Tuesday, June 18, 2002

I am Rachel Isabelle Clark Tucker.  I was born March 10th, 1913, near Hoxie, Sheridan Co., Kansas.  The 4th child of Oliver Francis and  Rosa Bell (Lindsey) Clark.

Mervin Leroy Clark, born 3-11-1902

Jessie Marie Clark Chew, born 10-21-1906

Martha Leota Clark Ayres, born 6-21-1909

Rachel Isabelle Clark Tucker, born 3-10-1913

I was born in a sod house.  Don't know how long we lived there.  We lived on a farm on Dry Wood Creek near Fort Scott.  Dad rented from a man named Tom Ater.  In those days there were men that traveled around the country as horse traders.  He came to our place and Dad bought a beautiful gentle buggy horse for Mother.  So she took us 3 girls and went shopping.  Well on the way home the horse got tired, stopped and laid down.  A man came by and saw the problem and went and told Dad, who came with another horse, hitched it up and we got home okay.  Dad learned later on the horse had a very weak back.  Needless to say we didn't keep the horse very long.

While we were living there a rabid dog came and got into a fight with our dog and we had to destroy him, but we did not know the dog had bit one of our mares, until she went mad, and Dad had to destroy her, too.

The next memories were of a place where we lived when our baby sister Oiha Elizabeth Clark Grouger was born, August 21, 1917.  Dad rented the farm from a lady named Maggie Van Brunt.  That was near Garland, Kansas.  This is the place we lived near some people name Pellett.  They might have relation, as there was Uncle Seth and Aunt Nancy, I think were the names, and a boy about my age named Little Joe.  We used to go visit them a lot.  Little Joe and I played together.  He died as the result of a tragic accident.  His dad was Joe also.  There was snow on the ground and Big Joe had been to town or somewhere in the big lumber wagon.  Little Joe ran out, stepped on the brake in front of the big back wheel, his foot slipped and the wheel ran over him.  His Dad didn't know he was trying to get on the wagon.  This was in the late 1916 or early 1917 as it was before Oiha was born (8-21-17).

Then in 1917 or 1918 we moved to another farm owned by a man named Millard Mitchel.  What was so neat were the 22 sugar maple trees in our front yard.  The shade was so dense the grass never grew in there, it was always very cool. 

The highway was in front of our house.  I will remember the soldiers marching along the road, the munitions and supplies were hauled in enclosed wagons.  It was a thrill to see the soldiers in lines and in perfect step.  There were no trucks, just horse drawn wagons.  Of course, the officers rode horses.  That was the place we lived when sister Martha almost drowned, one of the few places we lived where we had a "TELEPHONE" .  There was a big pond not far from the house, and the teenagers would skate on it.  One of our neighbor ladies was in Pittsburgh and called to have Mother call the daughter to the phone.  Martha went to tell her and since they had been skating on the pond the night before, they were taking a short cut across the pond.  Well, the weather had warmed some in the nite and ice where Dad kept it cut so the stock could drink, was  not very solid.  Fortunately there was some woven wire across the drinking hole, and Maggie was wearing high heel shoes and one of her heels got caught in the woven wire and that kept the girls from going under the ice.  A neighbor (farmer) was driving a team of horses down the road and heard the screams, took the lines of the harness, snapped the lines together and helped  save the girls by pulling them out.  We lived there for several years.  Dad was a blacksmith at the coal mine and Mervin and Grandpa Spring (Mother's step-father) did the farming. 

There were peddlers that came by selling barrels of all kinds of apples, potatoes, cabbage, turnips and etc., that we could put in our pit that was lined with straw, and covered with straw and dirt and we could keep the stuff until we used it up.  Grandpa Springer always bought us barrels of apples.  The peddlers had bells on the horses harness and Oiha would hear them and would recognize them and say "Apples, Apples".

We moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma next.  Got to Bartlesville just as they were ringing the old year out and 1921 in.  Our furniture, live stock, and farm equipment was sent on the train.  Grandpa and Mervin riding the train to take care of the stock, horses, cattle, hogs, chickens, and etc.  Dad was strictly a farmer there.  At this time we had a 1917 Model T Ford touring car.  Someone came and stripped it of tires and several other things one night.  It had carbide lights, claxon horn, 30 x 3 1/2  clinche(r?) rim tires, and of course the old crank handle to start it with, reverse, clutch and brake pedals, a fold down top and side curtains.  Dad never did fix it up again, but later on bought a Buick roadster.  We usually went to town in the farm wagon.  Mother only lived from 1-1-21 to 8-26-22 after we got to Oklahoma.

After that Dad got a job pumping 3 little oil wells for $30 per month.  Mervin and Jessie both had gotten married shortly after that.  Jessie was married 1924, Mervin was married in 1927.  Martha went to town to work and Oiha and I kept house for Dad.  We lived with Jessie and Otto for a while before coming to Moline to live with some friends from Bartlesville in 1927, to go to school.  

I met George L. Tucker in Moline and we were married 12-24-28.  We moved to Elk Falls, Ks. where George owned a barber shop.  George's hobby was raising livestock.  We raised pure bred chickens for a while, trap-nested the hens and selling the best layers eggs to the hatchery.  After our daughter, Wanda Lee was born May 8, 1931, we moved to a farm west of Elk Falls and raised pure bred pedigreed hogs.  Ohio Improved Chesterwhites (O. I. C.)  After times began to get bad, no one wanted the O. I. C. so we stopped raising them.  We moved back into town.  We still milked cows and shipped our separated cream and George barbered full time.  Our son, Kenneth Eugene was born in Elk Falls 10-7-34.  

We moved to Harper, Kansas George barbered for a man named Warren Westbrook.  Eventually we came back to Moline and George was in partners with his brother Emmett Tucker.  George wanted to farm again so we moved to a farm north of Moline about 3 1/2 miles from town.  Our children went to a country school.

George and I were milking one summer evening a thunder and lightning storm came up, we had a woven wire partition in the barn between where we milked and where we kept the hogs's shed.  The lightning hit the barn, killing the cow I was milking.  I had a 2 1/2 gal. bucket of milk and after everything settled down, my bucket was empty, no milk on me, the cow or the barn floor.  George had about 1 or 1 1/2 gal. of milk in his bucket, he'd hung on a hook a ways from where I was, and there was only about a pint left in his bucket.  Needless to say the barn was empty of livestock except the dead cow and our 4 horses tied in their part of the barn.  The mare farthest from the cow was deaf for a  while, but later was okay.  [Read newspaper article]

In 1944 we sold our farm equipment and bought a house in Moline to be close to George's mother [Lulu Maude Sallee Tucker], who was getting older.  And George barbered full time.  He retired in 1962, we fished and traveled a little, but the times he enjoyed most in his retirement was when our grandchildren, Wanda Lee and her husband Beryle Mills four, Rick, Cindy, Bob and Tim, would come to fish at our place on the lake, especially when Kenneth  and Shirley's three, Roger, Becky and Mark, would come down, the 2 older boys, then the 2 girls and then the young boys, sometimes two and sometimes Tim would come down to be with them and sometimes Tim would come down with Cindy and Becky.  George really enjoyed his grandchildren a lot.  He never got to see any of his great grandchildren.  He died April 9th, 1967 just 8 days after Wanda Lee's husband died April 1st, 1967.  Rick had 1 son, Adam Mills, Cindy has 1 son, Justin Klaudt.  Bob has 2 Jennifer and Kevin Mills.  Tim never married.  Kenneth and Shirley's Roger has Deron and Lisa, lost 2 before they were 1 year old.  Becky has 2 girls Jessica and Rachel, Mark has 3 Garrett, Alana and Mindy.  

They were both good men.  Good husbands and providers.  We had some glad times and sad times.  Rich times and lean times.  Good times and bad times, but all in all I've had a good life and I am truly blessed.

I am past 89 years of age, my health is good, I live alone, do my work, sew, crochet, I love to cook, I can drive my car.

I wouldn't want to go thru these things at my age, but I'm glad I experienced them in my younger days.  I'm too old to stack hay, shuck corn, shock feed and cut the grain heads from the kafer [?] corn and Milo and with arthritis in my hands, I don't think I could do very much milking.

If I had the team, wagon and equipment and someone to drive I'd still love to go on a wagon trail trip.  I wasn't old enough to know anything about the covered wagon trip the folks took, when they had to winter in a "soddy" when I was born in [March] 1913.  

There are probably a lot of things I've missed but these are some of the things I remember.

Rachel Isabelle Clark Tucker, June 19, 2002