring enough wood into the house each afternoon after school to last through to last overnight and through the preparation of the next evening meal.
My dad would be up first each morning. He would start the fires and soon the old farm house would be warm and mother would have breakfast cooking. Hot biscuits were always on the menu for breakfast. My breakfast was usually hot oatmeal. All of our meals were eaten together. My mother always prepared hot food for breakfast and lunch (dinner). One item on the evening meal or supper menu was corn bread and milk - no exceptions. In mid-afternoon, mother would bake a large skillet of corn bread. By supper time it would be cold and would be eaten as a cereal with milk and raw onions. Corn bread and milk is still one of my favorite dishes.
There was no running water in the house until after we got electrical service. A hand pumped well on the back porch was the water source. The rule of the house was “you take a bath every Saturday evening whether you need one or not”. Water was heated in pans and a tea kettle on the kitchen cooking stove and poured into a round galvanized tub. If you were the last one in the tub, the water would be getting murky and cold. Mother would carefully pour another tea kettle of boiling hot water into the tub to heat it up. When the last person was finished, Mother would give the kitchen it’s weekly moping using the bath water.
Telephone service in Floyd County was (and still is) provided by a mutual cooperative telephone company. The telephone company in the 1930’s and 1940’s was a system of individual party lines. Each telephone owner was required to be a member of the Citizen’s Mutual Telephone Company. Each party had a special ring. Central was one long. Our ring was two longs and there were six or eight people on our party line. When a call was coming in or going out on the line everyone’s telephone would ring. While it was considered impolite to listen in on someone else’s conversation, there was always some busy body who wanted to know what was going on in the neighborhood and would listen in on other people’s conversation. You could hear a click when they took their receiver off the hook. If too many tried to listen in the volume would go down so it was difficult to hear.
Our telephone was mounted on the wall in the kitchen. It had been purchased in the early 1900’s by my grandfather. Until sometime in the mid 1940’s the telephone service was provided by a one wire system. The earth ground provided the electrical return for the ringing current as well as the sound signal. Every telephone had a hand cranked magneto to provide the ringing current. It was necessary for each telephone to have a good ground connection. Sometimes during very dry weather it was difficult for the more distant telephone customers to be able to ring the central office. In the mid 1940’s the system was upgraded with new wire and converted to a two wire system. This improved service significantly. The system was upgraded in 1953 to a more modern dial system. Today it has now been upgraded to the latest dial and fiber optic equipment.
Life on the farm in the 1930’s and 1940’s was difficult at best by today’s standards. Many of the things we take for granted today were only hope for then. For example an indoor toilet was a luxury that we could only hope for. In fact we did not even have an out door privy until the mid 1930’s when sufficient money became available (about $2.00 as I remember) to buy the lumber to build one. I can well remember when it was built. The barn or chicken house and a Sears Roebuck catalog was the best we had to offer on our farm! I also remember mother telling about Christmas 1933. They had a grand total of $5.00 that year. She took half of it and ordered Christmas presents from Sears Roebuck for dad and the three kids. I can also remember her saying many times that there was not enough money in the house to buy a three cent stamp. If you had to buy something from the store it was on credit. You simply told the merchant to charge it and you would pay when you got the money. There were no credit cards and never any question about credit or credit ratings. Somehow the merchants always got paid but it may have taken a year or two. Another thing I remember was leaving eggs in the mail box for the rural mail carrier to pay for stamping a letter.
One of the first purchases that mother and dad made after getting married was a Maytag gasoline powered washing machine. Wash day on the farm was a weekly all day job for mother and usually took place on Monday or Tuesday. If the weather permitted, she would build a fire outside and heat a large cast iron kettle and a galvanized tub of water. If the weather was bad the water had to be heated inside on the cook stove. The clothes were sorted into separate piles - white, medium and dark and put into tubs to soak. The white clothes were first boiled with home made lye soap and then run through the machine to finish the job of dirt removal. While this was happening, the dark clothes were soaking, also in a lye soap solution, waiting their turn in the machine since they were usually in worse shape. After a sufficient time of agitation in the washing machine, the clothes were removed, the water changed and another cycle to rinse the soap out. I can still remember the “put-put” and the smoke of the one cylinder Maytag engine and the smell of clean, sparkling white clothes hanging on the outside clothes line.
Television was unknown in Floyd County until about 1952. We did not get our first radio until 1936. Dad made a special effort to get it in time to hear the presidential election returns. Dad went to Roanoke and bought it from Sears Roebuck. He did not get home until after dark but he had to set it up anyway since we were all so excited. This radio was powered by a 6-volt car battery which dad had to take out of the car.
Some of the programs I best remember were Amos and Andy, Lum and Abner, The Lone Ranger, and Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch. Mother liked the soap opera’s like Linda’s First Love, Just Plain Bill and Ma Perkins. Dad liked the Grand Ole Opery on Saturday night and the Renfro Valley Folks country music program on Sundays. He was also very interested in the world news. Hitler had seized power in Germany and boasted of German superiority over the rest of the world. The ominous clouds of war hung over Europe and were the headline news items. The world news was especially interesting to Dad since he was a veteran of World War I and had served in France.
One of our neighbor ladies was so addicted to the soap operas that anytime her battery operated radio was not working she would walk a quarter mile to our house in order to listen. If for some reason our radio was inoperative, she would go another half mile to another neighbor’s house so she would not miss an episode.
I particularly remember the radio broadcasts of the Joe Lewis - Max Schmeling heavyweight fight; William L. Shirer a CBS war correspondent reporting from Berlin in the 1930’s; and Edward R. Murrow reporting from London during the Battle of England and through out the war with Germany.
Joe Lewis was declared the heavyweight boxing champion of the world after his fight in 1937. This title was challenged by Hitler since Lewis had earlier lost to a German, Max Schmeling. The rematch took place in 1938 and was broadcast world wide on the radio. My Dad was not the least bit interested in boxing but if the fight went against Hitler as everyone expected it would, that would be sufficient reason to listen to it on the radio. I was only seven years old but still remember the excitement as Lewis beat the tar out of Schmeling as soon as he stepped into the ring in the first round.
William L. Shirer had a unique way of presenting the news that made you feel almost like you were there. I remember his describing soldiers of the German army in a goose-stepping parade shouting “Heil Hitler”. I also remember his reports and vivid descriptions of the activities of Hitler’s aides, Goering, Goebbles, Hess and Himler among others in the days that lead up to World War II. It seemed that Mr. Shirer better understood what was about to happen in Europe than anyone else in this country. He always ended his broadcasts with “So long until tomorrow night, this is William L. Shirer in Berlin - goodnight”.
Another war correspondent we listened to was Edward R. Murrow. This man had a very deep voice and sounded much older than his thirty years. He would open his broadcasts with “This (pause) is London”. During the Battle of London he reported an eyewitness description of the British capital under air attack by German Lufwaffe. His accounts of these air raids and resulting damage and personal suffering were extremely descriptive. Later after the United States entered the war, he flew on several bombing missions over Germany and presented eyewitness reports of these equally as good as his reports of the Battle for England.
As a small boy only four or five years old I remember visiting with Len Spangler on several occasions. Len was a distant cousin and lived on a small farm about a mile and a half from our farm. Occasionally my father would say to my brother and I “lets go over to Len’s place after we get the evening chores done and see how he is getting along”. We would then walk the mile and a half through the woods to his place.
I remember Len as a solitaire individual. He was unmarried and lived by himself on a small farm. His home was an old log house probably built in the mid 1850’s and previously owned by my grandfather Samuel Spangler. Len’s nearest neighbors were a mile or more away. When you entered his house you were greeted by years accumulation of dust and several energetic fox hounds. I can only remember two rooms. The walls and ceilings showed evidence of having been painted or wall papered in the distant past. The house did not have electricity or running water. His kitchen had an old wood burning stove on which sat a cast iron tea kettle and a coffee pot. A few cabinets and a small table and some broken down chairs completed the list of furniture. In his bedroom living room combination sat an old wood burning heating stove. A gun belt and a .44 caliber pistol was slung over his bed post. A Winchester rifle was on pegs mounted over the door. Both of these were relics of the old west. An old Edison wax cylinder phonograph and a few record cylinders sat on a table next to his bed.
Len was an excellent story teller. He could “spin yarns” about the old west which would be worthy of a TV show today! These were probably based to some degree on his experiences as a “cowboy on Miss Lee’s ranch” in Iowa during the late 1800’ and early 1900’s. His stories included the experiences of cowboys riding into town for a “Saturday night frolic” as well as tales of ghosts, mountain lions, panthers and grizzly bears. He could tell these stories in a manner that would make a five year old boy’s eyes open wide and feel like he was a part of the action! It also seemed that he could make a story last for hours!
The story I best remember was the one he would tell about killing a grizzly bear. It seems that a bear had killed some cattle on the ranch and Len, armed with his rifle, pistol and hunting knife, went by himself to get the bear. He said he found it in an open field and he would make the point that it was very, very large and there were no trees around. He got off his horse. The horse saw the bear and promptly retreated to safe territory. Len, unaffected by his horse’s fear, bravely approached the bear and got close enough for a rifle shot. His first shots wounded the bear enough to make it mad. The bear looked around and saw the source of the shot and charged. As it approached Len said he emptied his rifle into the bear but did not stop it. Out of rifle ammunition, he would next have to use the pistol. By this time the bear was very close and was standing on its hind legs with its front paws behind its head exposing a white spot on it’s neck. To hear Len describe that bear, you were sure it was at least ten feet tall! When the bear was in pistol range Len says he also emptied this gun into the bear’s heart. It fell dead only a few inches from his feet. Len would always say he fully expected having to use his hunting knife in hand to hand combat to finally kill that bear since there were no trees to climb.
Walking home through the woods after hearing one of Len’s stories was a real experience for five year old kids since it was usually after dark. We were expecting a wild animal behind every tree so we always stayed very close to dad and somehow we survived to get home to a safe, warm bed.
My father had three brothers and two sisters. When I was a small I remember an “old man” coming to our home for extended visits. This “old man” was Uncle Lee Spangler, dad’s brother who lived in Roanoke. He was a big and a very strong man in his prime. He would arrive on foot since he did not own an automobile. He would always bring small gifts for the children. One of our favorites was Prince Albert tobacco tins. Being a roll your own cigarette smoker, he always had plenty and would bring a large sack full.
I also remember some of the tales one of our neighbors, Mr. Lemual Boothe, would tell about Uncle Lee. According to Mr. Boothe, Uncle Lee was a deputy sheriff in Floyd around the turn of the century. One July the fourth, a couple of drunk boys wanted to have some fun at Uncle Lee’s expense so they set off a firecracker in his pocket. Uncle Lee promptly got revenge and also had some fun of his own. He picked up the two boys by their shirts holding one in each hand. He then proceeded to crack their heads together several times. He let them go with a stern warning to get out of town immediately. According to Mr. Boothe the boys did not stop running until they were out of sight.
There were many other tales of Uncle Lee’s strength and the size of his hands. It was also said that he could grip and anvil by the horn and pick it up. He could also grip a 10 pound sledge hammer by the end of its handle and hold it in a horizontal position.
Uncle Lee was at one time a well driller. When the town of Floyd needed a public water supply, Uncle Lee was hired to drill some wells. I can remember him talking about the “500 foot deep dry holes” he said he drilled before finding water.
When the dam forming Claytor Lake at Radford was being planned, Uncle Lee made a number of test borings to determine if under ground caverns existed in the limestone rock formations. Uncle Lee would tell of pulling a live frog out of one of the 200 foot deep test holes.
Uncle Lee’s career as a well driller ended when a bolt fell from his drill tower cracking a hole “the size of a silver dollar” in the top of his skull. He recovered but suffered ill effects from this experience for the remaining years of his life.
Another of Dad’s brother’s, Uncle Jim, also lived in Roanoke and worked for the Norfolk and Western Railroad. His first wife had died unexpectedly at an early age of complications of appendicitis leaving him with five children all under the age of ten to care. Devastated by the loss of his wife, Uncle Jim had to serve as both mother and father to the children as well as work a full time job to support them. At times the children would live with their aunt’s and uncles and grandparents. Both Robert and J.D. stayed with mother and dad at various times. I remember best some of the stories about J.D. It seems that he was an independent kid who was brilliant as well as very mischievous who developed a reputation of being difficult to control. One story my mother told was of his escapades in the Floyd elementary school. As this story was told, J.D. was in Ms Nellie B. Slusher’s class. Ms Slusher was a large woman and a regimented and an authoritarian type of school teacher. She viewed her class room as a place to learn and not a place to play. She had strict rules of conduct that every one of her students had to follow without exception. On the first day of school, J.D. was being his usual self, and in Ms Slusher’s opinion, disrupting the class. Ms Slusher, fully aware of J.D’s reputation, gave him one verbal warning to bring his behavior into line or else suffer the consequences. Apparently J.D. did not respond to her liking. At this time and without saying another word she got her paddle out of the desk drawer, got J.D. by the ear and proceeded to take him outside the room, closed the door and gave him a swift spanking. The kids inside the class room were absolutely quite. Ms Slusher then brought J.D. back into the room, again leading him by the ear. She sat him down in a first row, shook her finger in his face and proceeded to spell out the rules of behavior in her class room. According to mother, this was the best thing that ever happened to J.D. in school. He was a changed boy after this experience. Both his school and home attitude and performance improved dramatically.
Uncle Jim remarried around 1930 and had five more children who were
about the same age as my brother and sister and me. It was tradition for Uncle Jim and his family to come visit us every Christmas since we lived at the Spangler old home place. This was great for the kids. We all enjoyed playing together and all the good food that mother and Aunt Viola would prepare for Christmas dinner. Uncle Jim almost always would bring a bushel of oranges and a lot of nuts for us to eat. Dad and Uncle Jim would talk for awhile and after lunch they both would fall asleep in easy chairs in the living room.
We would visit Uncle Jim in the summer time. They had all the modern conveniences in their home including electric lights, a gas range in the kitchen, a gas refrigerator and an indoor bathroom. Aunt Viola had grown up in a very poor home in Southwest Virginia. As a result she was very frugal. She would never put more than two ice cubes in a glass of water. She would also remind us kids that bathroom tissue was expensive and that we should never use more than three tissues at a time. Uncle Jim was very good to the kids. He would buy us five cent ice cream popsicles from the street vendor. This was a real treat since we never had ice cream at home. On one occasion he gave us money to see a movie. It was an English war story movie Korvette K225. This was the first feature movie I had ever seen.
Dad’s other brother Uncle Beecher lived in Christiansburg. He was an Elder and a lay minister in the Brethren Church. He was a frugal man with a large family. His first wife died in 1928 and two of his girls lived with us for short periods of time. At various times during his career Uncle Beecher was a well driller; an itinerant threshing machine operator; and, a machine and automotive mechanic. During his later years he had a small business dealing in scrap metals, and used auto parts located near the center of the town of Christiansburg. We had visited him on December 7, 1941 and had returned home when we heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
I best remember Uncle Beecher’s love of motor cycles and his junk yard in the middle of Christiansburg, Virginia. At one time he owned a big old black Harley Davidson motorcycle which he would ride to Floyd as well as to Alabama to visit his children. It made a deafening noise that you could hear for miles. As a kid I wanted to ride on it but dad would not let me get close!
Uncle Beecher’s junk yard was a real attraction for a young mechanically inclined boy. I liked to explore it and image what I could make from the various assortment of “cog wheels”, bearings and the like if they were only mine.
Aunt Rosetta Poff, Dad’s sister, lived in Marion, Virginia. Her husband, Uncle Will Poff had died in 1940 so we did not get to see Aunt Rosetta very often. I remember going to her house only once.
Aunt Esther, Dad’s other sister, also lived in Marion. While still a young woman she had contacted encephalitis during an epidemic. This illness and the accompanying very high body temperature caused severe brain damage which resulted in frequent episodes of uncontrolled rage and violent behavior. A lobotomy was performed with the hope it would cure the problem. The operation relieved the violent behavior but did not result in a cure. She spent the remainder of her life in the state hospital at Marion, Virginia.
My mother had four brothers, two of whom did not live in the immediate vicinity of Floyd. They were Uncle Andy Yopp who lived near Shawsville, Virginia and Uncle Pete Yopp who lived in Rock, West Virginia. Uncle Andy would also come to visit us on occasions. I can barely remember this short heavy set old man with a black high top hat and mustache come walking down the lane toward our house and mother told me who he was. I can also remember visiting his place a couple of times. He and his large family lived in a small old shack located in a narrow valley in the mountains near Shawsville. The yard had no grass since the house was built on a flat rock. My mother use to say the sun did not rise at his place until about 10:00 in the morning because of the high mountains and narrow valley.
Uncle Pete Yopp was a coal miner in West Virginia all his adult life. He was also a big man and very strong in his prime. However the “black lung disease” caused him to become old and almost helpless at an early age. It seemed that he was sick every time we went to visit him.
Mother’s two other brothers lived nearby. Uncle Ben Yopp was a carpenter and later a merchant in the town of Floyd. When the Blue Ridge Parkway was built in the late 1930’s he was a foreman on a construction project. During World War II he had an electrical contracting business and store in the town of Floyd where he sold appliances. Near the end of the war when it was anticipated that household appliances would soon become available, he had a list of those waiting to buy refrigerators and stoves. My mother’s name was always the first on the list. We got the first Westinghouse refrigerator which came into the county after the war.
Uncle Jim Yopp lived in Bedford until he and his wife, Minnie Collins, separated sometime in the mid 1930’s when he came to live with us for “a short time” until he could get his own place to live. This short time turned out to be several years and ended only near the end of World War II when mother insisted that he get a place of his own.
Uncle Jim’s boy Grant was in the army in the 29th division from Bedford, Virginia. I remember him getting V-Mail from Grant on many occasions. Much of the letter contents would be cut out by the censors but it still was sufficient to let Uncle Jim know that Grant was OK. On one occasion Grant said he wished he had a watch so he could tell what time it was. Uncle Jim packed up his watch and mailed it to Grant.
Everyone knew from radio broadcasts that the invasion of Europe was about to happen. Uncle Jim knew that Grant was in England and would probably be involved. Then came that fateful day in June that Uncle Jim received a telegram from the War Department saying that Grant had been killed in action during the invasion of Normandy.
My mother also had two living sister’s that I can remember. Aunt Margaret Janney and Aunt “Min” Kelley. Aunt Margaret, having been born in 1864 was twenty eight years older than mother. She always looked so old it was hard to believe that she was my mother’s sister. Aunt Margaret lived in and around Roanoke and died in 1942. I remember visiting her several times and her being at a reunion at our house about 1940.
Mother’s other sister, Aunt “Min” lived at the Yopp old home place near Copper Hill, Virginia. Mother and Aunt Min were very close and visited each other frequently. I remember going to Aunt Min’s home when I was very young. At that time her husband’s mother was living with them and I remember this old lady sitting behind the stove smoking her long stemmed clay pipe.
Aunt Min’s husband, Uncle Rufus, Kelly worked away from home in Pennsylvania and left Aunt Min to take
care of everything at home. Her youngest son, Lester, was her pride and joy but was sick a lot and unable to work other than a few chores around the house. He died of a heart attack on a street in Roanoke while helping a neighbor make a delivery.
When I was about 10 years old dad bought me an old non-operating Atwaterkent radio at an auction sale for 25 cents. For years that old radio and its parts was my pride and joy. I immediately took it a part to see how it worked. From the parts I made all sorts of radio’s and other electronic devices. Few of them worked but it was the fun building them. It was at this time that I knew I wanted to work with radios and electronics when I grew up.
There was always plenty of work for everyone to do on the farm. At times dad would hire help. The going rate for farm labor was $1.00 for a ten hour day. Sometimes the hired help would be paid with eggs, butter, milk, flower or some other food item. My first job for which I was paid was hoeing corn for the neighbor down the road. She paid me four cents a hour. I really thought that was big money! There was one rule dad and mother always followed. You work hard six days. On Sunday you rest except for the necessary chores of feeding the animals and chickens and milking the cows. I can remember only one time when we worked on a Sunday. This was during the war. The weather had been bad for several weeks. We had tomato plants which were going to waste unless they were reset. On a Sunday afternoon the weather cleared so dad decided that we would have to reset the plants even it were a Sunday. My brother and I grumbled a bit but we knew that the job had to be done. Mother never worked on Sunday. Even in her later years when about all the work she was able to do was crocheting, she would put her work away on Saturday and resume work on it on Monday.
Times had improved between 1931 and 1940. I remember when dad bought a 1931 Model A Ford sedan. I don’t remember what the date was or how much he paid for it but I am sure he paid cash otherwise he would have not bought it. The date must have been sometime prior to 1936. I still remember him finding a gold dollar coin under the floor board. This vehicle served as both truck and passenger car. When dad would go to town to buy supplies he would come home with one hundred pound bags of chicken feed in the back seat and one on each front fender. The road from the main hard surfaced road to the farm was about a quarter mile in length and was completely unimproved, In wet weather it would be too slick to travel and the ruts would get so deep the car would drag bottom. We spent many a hour picking up rocks on the farm and using them to fill the ruts in the road. I remember one year the road was so bad that dad had to leave the car at the hard surfaced road from November to late March.
I started to school in the fall of 1937. You had to be at least six year old to go to the first grade at school. School usually started about the first of September but in 1937 it started late - sometime after September 16. I was six on September 16 so I was the youngest one in my class. We had to walk a quarter mile to catch the school bus. I think Dad went with me the first day but after that I was on my own. How I figured out which school bus to get on and where to get off, I will never know but somehow it worked out.
The school house had two rooms - one for the first and one for the second grade. There were no indoor facilities. A pot bellied stove provided the heat. There was a blackboard at one end of the school room which the teacher used. The kids had small slates and chalk to do our work although some writing was done on paper. We had to buy our own books and supplies so paper was used sparingly.
A new high school building had been completed in 1938 as a WPA project and the old high school building was available for the elementary grades. My second year class moved from the two room building to the old high school building where we had more room. This building did not have any indoor facilities or central heat either but it was much better than the two room building.
I had the same teacher for the most of my elementary schooling starting with the second grade. Mrs. Mary A. Dobyns seemed to take a liking to our class and followed us through the sixth grade. She was the first to initiate a hot lunch program for the children. However the hot lunch consisted of a boiled potato or boiled eggs which you brought raw from home. Mrs. Dobyns would cook them for us on the coal fired pot bellied stove in the class room.
School work was always easy for me. This was probably because my Dad would read to my brother, sister and I when we were very small and I really enjoyed reading. I also think he enjoyed reading Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Robinson Caruso as much as we enjoyed hearing him read. Later I enjoyed reading Popular Mechanics magazine and scientific books especially chemistry and physic text books whenever I could get my hands on one.
The spring of 1939 dad was sick and unable to do his spring plowing. The neighbors came in with their teams of horses and did the plowing without even being asked. Neither did they ask for or nor did they receive any pay. They felt that it was just the right thing to do for dad would do the same thing for them if the need arose.
The winter of 1940 and the spring of 1941 was another tough time. Dad was sick again that spring with an infected foot. This time he went to Christiansburg and purchased a John Deere Model H farm tractor, a turning plow, a corn planter and cultivator and a manure spreader. The cost was six hundred dollars which he had to borrow from the bank. This turned out to be one of the best investments he ever made.
The crop harvests and beef cattle sales in 1941 were good and dad was able to accumulate enough money to trade in his Model A for a 1936 Chevrolet sedan. This car cost $250 and he brought it home on December 6. On December 7 we went to Christiansburg to visit dad’s brother and returned home about mid afternoon. That night when we turned on the radio while we were eating supper. Everyone was talking about what had happened that morning. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the war had started. Our family was especially concerned since my mother’s brother’s son was in the army and known to be stationed on Ohau, Hawaii.
My school teacher, Mrs. Mary A. Dobyns, brought a radio into school the next day. It was tuned to the news all day. You could have heard a pin drop in the classroom as everyone listened to President Roosevelt make his speech to congress. In somber tones he described December 7, 1941, “as a day which will live in infamy” and requested a declaration of war on the Empire of Japan. On December 9 we again listened to President Roosevelt tell the Americans “to prepare for a long war which we are going to win”. On December 11, the United States declared war on Germany and Italy.
There was no question that the nation was ready to fight. The nation seemed to mobilize overnight. The young men raced to enlist in the military forces. Training camps seemed to spring up everywhere. There was news of the Japanese advances into the south Pacific. First came the invasion of the Philippine Islands, next came Hong Kong, Wake Island, and Singapore. I remember the story of a Japanese man wanting more sugar for his coffee in a restaurant. When he was told that sugar was rationed he made his famous statement “keep your damn sugar, we got Singapore”. It was reported that the waitress responded by pouring hot coffee on his head.
It seemed that the Japanese forces could not be stopped. By March it was apparent that the Philippines would fall. General McArthur was ordered to leave and set up headquarters in Australia. On leaving the island of Baatan he promised the Filipinos of continued American support and he uttered his famous commitment “I shall return”. The nightly news broadcasts told of the unrelentless Japanese air attacks on the American troops defending the islands. On April 8 General Wainwright unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese army.
In April 1942 a group of American Army Air Force fliers, under the command of Col. (later General) Jimmy Doolittle launched a lighting air raid on Tokyo from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. The attack did little damage but really made the news headlines in this country and certainly was a psychological victory. This was the main subject of conversation at school for days.
In June 1942 the Japanese attacked Midway Island. After a four or five day air and sea battle the Japanese navy was badly beaten and had to withdraw. I remember the details of this battle as they were available being described on the evening news every night. This victory by the US Navy was probably the turning point of the war. Even though the Japanese had advanced as far south as New Guinea, it was an uphill and losing battle for them for the remainder of the war.
By early 1943 General McArthur began his Island hopping campaign on his way to the Japanese home islands. There were big battles at Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, Grand Turk Island, the Marshall Islands, the Marianas Islands, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and other places with strange names that we had never heard of and were a problem to find on a map. It was during the battle for the Solomon Islands that my first cousin Robert was killed in action when the heavy crusier USS Quincy was sunk by the Japanese off Savo Island. Uncle Jim and Aunt Viola received the notice from the War Department on August 9. I seem to remember that it was in the same naval battle that the cruiser USS Juneau was sunk taking with it the five Sullivan brothers.
Finally in mid 1944 the U.S bombers initiated an all-out air war against the Japanese Empire by bombing the Japanese main islands. In late 1944 General McArthur returned to the Philippines. I still remember the photo’s of him holding a corn cob pipe in his mouth in knee deep water striding ashore in victory at Leyte with the caption “I have returned”.
The war with Japan ended on August 10, 1945 after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 8. The photo’s of General McArthur signing the terms of surrender on the USS Missouri were in all the newspapers and magazines.
The memories of the war with Germany are equally vivid. It seemed that early in the war the German U-boats were unstoppable. There were news reports almost every night of another ship being sunk in the Atlantic. Some very close to the shore. In fact I remember a German submarine being sunk very close or maybe even in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor. This was all very scary and people were afraid that the Germans would land saboteurs on the mainland and we would have to deal with them. All the farmers kept their shot guns and rifles handy just in case.
The war effort brought with it daylight savings or “fast time”. Floyd County was a republican stronghold in an otherwise strongly democratic state and strongly anti-Roosevelt. Fast time was viewed as another symbol of President Roosevelt forcing his “liberal” views on the people. “Why change your clocks everyone asked, when you can get up an hour earlier if that is what you want to do?” Many people, including my parents steadfastly refused to change the clocks. You simply added an hour to the clock during the summer. This was their way of protesting. A bit confusing at times bet everyone got use to the idea. Incidentally, being a republican county in an otherwise democratic state had some real disadvantages especially in the state funding projects with tax money. Floyd county never really got its fair share of state or federal money during those years.
What was life like in a small rural farming community during the war? The war effort had the backing of everyone. High school boys enlisted in the military service as soon as they were old enough. Some before graduation. The Victory Corps was organized in the high school. They sponsored numerous war bond drives, scrap metal drives, scrap rubber collections, tin foil collections drives, etc. Aluminum, rubber and tin were scarce materials and essential to the war effort. Toothpaste tubes were made out of pure tin as well as the foil on chewing gum and cigarette wrappers. You had to turn in an old toothpaste tube when buying a new one. I remember one veteran who had lost a leg in World War I. He had an aluminum leg which he contributed to the war effort.
The war bond sales drives usually had an objective such as sell enough to buy a jeep or a fighter plane, etc. A jeep cost around $1,000 and a fighter plane about $25,000. I remember one such drive which had an auction with the items on sale going to the bidder who would buy the most bonds. One of the items at an auction was a set of second lieutenants bars which had belonged to a local boy who had been captured by the Germans. This set of bars went for a $1000 bond purchase - enough to buy a jeep.
Very soon after the war began the store shelves went empty of non-essential products. Ladies hose and hair pins were some of the items difficult or impossible to find and sometimes caused the ladies to fight for them if they were found in a store. Ration stamps was a necessity of life, for almost all items were rationed. The ration list included all meats, butter, sugar, flour, coffee, canned foods, gasoline and shoes. Food rationing, with the exception of sugar and coffee, really had little effect on our life with the exception of sugar and coffee since we seldom bought any other food item.
Gasoline rationing affected almost everyone. Every licensed vehicle got an “A” ration stamp book which allowed the owner to purchase three gallons of gasoline a week. Farmers were allowed a “B” stamp book which allowed more gasoline for farm vehicles. Our farm truck and tractors qualified for a “C” book which allowed dad to purchase as much non-road taxed gasoline as he needed for the tractor and off-the-road farm truck. In order to conserve gasoline, dad purchased a 1936 Chevrolet pick up truck for farm use and put his 1936 Chevrolet sedan on blocks and out of service for the duration of the war.
I can best remember the farming activities from the mid 1930’s to 1949 when I left the farm to attend the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. We usually had a number of milk cows as well as some beef cattle. I can remember milking sixteen cows twice a day. The animals provided some cash even though the milk only brought about ten cents a gallon and beef on the hoof brought about fifteen to thirty cents a pound. Veal calves usual brought somewhat more. Hay and grains were grown to provide the feed for the animals. Dad was a strong believer in progressive farming techniques. Contour strips and crop rotation was implemented in the early 1940’s. Corn, wheat, oats and alfalfa were the main crops. Dad was the first farmer in Floyd County to produce over one hundred bushes of corn per acre.
Wheat was usually harvested in July. Typically we would start cutting wheat around the fourth of July. Modern combines which cut and threshed the grain were not yet in use. Dad had an old McCormick Deering grain binder which was originally intended to be pulled by two teams of horses. Not having any horses on the farm, he had converted an old Model T truck into a tractor of sorts to pull the binder. This worked very well but it required two people, one driving the truck and one on the binder, rather than only one on the binder. The old truck was used until the John Deere tractor was purchased in 1941. The binder would cut and bind the grain into bundles. A bundle carrier on the binder would carry three or four bundles and then dump them. Additional workers, as available, would follow the binder and stack the grain bundles into shocks to dry. Each shock would contain twelve bundles - ten bundles upright and capped with an additional two bundles. After several weeks of drying the grain would be collected and stacked usually around a stack pole to await the threshing machine. Before I was old enough to operate the tractor or binder, I would follow the binder and watch for rabbits to run out ahead of the binder. It was difficult for the rabbits to run through the grain stubble and they were easy to catch. It was not uncommon to catch at least a half dozen rabbits in a day.
A grain threshing machine and a straw bailer represented a considerable monetary investment and usually one machine served the entire neighborhood. In late August or early September the thresher would start making his rounds through the neighborhood. The machine operator provided the people to feed both the threshing machine and bailer. The farmer had to provide the additional help to get the grain on the feeder table, to insert and tie the bailer wires and to remove the grain and bailed straw. These tasks required the farmer to provide at least six to eight additional people. In most cases these people were your neighbors with the kids getting the job of inserting and tying the bailer wire and carrying water to the workers. The neighbors helped you thresh and you helped them. The time it took to complete your or their job made no difference and was never even discussed.
The threshing machine operator charged toll rather than money. The toll was usually one eighth of the grain threshed. The farmer had to feed the crew and this was no small task. Those guy’s worked hard and ate hardy meals. Just as the neighbor men helped with the threshing, the neighbor ladies helped with the meal preparation and service. Fried chicken was always on the menu along with ham, roast beef and plenty of vegetables, pies and cakes. The dining room was not large enough to seat everyone at the same time so dinner was served in shifts but there was always enough food to go around.
Threshing day was a big event. My first memories of a threshing machine was a steam traction engine pulling this big machine down the road. It seemed to move very slow and I thought they would never get the rig near the wheat stacks without burning up something but somehow they did. The next year the steam traction engine had been replaced with a Fordson tractor. This tractor was used until about 1939 or 40 when it was replaced with a Farmall Model M tractor.
The grain we grew on the farm was not sold as a cash crop. Instead it went to feed the cattle and chickens. We had a small hammer mill which was used to grind the grain. One job I liked particularly was grinding grain for cattle feed. Dad would buy feed supplements to mix with the corn, wheat and oats. Sometimes we would also grind some alfalfa hay into a power and mix it with the grain.
A lot of chicken feed was purchased from the local Southern States Cooperative store. The feed came in 100 pound printed or clear cloth bags. These bags were prized by the farm ladies. They were used to make towels, sheets, quilts and clothes as well as anything else requiring a good quality heavy fabric. If mother didn’t have enough of a particular print for a project, she simply would trade with a neighbor to come up with the number needed. Most of the shirts and underwear I had up until the time I went to college was made from feed bags. Fertilizer also came in very heavy cloth bags each containing 200 pounds. (These were really muscle builders for farm boys!) These bags were more like a lightweight canvas and the material was used to make towels and “straw tick” or “feather bed” mattresses for our beds.
During the summer there was usually an abundance of fruits and vegetables as well as wild berries to be harvested. Picking blackberries was an event. Dad would be working in the fields so this was an activity supervised by my mother. She would dress in dad’s long overalls and put on a long sleeve shirt to protect herself from the thorns and off we would go to the briar patches. It was not unusual for us to come home for lunch with ten gallons or more of blackberries. The afternoon and the next day was consumed with cleaning the berries and making jellies, jams and canned berries.
We had a big black heart cherry tree on our farm. One of our neighbor’s had a big, and I mean big, red cherry tree. When the cherries were ripe the neighbors would get together and pick cherries. These two trees usually supplied more than enough fruit for everyone. Dad would usually help picking cherries since a lot of tree climbing was required.
Preserving beans, corn and apples for winter was another annual event. In addition to canning these food products my mother liked to also dry some. I remember bushels of corn or beans being cleaned, precooked for a few minutes and placed on large flat pans on the woodshed roof to dry in the sun. The pans were covered with cheese cloth to keep the birds and insects away and allowed to dry in the sun for several days. Dried corn and beans along with salt preserved ham or canned pork tenderloin made good “eating” in the winter time.
Another pleasant childhood memory is hearing Archie Naff preach at Red Oak Grove Church of the Brethren. This church congregation still observed some of the old Dunker traditions. The ladies all wore white bonnets and the building had a left and a right door. The ladies and children would use the right door and the men would use the left door.
When Archie Naff preached he could be heard for miles around and he did not use an amplifier! Archie was a tall man and would stand in the pulpit holding his bible in one hand. To introduce the subject for his sermon, he would read a text from the bible (which he probably did not need since he had the bible memorized) and then start his sermon. He never had any notes and could talk for hours without any hesitation. His delivery was sort of like a train getting up to speed. He would start out slow and continually increase both speed and volume until he was shouting so fast that he would slur his words. He always had a number of church elders in the front row (or amen corner) saying “amen brother” at appropriate times to keep him inspired. Mr. Flem Basham, a man with only a few long white hairs on his bald head, was one of the elders I can best remember.
In the fall, the Red Oak Grove Church had a love feast and an accompanying foot washing ceremony. Mother use to say she hoped everyone washed their feet before they came to church. This meeting was held at night. The church would be illuminated by oil lamps on the walls and a huge chandelier in the center. Open windows and doors provided the air conditioning. Two or three preachers would participate in the sermon which always seemed to last for hours.
The food for the accompanying meal was a sight to behold and well worth the wait. It seemed that each lady of the church tried to outdo the others. There would be platters of roast beef, ham, roost pork, boiled eggs and vegetables of all kinds. You never saw bologna or hot dogs at one of these meals! The desert table loaded with pies, cakes and cookies was fit for a king. No one ever went home hungry.
After graduating from Floyd County High School in 1948, I returned for some post graduate work in order to take solid geometry. This was required in order to be admitted to VPI. In fall of 1949 I entered VPI. Leaving home was hard to do but it was something I really wanted to do. It was something that Mother and Dad wanted me to do also. I got home for summer vacations but that was for only about three months a year.
I graduated from VPI in June 1953 with a degree in Physics. In August 1953, I entered the US Army and served two years in the Signal Corps serving at Fort Meade, MD, Fort Knox, KY, White Sands, New Mexico, Holloman AFB, Alamogardo, New Mexico and Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. As a member of the SigC we performed a number of interesting missions supporting the development of ground-to-ground tactical and ICBM’s, air-to-air tactical missiles and advanced radar and nuclear weapon development and testing. Cold war activities were very active at this time. As you could expect, our government was very interested in what the other side was doing. Part of our job was to find out as much as possible.
I returned to civilian life in 1955 and went to work for Westinghouse in Baltimore, MD where I had worked for a short time prior to entering the Army. My first assignments were associated with the development of the ground control system for the first US Air Force ground to air missile defense system.
I worked for Westinghouse continuously until I retired in 1994. During this 40 plus years (Westinghouse gave me credit for the time in the Army) I held various design engineering, supervisory and management positions. For the last 28 years of my career, I was in the Space Division. Here I was responsible for the design, development, test and launch of extremely sophisticated sensors for meteorological satellites. I lead the development and production of these systems from 1966 to 1976. From 1976 until my retirement I was the Program and Business Area Manager. I retired as a corporate executive responsible for a significant business area. Since retirement, I have been so busy that I don’t know when I ever had time to work! I have been doing some consultant work as well as preparing a book of Spangler genealogy. I have been working on the book since 1973 and have it about ready to print. It is surprising how many names common in Floyd County appear as descendants of Daniel and Mary Spangler 1720-1820. I have names of over 2,000 of their “grandchildren”.
In 1957 I married the former Bessie Delia Bungard from Butler, Indiana. We have four children and nine grandchildren. Our daughter Janet graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in music education. She is married to an electrical engineer and they live in Library, PA. Her husband designs rapid transit system for airports. He is responsible for the Denver and Orlando airports systems among others. They have three children, two boys (twins) and one girl.
Our son Gary graduated from the Catonsville Community College and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with an associated degree in engineering and a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He is married to the Juliann Beckleheimer and is employed as a driver of a local delivery truck in Columbus, Ohio.
Our daughter Karen graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia with a degree in recreational therapy. She is currently employed as the recreational activity director for “The Hermitage” a nursing and long term health care facility in Richmond. She is also president of the Virginia State Association of Activity Professionals. She is married to a well known radio/TV sports personality in Richmond. Her husband was formerly the voice of the Richmond Braves baseball team. He currently broadcasts the University of Richmond football and basketball. He also does local radio and TV broadcasts for Richmond radio and TV stations and for the Virginia News Network as well as TV for Home Team Sports events. They have two children, a girl and a boy, and live in Richmond, Va.
Our son David graduated from VPI with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He is currently employed by a small company in Hollywood, Maryland as a hardware/software system designer of special test equipment for naval aircraft. His wife also attended VPI and graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and works for the same company as David. They have four children, three girls and a boy, and live in Hollywood, Maryland.
M. J. Spangler
4033 Crescent Road
EllicottCity, MD 21042