INTERVIEW WITH EDNA MEYER AND RETHA (BOLDING) BEVERIDGE ______
An interview conducted by Jerry Abbitt with long time friends, Edna Meyer and Retha (Bolding) Beveridge. Edna graduated from Glendale High School in 1918 and Retha graduated in 1926. They were interviewed on four different days, May 12, 1992, May 18, 1992, August 6, 1992, and August 28, 1992.
UV: [Inaudible]
JA: What I got out of that was that George Vancil?
RB: Vencil. V-E-N-C-I-L, Edna, or S-I-L?
EM: V-E-N-S-I-L. [Glendale City Directories list the name V-E-N-S-E-L.]
JA: S-I-L. Okay, now start with him. He got a pair of peacocks?
EM: From a Mexican woman.
JA: Okay.
EM: His aunt, Emma Wilky (who was also my aunt) wanted the first pair he raised. So he raised a pair and gave them to my aunt. Then he decided to sell the remaining pair and mother [Clara E. Wilky Meyer] bought them from him for $5.00.
JA: What a buy! [Laughter]
EM: Because he wanted a gun.
JA: Okay.
EM: When Mr. Vensel brought the peacocks over their legs [were] tied together. When he took the hen out of the buggy she flopped and broke her leg. My mother was very upset about that. My dad [John J. Meyer] said he could fix it. He splintered her leg and that was the beginning of the peacock flock. She got well.
JA: She got well. Hobbled around a bit?
EM: Oh yes, she was able to hobble and fly onto the roost but she was lame. But that didn’t keep her from raising a big flock of peacocks.
JA: Okay.
RB: Edna, at the most (that you had when I was young), how many peacocks would you say that you had at the time?
1
EM: I wouldn’t know. Oh, I would say maybe fifteen or so.
RB: Yes, I think so.
EM: But when I cooped them up (when Jimmy rented my place) I think I put about sixty in the coop.
RB: Oh really?
JA: Wow!
EM: I had a big long coop for them but one by one they died.
RB: How did your dad happen to send peacocks to Obregon, the president of Mexico?
EM: I don’t know exactly how that happened. Somebody in Phoenix [Maricopa County, Arizona] who had government connections down there [but] I don’t know just who it was. [Inaudible]
JA: Where was Obregon at? In Mexico City?
RB: Mexico City. He was the President of Mexico.
JA: Do they still have descendants from your peacocks?
EM: I don’t know.
RB: Jerry, when I was in Mexico in 1970 we went to the palace and there were peacocks on the grounds in Mexico City.
JA: I’ll be!
RB: So not until just recently did I know that Mr. Meyer had sent the peacocks to Obregon. But I would say that those that I saw on the grounds were the descendants of the Meyer ─
EM: Oh, I didn’t know that.
RB: ─ peacocks.
EM: I am learning something!
RB: Yes.
JA: That is fantastic!
EM: I remember him building a crate for them. He had to put them in a crate.
2
JA: Do you know about what year that would have been? Or even [what] decade?
EM: Oh goodness, it was before 1910, I’m sure. I was quite small.
JA: Okay, so just for the completeness of the story here on the tape. The [Louis] Sands purchased a pair [of peacocks] from your parents and that pair was the start of ─
EM: I suppose so.
JA: ─ the [ones] that were at the Sahuaro Ranch.
RB: Yes, because Mr. Sands’s sister (at that time) owned the Sahuaro Ranch and undoubtedly, got the peacocks from her brother. [Charlotte Sands Smith purchased Sahuaro Ranch in 1927. She went the Chicago World’s Fair in 1930s and purchased three peacocks, a cock and two pea hens. She gave little ones to her brother and they were at Manistee until after the grandchildren and friends shot them with their air rifles. Sahuaro Ranch peacocks are not descendents of Meyer’s peacocks.]
JA: Oh?
RB: Because I can remember when the peacocks came to the Sahuaro Ranch.
JA: Okay.
RB: I couldn’t have been over eight (maybe) at that time. We would go out past there on our way to swim in the canal.
JA: Did you swim in the canals a lot?
RB: Oh, yes, we had what we called Glendale Beach? Hasn’t anyone told you about that?
JA: No.
EM: It was right below our house. [Laughter]
JA: No kidding? Tell me about it.
EM: That is the reason that I know her [Retha] so well. I remember seeing her when she was a little girl.
RB: [Laughter]
EM: My mother wouldn’t let us go swimming. It was unsanitary. She didn’t want us in that dirty old ditch.
3
RB: Up on the Arizona Canal (above the Sahuaro Ranch) there was an area that the men of Glendale cleaned off the bank of the canal [and] put sand on there. [They] cut steps, now this was before APS [Salt River Project not APS] cared what you did ─
JA: Yes.
RB: ─ particularly at the canal. They cut steps in the bank of the canal so the ladies could be led down into the water. We kids just jumped off the bank into the canal. They made ramadas. It was a regular place where you went in the summer.
JA: No kidding?
RB: Yes.
EM: Oh, I thought those steps were for the dogs to get out [in the water]! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I know they have steps on by the CAP [Central Arizona Project] for the animals to walk out.
JA: That is right. I have never heard anyone talk about that.
RB: Oh, really?
JA: That is fascinating.
RB: Lot of the people from Peoria [Maricopa County, Arizona] would come down and picnic. It was great! The Fourth of July and different holidays [like] Memorial Day. You went to the cemetery and then you went out to Glendale Beach and spent the rest of the day. These ramadas that they built (just the framework) they used the fronds off of the Washingtonian Palm [trees] to cover and make shade. We went there very often in the summer.
EM: Did you ever heard of very many getting drowned?
RB: No, no.
EM: There is another thing.
RB: Edna ─
EM: Nearly every day someone else gets drowned.
4
JA: Yes.
RB: Edna, the only child that I can remember (in my lifetime) [drowning] down at Glendale [Beach] was the little Payne boy that lived at the corner of Lateral 18 and C Avenue. [59th and Myrtle] The Payne’s, there was Marvin and Norman and John Payne. [Gordon Albert Payne, son of Leslie Marvin and Josephine Payne died of accidental drowning on November 20, 1922.]
EM: Yes.
RB: Their little brother (one of the little [boys]) drowned out there in front of the house. And that is the only drowning that I can ever remember.
EM: Across from the high school, weren’t there some people by the name of Thuma?
RB: Yes, Thuma.
EM: Didn’t a little Thuma child drown in that ditch?
JA: Yes.
RB: Yes.
JA: I was interviewing Frank Thuma and he didn’t tell me how she [Harold Webster Thuma died of accidental drowning on September 28, 1918] died but that she [he] died right there.
RB: Yes.
EM: She [he] drowned in the ditch. I remember ─
RB: That is right. I had forgotten about the little Thuma girl [boy.]
EM: ─ a little boy who lived on 67th Avenue off of Indian School [Road], a little toddler. [He] got away from his mother and walked out in to the ─
RB: Canal?
EM: No, the stock pond, the cattle pond [inaudible] to drink. [He] walked in there and when she went to look for him, he had drowned.
RB: Between the time that the Payne child and the Thuma child died, there would be quite a space of years. When this little fellow drown down off Bethany Home [Road] it wasn’t as if something like that happened every year. Or happened every week, it seems like we are having now.
5
EM: Yes.
JA: Yes.
RB: Yet we just lived in the canals!
EM: People lived on banks of the canal. Little [children] played ─
RB: Oh, sure!
EM: Heck, we lived on those laterals and we played along the ditch all the time and never fell in. We would get a spanking if we had!
[See Note 1: for an explanation of the Lateral system and the ones in or near Glendale.]
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Lateral 19 was right across from where Edna’s home was on Glendale Avenue. It would be 67th Avenue and Glendale Avenue now. As the water came over the head-gate it would wash out quite a hole. Across from her home there was a particularly good hole. This would be just down beyond the Glendale High School where Edna lived on the next street, 67th Avenue.
JA: Yes.
RB: Opposite her home was one of the best swimming holes that there was in the area.
JA: No kidding?
RB: The very best one, Jerry and Edna, was the hole down on Lateral 18 and Glendale Avenue. Right there at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Lateral 18 was the town’s swimming hole. It was called the town’s swimming hole! Now it is all cemented over. The water poured down there viscously and made a big hole. If you wanted to find any of your friends in the summertime, you went to the swimming hole because there they were!
JA: You just went to the hole!
RB: It was right down town at the intersection. [It was] just beyond the railroad to the south (I would say one hundred feet beyond the railroad) was where the irrigation ditch came. That was the town swimming hole.
JA: No kidding? I bet you could have fished in there too. There were fish in the canals.
RB: I don’t know if Wallace [Edna’s brother, Wallace Meyer] ever caught muskrats in the canals and laterals or not. Did he, Edna? The Dille boys made money by catching
6
muskrats. I can remember swimming in the laterals and canals and having [muskrats swim] around hitting my legs.
JA: Really?
RB: There were muskrats there. Charley Dille made quite a lot of spending money catching muskrats.
EM: We lived on the end of the ditch and you would be surprised at all the stuff that used to come down.
RB: I’ll bet! [Laughter]
JA: I’ll bet!
EM: All the people from us clear up to the railroad threw their crap in that ditch and it came down to us. Dead cats and dogs and everything else.
JA: I’ll bet that was [inaudible]. Did the women ─
RB: Participate?
JA: ─ surf on the canal? I have that picture, my mind just went blank.
RB: Varney?
JA: No, the Rovey brothers.
RB: Oh, the Rovey brothers.
JA: Surfing on the canal. Did the girls participate in that too or was it just the boys?
RB: Oh, yes. No, no, the girls did it too! The Rovey’s are quite a lot younger than I am. They would the age of my brother [Charles Bolding] and my younger sister, June. No, the car would go along and pull the kids on the canal until APS [SRP] stopped it. The canal was a source of a lot of entertainment; of fishing, swimming, picnicking, and boating. I knew [friends] who had little boats that they took out and they would go from one lateral to the other. Then there would be a head-gate and you would have to take your boat out and put it [in again]. They would go the full length from wherever they lived to Lateral 23 which was the end of the system. [At that point] it went into the Agua Fria River.
JA: Yes, fascinating!
7
RB: That was one of the sources of entertainment during the summer. At that time, Jerry, there were only two swimming pools in all of Maricopa County. One was Riverside, down ─
EM: I remember Riverside.
RB: ─ on south Central [Avenue]. A beautiful swimming pool with a big concrete slide ─
JA: Really?
RB: ─ that made dips as you came down it. There was a big circular dance hall. One of the nice things that my mother would do in the summer, was one weekend (a Saturday or a Sunday) she would take the four of us to Riverside and we could swim as long as we wanted. We took our lunch. From 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon was tea-dance. For the price of getting in to the park you [were able] to swim and then you could go to the tea- dance. Many of us who learned to dance up there in the building on 58th [Avenue] and Glendale Avenue learned to dance [at Riverside]. We would meet out at Riverside on this particular [day]. They only had [tea-dance] only on the weekends from 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoons.
JA: Where was the other pool? You said there were two.
RB: A number of years later Joyland came and do you know where Van Buren Street crosses the Roosevelt canal out east of town? Beyond the [Arizona State Hospital?]
JA: Okay, yes.
RB: There is a canal there and just to the west of that canal a man started an amusement park called Joyland. He built a [swimming] pool and that was the second one that was a man- made pool in the state of Arizona.
JA: What time frame are you talking [about]? Would this have been in the 1920s or in the teens?
RB: The 1920s.
JA: The 1920s. I’ll be.
RB: I was about twelve when I was learning to dance, twelve or thirteen.
EM: That is something that I never learned to do. I was too bashful.
RB: You didn’t learn to dance, Edna?
8
EM: In the first place, I didn’t dance when I was young because my dad [John J.] didn’t believe in dancing. Then afterwards (I guess) I was just too bashful and didn’t care about it.
RB: Oh, I loved to dance. My sister June ─
EM: So did my mother [Clara E.].
RB: I would like to have a penny for every mile of dancing that my younger sister did. She was a beautiful dancer.
EM: I imagine she was [as] she was a nice looking girl.
RB: She played the piano. She played the piano for a little dance band in the early 1930s. Norman Iverson played something.
EM: Oh, I forgot about Norman!
RB: Jackie Sobey played the drums.
EM: Jack Sobey, I forgot about him!
RB: Jackie played the drums. [Laughter]
EM: I haven’t thought of them in years.
RB: They practiced [at] our house so you know my mother [Cecilia Bolding (Mrs. Wiley Harrison Bolding)] was a person of great feeling for kids. Otherwise you never would have put up with Jackie Sobey and the drums!
EM: [Laughter]
JA: I imagine that was a bit of an annoyance!
RB: They [also] played for the high school dances.
JA: Which were at the Women’s Club?
RB: Yes.
JA: Okay. Fascinating! I know you need to leave at 2:00 p.m., Edna, so we are going to wrap this up here.
RB: Yes, we need to [leave].
JA: Thank you.
9
EM: Maybe we will think of something for the next time.
RB: Yes.
JA: Thank you for reminiscing with me. I appreciate it. It helps me to learn.
RB: Edna, Jerry asked me if sometime we would get together and talk. I told him that I would talk with you and then we get together. I made a list (that I will bring over the next time that Pat and I come) of things that I remember happened. You and I can talk those over. [Pat is a companion that helps Retha.]
JA: That would be great.
RB: One thing I had on the list was the Glendale Beach.
JA: Good!
RB: And the swimming pools at Riverside and Joyland. I [listed] things that we might talk about (from my memory) from the time I was young until I [left] high school. I’ll bring that list over and we will [review] it.
EM: You probably know more about those things than I do because I was never very sociable.
RB: No, but you knew the people that I knew.
EM: Yes.
JA: You probably experienced a lot in the community.
RB: Edna, didn’t you have out at your home a horse-hair couch?
EM: Horse-hair couch?
RB: Yes.
EM: No, I don’t think so.
RB: Didn’t you? I thought that I remembered [seeing one the] time I came out to your house when you belonged to the little bridge club. Do you remember?
EM: Yes.
RB: I came out and substituted for somebody. I was thinking that in your living room you had a horse-hair couch. But if you did, you would remember it.
10
EM: The only old couch that I remember is that one and I had it re-upholstered when I moved over here.
RB: Yes.
EM: I’m sure it wasn’t horse-hair.
RB: I just made a mistake. It wasn’t at your house.
EM: Did you come out one time when I had ─
RB: Oh, yes, you invited me to come out and substitute for somebody.
EM: Well, well.
RB: It was the kind of couch that had a roll and then came out like this and was it only about so wide. I’ll have to think of whose house had that couch. If your family didn’t have it, then I have to find out who had it.
EM: I’m sure I didn’t have it. That is the only couch we have ever had.
[END OF TAPE 92-010]
______
INTERVIEW WITH EDNA MEYER AND RETHA (BOLDING) BEVERIDGE Continued on May 28, 1992 ______
RB: The earthen dam went out and flooded us all the area but (as Edna said) they thought there was gold up there. Luke’s flood covered everything they could find. Of course, if there had been gold they would have figured out some way to mine it.
JA: Where was that?
RB: Walnut Creek [Arizona].
JA: That was at Walnut Creek?
RB: Yes.
EM: It was lined with walnut trees, a walnut grove.
RB: Yes.
JA: The Cartwright’s [owned] a cattle ranch there?
11
EM: No, one of the Cartwright girls married a [man by the name of] Carter.
JA: Oh.
EM: The Cartwright Ranch was at ─ where was that? Out there some place! [Laughter]
RB: J. M. [Jackson Manford] Cartwright. It was J. M. Cartwright.
EM: Yes.
RB: [His ranch] was below Walnut Grove [Yavapai County], Edna.
EM: Yes, I know we used to pass by it [inaudible].
RB: Yes, on the old Black Canyon [Highway].
EM: Yes.
JA: Edna, tell me how your family came to Arizona?
EM: How did we come to Arizona?
JA: Yes, and when.
EM: When? My mother came in 1884. She was eight years old. She came from Missouri.
JA: From Missouri? Did she come with her family?
EM: Yes. The first one of my family that came west was my Great-Uncle John [inaudible]. He came in 1876 to Phoenix. He homesteaded and bought the 320 acres where they built the aluminum plant on 35th Avenue and Van Buren [Street]. [This was the site of the Reynolds Aluminum plant.]
JA: He homesteaded that [land]?
EM: Yes.
JA: Wow!
EM: His heirs sold the property to the aluminum outfit.
RB: Was that on your father’s side [of the family], Edna?
EM: Mother’s.
12
RB: Your mother’s.
EM: My father was the only one of the Meyer’s that came out here until later years when the Barbus niece came out.
RB: You father came from where, Edna?
EM: My father was born (I told you) in Alsace-Lorraine [France].
RB: Alsace-Lorraine, that is right.
EM: They came across [the ocean], I don’t know when, he was about nine years old. [They landed in] New York and they [went] to Illinois because Grand-Father Meyer was already there. My dad left home when he was sixteen and never went back.
JA: Never went back?
EM: He went back once or twice on a visit but ─
RB: Where did he go when he left home?
EM: He and another boy left home and went to Nebraska. They said the other boy was his cousin. They stayed about a year in Nebraska and decided they would move on. [Laughter] Dad wanted to go west and the other boy wanted to come home, go back to Illinois. So they parted. One went one way and the other went the other way. The boy who wanted to go home never did get there. They don’t know what happened to him. [He] never got back.
Dad went west. He claimed he went with (I don’t know if I should tell this or not) a fellow who was taking bunch of horses to Mexico and dad went with him. A kid about sixteen or seventeen. There was another boy who went along too. He was a Mormon boy. So they had these two boys and five or six drivers and the boss. They started the herd of horses to Mexico. As they went along the horse herd increased. As much as I could [understand] they took the old Horse Thief Trail through Horse Thief Basin.
JA: Yes.
EM: They got into Hidden Valley out here and camped and let the horses graze. About sundown a stranger rode in and the boss talked with the stranger. After the stranger left he came back and fired the Mormon boy and dad. He told them to leave and to go home. They didn’t want to but he insisted. He gave them a horse and told them to leave and they did. They went back to Utah to the Mormon settlement and stayed the rest of the winter. Dad said he was never treated better in his life than he was with those Mormons. He said they were grand people. Through the grapevine they heard what happened to this fellow and his horses after they were settled in Utah. The vigilantes were on the trail and caught up with them and killed them. [They] took the horses back to Nebraska. I asked
13
dad why the boss fired the boys. He said, “He knew we didn’t have anything to do with it and we were innocent. He didn’t want us to get into trouble so he just fired us [so] we were out of the way when the vigilantes got there.” So that was sad.
Dad said he stayed with the Mormons all winter and then he went home. He got kind of homesick and stayed a little while and then left again. He went west to Wyoming and South Dakota. He was in Deadwood [South Dakota] right after Wild Bill [Hickok] and Calamity Jane was there. Wild town in those days! Then he came to Phoenix in 1890. He had a wild life!
RB: Interesting, though!
JA: My goodness! He would have been in this area in the 1880s?
EM: Probably so or a little bit earlier.
JA: [In the] 1870s? He was one of the earliest!
EM: But he didn’t come to Phoenix to live until 1890.
JA: Did he tell you much about what Arizona was like in those times?
EM: No, there wasn’t much in Phoenix at that time.
JA: No! [Laughter] That is for sure!
EM: When my mother came on the Southern Pacific [Railroad] to the little ol’ town of Maricopa out here, her Uncle Johnny was already [living] in Phoenix. He was out there with a big wagon to load up Grandpa and all [of] their family and bring them to Phoenix.
JA: No kidding?
EM: Another person that came to Phoenix (on the same old big wagon) was a Mrs. Smoot. Do you remember met Mrs. Smoot?
RB: Mrs. Smoot, [Mrs. A. B.] yes.
EM: Alice Smoot’s mother.
RB: Yes.
JA: Who were they? I am not familiar with ─
EM: They lived down in the Cartwright district. [The Smoot’s donated the land for the Margaret Brooks Memorial Church].
14
JA: Oh.
EM: What was it, Thomas Road?
RB: Thomas Road.
EM: Thomas and [inaudible] right below the Cartwright’s.
RB: Yes.
EM: [On] 59th [Avenue], I guess.
RB: [On] 59th [Avenue], I think. The Smoot’s lived at Thomas Road and 59th [Avenue].
EM: After grandpa [came] to Phoenix he took up a homestead on 99th [Avenue] and Indian School Road. He also could take up a timber claim. His timber claim was right katy- corner on the river [Agua Fria River] down there at 99th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road].
RB: [Laughter]
EM: He couldn’t get any water to irrigate because the ditches didn’t come down that far. So he gave them up and moved up to 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road where] he lived until he died.
JA: What year did your father die? [John J. Meyer died July 11, 1949]
EM: My father?
JA: Oh, that was your grand-father you were talking about.
EM: I don’t know, 1900, I guess.
JA: Yes?
EM: I was just a baby.
RB: Now that is the family.
JA: Right. So he was a farmer?
EM: Yes.
JA: Do you know what kind of things he farmed?
15
EM: I guess barley and alfalfa. He raised hogs, maybe. That is what most of them did in those days.
JA: Yes. When your mom came (you said) in 1884, is that right?
EM: Yes.
JA: How did she meet your father?
EM: Oh! They were living there on 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road] and there was a family that lived up somewhere on 67th Avenue by the name of Eagers. These Eagers came from Deadwood and they knew dad in Deadwood. After they [arrived] in Phoenix they wrote back and told him what a wonderful place Phoenix was so he came to Phoenix in 1890. He stayed with the Eagers for a little while and then he went to work for my Uncle Henry [Wilky]. [During] that time he met my mother through my uncle. They [started] going together and eventually [were] married. He never left! [Laughter]
RB: When did your dad acquire his property, Edna?
EM: His what?
RB: Property.
EM: I don’t know. I would say probably about 1899 or 1898.
RB: Were you born on that property?
EM: I was born this place.
JA: Where was his place, again?
EM: [At] 75th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road]. Do you know where the Westridge Mall is?
JA: Yes.
EM: It is just a mile north of there.
JA: Okay.
EM: Cedar Arms had the property where the mall is and we [had] the next corner up on the next mile on Indian School [Road].
RB: Yes.
JA: Did he actually homestead that?
16
EM: No, he didn’t.
JA: Okay.
EM: He bought it from a fellow by the name of Harry Kay. I think Harry Kay homesteaded it.
JA: Okay.
RB: [Inaudible]
JA: Yes. Your father farmed that land as well?
EM: Yes, he farmed that land until 1917 when he sold it and moved to Glendale. We didn’t sell it; we just moved off of it and rented it.
JA: Okay.
EM: Wallace [her brother] and I sold it in 1960.
JA: Is that when the residential area was developing?
EM: That is when John [F.] Long came and bought it.
JA: Okay.
RB: Was that the property at the 75th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road] or the property at Glendale [Road] and 67th [Avenue]?
EM: No, 75th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road].
RB: [At] 75th [Avenue] ─
EM: There was 160 acres there.
RB: You sold that to John F. Long?
EM: To John Long. John Long was one of my pupils [Edna is mistaken about this. John Long says he did not attend Glendale Grammar School.]
RB: Yes, I know!
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I have always wanted to meet up with him [but] I never have.
17
JA: Since the time that you sold the property to him you haven’t seen him since?
EM: I didn’t see him then, I dealt with a ─
RB: Agent.
EM: ─ agent.
JA: Really? Well, it high time that your student comes and talks to his teacher, isn’t it?
EM: [Laughter] Maybe he thinks he is disgraced!
RB: You know, Edna, he does a lot of good. I notice on Channel 8 a number of [programs] that are sponsored by the John F. Long Foundation.
EM: I heard that ─
RB: He has to put up a lot of money to buy to those [programs] on [television].
EM: I heard that John Long was a little bit disgraced because he is Russian. [John’s wife, Mary was Russian. John’s family were German and he spoke German until he was 5 years old.]
JA: Yes.
EM: He took his step-father’s name.
JA: Yes.
EM: He was Russian when he was in my [school] room.
RB: Yes.
JA: What was his Russian name?
EM: I don’t know. That is what I have been trying to think. The first name was Fred because ─ [John used his middle name of Fred and old friends still refer to him as Fred.]
JA: Yes.
EM: ─ he was Fred Yuseoff or some such name but I can’t say for sure.
JA: I was told that at one time by one of the Russians and I can’t remember what the last name was.
EM: It was a short name and I don’t know. He married Polly [Mary] or somebody.
18
RB: Yes.
EM: We knew her with a different name. She goes by a different name now.
JA: Mary [Tolmachoff]. Is it Conovaloff ?
EM: I don’t know [inaudible].
RB: I think her name was Conovaloff.
JA: Yes, I think so.
EM: I won’t say anything about what their names were because I can’t remember.
JA: Okay.
RB: Edna, to whom did you sell the property on Glendale Avenue?
EM: What?
RB: Who did you sell it to?
EM: I don’t know. It ended up in the hands of that Schultz who bought the Stabler place much to my disgust. He hired somebody to buy it and I sold it to him. That is what I am so disgusted [about]. Of course, I got my money. I got what I asked for. Schultz got the Stabler place. The apartments are about that far from my fence which is against the law. That is another thing that I have against Glendale. Schultz wanted a sidewalk built on the…
JA: So you were born on your parent’s property here in Glendale?
EM: No, at 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road].
JA: Oh, that was the Indian School [Road] property. Okay.
EM: It just broke my heart when we sold.
RB: Was Wallace [Meyer] born there too, Edna?
EM: Yes.
RB: Is he four years younger than you?
EM: What?
RB: Wallace is four years younger than you?
19
EM: Three.
RB: Three years.
JA: What do you remember about life when you were a little girl on the ranch? What kind of things did you do?
EM: What did we do? We played stick horse. Did you ever play stick horse?
RB: Oh, sure!
JA: Stick horse?
RB: Yes, you had a stick like a broom stick. We put strings on the front of it for the mane and put a little ─
JA: Bridle on it?
RB: ─ bridle on it (rope or leather if you had that) and had all kinds of games that we played with stick horses.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: Then we would go out to the roadside and get those little green gourds. We would pick us a bucket of little green gourds and start us a dairy. Each gourd was a cow and we would put a brand on it.
JA: [Laughter] Sure!
EM: We would hunt up some old beer bottles and those were people, our dolls. I remember putting cotton around the top of a bottle for a woman’s hair. [Laughter]
RB: Yes. [Laughter]
EM: My brother [Wallace] got his first saddle when he was four years old because we had an old white horse that we could ride. So we rode that old white horse. We each had a burro that we rode. Oh, we had lots of things to do! And then we had to work!
RB: Yes, yes!
JA: What kind of work did you do?
EM: I had to help my mother in the kitchen [by] washing dishes. I can remember she used to put a box or chair by the table. I had to wash the dishes and she wiped them. I wasn’t big enough.
20
JA: Not tall enough to reach over.
EM: My brother had to help take care of the stock and feed the pigs.
RB: And the chickens.
EM: And stuff like that.
JA: Yes. Were burros [fairly] wild when you had them on your own farm? I have seen them out in the wild. Or were they tame like a horse? The burros?
EM: Oh, they are just like a horse only they are more stubborn.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Jerry, when we were young, the people who had sheep (in particular) would bring their sheep to the valley for the winter and springtime shearing; most of them had quite a herd of burros that they used in moving their camps. They would turn [the burros] loose out beyond the Arizona Canal. [They would] hobble them and turn them [leave them] out on the desert. The boys in Glendale could go out there and get a burro and ride it into town and take care of it all winter long. [They would] have it to use, to ride and enjoy. Then when it came time, the word [would] spread around that the sheep were going to be moved to the mountains and that meant to take the burro back. So you took the burro back to where you [found] him and hobbled him and [left him in desert]. My brother [Charles “Chuck” Bolding] always had a burro in the wintertime.
EM: That is where my dad got his burros. He was one of these [fellows] that was always getting into a new business. He decided that he would go into the sheep business and he bought a flock of sheep and the burros came with the sheep. I remember that he gave my brother “Pinky.” “Pinky” was a saddle burro and she had a pretty good gait and wasn’t quite [as] mean. Then he decided that he had better give me one too, so he gave me a little old brown burro that was gentle as she could be but she was stubborn. Oh, she was stubborn! I called her “Suzy.” We used to saddle those burros. My brother already had his saddle and they got me a saddle. We rode all over the country. My burro finally had her little colt. The colt followed us all around. We rode those burros until we were pretty good size. We out grew them when we [were] high school age.
JA: Yes!
EM: We gave them to an old prospector [who] lived part time at our house, old Mr. Hestor. He eventually sold them or gave them away, I don’t know what happened.
RB: I remember one winter when the kids went out and got the burros. Bill Betts of the─
EM: Bill Betts.
21
RB: What was their dad’s name, Edna?
EM: What?
RB: What was Bill and Charley dad’s name? O. D. [Ova Darling Betts used O. D. as his name not Ova.] O. D. Betts was Bill’s father. Bill was the youngest [in] the Betts family. He and my brother and other friends had been out riding their burros. The irrigation water had run over in [to] the alley beside our house. [It] made quite a mud hole. Bill was in the lead of the riding [group] and going along at a good trot when they came to this mud hole. That doggone burro just set himself and up and over went Bill right down into that mud hole, clear up to his neck! We all yelled because we were out where we could see them. Out my mother came and fished Bill out of the mud hole and cleaned him up. [Laughter] Nothing was wrong except he had a nose bleed and that soon stopped.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: I shall never forget seeing him pitch over burro right into that mud hole head first.
EM: Something happened to me almost like that only my burro was too stubborn. We rode the burros around the section and went we were just about home we came to water across the road. Wallace took his burro across, she went right over. Mine wouldn’t go. We got off and tried to push her and she wouldn’t go. If she had [crossed] I would have gone over!
RB: Did you ever ride a burro?
JA: No.
RB: They can be the stubbornness things!
EM: So we had to get on the burros and go clear back around the section the four miles to get back home. The little ol’ colt following us.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter] Wouldn’t that make a pretty picture?
JA: Oh, it would!
EM: Oh, she was stubborn! But I loved her. I just thought she was wonderful.
JA: Did she grow up and you kept her?
22
EM: That was the one that we gave to Mr. Hestor. He was an old miner and he took her out prospecting. I don’t know what he did with her. Gave her away or sold her or something. [Inaudible]
RB: You can’t imagine, in this day and time, that kind of rapport between the people who lived in the area and those who came in temporarily like the sheep herders, the cattle people and the horse people. What a good feeling there was between them and us because they, the sheep people, didn’t any more worry about what happened to their burros. They knew that [when] they [were] ready to take the sheep back to the mountains that those kids would have the burros back.
JA: Yes.
RB: You can’t imagine anybody today trusting a bunch of kids to take a burro and keep it all winter and bring it back.
JA: No.
RB: I don’t think they ever lost any burros.
EM: Is that what you came here for, to listen to all of this trash?
JA: Sure is!
RB: That is [why] he came.
EM: He can’t keep it all in his head.
JA: This isn’t trash! These [are] the best stuff I have heard in a long time!
RB: He has a paper that he is making notes on, Edna. If he is any kind of a student at all, he can remember.
EM: [Laughter] Oh.
JA: This is fantastic! I have heard people talk about the burros but they never told me the story behind the burros, which is really the value of Glendale in its early years. That sense of trust. That is beautiful!
EM: I don’t know what my dad did with the rest of the burros. [Just] gave them to somebody. He was always giving somebody something.
RB: Yes, your dad was a very generous man. All the kids liked him.
23
EM: Too generous! Right now, if my brother and I [went] there in that valley and collected all the money is owned to him and us (I’m just as bad) and had it compounded we could give each of you a million!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: Yes, there is an awful lot of credit that was extended over the years that was never collected.
EM: I shouldn’t gripe about my dad because the Russian boy that moved off of my place still owes for the rent. It isn’t very much but it would buy my groceries for a few days. [Laughter]
JA: Yes. Edna, where did you go to elementary school and high school?
EM: On my father’s place off 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road], about a quarter of a mile from the corner. He gave the land and the community formed a new school district. They pulled away from Cartwright [school district] for some reason. Cartwright wanted to build a new school and they built it where the old school was and the people wanted it a little farther west, more in the center of the district. Anyway, they had some kind of a squabble. Dad gave them (probably an acre) and they built a one-room schoolhouse, just a quarter of a mile below us. It was real big; it had as many as eight pupils.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I know one time it only had seven pupils and we had to get a little girl three or four years old [from] down the street to come to school part of the time so we could have eight.
RB: To qualify.
EM: Anyway, that is where I graduated. They couldn’t get me to [go to] school [because] I was so bashful. They started me when I was six years old. I cried so much that mom took me to the doctor to see why I cried. [Laughter] He told her to take me out of school which just tickled me. He said to keep her out until next year, she is too young yet. So they kept me out the rest of that year. The next year I just sat down on the floor and told them that I wouldn’t go to school. My father said, “When your birthday comes, your mother [is going] to bake you a birthday cake and you are going to have to take it down and treat those little kids at school.” He thought that maybe that would get me interested. When my birthday came, I wouldn’t do it. [Laughter] I bawled and bawled. He said to mom, “Don’t you make her any cake.” So mom didn’t make me any cake and that still hurts me, because I didn’t get any birthday cake. [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I was seven years old then. The next year, when school started, there wasn’t any place for the teacher to live. [My] folks had built a new house and had plenty of room and
24
they decided that the teacher could live with them. In those days, the teacher lived wherever she could find a place.
RB: Yes.
EM: The teacher came to live with us and I went to school with the teacher. I was eight years old. I was through when I was about fourteen. I made up for it.
JA: I would say [so].
EM: We had that big school and when I graduated in 1914 there were [only] two in the graduating class, Sam Hutchison and me. Then I was supposed to go to high school. My eighth grade teacher said I had to go to high school. I didn’t want to. My father said, “You have to go to high school.” He believed in education. My Aunt Emma lived right across the street from the Phoenix [Union] High School and [my] folks made arrangements with her for me to stay in there and go to school. I went there and stayed one week and I came home. I vowed that I wasn’t going back Dad said, “You have to go to high school.” [Laughter] He said, “Maybe you can go to Glendale [Union] High School.” He investigated and the trustees said I could come to Glendale. The Greene’s lived up the street. [Did] you know Frances Greene?
RB: Yes.
EM: He said, “You can go with Frances a day or two and get acquainted. You will have to ride horseback to high school.” I went up with Frances for a couple of days. Dad said, “That is enough imposing on people, you have to ride now.” He gave me his choice saddle horse and I rode [it] five miles to school. When I got up there in that great big school where they had sixty-five pupils, I was completely lost. But I made it! [Laughter]
JA: You must have done pretty well!
EM: When I [finished] high school I still had to go on. So I went to Tempe [Arizona] to college [Tempe Normal School]. That was during World War I and it was nearly an all- girls school. The boys were all in the [United States] Army. When I [finished at] Tempe, I didn’t try too hard to get a job. Dad said, “If you are not going to get a teaching job, I think you had better go to school some more and maybe you can get a business job.” [Laughter] So I had to go to Lamson’s [Business College]. That is when I met your mother [Cecilia Bolding]. I went to Lamson’s one year and [took] a bookkeeping course. When I [finished] my bookkeeping course I couldn’t get a job because the places where I applied only hired men. I remember going in to the First National Bank trying to get a job there. Lamson’s recommended me. [But], no, they just hired men.
JA: [Really?]
EM: The only men that they had in there were boys that were working, Guy Allsap ─
25
RB: Yes.
EM: Do you remember Guy Allsap and Sylvan Dams? Jew boys?
RB: Yes, Jew boys.
EM: Then I came home and still didn’t have a job. [It was] the middle of the year, 1922, C. A. McKee came one day and said, “Do you want a job?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Come up and I will give you a job.” I went up there and he gave me about twenty little Mexican kids and said, “Now, you can play with them for awhile.” [Laughter] The little Mexican kids and I played for half-of-a-year and had a good time.
RB: What grade was that, Edna?
EM: What grade? Kindergarten. They couldn’t talk English and I couldn’t talk very much Mexican, so we didn’t get along too well, but we [managed].
RB: Oh, kindergarten.
EM: The next year Miss [Laura] Imes took them into her first grade [class].
RB: Laura Imes.
EM: I told Mr. McKee that I wanted a higher grade. He said, “I have a crack class of fifth graders coming up. Don’t you want them?” I said, “Yes, I’ll take them.” That is when Charles [inaudible].
RB: My brother.
JA: Oh, okay.
EM: That was one of the best classes that I ever had. That was a neat class!
RB: You put them through two grades in that year.
EM: Two grades. Oh, they were splendid! I have often thought of them.
RB: And they thought of you, too!
EM: [Laughter]
JA: Why were they so good? Do you know?
EM: That is what I don’t know. Well, in those days they classified them. They had superior, medium and poor. Didn’t they?
26
RB: I think so.
EM: They did, I know, from then on. It was a high grade of fifth graders.
RB: Yes.
EM: I have often said that class of fifth graders could run our government better than it is run today. When it came to common sense they were good.
JA: [Okay.]
EM: They went through the fifth and sixth grade and they went into the seventh grade and they all graduated, I guess.
RB: I don’t know of any who didn’t.
EM: [Inaudible] ever failed.
JA: [Which] school was this? Glendale Elementary?
EM: Glendale Elementary. I taught there twenty-five years.
RB: And one-half!
EM: One day [about 1950] I [was] disgusted and went down to Mr. [Harold] Smith and said, “I’m not coming back next year. [But] don’t say anything about it.” He never did say anything about it. So I didn’t ever go back. I guess he is still living, isn’t he?
JA: Yes.
RB: Yes, I think he will be 100 this year.
EM: My gosh, he must be 100!
JA: This year, yes.
EM: I’ll bet he is no bigger than that.
RB: He never was very big.
EM: He wasn’t a very big [fellow].
JA: Yes.
RB: He was of this disposition, Jerry, for instance Beryl Moore who was a sixth grade teacher, Melvin Sine who was a sixth grade teacher, and Harold Smith and I used to play tennis.
27
Beryl and I would play the men. There were times when all four of us couldn’t play. I can remember times when just Harold and I played. If I beat him he was just as nasty and hateful about it as could be. He always wanted to win! Always wanted to win!
JA: [Laughter] Very competitive.
RB: Yes, I think due to his size because I was taller than he was and so was Beryl. Unless he and Melvin won or he and, what was that Smith’s name from Peoria? He was no relation to Harold Smith, they were just good friends. They all went to the Methodist church. Anyhow, that kid played a lot with us. I thought at the time that it was very strange to have somebody [who was] head of the school system who had the type [of] personality or character that he couldn’t lose.
JA: [Yes.]
RB: If he did lose then he was angry. He was unsociable for two or three days until he could get back and beat you. Then he was in good humor again.
EM: He was an awful hard fellow to talk to. I never did get acquainted with him [during] all those years. I guess I was hard to talk to and he was too and we just didn’t. But I never had any trouble with him.
JA: He sure had a long tenure there.
RB: Yes.
JA: I don’t know the exact number of years.
RB: I don’t know either.
EM: Mr. McKee was there [the] first year, the first fifth grade [that I taught]. Before he left he [asked] if I wanted to go up into the department. I told him that I would like to. He said, “I’ll send you right along with the class. There is a vacancy in arithmetic.” That meant that the next year, the first year that Harold Smith was there, that I would have been in ─
RB: The seventh grade.
EM: ─ the seventh grade. I stayed there about seven years, I guess, and they decided that they wanted a woman coach for the girls.
RB: Yes.
EM: That was one thing that I wouldn’t do, coach ball. Mr. Smith said, “If you won’t coach ball then you will have to go back to the sixth grade.” I said, “Alright.” He said, “I’ll give you a good section.” And he sure did. It was a section with Vernon Bice [Jr.], Wayne Yeoman, and ─
28
RB: June. [June Bolding, Retha’s sister.]
EM: Yes, and a bunch of the [students] who turned out pretty successful. Jack Meyers, no, Jack was down in the fifth grade. There were quite a number there. They were a good class, too.
JA: [Okay.]
EM: I had [the] sixth grade until I quit.
JA: You taught fifth grade starting out and then sixth grade for the rest of the time.
EM: I was about seven years in the department of seventh grade ─
RB: Seventh and eighth grade. She taught ─
EM: That is another thing that I can’t understand. In those seventh and eighth grades we use to [teach] compound interest, square root, geographic equations, algebraic equations and stocks and bonds and all that stuff. I [was] up here [at] the Yellow Front [store] and the cashier couldn’t change a quarter! She had to call somebody to find out how much change she should give you.
RB: Yes.
EM: What is the matter with arithmetic?
RB: I don’t know but Pat, who works with me, she says the same thing. She said the same thing. She went to parochial schools, the Catholic school, and she was saying the other day how differently she was taught compared to her son who is fifteen now. Pat said they went to the process of learning to bank.
EM: Yes!
RB: Somebody was the teller, somebody was a customer and they learned to write checks and to balance a check book and all that kind of thing, when they were in the seventh and eighth grades. Now, kids don’t know [how to do] that at all. In fact, there are many adults who don’t know [how].
JA: That is right.
EM: Another thing is the writing. You can’t tell it by my writing today, but I have a Zaner [Zaner Blosser] and I have a Palmer [Palmer Method Penmanship] writing certificate.
RB: Certificate.
29
EM: We had writing in the sixth grade. Now you can’t read people’s writing. I know that the last time I went to “Ketch” Trueblood, [Dr. Roger Ketchum Trueblood Jr.] he was one of my pupils, and he wrote something down for me. I looked at it and said, “I can’t read that.” He just grinned. I said, “If you had written like that in the sixth grade, I would have cracked your knuckles.” [She would use the metal edge of a ruler to do the cracking.]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: He still looked at me and grinned. I said, “I still can’t read it.” You look at the game shows, Jeopardy, for example. What those people write on there, you can’t read it! I believe in reading, writing and arithmetic. I am old fashioned.
JA: We are going to have to come back to it because we have lost the basics.
RM: Other countries have not.
JA: That is right.
EM: What else do you want to know?
JA: There are a whole lot of things that you mentioned that I want to find out a little bit more about. You talked about the World War I era was when you were going to school. I want to find out what you know [about] how World War I affected life in this area. What kind of things were going on?
EM: [Inaudible] I know there weren’t any boys [around]. I was going to Tempe at that time [inaudible] high school boys. I just don’t know what I can tell you about that.
RB: Edna, [at] Glendale High School [didn’t] they have the trenches and drills?
EM: Yes, they had all of that.
JA: Were the boys in the high school the ones [they were] training?
EM: No, no, that was just the high school. They had the draft then and drafted [the men] in.
RB: But they trained in the high school [to be] ready for the draft.
EM: Yes, preparing for it.
RB: Captain Phelps was hired to do the training.
EM: Yes, and then Mr. Ogg? Was that his name?
RB: Ogg?
30
EM: Ogg? There just weren’t any young men around. I know some of the boys didn’t come back.
RB: Did you know the Coors, Edna? The one that is the head of ASU [Arizona State University, Tempe, Maricopa County, Arizona] now, his [Lattie Coor] family? The Coor family?
EM: I didn’t know them but I have heard of them.
RB: They lived in Peoria [Maricopa County, Arizona]. That would be the connection, if you knew them from Peoria. I know Sandy was killed.
EM: I knew a Helen Brown from Peoria that married a Coor. But I never knew any of the Coor family.
JA: Did they have scrap drives like they had in World War II? Did they have those during World War I as well?
RB: I [don’t] remember that we ever had any drives like that.
EM: I don’t even remember any rationing.
RB: I can’t remember any rationing either.
JA: No?
[END OF TAPE #92-011 – SIDE ONE]
RB: In Alamogordo, New Mexico there was a fenced in area where they put the aluminum and when World War II was over the aluminum was still there. They sold it, eventually, to a foreign country. The same way with the [scrap] rubber. I think it was more to involve the people in the war than it was that they basically wanted those things.
JA: Oh?
RB: Because if that happened in Alamogordo, it was not isolated. It had to happen in the other places. As Edna said, during World War I [we] can’t remember that we ever had any kind of a [scrap metal] drive or any kind of rationing. There was a shortage of things, surely, but you just tried to adjust.
EM: I just noticed that there was a shortage of boys around! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
31
JA: [Laughter] I imagine, being eighteen or nineteen years old, that would be something that you would be observing because those were your own classmates.
EM: The last year that I was at Tempe there were only two boys and I think they were out of the [United States] Army. One of them was John Berry.
RB: Later he became [Maricopa] County School Superintendent. [He moved to Phoenix and lived on 9th Avenue.]
EM: John Berry and Wilford Austin were the only two boys who graduated when I [did] in 1920 from Tempe. The others hadn’t [progressed] that far yet. John Berry’s sister married my cousin, Frank Wilky.
RB: Oh, really?
EM: Yes. We were pretty close to the Berry’s. [My] mother and Mrs. Berry were schoolmates at the old West End School.
RB: Yes.
EM: My cousin Frank [Wilky] married Nellie Berry.
RB: John was [Maricopa] County Superintendent of Schools for, I imagine, for twenty years or more. Don’t you [think] Edna?
EM: [Laughter] Yes, I guess he was.
RB: He was good and had no difficulty being re-elected.
EM: [Laughter]
RB: In [those] days you depended a lot on the reputation of the person. John Berry was re- elected time after time. Another person who was re-elected (I can remember one time he spent $4.50 for his election expenses) that was Harry M. Moore, Edna. [Harry was the son of Ira A. Moore and his sister was Beryl Moore, a teacher at the Glendale Grammar School.]
EM: Yes.
RB: First, he was [Maricopa] County Treasurer and then there [was] a vacancy [for] state treasurer and he ran for that. [He] was elected and went on as our state treasurer until he married and moved to San Diego [California]. His two sisters were my very good friends so I was with the Moore family a lot. I can remember one year when Harry spent $4.50 for little cards that said Harry M. Moore, State Treasurer [Secretary of State] and the date of the election. That was all he spent. [Harry M. Moore did not move to California. He was married October 20th, 1942 and after he returned from his honeymoon he underwent
32
an emergency appendectomy. While in his hospital bed he suddenly died on November 26th. Earlier in the evening, he had been visiting with friends, including Governor Sidney P. Osborn. Harry was replaced by Dan E. Garvey, who would later succeed Osborn when he died in office. [Retha has Harry confused with another Harry. Harry More, formerly of Sample and More Meat Market, moved to California. This Harry More was a member of Retha’s church, the First Christian Church.]
JA: I’ll be!
EM: I guess John Berry spent about the same because every year that he ran for election he [would] come and want to know if he could put his sign in the corner of my place on 67th [Avenue] and Glendale [Avenue]. “Can I put my sign up there?” I would always say, “Yes.” Of course, I never charged him. He probably did that with all of his friends. [Laughter]
RB: Yes.
EM: I can remember the first time I went to Glendale.
JA: Tell me about it.
EM: I think I might have been three years old. I know I was awful little. My mother and our neighbor lady, Mrs. Maggie Smith, decided that they would go to Mrs. John Hawkins funeral. [It was] going to be held in Glendale. They hitched up old “Daisy” to the buggy. My mother took me along. I don’t know why she took me, I guess there wasn’t anybody to leave me with. We went to Mrs. Hawkins’ funeral. I can remember that when we [arrived] we got out and walked some place on an old dirt walk into some kind of a dark place, maybe it was a church. I don’t know what it was. They had wooden benches for you to sit on. I remember sitting on that wooden bench. That is all I can remember.
RB: [Laughter] Your first trip to Glendale.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I can see that bench yet!
JA: [You have] no idea of where you were though?
EM: I remember another time, going to Glendale. My mother had a cousin, Gene Hawkins. His wife was mother’s cousin. That lived in a little green house about where that new city development is in Glendale, about 58th Avenue, somewhere along in there. [It was] sitting out there in the desert. We went there for dinner one day. I can see that little green house yet. Mr. Hawkins had a little store down the street.
RB: Yes.
33
EM: Later on Mr. Hawkins and his wife moved over next to the Lehman place. You know where Lehman’s lived?
RB: Yes, on Myrtle Avenue.
EM: They lived there for awhile and I can remember going over to their place when the Hawkins decided to go to California to get rich. They were going to California and [live] in a new settlement called Lodi. They were really going to make it over there! We went over to their house to tell them goodbye. I know that Mrs. Hawkins gave mom a little Indian basket. I can remember that little basket. The Hawkins went to get rich in Lodi! Some of them are still there. Mrs. Hawkins had two or three sisters and they married fellows from Glendale. Maybe you knew some of them. One of them married a fellow by the name of Quisenberry.
RB: Oh, yes! Quisenberry’s lived on the street behind us. [The Bolding residence was 329 W. “A” Avenue (Glenn Drive).]
EM: The old, old family of Quisenberry’s lived up from the old brick [house] where I lived [by] Mr. Hand. Do you remember that old brick [house]?
RB: Yes.
EM: That was the old Quisenberry place.
RB: Later on, I don’t remember the relationship, Edna, but it was some of their relatives that lived on the street behind us.
EM: I can’t remember the fellow’s first name that married Louise. Another one of them married a fellow that they said was kind of worthless. I don’t know. [He was] named Lou Thistle. [I] never heard of him much.
RB: No, I don’t know of him.
EM: The younger one married George Furrey. The Furreys are still around.
RB: Yes. Let us see, wasn’t Frank Weigold’s wife a Furrey?
EM: Yes, she was a Furrey. [Maude (Aunt Maudie) Weigold was the daughter of S. O. Furrey.] Oh, that is another thing. When the folks moved to 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road], the old house was a shabby old house, just an old shack. [My] dad decided that they would build a new house. They built it in about 1907, I guess. Old Mr. [William] Weigold built it.
RB: Yes.
EM: That was the first time I remember hearing [about] the Weigolds.
34
JA: He was a major builder in Glendale? [William Weigold was the builder of Manistee Ranch.]
RB: Yes.
EM: He used to bring his teenage son with him.
RB: Yes, Ray Weigold. He lived just a block down from us, Edna.
EM: An old bachelor.
RB: An old bachelor, never married. He built a very pretty little house down there. On the lot to the south of his house, he owned that, he made a horse shoe pitching court. It was just hard and clean. He swept that with a push broom, when we had push brooms, and kept it ever so nicely. [He] invited people to come and play. I know we could go down and play at the time the adults were not there. Ray Weigold.
EM: Well, Mr. Weigold built us really a mansion! I think we had three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a den, a pantry, two screen porches and a big open front porch. He painted it yellow and trimmed in green. It was really a mansion in those days! [Laughter] We were very proud of our new house.
JA: I bet!
EM: Another thing, I remember before the house was completely finished, before they had all the partitions in, old Ferd Charlebois.
RB: I remember Ferd Charlebois.
EM: He was working for dad at the time. I guess he was about eighteen and he was a wild boy. [There were] some other boys working there. They were [living] with us as family. They left their families in the valley and they came [to] live with us. A couple of the boys, Gus Tipton and Warren Hans decided that they ought to have a dance in the house before they put all the in partitions. So they [held] a couple of dances. They had been having them in the old school house. I remember one night they had a dance and mother made a whole bunch of cakes and, I think, a couple of the neighbors made some cakes. They were going to serve homemade cakes and punch. Dad decided that the ladies [hadn’t] made enough cakes and he went to Phoenix and bought some cakes. In those days, baker’s cakes weren’t very good. He brought them home and said, “We will use up the homemade cakes first. If we have to we will service the bought ones. But if we don’t have to we won’t serve them.”
There was a lull in the dancing. I don’t remember how big of a crowd it was [but] I do remember some of the [dancers] that were there. They served the cake and Ferd was one of the waiters serving the cake. They served all the homemade cakes and [then] started
35
[serving] (you know how [young people] will eat) the bought ones. When Ferd served the cake to one fellow and guess who it was? John Tuckey.
RB: Oh, no! [Laughter]
EM: That is the first time I remember John Tuckey. He offered John Tuckey a piece of bought cake. John Tuckey wasn’t going to take it. He said, “I don’t want any bought cake, I want homemade.” Ferd said, “You eat that bought cake or I’ll hit you!” John politely took it. I know afterwards mother got on to Ferd. She said, “You shouldn’t treat a guest like that.” He said, “Well, if he hadn’t eaten it, I would have hit him.” [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: You know ol’ Ferd! That is the first time I remember John Tuckey.
RB: Yes?
EM: I will tell you somebody else that was there, Lon Smith.
RB: Yes, yes. He later was president of the school board for Glendale Grammar School.
EM: I didn’t recognize him at the time because he wasn’t running around in our crowd then. In later years, he told me that he was at that dance.
RB: He had a feed and seed business in Glendale at the time he was on the school board.
EM: Charley Pendergast was there
JA: Really?
RB: What was the name of his feed place, Edna? Was it the Glendale Milling Company?
EM: That was [David Harrison “Harry”] Bonsall [Sr.].
RB: No, Bonsall’s had Southwest [Flour and Feed]. [Lon Smith] had Glendale Milling Company.
EM: He married Susie Harris.
RB: Yes, he did.
EM: Susie Harris was at that dance, too.
JA: [Oh]? Were dances unusual at that time? Or was─
36
EM: No, we had those country dances around. My folks never danced because dad didn’t really believe in dancing. He didn’t want other people dancing with his wife. [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: But he let the boys have the dance anyway. Who else was there? Lela Perry, Charley Pendergast─
RB: Sam Hutchison?
EM: That was before Sam Hutchison’s time.
RB: That was before Sam?
EM: I was just a little kid then, seven or eight years old.
JA: Do you remember watching the dance?
EM: Oh, yes.
JA: What kind of dances did they have? Were they─
EM: Waltzes, I guess, and two-steps.
JA: Waltzes and two-steps?
EM: Yes. Another thing I remember; one night they had a dance down at the schoolhouse.
JA: Which schoolhouse is that?
EM: The little one that I went to.
JA: Okay.
EM: The boys moved all the seats out and they would have a dance. The little old place about that big. One morning after one of those dances mother said, “After you have your breakfast and get hungry I have a treat for you.” It seems like one of the boys, Ferd or somebody, had brought a dish of ice cream from the dance. [It] was left over [as] they didn’t eat it all. They had put it in the outdoor icebox that had big hunks of ice in it. They put the ice cream on the ice so it would keep until morning for us kids. I remember mother giving us that ice cream that the boys had brought [home] from the dance. [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: Oh, it was good!
37
JA: Was that your first ice cream?
EM: No, I don’t [think] it was my first but it sure was about the best!
JA: The best! What kind of social gatherings did you have in a community that was so spread out at that time?
EM: Of course, they had churches but we weren’t very good church members. We never went very much. Us kids, we used to go some. The women would hitch up ol’ “Daisy” and go visited their neighbors in the afternoon. Every once in awhile you would be invited out to a Sunday dinner. I remember being invited out to Jack [inaudible].
RB: In the summertime we had swimming parties along the Grand Canal.
EM: Yes, but I didn’t go swimming. I wasn’t allowed [to do] that.
RB: Whole families would go.
JA: [Oh]?
EM: I remember being invited to the Orme’s for dinner, to the Harmon’s, to the Wilky’s, the Jack Brooks’ and the Berry’s. Every so often we would have to have a Sunday dinner and invite them back. My Uncle George Wilky, lived in Phoenix in [his] later years, and he used to come to the ranch about every Sunday, bring his [children]. We always had somebody [for dinner] on Sunday.
JA: Was it your family’s tradition to go into town on Saturday’s and do your shopping?
EM: Yes, dad went to town once a week to get ice. [There was] another thing that I could never understand. He wasn’t too big of a man but he would pick up those 200 pound cakes of ice and carry them and put them in that old ice box. I don’t know how he did that. Yes, hitch up the old [inaudible] and go to town.
JA: What did you do in town as kids?
RB: We played in the park.
EM: We generally followed mother. She had to take in Korrick’s [Department Store] and Diamonds. She wouldn’t go to Goldwater’s [Department Store], they were too expensive. We generally hung out at Goldman’s Grocery Store.
RB: This is in Phoenix.
JA: Phoenix.
38
EM: She liked Diamond’s [formerly The Boston Store] the best. [But] we [did] go to Korrick’s. There was a drug store and I can’t think of the fellow’s name.
RB: Wayland’s?
EM: No.
RB: Before Wayland, Edna, on Washington Street?
EM: No. There was this place, a little bookshop, where Mrs. Sheets worked. Then we always went to a Chinese restaurant to eat. If we still had time left we would go back into Goldman’s store and wait until dad was through playing pool and then went home. [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Edna, was the Chinese restaurant, at that time, called the English Kitchen? It is the earliest Chinese restaurant that I remember.
EM: I don’t know.
RB: It was on Central Avenue between Adams and Monroe.
EM: There was the American Kitchen.
RB: Yes, I don’t mean English, I mean the American Kitchen. It was Chinese.
EM: Do you know I have some of those round dishes yet?
RB: Oh, really? Are they out there?
EM: Yes.
RB: Can we go out and ─
EM: You can go out.
RB: I don’t care if they are dusted or what not.
JA: Me neither!
RB: And Jerry doesn’t care.
EM: I am ashamed of them. I used to keep it up but I can’t do it anymore.
RB: I know but you can’t do it.
39
EM: And I don’t want anybody else in there.
[END OF TAPE 92-011 – SIDE TWO]
______
INTERVIEW WITH EDNA MEYER AND RETHA (BOLDING) BEVERIDGE Continued on August 6, 1992 ______
EM: In those days, way out in the country, the teacher boarded around where anybody would take her. We had a pretty good sized house so it fell our lot to keep her part of the time. [Laughter] She just lived with us!
RB: Jerry, are you going to record this?
JA: Yes.
EM: What are we going to talk about?
JA: We are going to talk about a lot of things. I have a whole bunch of things to ask you about. First of all, I want to find out more about the single teachers living around because that happened on my block where I live on State [Street]. Apparently [in] the end house they used to board the elementary schoolteachers there. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about why they did it that way? [The Rev. and Mrs. David Roberts’ home was across from the Glendale Grammar School. For many years they rented to teachers. This was a source of income for Clara Roberts after David’s death. Following Clara’s death, her daughter and son-in-law, Ruth and Earl Smith owned the home and continued to rent to single teachers. Ruth was a Home Economics teacher at the Grammar School.]
EM: [It was] because we were ten miles out of Phoenix and there wasn’t any place for them to live [except] with families that lived around the school.
RB: [We didn’t have] any transportation.
EM: No transportation. When Beulah Johnson (you knew Beulah Johnson) ─
RB: Yes.
EM: ─ when she lived with us we lived ten miles from Phoenix and five miles from Glendale. She would get out there [somehow]. Sometimes she hitch-hiked from Phoenix [where] she lived. She would hitch-hike out there on Sunday nights. Then Friday afternoons she would either hitch-hike, or I have known of several times [when] she walked to Glendale to catch the bus to Phoenix.
40
RB: Yes.
EM: There wasn’t any way for her to get [home].
RB: No.
EM: Once in a great while, if it was a popular teacher like my first grade teacher, her boy friend came out and [picked] her [up] and brought her back.
RB: [Laughter]
JA: No kidding! They would spend the week out here ─
EM: They would spend the week out here with the family.
RB: Did they pay, Edna? I have forgotten.
EM: They paid a small amount for their food, just a small amount.
JA: How did they decide which family would get [the teacher]?
EM: It fell to my dad quite a lot because he was one of the trustees of the school.
JA: Okay.
EM: He was kind of soft hearted. [Laughter]
JA: Oh?
EM: Momma could take somebody else in. I think Beulah Johnson couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
RB: I don’t think so either.
EM: I know Miss Harper was twenty. I thought she was an old woman but she was only twenty!
RB: [Laughter]
EM: Miss Lake she was an old maid and she was in her thirties. She was kind of an old crank.
RB: Yes.
JA: Did they help around the house or did they just stay to themselves.
41
EM: Not much, maybe they would wipe the dishes, not much. Every year we had a basket social. Do you know what a basket social was?
JA: No, tell me about it.
EM: The ladies fixed up a basket of food. They had a night program at the schoolhouse and the ladies took their baskets. The men bought the baskets and the money went into the school fund.
JA: It was a fund raiser for the school.
RB: Yes.
JA: They raised funds for the school that way.
EM: Yes. I remember one teacher (I guess it was Miss Johnson) was living with us and one of the hired fellows wanted to buy her basket. I remember coaxing my mother to show ─
RB: [Laughter]
JA: Which basket was [hers]?
EM: ─ her basket. They decorated them so he could buy them and he bought it. [Laughter] She didn’t like it much!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Jerry, they were first called basket suppers. Then they became box suppers. You put the food in a box which you decorated in just the most elaborate way that you could so that it would catch the guys’ eye.
JA: Yes.
RB: Usually a member of the school board or the principal would be the auctioneer and they would bid on the boxes knowing that this one that was so fancy belonged to Miss So-in- So. They wanted [that one] and consequently it was remarkable how much money they made at those basket and box socials.
JA: Interesting. What time period would these have been going on?
RB: You mean [what] years?
JA: Yes.
42
EM: [In] 1912, 1914.
RB: On beyond that, Edna, because I ─
EM: I guess so, because when I was about sixteen I remember going up to the Cartwright schoolhouse with a basket.
RB: I ─
EM: With the Greenes, remember?
RB: Frances Greene, yes.
EM: Instead of auctioning off the box, you were supposed to wear an apron. They took the strings off and auction off the apron strings.
RB: Oh, really?
EM: Then you had to match the apron to the strings. The fellow got the strings and you kept the apron. I remember Jim Miller. Do you remember Jim Miller?
RB: I remember Jim.
EM: He got] my basket! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I didn’t know him very well. I was so bashful but we got along. I wanted my strings back so I could put them on my apron. But he wouldn’t give them to me!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I still have the old apron without the strings!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] He bought them [with] good money and he was going to keep them!
EM: Yes!
RB: Jerry, I would say that [the custom] went on into the middle 1920s.
EM: Probably did.
43
RB: I was born in 1910 and I remember it as a little girl. Then I remember [when I was] twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years old because [then] I became old enough to take a box to one of those affairs. I couldn’t have been over fourteen or fifteen. So that would make it 1924 or 1925, certainly toward the beginning of the 1930s. Then we [can] say that it wasn’t ─
JA: Practiced anymore.
RB: ─ practiced anymore.
JA: Was that, in part, because the school system was still privately funded and no ─
EM: They [received] a little bit of money from the county but very little.
RB: Very little.
JA: Okay.
EM: A little bit of county money.
JA: So they had to raise much of it themselves
EM: We were just a little district. We had broken away from Cartwright.
RB: Yes.
EM: We were between Cartwright and what they called West End. That is [the] Pendergast [District] now.
RB: Yes.
EM: We were in the middle and just a very small school. If we had twenty pupils, it was a big school!
JA: What was the name of the school?
EM: Independence.
JA: That’s right, Independence.
EM: Because we were independent!
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Broke away from Cartwright and didn’t join West End.
44
JA: Yes.
EM: My mother went to West End School.
RB: Did she?
EM: Do you remember the Hammels? [James G. Hammels]?
RB: Yes.
EM: Mrs. Jim Hammels [Nell]?
RB: Yes, yes.
EM: She was one of mother’s teachers at the West End School
RB: Really? How about that?
JA: Edna, what do you recall of your mom talking about those time periods? We would be talking about the 1890s? Or 1880s?
EM: It was in the early 1890s, I guess, or the late 1880s. She came in 1884 and they lived out there on Indian School [Road] and 99th [Avenue], on that corner.
RB: Yes.
EM: They couldn’t get any water out there to irrigate with so grandpa gave it up and moved [in] closer to town, 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road]. [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
RB: [To] 67th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road].
JA: Did your mom ever talk about the social atmosphere in the 1890s that she grew up in, what they did?
EM: She talked some about it. I think they had dances and box suppers.
RB: Did she ever tell you how she and your dad met?
EM: I think they met, probably, at the old Cartwright Church. I am not sure.
RB: Yes.
JA: [Oh].
45
RB: Could be.
EM: I remember her talking about going to church with him in the old Cartwright Church. There was one song that they used to sing so much, In the Sweet Bye and Bye.
RB: Oh, yes.
EM: When dad died that was her request that the song be sung at his funeral.
RB: Oh, really?
EM: Because they used to sing it together in Sunday school.
RB: How interesting!
JA: The Sweet Bye and Bye.
RB: Yes.
EM: Yes.
JA: Yes.
EM: We had it sung at her funeral.
JA: Were they farming families?
EM: My grandfather Wilky was.
JA: What did he farm? That was early on [and] before the full development of irrigation.
RB: Hay.
EM: A little bit of hay but mostly barley.
JA: Barley.
EM: Most people, in those days, had a herd of hogs that cleaned up the barley fields and then they sold them.
RB: Yes.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: Another thing, in those days before the railroad, they had to drive those hogs from Phoenix to Maricopa [Maricopa County, Arizona] to load them.
46
RB: As a herd, just like you would drive cattle, they drove the hogs down to Maricopa.
JA: [Wow!]
EM: And loaded them into ─
JA: That is interesting.
RB: The train came as far as Maricopa and eventually a branch came up to Phoenix. [It] was called the Arizona Eastern. [The Arizona Eastern still runs today as a freight line from Globe, Gila County, AZ to the Southern Pacific interchange at Bowie, Cochise County, AZ.]
JA: The Arizona Eastern [Railroad].
RB: That was before the Southern Pacific [Railroad].
JA: And the Santa Fe Prescott [Railroad, Yavapai County, Arizona] ─ [The Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway popularly referred to as the “Peavine”.]
RB: Yes.
JA: ─ came about what time period? Do you remember?
EM: It came in 1895.
JA: [In] 1895?
EM: From Ashfork [Coconino County, Arizona] to Phoenix.
JA: So they had to drive those a long way.
EM: I think Martha’s [Wallace Meyer’s wife] father came to Phoenix on one of the first trains that came in.
RB: Oh, really?
EM: Yes, on that road.
RB: Martha was Edna’s sister-in-law.
EM: Another family that came on that same train with Mr. Stewart was the Greene family.
RB: Yes.
47
EM: The Greene family that I am talking about was Mrs. [Vernettie] Ivy and Mrs. Cartwright [inaudible]. [Two Greene girls married Cartwrights. Beulah Greene married Jackson Manford Cartwright and Ella Bird married Charles Cartwright.]
RB: Yes, yes.
JA: They came on the first train from Prescott or Ashfork?
EM: I wouldn’t say it was the first one but it was one of the first ones in 1895.
RB: Yes.
JA: One of [the first trains]. Did your mom ever talk about what they did during the summer times here? Did they go up to other places around or did they stay here?
EM: Not when she was a little girl but later on, in my memory, I remember that a lot of people went to Iron Springs [Yavapai County, Arizona].
RB: About [when] did they start that, Edna? It was going on quite strongly in the early teens. Evidently after the railroad came in they started it, because in the early teens people were going regularly to Iron Springs in the summer. The families would go up and spend all summer. Like the Tinkers and the Pearsons they would go up on the weekend, the men would and come down Sunday evening on the train. There was a train that came down in the morning and a train that came down in the evening.
EM: We didn’t go up there very often, we stayed home and worked. My uncle had a cabin in Iron Springs. I remember going to Iron Springs when I was a tiny kid and Grandma Wilky went along. I remember us being up there. Grandma died in 1908 so I must have been about seven years old. [It was] about 1907 or 1908.
RB: Did you go up on the train, Edna?
EM: [Inaudible]
JA: The people that could afford a summer cabin where they typically what we would call the upper class? It wasn’t something that just anybody could afford?
EM: No, the important people, I knew [who they were] at the time, out of Phoenix used to go up.
RB: Yes. The Goldwaters, the Rosenzweigs, the Vances, who had the big bakery, Vance Baking Company.
EM: Those kinds of people.
JA: The O’Malleys.
48
RB: They all had places up there.
EM: I remember one time when we were up there.
RB: A lot of doctors.
EM: Walking was the only way you had of getting around. If anyone walked past, everybody went out to look and see who it was.
RB: Yes. [Laughter]
EM: I remember one time it was raining, misting a little bit. My brother and I were out watching the people walk by. There was a big, old woman, a big, old woman with a long, full skirt. It was kind of misting a little and she had that skirt tail up over her head to keep the rain off of her head! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I knew at the time who she was but I can’t tell you now. She was some prominent woman from around Phoenix.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: We stood out there and giggled seeing Mrs. So-in-So with her skirt over her head.
JA: I imagine that was a view that was pretty uncommon at that time.
RB: Yes. A lot of the doctors and the military people who were assigned to the [Arizona] Territory had places at Iron Springs.
EM: The last time I remember us going, we went to Prescott and to Iron Springs. I don’t know [why] we went to Iron Springs then too, to see somebody, [maybe]. Dad was working on a cattle deal of some of kind. On the way to Iron Springs the train ran over a couple of cows. The train stopped and everybody got out to see what happened. Of course, dad had to get out. Mom wouldn’t let us get out. When we came back the next day, we went by the [scene] and there were some fellows there. We thought they were Indians, I don’t know if they were or not, skinning those cows. [Laughter] I remember that.
JA: Getting the skins!
RB: Then Jerry, a bit after Iron Springs was started, Crown King [Yavapai County, Arizona] and Horse Thief Basin was started for summer encampment because there was a railroad that came out of Prescott to Crown King. If you drive up there now you can see the old tunnels [that] the train [traveled] through. There was so much mining at Crown King that
49
it was essential to have some way of getting the ore out. People took advantage of the trains being there to make a summer encampment at Crown King and Horse Thief Basin.
JA: That is a nice place for it.
RB: Yes.
JA: Very nice.
RB: It is higher than Iron Springs and Crown King gets the greatest amount of [annual] rainfall in the state.
EM: Horse Thief Basin. Three or four years ago, I guess, Lyle drove us up there. I guess you know why they call it Horse Thief?
JA: No, tell me.
EM: [Laughter] That is where the horse thieves hid out from the law.
JA: They were run the horses up into the basin?
EM: They would drive them in and hide out and when the law left they would take them to Mexico. The old Horse Thief Trail came from ─
RB: Edna, it came down to Seven Springs and [there] on down past Phoenix on the east and went on into Mexico. It came down what is now Seventh Street. In fact, there is a trail still up there if you want to take a jeep or a four-wheel vehicle you can drive up that way to Horse Thief and Crown King.
JA: That would be one long ride!
RB: Yes, I have friends that were in the [United States] Forest Service. They married in Prescott. Hazel came out to Prescott and met her future husband there. Then the next summer she came out and they were married. He [was given] a new assignment [with] the Forest Service in Phoenix. They came down that trail from Crown King in a little old automobile of some description. So I know that it can be done. My husband did it but in a four-wheel vehicle.
JA: Sure. Interesting.
RB: You would take off right at Seven Springs in order to pick up the trail.
JA: Edna, did your folks come into Glendale at all in those earlier years? Or was the distance, even at that time, too much.
EM: Too much.
50
JA: They didn’t come in much?
EM: My first trip to Glendale (that I can remember) [was when] my mother and a neighbor woman went to Glendale in an old horse and buggy. I don’t know what they did with my brother. Maybe mother didn’t have him [yet], I don’t know.
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I was the only little kid that went with those two women. The other woman left her [children] at home. We went to Glendale to somebody’s funeral. I can remember going into that old dark place where the funeral was [held] and the old wooden benches. We sat on a wooden bench but I don’t know where it was.
RB: In Glendale.
JA: [Oh].
EM: That was my first memory of Glendale.
JA: Did you start coming more often from that point?
EM: No, we never to Glendale, hardly ever went to Glendale until we moved there.
JA: What year was that?
EM: In 1917. Before that we came very seldom. Seems like I can remember one time going with dad and [some] fellows drove a herd of cattle to the stockyards in Glendale. I was in my teens. There wasn’t anything there!
RB: No.
JA: Where were the stockyards? I don’t remember hearing of them.
EM: I don’t where they were. They used to be somewhere around the ice plant, I think.
RB: [It was] east of the ice plant, Edna, east of the ice plant.
JA: Would they slaughter them there and ice them down for the railroad?
RB: They would put them on [railroad] cars and ship them to Kansas City or to Omaha [Nebraska].
JA: They shipped them alive?
RB: Yes, alive.
51
EM: They would ship them out alive.
JA: Okay.
RB: Jerry, you know where the [United States] Post Office is?
JA: Yes.
RB: I would say that across Grand Avenue and a bit west of that intersection would be where the stockyards were because there was a big feed and seed company on the north side of Grand Avenue, just about there?
JA: Was that Southwest Flour and Feed?
RB: No, no.
JA: A different one?
RB: It was before Southwest [Flour] and Feed and Mr. [David Harrison “Harry”] Bonsall, [Sr.]. There also was Glendale Milling Company.
JA: Yes.
RB: I believe it was Glendale Milling Company and they later moved from that location into, you know where the American Legion Hall is [now]? The Glendale Milling Company would be a block west of the American Legion Hall. [It would be] near Sine Hardware.
JA: Yes, right in that area.
RB: Yes.
JA: Edna, I want to ask you if you could give me a sense of what family life was like in a ranch home at the turn of the century through 1910, that kind of an era, when you were growing up. What would you have done in the house? If you could let me have a sense of what your life was like as children and maybe reflect upon your parents as well, some of the things that you recall of family life.
EM: I remember that we got up at 5:00 a.m.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: When we were little [children] we stayed in bed a little longer. Mother cooked breakfast. We always had three or four hired men. Hired men, in those days, were generally around nineteen to twenty years old.
JA: Yes.
52
EM: They belonged to families that had boys who wanted to work. That was their start in life, to work for somebody. Generally, we had two or three of those [boys] around. They lived out in a room in the barn but they ate [with] the family. They were just part of the family. They were come early on Monday morning to work and go home Saturday night, spend Sunday with their folks, and then come back the next day. Fellows like Ferd Charlebois, Ora Hann and Gus Tempton and those fellows.
RB: Yes.
JA: What was the first name? Ferdinand?
RB: Ferdinand.
JA: I don’t think I have heard that name before.
RB: Ferdinand Charlebois. [His] first name was Ferdinand. I believe that Charlebois were Basque. Or were they French? [Glendale’s Basque families descended from both sides of the Pyrenees Mountains, some were from France and some were from Spain.]
EM: They were French. His stepfather had that big Holstein dairy on Grand [Avenue]. Reno.
RB: Reno, yes.
EM: Remember the Renos?
RB: Yes, he was his stepfather.
EM: He was the stepfather.
RB: Yes, R-E-N-O.
EM: “Ferd” didn’t get along with his stepfather so he went out to work for somebody else. [Laughter]
JA: Okay.
EM: There were two or three of those boys, “Ferd”, Pat, and George but “Ferd” was the only one that ever lived at our house. He was a friend up until he died. He was a wild character, though!
JA: So you [were] close to some of these hired hands?
EM: Yes, we knew their families.
RB: Yes.
53
EM: [We knew] where they worked.
RB: Edna, how far in school [did] the majority of the young men who worked for your father go? [What] would you say? Eighth grade, do you imagine?
EM: Not very far, probably the eighth grade. Very few of them had gone to high school. But they made it. In those days ─
RB: Yes, some of them very well. The Charlebois certainly did.
JA: Did you also have Hispanic hired workers?
EM: A few but not too many. I remember only little ol’ fellow that used to eat with us. He couldn’t talk English and we couldn’t talk Mexican but we got along. In those days, the Mexican families lived out along the canal bank in tents.
RB: Yes.
JA: In tents?
RB: Yes.
EM: Sure, in tents.
RB: Yes, in tents along the laterals.
EM: That is what I can understand. Little [children] are always drowning these days and those people lived along the canal banks and hardly ever did we hear of one drowning. We lived on a canal bank. We didn’t drown.
JA: When I read about the Mexicans moving to this area it always talks about them being hired hands. What kind of people hired them?
EM: Farmers.
JA: To do ─
EM: To do the irrigating and the ditch shoveling. They had to shovel ditches in those days.
JA: Yes.
EM: Plant crops, maybe. Some of them were pretty good teamsters.
RB: Weeding the cotton.
JA: Your dad was a cattle rancher? Did I get that right?
54
EM: He had 160 acres that he farmed and then he had cattle out on the desert.
JA: Okay. So he was both.
EM: They called them the White Tanks [Maricopa County, Arizona]. When Goodyear came, Waddell and those fellows pushed him out because they homesteaded it. Then he went to [inaudible].
JA: The Goodyears and the Waddells homesteaded?
RB: Yes.
EM: I guess they did [in] Litchfield, Maricopa County, Arizona]. I noticed in the [news]paper where ─
RB: Litchfield’s daughter ─
EM: ─ friend.
RB: Yes, Edith.
EM: She is still on the old homestead.
RB: Yes, Edith Denny. She is Litchfield’s daughter and she is trying to get her dad and mother’s property, where she lives, declared a historical site so that the house can be made into a museum and an eighteen-hole golf course developed with houses surrounding the golf course. She is now in the process of trying to preserve that as her parents had it ─
JA: [Oh.]
RB: ─ and yet develop part of it too. There are quite a number of acres there.
JA: What is her name?
RB: Edith Denny. Edith (Litchfield) Denny.
JA: Okay.
EM: According to the [news]paper, you should drive by there and look at it, the half-section that they have goes right down Camelback Road ─
RB: Yes.
55
EM: ─ and it is all desert, greasewood. Wallace and I have been wondering why that wasn’t ever developed.
RB: I don’t know.
EM: Maybe there was no reason to develop it.
RB: To the north of the house, the property that the house is on, they own that because when the Litchfields controlled the Wigwam [Resort] they would take the [visitors] for a cookout in the evening. Right on the point of the hill, north of the home property, is where they took them. That [property] belongs to Edith.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: I think they still do [the cookouts]. I think they have hay-rack rides from the hotel. They did up to at least ten years ago. I know that because I had a friend that worked out at the Wigwam [Resort] and we saw each other regularly. It was not unusual for her to mention about having been required to make one of the trips on the hay wagon.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: They would have people that they could depend on to go on the wagon so that if anything happened somebody from the hotel would be responsible.
JA: Edna, what kind of games did you [play] as children?
EM: [Laughter]
JA: Did you play marbles? What kind of games do you remember?
EM: [The] boys played marbles and some of the girls did [also].
RB: Tops?
EM: Drop-The-Handkerchief. Remember that?
RB: Yes. Spin-The-Bottle. When we [were] together for birthday parties or in the evening [we] played Post Office [and] Spin-The-Bottle.
EM: Stick Horse. Annie Over. I never could throw the ball over!
RB: Yes.
JA: Let me clarify something here. I think I am showing my post-1960 era. But Spin-The- Bottle and Post Office were sex orientated games when I was growing up from listening to what other people were talking about.
56
RB: Yes, they were when we were young, too.
JA: Even in the early years?
RB: Yes, that gave you a chance to be kissed, you hoped, by the fellow that you were particularly interested in. When the bottle spun, you hoped to high heavens that it pointed to you.
JA: So that you could kiss whomever you wanted?
RB: Yes, yes.
JA: Even in those early years ─
RB: Yes, in those early [years]!
JA: ─ people were infatuated with kissing!
RB: Yes!
JA: Interesting! I didn’t think that would have been the case.
RB: Yes, that was true.
EM: It wasn’t true with me because I was too bashful.
JA: You weren’t into that kissing scene?
EM: No, I was scared of boys.
JA: That is fascinating that was around then.
RB: I can remember that, Jerry, when I couldn’t have been over three or four years old. My aunts who were a number of years older than I, they would [have] been [in their] early teens ─
JA: Yes.
RB: ─were involved in Post Office and Spin-The-Bottle.
EM: I was pretty dumb but I will tell you I learned a whole lot about sex from some of the pupils I had when I first started to teach.
RB: [Laughter]
57
JA: I imagine so!
EM: Gosh! I had some wild girls! Oh!
JA: Were they just talking about what they were doing?
EM: I would find notes that they wrote to each other.
RB: Yes.
EM: They just left them lay around where you could find them. I remember one time, [it was] the last day of school in the sixth grade. I didn’t like to leave a room dirty so I had them clean out their desks. But I thought to be sure I would check after they had gone. I checked the desks and I found some notes in the back desks. I’ll tell you, I almost fainted when read them!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: This would have been in the 1920s [or] 1930s?
EM: It was in the early 1920s.
JA: What kind of things were sixth grade girls doing in the 1920s?
EM: I don’t know.
JA: Are we talking kissing or are we talking [about youngsters] at that age were already having an affair-relationships with men?
EM: It sounded like relationships or at least they were thinking about it.
JA: That is hard to believe!
RB: I would say [that it was] more thinking than doing. Because I can remember the Gilbert girl, Charley Gilbert’s sister ─
EM: Yes.
RB: ─ Marjorie Gilbert, she was not mentally alert and somehow she [became] involved with men. What had happened to Marjorie Gilbert was known by everybody in Glendale.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: There was definite active sex as far as Marjorie Gilbert was concerned. That was my first knowledge that this could occur to somebody who was not married.
58
EM: The year before I began [teaching] the sixth grade, there was quite a scandal about a girl in the sixth grade but it wasn’t Marjorie.
RB: It wasn’t Marjorie?
EM: It was one of the McFadden girls, wasn’t it?
RB: Oh, really? I guess so and their dad [Ernest McFadden] was the sheriff. What was her name?
EM: The McFadden girl that I had in my room, she was a little darling but that other one was wild!
RB: Yes, the other one was what we would consider at that time, very wild.
EM: [Inaudible]
JA: I am just trying to plug into trends. So these are essentially the teenagers of the 1920s.
RB: Yes.
JA: They will be the “flapper generation.” Correct?
RB: Yes. Shall I answer it, Edna?
[TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF]
JA: I’m sorry to hear about that.
EM: Now, where were we? [Laughter]
JA: You are helping me [as] I have always wondered about this. Because ─
EM: I can remember when I was a teenager they didn’t talk about things like that in front of kids in those days. But I can remember some ol’ lady that mom used to visit a lot. They would whisper behind their hands like this.
RB: Yes.
EM: Yah, Yah, Yah. Goodness, I was smart enough to know what they were talking about. There were a lot of scandals in those days.
RB: Yes.
EM: There always have been scandals.
59
RB: Doctor Burnham’s daughter, Lovena, she was considered the word that they used for somebody who was more open and was apt to do things, was “fast.”
JA: Yes.
RB: Lovena Burnham was considered “fast.” Her dad was a doctor. [Dr. Ferris Burnham]
EM: Yes, I remember her.
JA: Was that a-typical? Was that sort of outside of the norm for girls?
EM: Yes.
RB: Yes, very definitely.
JA: Did that change in the late 1920s? Or was it just recorded as changing? Did more girls start getting involved?
RB: I don’t think so because I would say, Edna, when I was in college there wasn’t as much sexual activity in the late 1920s and early 1930s as there had been right after World War I.
EM: Probably not. In our day though, a child born out-of-wedlock that was a disgrace. But it isn’t now-a-days.
RB: Oh, no.
EM: Times have changed.
JA: Yes. I am trying to just understand how much they have really changed. It is interesting how many of these kinds of stories a person can hear over time and you don’t know─
RB: In my experience, I’ll say from the mid-1920s to the beginning of World War II there was a period in there, Jerry, where people were more conscious of sexual activity. Do not do this! Because by that time it was very well known that you could get gonorrhea [and] you could get syphilis. The same thing prevailed in that period of time that is now about AIDS [auto-immune deficiency syndrome].
JA: [Oh.]
RB: I think there was a let up in the activity after World War I, there was more liberation and freedom until about the middle of the 1920s, up to World War II. During and immediately after World War II was when the liberation in sexual activity occurred. Now that is my experience.
EM: I would agree.
60
JA: So the wars really drastically affected that.
RB: Very definitely.
JA: What do you think was the cause?
RB: I think the uprooting of so many people away from the average norm. These young men were taken away from homes and thrown into situations that they had never experienced before. In these big camps [they were] held there more severely than they are today. When there was an opportunity to get out where there was the opposite sex, where there were young women, the young women were a prize, I think. They could have any one of a half-dozen [men]. I think a laxity developed after both World War I and World War II.
JA: It is interesting [that] in the history books there were two major concerns that faced the military in World War I that the boys would turn to prostitutes and they would turn to liquor. Do you know what the conclusion is? They did both. [Laughter]
RB: Yes.
JA: What I am hearing from you is that was true even in the Glendale area. Is that what I am hearing?
RB: Yes.
JA: Good old conservative, temperance colony Glendale.
RB: Yes.
JA: How did that play with people? Do you remember, Edna, any reactions from the war?
EM: [Inaudible] know what to say about that.
RB: I know that my mother was apt to make, every now and then, a strong point of avoiding people like Lovena Burnham, Katherine McFadden and Marjorie Gilbert. Even though the families were good families you didn’t have anything to do with those particular girls because they were “fast” and they would get you into trouble.
JA: Bad company corrupts good morals.
RB: Yes.
JA: Interesting. Good warning.
61
RB: Edna, who were the people who had the pool hall? They had quite a number. The boy did a lot of drinking, particularly of lemon extract. He was apt to come to a ball game high on lemon extract.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: Who was?
RB: His dad ran the pool [hall]. Archie? Archie? What was their name? His name was Archie. I remember one time being at a baseball game when he came [and] it almost scared us as kids to death because here was this guy. The word circulated around, “Archie is drunk on lemon extract.” I will have to think about it. [Schwartig]
EM: They ran the pool hall?
RB: Yes, they had the pool hall.
EM: I don’t know who that is.
RB: [The pool hall] also was a place that only people of low repute went.
JA: Yes, I remember that concept. It still holds true in a lot of people minds.
RB: Yet in the present day, for instance, in Mayer [Yavapai County, Arizona] my sister [June] was the champion pool player. Also [the] game [where the metal disc is sent down the board, whatever you call [that game], she was [the] champion.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: I was in conservation with my nephew the other night. I said, “What are you going to do this evening?” He said, “I am going up to the upper bar because we are having a pool tournament.”
JA: So they are still doing it?
RB: Yes.
JA: We took a major deviation here from asking about the toys that the [children] played with in those early years! [Laughter] Very fascinating, I appreciate you sharing the little insights with me to fill that in. Were there other kinds of games that [children] would play? Would they play together? Or just within their family members? Edna?
EM: We played pretty much together because we didn’t have anybody else to play with.
JA: Too far apart?
62
EM: Our nearest neighbors were half-mile [away]. I didn’t have any girl cousins to play with. One family had four boys and they didn’t play with girls very much. The other family had three girls and four boys, something like that, and the boys didn’t play with me and the girls were too big to play with little ol’ person like me. I just didn’t have any playmates much. [I was] by myself.
JA: Did you end [up] working around the house and on the farm?
EM: Yes, my mother used to stand me on the chair to wipe the dishes.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I couldn’t reach the table.
JA: It is reported that women on the plains, when they were settling the plains area, had problems with going insane because of the loneliness of being separated. Was that ever a problem out here?
EM: No, I don’t think so. There were quite a few younger women [who] died. I don’t know what the problems [were]. [Inaudible]
RB: Edna, the people who had the pool hall was Schwartig.
EM: Oh, yes, Archie Schwartig. There was a girl too, wasn’t there?
RB: Yes, several girls. Laura Schwartig was my friend and to me she was a good friend. My mother said, “Don’t forget that her brother is a drunkard.”
JA: [Laughter]
RB: We were in the same grade.
JA: Yes.
EM: Schwartig, I remember now.
JA: Good, we have that one nailed down!
RB: In town, within a block, there would be teams that would challenge each other for different kinds of games.
JA: Oh?
RB: [If] we were playing Run Black Sheep Run [or a] ball game. As I told you coming over [today], you remember “Red” Emmons [W. Marion Emmons] who was the marshal in
63
Glendale, was married to a Mexican woman [Lupe]. He also ran the water. He was the zanjero for Glendale. In the day time… [See Note 1]
EM: Yes. What was he name? “Red”?
RB: Emmons.
EM: Emmons.
RB: He had red hair is the reason he was called “Red.”
JA: Oh.
RB: Very often when he was running the water he would volunteer to help us out with our ball games. [When] we were down at Frank Heatwole’s, we could play basketball because they had a hoop on a [building] that later became their garage. Our backyard was big enough that we could have a ball team. There wouldn’t be nine on each side but there would be five on one side and five on the other side. We played cricket [also].
[END OF 92-012 – SIDE ONE]
RB: In April there [would be] a contest [at] school. My sister, June, was five years younger than I and when she was in grade school she was the champion. It [continued until] the late 1920s [and then] it died out.
JA: Marbles died out.
RB: Yes, marble contests. [We also had] contests at school with spinning tops.
JA: Yes.
RB: And mumble-ty-peg. [A children’s game played with a pocket knife.] June was also champion at that.
JA: Were all [of] these [games] true for the non-city people too, Edna? Did you know about all of these games?
EM: No, I didn’t. I just didn’t have very many playmates.
JA: Yes. That is the downside of living on a ranch.
EM: There was just two kids and my brother at a very early age went with dad and the men.
JA: Yes.
EM: He [received] his first saddle when he was four years old.
64
JA: [Laughter] Wow!
EM: I was left at home with my mother and I just didn’t have very many playmates. I started to read when I was quite young and I’ll bet I read a million books!
JA: Where did you get your books?
EM: I read all that were in the old school library which were just a little bit. My father took three magazines, Western Story, All Story and Argosy. Every Saturday he had to go to Phoenix to get his magazines. I read them. I read some of those old, old novels that came out of Novel Horn and those magazines, some of those old Zane Grey stories.
RB: Yes.
JA: Yes.
EM: [Inaudible] I would just read a lot and I helped my mother a lot.
JA: With the cooking?
EM: I had to learn to cook the supper when I was pretty little because mother had to help with the milking.
RB: Yes.
EM: She was the milk maid.
JA: What kind of foods did you prepare?
EM: Fried potatoes, for one thing! [Laughter]
JA: [You] made a lot of fried potatoes?
EM: Fried potatoes cook, fried potatoes —. I have fried many a skillet of fried potatoes! I still use that old skillet to fry potatoes!
RB: Yes, a black one!
EM: An old black skillet and it was my dad’s bachelor skillet. That must be 100 and some years old.
RB: Edna, there are several things that I prepare for myself, even now living alone, that I get the black skillet out [for] because it is the only one that will do it and do it properly.
EM: Do it right!
65
JA: It is well seasoned.
EM: It is good to fry bacon in.
RB: Yes. Jerry, at that time, when you did the laundry you had a big black kettle that the water was heated in.
EM: Yes, [inaudible].
RB: You made a fire, a fire under [the kettle] in order to heat the water that you bailed out and put in the tub in which you put the scrub board to do the washing. Once every month or two, my mother would say to my sister Mary Lee and me, “Now, today burn out the skillets.” When the fire underneath the kettle was just down to coals you turned the skillet upside down so the inside part of the skillet was right over the coals. You burned out all the grease that had accumulated in [the skillet]. It would accumulate no matter how good you washed it.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: [No matter] how well you washed it, you were still going to get a certain amount [of grease]. That would just scale off and your skillet would be pretty and clear again.
JA: Interesting!
EM: In those days we didn’t always have fresh meat every day.
RB: No.
EM: Gosh, we fried many a chicken! We always had chickens!
JA: Did the men kill the chickens? Or did you have to kill and clean them yourselves?
EM: The men generally did because my mother wouldn’t kill a chicken. I got so I could kill a chicken. I didn’t like to but I could kill a chicken if I wrung his neck.
JA: Yes.
EM: Just give him a twist!
RB: My sister, Mary Lee, just ─
EM: They butchered hogs in the winter and salted them down.
RB: Yes.
66
EM: We had salted hams.
JA: You cooked a lot with ham and bacon?
RB: Yes, and side pork.
EM: In the early, early days there used to be an old butcher. [He] had an old covered wagon and horses hitched to it that [he used to] make his rounds. Triblet…
RB: Triblett.
EM: He is still in business in Phoenix.
RB: Yes.
JA: He was ─
EM: He had fresh meat. I remember Triblett coming by with his meat wagon. Sometimes mama would buy some if the meat looked fresh and if it didn’t look fresh she wouldn’t [buy].
JA: He would slaughter his own [animals] and take [the meat] around─
EM: He had a butcher shop in Phoenix.
JA: Okay.
EM: I know he used to have bologna. We used to like bologna.
JA: Yes.
EM: Some of the Mexican boys that Wallace, my brother, worked with worked for Triblett. They told him that if he knew what went into that bologna he wouldn’t eat it. [Laughter] The Mexicans wouldn’t eat it. My brother told us that if the Mexicans wouldn’t eat it [then] he wouldn’t either. So we didn’t have any more bologna.
JA: After that? [Laughter]
EM: I don’t know what he put in it! [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] Raises some suspicions though, doesn’t it? Did you have pretty much the same kind of meals?
67
EM: Yes, day after day. In the summertime [we had] fried chicken. Another thing [happened] in the early days. I don’t know if you remember it or not. [There were] old Chinese fellows that drove their wagons out in the country selling vegetables.
RB: Yes.
JA: [Oh?] You would get fresh “veggies” from the Chinese?
EM: Yes, supposedly so. I remember my first [experience with] Chinese candy and those Chinese nut things that [had] a hull on them that [the] old Chinese man, [Mr.] Hoy gave to us to eat.
RB: Yes.
EM: He came around about every week with his old team and covered top wagon and sold his vegetables. [Also] in the early days the Arnold Pickle Company in Phoenix, [have you heard of them]? Arnolds.
JA: Yes.
EM: Arnold had a pickle route. He used to stop at the school I [attended] that had so many pupils, eight or ten. He would stop out there and give each one of us a pickle as he went by.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: He had an old wagon, about like the one that is parked out there, and one old bay mare horse and three or four wooden kegs of pickles. [He] went around the country selling pickles.
RB: Yes.
EM: You took your container out [to his wagon] and he weighed out so many pickles. But he gave us [the pickles] at school. We could have a sweet pickle or a sour one, which ever we wanted.
RB: The Arnolds were probably the first people who made sweet dill pickles. Dill pickles that they put sugar in and they were the most delicious pickles. When I first came home from the Orient, Edna, we could buy Arnolds pickles in the market, those sweet dills. Then all of a sudden there were no more.
EM: [Inaudible] I guess they are still on Van Buren [Street].
RB: Whoever of the family who knew [how] to make them must have died.
68
EM: They are still on Van Buren [Street], aren’t they?
RB: No, [on] Indian School [Road].
EM: Indian School [Road].
RB: Yes, just recently the last of the women died.
EM: Yes.
RB: I would say in the last three or four years the last Mrs. Arnold died.
JA: [Oh.]
EM: I know Margaret’s first husband, “Chuck” worked at Arnolds at one time. One time he came home and said, “Mrs. Arnold is the boss of that outfit!” [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: He found that out! [Laughter]
JA: You learn those things when you are working for people.
RB: Edna, do you remember when we first had the ice plant? When did the ice plant [Crystal Ice Company] come?
EM: I don’t know.
RB: It was just that little bitty, one-story [building] and then it grew and grew into about a three-story building.
EM: I don’t know when that first came.
RB: When we lived down on First Avenue the little building was there [and] that would be around 1918 or 1919. So it was there then.
EM: It was there when we moved to Glendale because Dewey Kiser was our iceman.
RB: Yes, and my brother, “Chuck” [Bolding] delivered in the summertime with Dewey.
EM: Did he?
RB: Yes. That was great! The ice man came with the horse drawn vehicle. The back, naturally, was opened. Usually you took twenty-five pounds because [the load] was one- hundred pounds divided into either ten-pound pieces or twenty-five pound pieces. As he
69
would pick [the ice] to break up a 300-pound piece of ice, we would get all the pickings [ice chips] that came off.
EM: [Laughter]
RB: [You could] go out there with your glass, fill it, and run and put water in it and have ice water. That was great!
JA: [Oh.]
RB: We never had an iceman that wasn’t a kind, generous person.
EM: Yes. Dewey was [inaudible]
RB: The same way in the early days in Glendale when we had absolutely no paving the water wagon came along. At first it was drawn by horses and eventually it was mechanized. The horse drawn vehicle didn’t move [very] fast. There were gears up in the front that he pressed in order to make the water spray out from each corner. We never had a waterman that wasn’t kind enough to let us run along behind him in our bathing suits. We would go almost out to your house!
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Behind the water wagon!
JA: Getting sprayed down?
RB: Yes, getting sprayed down!
JA: This would have been in the teens?
RB: Yes.
EM: Before we moved to Glendale, I was a good deal younger, we didn’t have ice delivered. Dad would have to go to Phoenix to that ice company.
RB: Yes.
EM: He would bring it home in 200-pound cakes. How he ever got it in that old wooden icebox, I don’t know, but he did. That would last almost a week. We were very saving with it. Then the next Saturday he would bring back some more. He had to go to town every Saturday to get ice and his magazines!
JA: What kind of things did you keep in an icebox at that time, Edna?
EM: The butter and milk. Milk would sour. [Inaudible]
70
RB: Any fresh meat that you had or chicken.
EM: It seems like this old wooden box had a little vacant compartment underneath ─
RB: Yes.
EM: ─ that you could put [food] in. I know that it had a little place where the water ran out. The peacocks and the chickens used to come and drink the water.
JA: [Oh.] I would like to talk about the statehood element. I know that was before your times but if you recall anything that people talked about, the movement to become a state [and] whether everybody really wanted that or were there some things that were not of benefit that people referred to. Do you know, Edna?
EM: I don’t know how they felt about that. I just really don’t. We became a state in 1912. I just didn’t pay much attention to politics!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: Was there a big celebration that you recall when we became a state?
EM: Not that I know. I don’t remember going to one.
JA: It apparently didn’t stick in your mind. Okay.
EM: Was old Governor [George W. P.] Hunt the first governor [after statehood]?
RB: Yes.
JA: Yes.
EM: I know that the folks didn’t like him.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: Jerry, the first I remember about politics was the year that Tom Campbell got
EM: Yes.
RB: ─ [was] elected and Hunt said [that] he wasn’t elected. For a period of time we had both of them. [See Note 2]
EM: [We] had both of them.
RB: Finally, the Supreme Court said that Hunt was the governor. It went along for two years in school we heard and talked about Hunt. Then the next election when the election came
71
up, Tom Campbell actually was elected. I remember he was the first Republican governor that we ever had.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: He was a handsome person, Edna.
EM: Yes. In that first squabble between ─
RB: Hunt and Campbell?
EM: ─ Hunt and Campbell neither one of them would give up their seat.
RB: No.
EM: My Uncle Henry Wilky was sheriff at that time and he had to go out there and drag one of them out! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] Did he really?
RB: Out of the capitol?
EM: [Laughter] Because one of them was illegally sitting in there.
JA: Did your Uncle Wilky ever talk to you [about] being sheriff? Was that a dangerous job at that time?
EM: Yes, I remember him telling, more than once, that he had to go out to Governor Hunt’s house to settle a dispute between the old man and the old lady because the old man was drunk! [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I remember him telling that. [Laughter]
RB: Yes.
JA: Family squabbles.
EM: Wasn’t there a big murder that took place out [inaudible] while he was sheriff? What was that? They hung somebody out there?
RB: Yes.
72
EM: What was that? I have forgotten the details. Out toward Apache Junction [Pinal County, Arizona]? [Inaudible] killed a couple?
RB: Yes. Edna, was it in relation to the Grahams and the Tewksburys?
EM: No, that was before then.
RB: That took place over in the Double Butte Cemetery [Tempe]. That was before. I remember what you are talking about but it just won’t come out.
EM: There was a young couple killed or a woman killed or something. The fellow who killed her dashed out and the law got after him. They caught him out there and the posse hung him.
RB: Yes.
EM: I don’t know if Uncle Henry got out there too late to stop the hanging. I have forgot all about it.
JA: Jog my memory. [I am thinking about something] that I have heard and I want to see if you know if it ever happened around here. There was a lot lynching of Black people in particular but other people as well in the late 1800s and up in through the 1920s. Do you recall any lynchings? There weren’t a whole lot of Black people in this area ─
EM: No.
JA: ─ but do you recall any of that in the area?
RB: I don’t.
EM: There were very few Black people. Do you know in the [many] years I taught, I only had two Black pupils. They only lasted two days. I don’t know anything about Black people.
JA: When you say they only lasted two days ─
EM: They were only in the community two days. They only came to school two days. I don’t know. They moved on.
RB: When I was a little girl we had Uncle Charley and his wife [who] came to The Christian Church. They were a Black couple. He did gardening and yard work. His wife was a house maid for different people. They were the only Black couple in Glendale when I was young.
EM: I remember seeing them walk along the street. I didn’t know them.
73
RB: Yes. They had a very nice buggy that they came to church in and they were quite well liked by anybody in Glendale. You mentioned Uncle Charley and she was always referred to as Uncle Charley’s wife. What her name was I haven’t the slightest notion.
JA: Where did they live?
RB: They lived down just beyond the ice plant.
EM: When your mother [Cecilia Bolding] and I were going to Lamson’s I remember only one Black person around there in Phoenix. That was a boy [who] worked in the store McDougall and [Cassau].
RB: Yes.
EM: Down below.
RB: A men’s store.
EM: My Aunt Ruby’s husband was a McDougall from that store. Aunt Ruby came up to the school room to meet me. She said, “I’m going home with you.” That was quite a shock that Aunt Ruby was going home with me because she was supposed to be way up in society. I asked her something about her suitcase. She said, “My suitcase is downstairs in the store. Malcolm will take care of it for us.” We went down into the store and there was Malcolm with the suitcase. He was a real good looking “nigger” boy. We called them “niggers” in those days. I know we walked down the street, Aunt Ruby and I, to the bus station and this Malcolm trotted along behind us, carrying the suitcase. [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I thought oh gosh, I am somebody important having a Black boy carrying the suitcase! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I never will forget that! He was the only Black boy in town, I think. I know he was a great friend of Barry Goldwater. I have read about him and Barry Goldwater since then.
RB: Yes.
JA: [Oh.]
EM: But I don’t know what his last name was. But there were just not very many of them.
RB: I have a couple of Barry’s books. I will go through them some time, Edna, and see if his name is in there.
74
EM: His first name [was] Malcolm. I don’t know his last name. We did have a lot of Chinese in Phoenix in those days and Jews.
RB: Yes.
EM: There was quite a Jewish settlement.
JA: Really?
EM: In the old days.
JA: What kind of businesses did they run?
EM: Jewelry.
RB: The businesses, jewelry and men’s stores.
EM: Korrick’s [Department Store] and Goldwater’s [Department Store].
RM: Korrick’s [Department Store] and Diamonds.
EM: Rosenzweig’s and Goldberg’s, all of them were Jews.
RB: All of them were Jewish people.
EM: The Chinese ran the restaurants.
RB: Yes, and the grocery stores.
EM: Yes. We traded at Goldman’s. Goldmans were Jews.
JA: I want to come back to the two Black [pupils] who were there for two days, essentially. That was at Glendale Elementary [School]?
EM: Yes, they were cotton ─
RB: Cotton pickers.
EM: [They] were picking cotton, I think. Their family didn’t stay in Glendale. They just came in the two days, the two brothers. I inquired about them the next day and the kids said, oh they had moved on.
JA: [Oh.]
EM: They just left town.
75
RB: Jerry, when I was in the fifth grade, this would be after World War I, around that time. There were nineteen nationalities in my room. Among those nineteen nationalities there was not a Black person.
EM: I never did have a Black pupil. They just were not in the grammar school.
JA: Yes.
RB: Lots of Mexicans.
EM: I had lots of Mexicans.
RB: We had Filipinos, Chinese and then later came the Japanese. But we just did not have Black people.
EM: The Japanese, and the Chinese too, but the Japanese especially are a brilliant race of people.
RB: Yes.
EM: I never did have a Japanese pupil that wasn’t above average.
JA: How were they treated in the community, Edna?
EM: They were one of us.
RB: Yes, [inaudible].
EM: [Inaudible] They played ball, recited and did their work.
RB: Back in the days when I was a grade school and high school student, Jerry, we felt very strongly that each person was an individual but we were all a big family of people. There was not [any] feeling against anybody. We had all of these nationalities come in from Europe and they became part of the community. I remember when I graduated from the eighth grade there was a family from Switzerland. They became dairy farmers but they had not made it. They did later on and did very, very well. Each boy was to wear a white shirt and a dark pair of trousers. This one Swiss boy who was graduating with us had nothing but a good pair of overalls, the bib kind of overalls with a white shirt. We all went together and raised enough money, just donated a quarter or whatever we could, and we bought him a pair of trousers so that he would not feel hurt that he was the only one in bib overalls. You could buy a pair of trousers for less than $5.00.
JA: That was for your high school graduation?
RB: Grade school.
76
JA: Grade school, [the] eighth grade. [In] 19 ─
RB: Let’s see, what would that be?
EM: About 1921 or 1922?
RB: Yes, about 1920 or 1921.
JA: Do you remember the Swiss name?
RB: Oh, heck! Jerry, you shouldn’t have asked me!
JA: Shouldn’t have asked that one!
RB: Because maybe it would have come. Later they became quite a dairy family.
EM: We had quite a few Basque students.
RB: Yes, quite number of Basque [people].
JA: I am always intrigued [by the fact] that [in] the European relations of this nationality group of nineteen you might have twelve different European groups. They are typically far more well received than the Asian, the Mexicans, or the Blacks were in communities. I am curious as to whether that was consistent here as well.
RB: I don’t think so because all the way through school, from the time I was in the first grade until I graduated from high school, Edna, there was not feeling against the Mexican kids or the Chinese or the Europeans. I can remember, Jerry, so well of the few Mexican kids who graduated from grade school at the time I did, we were so anxious to get them through high school that many and many a day I stayed after 4:00 in the afternoon to help those who were about to drop out, both girls and boys. There were a number of us who did that to get those [students] graduated from high school.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: There weren’t [any] feelings, we were just like all one big family. There was not feeling against anybody.
JA: [Did] the parents feel the same way? The first generation?
RB: Yes.
EM: The first years that I was there, and when you were there, the Mexicans were separate.
JA: They had a separate school?
77
RB: Yes.
EM: Yes, separate rooms.
JA: Why?
EM: So they could learn English quicker and better, I guess.
RB: I think that basically was [the idea]. What I taught was beginning non-English speaking children. I had Filipinos, Native Americans, pre-dominantly Mexicans, Chinese, and Japanese in my room in the early 1930s. They still were segregated as to the number of children, as Edna said, primarily so you could concentrate on English grammar.
EM: My first class was first grade Mexicans. They couldn’t talk English and I couldn’t talk Mexican and we finally made it.
RB: Yes.
JA: Did they learn English?
EM: Yes, they learned English.
JA: Then they moved into the regular school?
EM: In the seventh grade [the students] were all put together.
RB: Yes.
EM: Melvin Sine had Mexicans for years and years.
JA: When they merged together at the seventh grade ─
EM: A lot of the Mexicans didn’t come back, they quit.
JA: They quit by that time?
EM: Not all of them came back.
RB: Yes.
JA: I was just wondering how well they were received once they blended together.
EM: They were generally pretty good athletes. The boys were always accepted, I think, by the other boys.
78
RB: We had fights, sure, but I can’t remember anytime that the Anglo [students] fought the Mexicans, for instance, or fought the Japanese kids or the Chinese. No, there would be a conglomeration of everybody on this side and everybody on [that] side and you just fought!
EM: I think they were accepted better, in a way, than the Russians were.
RB: Yes, I do to.
JA: [Oh.] Why the Russians?
RB: I think that the Russians were so prone to keep to themselves. People resented that because you couldn’t know the Russians. I had a friend, Hazel Tolmachoff, and I used to go out to their home on Maryland Avenue. They lived just down the street from the cemetery. She came to my house on weekends. When I went out there we went to church, ate Russian food, Russian was spoken and she was the interpreter for me. Then she would come in and stay the weekend at my house and go to church with me and have the kind of food that we had. When I went out to her house it was very definitely Russian food.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: Her family and the [Russian] families that I met through the Tolmachoffs [like] the Popoffs were real good to me. I could never say that I was mistreated in any shape or form when I would go out to what we called Russian Town.
EM: Russian Town.
JA: Is that what you actually referred to it as?
RB: Yes.
EM: They lived pretty close. Some of those Russians are millionaires today.
RB: Oh, sure!
JA: Many of them!
EM: I remember when they first came out there. We were still living at the old place on Indian School [Road]. They used to come to our house and buy [inaudible] horses from dad. We had an orchard and they would come for fruit.
RB: But they were prone to keep to themselves.
JA: Edna, when they first came was there a sense of fear of them or a sense of disregard for them?
79
EM: They were just different. We didn’t know too much about them.
JA: [Did] they look different?
RB: You didn’t have any fear of them.
EM: No.
RB: It was just the fact that these people were very different.
EM: There was one thing, they were pretty shrewd people. You had to watch them or they would get the best of you!
JA: [Laughter]
RB: In the deal!
JA: Yes! I imagine so. I think we talked about World War I in previous discussions. So we probably jumped through that one a little bit. The Depression years ─
EM: Oh goodness! When were they? [Laughter]
JA: That is one that thing that I have wondered. [Did] people living in that time see it as that big of a change in their life as people look back on it today and say, “That must have been terrible.” Was there really that much of a change in your lives during 1929 to 1940?
RB: Oh, definitely!
EM: I can’t remember much about The Depression. What years was that supposed to be?
JA: The end of 1920 through 1940.
EM: In the 1930s.
JA: The bad years were 1933 to 1937.
RB: I would say yes, a very definite change in the lives of people.
JA: Give me a sense for that.
RB: For instance, when you picked up [The Arizona] Republic in 1929, after the October 1929 affair, and read how many people jumped out of high-story widows in New York [City, New York] committing suicide because the stock market had gone completely bad, this reflected on the people in Arizona. What is happening to the people in the Eastern part of
80
the United States? They are committing suicide. What is that going to do to us? There was a definite apprehension.
JA: Fear?
RB: Yes, of what is going to happen.
JA: But did it happen?
RB: Yes, it did happen. There was a time when the State of Arizona was going through just exactly what California is going through now. Don’t you remember, Edna, when we were issued vouchers for our pay? The state of Arizona was broke immediately after the stock market crash occurred.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: If you had to cash your voucher you could find somebody who would take it for a percentage, [maybe a] ten percent deduction [by] somebody who had accumulated enough to buy up the state vouchers. I don’t know how long a period of time that this went on but it was quite a bit of the school year that we were paid with vouchers. That would be 1932.
EM: [Inaudible] 1932.
JA: That is interesting. So it did have its effect?
RB: Oh, it very definitely had its effect.
JA: You were teaching at that time, Edna. You were not back on the farm.
EM: I was teaching. [Inaudible]--- on the farm. I know I used to take about fifteen dozen eggs to Davis Store [John D. Davis’ Market] every Friday. It came to about $4.00 and something. I bought mom’s groceries for the week and took her home some change out of that $4.00.
JA: [Oh.]
EM: We didn’t buy expensive stuff.
RB: Edna, when you were teaching during the early 1930 years, did you walk from home to school or did you drive?
EM: That isn’t when they rationed the gas, is it? That was during the war?
JA: That would have been during [World War II].
81
EM: I guess I drove the old Model-T.
RB: I couldn’t remember.
EM: When I first started I walked.
RB: Yes.
EM: That was when I used to meet Mary Lee [Bolding] on the street and I thought she was so pretty.
RB: Yes.
JA: That was a long walk!
EM: It was about two miles.
RB: There were students coming to Glendale [Union] High School who were walking farther than Edna did!
JA: [Oh.]
EM: Yes! [Inaudible]
RB: [Inaudible] Lateral 22. The Davis and the Pecks all of those kids walked in to Glendale [Union] High School.
EM: [Inaudible]
RB: It couldn’t have been less than three and one-half or four miles. Nothing was thought of that.
EM: I remember Mr. [Homer] Davis when I was walking to school. Some people kind of talked about him but he was kind to me. He would give me a ride home from school in the afternoons. I don’t know what he had been doing up that way. [He had] an old wagon [with] an old flat bed in the back and one horse. If he didn’t have something in the seat beside him I would sit up there with him. If he did, I would get in the back! [Laughter] He would give me a ride home. I remember my high-tone aunt, that Aunt Ruby McDougall, came home with me once and we had to walk home from Glendale and [inaudible]. That was where I lived. We were walking along and Mr. Davis came by and stopped and said, “Do you ladies want a ride?” I thought where are we going to [sit] because he had something in the seat. He said, “I don’t have any room [except] in the back.” I helped Aunt Ruby in to the back [with] her old full skirt a flying! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
82
EM: I got in the back with her and we sat down on the bottom of the ─
RB: Bed?
EM: ─ bed. I thought [about] my rich aunt sitting there like that! That was [quite] an experience for her. She had more fun!
JA: [Laughter]
EM: So I got over my embarrassment.
JA: She hadn’t done that one before?
EM: When she got out she said she just didn’t know when she had enjoyed anything so much.
RB: One thing I know full well, that you had moved to Glendale when this occurred. Do you remember, Edna, when the first airplane came to Glendale? It landed in the fellow’s field just west of your home? [It was] a bi-plane. The [pilot] got out of it and he had on boots that came up like this and wore a coat that was like a linen duster. [He] had big goggles and a helmet. Do you remember that?
EM: [Inaudible] the [W. P.] Sheets place?
RB: A bi-plane. Yes, it would have to be the Sheets place because Jimmy Harper came by and we all went out there in the big old touring car that they had.
EM: [Inaudible]
RB: That was the first airplane that I ever saw. It landed just west of your home.
EM: I forgot all about that. That was all vacant.
RB: Yes.
EM: Except for the Sheets house.
RB: Yes, it was vacant.
JA: What era was this?
RB: Maybe 1918 or 1919. This fellow had to land, there was something that caused him to land. I think he was connected somehow with the military. It would be before the end of World War I. All the [children] and practically everybody [else] in Glendale went out there to see the airplane. I remember that the wings were like they [had been] made of linen cloth.
83
JA: Pretty close! [Laughter]
EM: I guess Jess Greenlee [Sheets’ son-in-law. Jess was married to Lenore Sheets.] lived there at that time.
RB: Yes, Jess Greenlee lived there.
EM: [Inaudible]
JA: The cotton production was a big [factor] in the Glendale area before the bust of cotton. The Depression was pretty hard on [the farmers].
EM: I guess it was. We never did go in for cotton.
JA: You didn’t? How come?
EM: Oh, I don’t know.
RB: Usually people were involved hogs, cattle, or sheep had nothing to do with anything else. They might raise grain but they didn’t go in for cotton or citrus. When I was a little girl, people came from Ohio to here, and they raised lots of apricots, lots of peaches and plums. Everybody had trees like that in their gardens.
EM: When we moved to Glendale we had alfalfa and we had a few cows to milk. The old place that we left on 75th [Avenue] and Indian School [Road] was 160 [acres] there. Dad rented it to farmers that either planted wheat and corn. A few years the Girard Company that had those vegetables gardens, had [the acreage] in vegetables.
RB: Yes.
EM: Some of them didn’t pay. They still owe us some rent. [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: You know if I had all the rent and stuff that people owed dad and me and compounded [it], I would be rich!
JA: That brings [up] an interesting [subject], credit.
EM: My dad was easy going.
JA: He gave a lot of credit?
EM: [Inaudible] they will do it and they never did do it.
84
JA: [Right.] Was there a country store [where] people bought [items and] bought on the futures of their crop?
EM: Yes.
JA: Did that happen here too?
RB: Yes, very definitely. Stauffer’s store [Retha’s mother was a bookkeeper for Ray Stauffer’s General Merchandise] was one where they ran entirely on sale of wool and cattle. They carried people for a year at a time.
JA: [Oh.] [It is] hard to imagine that.
RB: Credit was just taken for granted, Jerry. Not because people didn’t have the money but it seemed to be the way business was conducted in that period. Even if you had the money, you charged your groceries. You charged your clothes.
JA: Then you paid at the end of the month?
RB: You paid at the end of the month.
JA: You are laughing, Edna! What is going through your mind?
EM: The Goldman Grocery Store [Goldman’s or Goldman Implement Store] on Center Street [Central Avenue]. That’s where [my] folks traded. They bought [items] on time like you talked about. One time they finally got their bill and it was real high, $1,004.00! [Laughter] My mother blew up! “From now on we will not buy anything if we can’t pay for it.” She never would let us charge anything after that. If we didn’t have the money to pay for it, we did without.
RB: [Laughter]
EM: She said, “I am not very fond of getting these big bills. So from now on if you have to pay for it when you take it, you won’t buy so much.” If you buy it on time [you think] oh, I’ll pay for it later.
RB: Yes.
EM: So after that we had to pay for everything we bought.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: There were people who took advantage of that just as we have people today who take advantage of the credit card. The leniency or the fact that it was part of commerce to do credit business. [In December] 1936 I married [Wilson Beveridge] and moved to Holbrook [Navajo County] Arizona. Other than the [JC] Penney Company, and they
85
have a lay-a-way system, there wasn’t a business in the town of Holbrook that didn’t function on credit.
JA: [Oh.] Did the farmers buy [their] hogs on credit and then when you sold them ─
EM: [We] raised the hogs. I guess the first ones were on credit. After you got the pair of hogs you could raise your own.
JA: You could just keep that going.
EM: My father, I’m just as bad [so] I shouldn’t talk, the rent money. We [rented] the ranch and the fellow moved off without paying his rent money. They still owe it. I am just as bad because the last fellow that [rented] my Glendale place moved off and he still owes me money.
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: So I shouldn’t complain!
JA: You are living in your father’s footsteps!
EM: Yes and my brother [Wallace] is just as bad!
JA: It seems that boarding house situations, where you would take in a boarder, was a way to raise family income.
RB: Yes.
JA: Raise cash for needs. Was that pretty standard in those early years?
RB: Oh, yes.
EM: I don’t know. We never did have anybody living with us except the teachers.
JA: And you provided a place to live for your hired hands.
EM: [Inaudible] food.
JA: Sure.
EM: Salary and board.
RB: I remember, Jerry, after World War I that some people looked forward to when school would start because they would have an opportunity to rent a room, or maybe two rooms,
86
to teachers. They looked forward to the teachers coming into the community for the school year.
JA: Sure, get a little income.
RB: Yes. I don’t remember anybody who wasn’t a native and lived with the family. I can’t remember any teachers having an apartment or a house until I was well along in high school.
JA: A privilege.
RB: [They] lived with somebody.
[END OF 92-012 – SIDE TWO]
INTERVIEW WITH EDNA MEYER AND RETHA (BOLDING) BEVERIDGE Continued on August 28, 1992 ______
JA: That is one of the things that impressed me [when] listening to the two of you. It is almost like everybody knew everybody in Glendale. You not only knew them but you knew where they lived, what they did, you knew their children’s names.
RB: Yes.
JA: You get that real sense of community.
RB: Pat [Retha’s companion] said to say hi to you. I told her that she could go home at 1:30 p.m. because Jerry was coming. [Laughter] She stays until 3:30 most of the time.
EM: [Inaudible]
RB: We were saying just awhile ago, Jerry. Pat has two sons [and] one of them is still in school. The other one is married. We were talking about doing a May Pole dance. This was part of school, when we went to school. Wasn’t it, Edna? The May Pole dance? It was as much a part of school as Christmas was.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: On May first the janitor put up the May poles. We practiced before hand to do the dance and weave those ribbons around that thing. [It] made a beautiful thing. The boys and girls both did that.
EM: [Inaudible]
87
RB: She was saying that she thinks we [should] do away with a lot of these counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists, so on and so forth and get back to the basics of what used to be school. What an improvement [inaudible]. She went to Catholic schools which, you know, is an all together different curriculum and extracurricular activities than what we have in public schools.
JA: I don’t know anything about the May Poles. That is news.
RB: Oh, don’t you? At the Glendale Grammar School there would be the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Usually each grade chose twelve [students]; six boys and six girls to be in the May Pole dance. You were in a circle and each one had a ribbon about two or three inches wide. You learned how to go in and out [something] like a square dance. You went around the flag pole and as you did your ribbon wound on it. You passed in front of the other person and [the one] behind you, so it made it go down the pole in a very pretty design.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: We [did] that each May first.
EM: They must have stopped that because I don’t remember.
RB: You never did do the ─
EM: I guess when C. A. McKee came in, he stopped that! [Laughter]
RB: Yes.
JA: C. A. McKee?
EM: C. A. McKee.
RB: He was there before Harold [W.] Smith.
JA: Okay.
EM: He was before Harold Smith. You know that was the gruffest old fellow in high school. I was kind of scared to death of him. But I sure liked him later. [McKee taught at the high school before he became principal at the grammar school.]
RB: McKee? [Laughter] Yes, I liked him!
EM: I liked him because he helped me so much that first year I taught.
RB: Yes.
88
JA: He was pretty sensitive to his teachers?
EM: He had been my teacher in high school. Then he [was] transferred to the grammar school as principal. When I started teaching I taught under him. He was real kind to me. They used to call me McKee’s pet, but then he had me four years in high school so I knew him pretty well.
RB: [Laughter]
JA: Yes.
EM: He was a gruff ol’ boy!
RB: Edna, who was there before McKee?
EM: [J. Torrence] McRuer.
RB: What was his first name?
EM: Duncan [McRuer] was the high school principal. I don’t know what [his] name was, I never knew.
RB: I will have to think [about it]. They were brothers and one was principal of the grade school and [Duncan] was principal of the high school.
EM: I don’t know his first name.
RB: The one that we can’t think of his name, McRuer was there prior to McKee. Then Harold Smith came.
JA: Do you know anything about Duncan McRuer?
EM: I do.
RB: In what way?
JA: What he was like? What he did?
RB: He was, I thought, a very good principal of the high school. He had children, so consequently he empathized with us and our problems. I think I told you about the time that five of us went to the school board to ask if we could have dancing. We talked it over with Duncan McRuer before we went to the school board. He arranged with the school board for us to meet with them. There were five men on the board and I. C. Teague was absent that evening. The four members, particularly the one who represented the Washington [School] District, were very strongly in favor of having dancing. Duncan McRuer was in favor of having dancing, too. He got along] with the students [very well].
89
I never heard real strong criticism [from] him except from someone who needed to be criticized. Then [they] got it! Anyway we thought on Friday evening we that we were going to have dancing in the gymnasium. Sunday the word got around about it. All of these people, with the exception of the man from the Washington [School] District, went to the Methodist church where I. C. Teague [attended]. After church he called a meeting of the school board down in the basement of the church. Monday morning Duncan McRuer had to call us in and tell us that we could not dance. [Duncan McRurer was a member of the Methodist Church also.]
EM: I thought the majority ruled! [Laughter] Not fair!
RB: He was very upset over it [and] so was Mr. Wood [from] the Washington [School] District. It wasn’t until “Chuck” and June [Bolding] were going to school there that they finally let them have dancing in the gymnasium.
JA: That would have been [in] what time period?
RB: They would have been there in the early 1930s. Mesa [Maricopa County, Arizona] let the kids] go down to the, what was the name of that big dancing place in Mesa? Where the [students] could go dancing at noontime? They also could dance in their gymnasium. [The Mezona]
EM: [Inaudible]
JA: Wasn’t that because of the Mormon influence out there?
RB: Very strongly.
JA: Yes.
RB: Sure. The girls from Glendale dated the guys from Mesa because they were the best dancers in the valley! We always looked forward to making an acquaintance with somebody from Mesa because they were good dancers.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: [It was] a long ways to come in that day and time.
JA: Sure was.
RB: Grand Avenue wasn’t paved all the ways into Phoenix, oh yes it was. But from Tempe [Maricopa County, Arizona] to Mesa wasn’t all paved at that time. It wound around. Do you remember, Edna, when we would leave Tempe going toward Mesa there was an Indian ruin over on the left-hand side of the road? Remember the road went straight then it turned directly south, a right-angle turn, and there was a creamery over here. Beyond that creamery was quite an Indian ruin. I just wonder what ever happened to that.
90
EM: [Inaudible]
RB: You know where the University Experimental Farm [U of A] was?
EM: Yes.
RB: This road led to the experimental farm and then you picked up the [road] that went directly into Mesa.
EM: I don’t know.
RB: I just don’t know whatever could have happened to that ─
EM: I guess they bull-dozed it down.
RB: It was like a Hohokam, quite a mound.
JA: Some archeologist could probably tell you where it is and what it is doing! [Laughter]
RB: It probably sold [because] that is all built up now.
JA: Sure.
RB: We used to go down near the college farm [where] a man had horses to rent. We would get the horses and ride out to that Indian ruin.
JA: Quite a little jaunt!
RB: Yes.
JA: Edna, I would like to learn a little bit from your perspective as a teacher. Twenty-five years is a pretty good overview of a segment of time in Glendale. What kinds of changes did you see in the school system from the time that you started teaching [until] you quit? What were some of the significant changes?
EM: There weren’t too many changes. All these changes are modern.
JA: Stayed the same?
EM: I don’t think the method of teaching changed too much from the time I started until I ended. It was afterwards.
JA: So this is ─
RB: I would agree with you on that, Edna. I think that change came even after I quit teaching.
91
EM: After the war.
RB: Yes, after World War II.
EM: After World War II. Before that we were pretty hard boiled! [Laughter]
RB: Yes. [Laughter]
JA: What do you mean by hard boiled?
EM: Reading, writing, and arithmetic.
JA: Yes.
RB: And discipline.
EM: Taught to the tune of discipline.
RB: Discipline
JA: [Oh.] Did the social environment of the school change over time?
EM: I don’t know too much about the social environment because I never mingled much with the people of Glendale. I was more of a homebody.
RB: Well ─
EM: I didn’t go to any of their meetings, only those I had to go to.
RB: Did we have teacher’s meetings once a month?
EM: We had teacher’s meetings every Monday afternoon for years, didn’t we?
RB: Yes, I guess we did, every Monday afternoon for years. We also had PTA [Parent Teacher Association]. I guess that was once a month, PTA.
EM: That was once a month.
RB: Because Harold Smith wanted to be in good with the PTA people. Consequently it was mandatory. We had one teacher who did not have to go to those Friday evening PTA [meetings] because she was a Seventh Day Adventist.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: Marilee Wise.
92
EM: Oh yes, I remember her.
RB: She never had to go to those [meetings]. She was excused. But the rest of us had to go.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: One time, I know, Harold Smith became quite irritated with me. We were playing tennis. When we stopped at the end of a set and had some ice water, or something, it wasn’t coke or anything like that so it must have been ice water to drink; he made some remark that the next evening would be the PTA. I said, “Will you tell me this? Why are we compelled, as a group to go to those PTA meetings and the parents don’t come?” Many times it would be just teachers.
EM: Just teachers.
JA: Oh, really?
RB: And the officers of the PTA. He very red in the face because he didn’t know what to say to me. He knew that I knew that he made us go so that he could make a good impression on the officers of the PTA. He did not fail, ever, to take advantage of what would put him in a good light.
JA: Did that change after that?
RB: Oh no, no! We continued to go to the meetings because he insisted on [us] doing it. But that increase the number of people who came to the meetings.
JA: So there wasn’t big parent participation like there is now?
RB: Oh, no!
EM: No, there were very few parents that I knew.
RB: At that time, Edna, Mrs. [Lola, Mrs.Claude] Conway, she had the two boys.
EM: Yes.
RB: Did they both become dentists?
EM: I believe they did.
RB: I believe they did. Raymond [Conway] was one of them because he played ball with “Chuck” [Bolding]. Mrs. Conway was the [PTA] president and I will have to say her grammar was not perfect. Many of the teachers were critical of her being president [because] she did use very inappropriate grammar. The verbs that she would use
93
definitely were not correct. She lived on our street, so I didn’t criticize Mrs. Conway. In fact, I praised her that she was strong enough to take the presidency of a group that didn’t support her any better than they did, just in order for Glendale to have a PTA.
JA: [Oh.] What do you think was the reason for the lack of parental participation at that time?
RB: I think [that] the parents thought that the school ran nicely and well.
EM: I just never got acquainted with the parents.
RB: That is [what] I would say. They didn’t think that there were problems in the school system with their children so that it would be necessary to have a PTA.
EM: I don’t ever remember meeting very many. I think that I told you that in all those twenty- five years I was only invited one time into a parent’s house.
RB: Yes.
EM: I never met them. They didn’t come to school. Once in awhile, maybe, a mother would come.
RB: Yes.
EM: But not very often.
JA: Edna, do you feel that the students lacked the parents support of their education?
EM: No, I don’t think so, because they used to take their books home and tell me about how their father made them study the night before.
RB: Yes.
JA: So that…
EM: I remember one little ol’ boy came one day and was all upset because [the class was learning to] add fractions. I think our book told us to put them this way to add fractions and his father learned [to do it] across this way. He wanted to know which [way] was right!
RB: [Laughter] Yes!
EM: His father didn’t know how to teach him when they were up and down this way! [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] So there was some involvement that way? Helping them?
94
EM: The parents supported you but they kept their nose out of it.
RB: Yes, I think they thought, as I said, strongly that the system operated as it was supposed to operate. I can’t remember, Edna, that we ever had too much controversy over the lack of kids who were not going to pass.
EM: No.
RB: You just knew, somehow, that you could work with that child and get him on to the next grade. We didn’t have a lot of kids that had to repeat grades. Unless it would be somebody like my second nephew had to repeat the first grade but he was out five months until he had his tonsils out. Now a situation like that, yes, a child would repeat. But the parents just knew that the teachers were going to get the kids through because that was what they were hired for.
EM: That is what they sent them to school for.
RB: Yes.
JA: Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that maybe the parents were not well educated?
RB: Oh no, no, I don’t believe that. You might say a small percentage of them, particularly after World War I, when we had so many foreigners come in from Europe, Russia, the Philippines, Japan, and China. You might say that we had the problem as far as that was concerned. But, by jiminy, the teacher acted as a non-English speaking teacher. [The teachers] got those [students] up to where they could have enough English to pass on to the next grade.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: There was no such thing as bringing in a specialist [for] that, you knew. That teacher, man or woman, enlisted the help of all the kids. My friend, Hazel (Treguboff) Tolmachoff all the kids in our room helped her with her English.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: We helped the Mexican kids with their English. When I was in high school there were two Mexican girls who had gone with me from the first grade on through [high school]. They were just about to drop out of high school. Four of us got together and tutored those girls after school so that, by jiminy, they wouldn’t drop out. We had good cooperation because we were there to teach and the [students] were there to learn. Which is not true today as Edna said, the changes have come now.
JA: [Oh.]
95
RB: If I were a parent I would resent to no end, that a teacher’s aide was teaching my child. Maybe she has a high school education. I am paying for a college graduate to teach my child. I wouldn’t like that at all. I think that is the reason that you have the interest in such organizations as the PTA, because the schools have gotten away from what they were intended to do and as Edna said, [it] is to teach.
JA: Teach the fundamentals.
EM: The fundamentals.
JA: Yes, the fundamentals [of] reading, writing and ─
RB: It is shameful today how many young people know so little history and so little geography.
EM: I was reading some of the subjects that they are having in school now, how they don’t have any history or any geography.
RB: That is social studies, Edna.
EM: Oh, is that social studies?
RB: Yes, that is social studies.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: I thought social studies were something different.
RB: When they asked them, where is the Grand Canyon [Arizona]?
EM: They don’t know.
RB: They haven’t the slightest notion where the Grand Canyon is. Where do the four states meet? What is the longest river in the United States? These are things that I have heard, just recently, asked ─
EM: Sixth graders all knew that.
RB: ─ of young people but they haven’t any idea.
JA: In your day that was the sixth graders knowledge?
EM: Yes, that was sixth grade knowledge.
RB: Very definitely.
96
EM: They knew all the capitols of the states. They could tell you all the state capitols and they knew all the capitols of Europe.
RB: Oh, sure! You had a map of the United States without any printing on it at all. I had Mr. Merrifield in the sixth grade and ─
EM: I remember him.
RB: ─ in order to pass to the seventh grade you had to fill in that map with every state and each state’s capitol before you could get through geography.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: That was the sixth grade.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: We didn’t have kids left out because they didn’t know.
JA: Yes.
EM: I see on television a room and each [student] is doing something different and they are all talking out loud. We had silence when we had study periods.
RB: Yes. That is why the kids learned, Edna.
JA: Interesting!
EM: [Laughter]
JA: Edna, when you were in the one-room schoolhouse, out on your father’s farm, attending school, what subject’s did you study?
EM: My first book was an old chart. Do you remember those old charts that they flipped over?
RB: Yes.
EM: Cat, C-A-T.
RB: Yes.
EM: That was my first [book]. Then we had reading, writing, and arithmetic, geography. Maybe [there would] be one pupil in the class. You went at your own rate of speed, so much a day. When I was in the eighth grade, there were two of us, Sam Hutchison and
97
me. I know in the eighth grade Sam went along with the books. We were supposed to study ─
[TELEPHONE RINGS AND TAPE RECORDER IS TURNED OFF]
EM: ─ advanced arithmetic that had geometry and all that stuff in it.
JA: Just because she didn’t think you had enough to do!
EM: I didn’t have enough to do! Who was it?
RB: A lady, who had a wrong number,
JA: So you really had the basic courses.
EM: Just the basics.
JA: If you were excelling they would add other courses, other knowledge?
EM: Oh, yes, if you were the only pupil in the class you went at your own rate of speed. The faster you went the quicker you got through the books. That was the reason she got the ancient history for me because I was already through the American history.
JA: [Oh.]
EM: But there was one thing that I never could do and that was sing.
JA: Was that one of the things that they taught you?
EM: They had a little bit of singing but not much, not in grammar school. I think that was the only [subject] that I ever [received] a D in, music at Tempe [Tempe Normal].
JA: [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: [Laughter] I couldn’t carry a tune!
JA: Edna, when you were in grammar school, did [the students] say the Pledge of Allegiance to The Flag? Or [do] any of those patriotic kinds of things?
EM: We used to say the pledge to the flag when I first started to teach. I remember I had a, what religion is it that doesn’t believe in that?
RB: Oh ─
98
JA: Jehovah Witnesses?
RB: Jehovah Witnesses.
EM: I had one of those boys and I [received] a note from his father that he wasn’t supposed to salute the flag. I told him he could be late coming in while we pledged to the flag when school started [each day]. He stood out on the steps while we gave the pledge and then he came in. Then I quit that as the years went by and the classes got so big.
JA: Was that a change in the school structure that made you start using the pledge of allegiance?
EM: It was just what you wanted to do. You could do it if you wanted to or not.
JA: Okay.
EM: The kids liked it because each one would get a chance to go to the front of the room and say the pledge.
RB: Yes. Also it was a privilege to go out in front of the auditorium and raise the flag. This passed along from one grade to another. You knew when your room was going to be responsible for raising the flag. Among the students somebody was chosen to do that.
JA: That was an honor, then?
RB: Yes, it was an honor to raise the flag.
JA: Okay.
EM: I think discipline has a whole lot to do with learning. I can’t see how kids learn anything nowadays, one doing this and one doing that, and all talking at the same time and chasing around all over the room. That is the way it shows it on television.
JA: I know that you were not necessarily a church goer and I am assuming that you ─
EM: I wasn’t.
JA: ─ a public school student. Was there prayer in schools in those days?
EM: Not in my room.
RB: Not to my knowledge.
JA: Okay. That was something that ─
99
RB: [Programs] that we would have in the auditorium when the entire school got together, maybe a minister would be at this particular [program] and he would say a prayer.
EM: [Inaudible]
RB: But to have prayers in the schools, no.
EM: We didn’t.
JA: That was not [the] custom?
RB: No, it wasn’t a custom.
JA: Okay, interesting. How about the graduation ceremonies? A class of two from the eighth grade, was there any “to-do” about graduating in those days?
EM: We had a graduation exercise.
JA: Yes.
EM: All the girls had a new dress.
JA: So you got a new dress for it?
EM: Yes, of course I did. I remember when I graduated from high school during World War I. We decided that we wouldn’t get any dresses. We had capes and hats and were all dressed up.
RB: The gowns and the mortar boards.
JA: Yes.
RB: When I graduated from grammar school it was quite an exercise. I think I told you that at the back of the auditorium there were big doors that opened and steps down from there.
EM: Yes.
RB: The people sat out on the grassy lawn on folding chairs or on the grass if there were not enough chairs. We were up on the stage and with the great big doors open the people could see all of us. Because of the temperature in late May it was almost mandatory that you have that kind of a graduation with the people more comfortable outside than they would have been in the auditorium.
JA: Yes.
100
RB: We had one boy from Switzerland. They came over after World War I and all of us had helped him with his English. He was such a shy and retiring child that you almost had to have a one-on-one with him in order to get him along.
JA: Yes.
RB: The boys learned that he was not going to be able to have dark trousers and a white shirt. We took up a collection in our room and bought him dark trousers and a white shirt. He had told the boys that otherwise he would have bib overalls because that was what he wore to school all the time. That was what his family could afford. So instead of giving to each other or doing that kind of thing, we took the money, probably less than $7.00 and bought him a pair of trousers and a white shirt so he would look like the rest of the boys.
JA: When you said you took up a collection, does that mean that you gave of your money or that you got money from your parents?
RB: If we had money ─ lot of the kids got an allowance. I didn’t. I had to work for what I had. A lady, Mrs. [Nettie] Thuma whose husband [James] had [the Eagle] Barber Shop─
EM: I remember Mrs. Thuma.
RB: ─ [and] she hired me because she was ill. I don’t know what her difficulty was [but] I would assume it was tuberculosis because they came from somewhere else [Missouri] to Glendale. She was never well but they lived in our neighborhood. She hired me to come on Saturday mornings and do the dusting in her home. Consequently, I had money of my own. Many of the kids did. Those who didn’t probably got it from their parents, I don’t know. But we had enough to money to buy his clothes for the graduation.
JA: Was that pretty customary for kids to work at odd jobs?
RB: Oh, yes!
EM: Yes, in those days. Some of them had to.
RB: Yes.
EM: Was that the Mrs. Thuma that lived across the street from the high school?
RB: No, Edna, at first they lived down our street toward the railroad track. Then, I think, they moved over [to] what now is Palmaire [Avenue]. [In the 1930s they lived at 419 E. “D” Ave., close to the grammar school. After Mrs. Thuma’s death, James Thuma lived on W. “D” Ave. or Northview until his death.]
EM: Oh.
101
JA: Yes.
RB: “Jim” Thuma had the barber shop.
EM: Yes.
RB: Frank Thuma was one of his children.
EM: Yes.
JA: He still lives in that house on Palmaire [Avenue]. [Frank Thuma’s house was further East.]
RB: Does he?
JA: I think so.
EM: I remember that I never met Mrs. Thuma until the last day of school [one year]. She came over to see me the last day of school. I thought that was strange. She never had come over before. She said, “I came over to see what my daughter’s next years teacher looks like.”
RB: [Laughter]
EM: You know it wasn’t but two or three weeks that I read in the newspaper that she died. She must have had some kind of a feeling.
RB: I just feel that, yes. She was a nice person.
EM: She seemed very nice and just said, “I want to see what you look like.”
RB: She asked my mother if I could come and dust for her. Before I went mother said, “Now, she is a very orderly person. You can tell that [by] the way she dresses and conducts herself. If you pick up something to dust, pay attention to where you picked it up. Dust under it, dust it, put it right back where you found it. Don’t dislodge or move things in her home.”
JA: [Oh.]
RB: Consequently we got along famously. I must have dusted for her until I went to high school.
JA: Lot of dust! [Laughter]
RB: Yes!
102
JA: Speaking of dust, when did paving roads become important in the Glendale area? When was it something that really took place?
RB: Jerry, in 1918 Grand Avenue had been paved prior to that. I was eight years old and I can remember going in to Phoenix when part of Grand Avenue was ankle deep in dirt. If I were eight years old I must have been in about the third grade.
EM: That is when Grand Avenue had about six roads and you picked out the one that had ─
RB: The least difficulty.
EM: ─ least bumps! [Laughter]
RB: And you drove on that! Then it was decided that Grand Avenue would be paved out here to the curve at El Mirage [Maricopa County, Arizona]. You know after you go out Grand Avenue you make a curve right at El Mirage. The Santa Fe [Railroad] had two big water tanks there where the steam engines stopped and took on water. They would pave out to that area. A company from Globe [Gila County, Arizona] called Thoowy Brothers.
EM: Yes, Thoowy Brothers.
RB: How do you spell it, Edna?
EM: T-H-O-O-
RB: W-Y. [Perhaps Michael Touhey who was listed in the 1920s City Directories.]
EM: Something like [that].
RB: Thoowy Brothers. There was rent house next door to us and the man who was in charge of the paving project lived in that [rental]. They built a little railroad that went from the plant in Glendale where the concrete was mixed out to where ever they were working. I think the little cars were about six feet long and maybe three feet wide and the little track was a little narrow gauge thing. When they dumped [the cars] the man who lived next door to us would be at home and he would say, particularly in the summer time, “Do you want to go out to the job with me?” We would all jump in his car, the four of us and other kids in the neighborhood. We would each get in one of those empty cars and ride it back to the plant. He would pick us up there and take us [back] home. That was the beginning of the paving. They not only paved Grand Avenue but they paved Central Avenue, Seventh Avenue, Seventh Street, ─
JA: [Was] that [in] Phoenix or Glendale?
RB: Phoenix.
JA: Okay.
103
EM: They paved Glendale Avenue past our house about, what year?
RB: About what year?
EM: [In] 1918 or 1919?
RB: About 1918 or 1919, yes.
EM: Because I know it was dirt when we moved there in 1917.
RB: Yes. I might have been a little later than that, Edna.
EM: It might have been 1919 or 1920.
RB: Yes, it might have been.
EM: I remember when they were working on it but I don’t [inaudible].
JA: Is that the house on Glendale and 67th [Avenue]?
EM: Yes.
JA: So [paving was] early on.
RB: I know the time that I told you about coming out to the field beyond you where the bi- plane landed, it wasn’t paved then, Edna.
EM: Yes.
JA: What year would that have been?
RB: That must have been about 1910 or 1911. [Inaudible]
EM: Not very long ago I was talking with my brother [Wallace] about that and I know he made the remark that he was one of the first persons that rode on that new pavement. He rode horse back up to Glendale on that new pavement.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
EM: But what year it was I don’t know.
JA: Did people look [at] paving with excitement and wanted more of it? Or because of the horses that were still being used, was it sort of an obstruction?
104
RB: No, I don’t believe so. I think they were very pleased with it because, Jerry, at that time as much traffic or as little traffic as there was on the roads, unpaved they were a source of dirt. Grand Avenue, no fooling, was ankle deep in the finest kind of dust and you almost had to wear something over your face if you made a trip into Phoenix.
EM: You remember when the pavement ended at the Red Tanks that you were talking about? How Grand Avenue was from there on [inaudible]?
RB: Yes!
EM: About six or eight roads. You thought you picked the best one and it always was the worst one!
JA: There were just different lanes that people would make?
RB: Yes.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: It was all desert and if the road looked too bad someone would start a new road.
RB: Yes.
EM: Everybody would use that new road until it [was] worn out. Then they would start another one.
RB: It [was] that way up to Santa Domingo Wash which is this side of Wickenburg [Maricopa County, Arizona] due to the fact that the [Hassayampa] River was on one side and the hills were on the other side, they had to come down to a road that people could pass on. [It was] no more than a two lane road. Before that, as Edna says, from out here at El Mirage on up to Santa Domingo Wash, you just had to be aware now. Am I going to Wickenburg or where is this going to take me? [Laughter] Because one of them could take off and go out to the old Relief Gold mine, for instance. It was in production at that time.
JA: [Laughter] It must have been interesting!
RB: It was fun!
JA: Yes, I’m sure! That obviously speaks of cars. I am curious whether women were driving as early as men or was it just men that were driving? Were there any prohibitions to women owning cars?
RB: As early as the early 1920s, Katie [Katie Mae (Rambo)] Tuckey, who is Ruth and Vernon’s mother, drove a car.
105
JA: Was that odd? [Did] people look at her as sort of a renegade?
RB: I don’t think so. I think, if anything, it was envy that she had the grit to learn to drive the car and to do it.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: Mrs. [Daisy] Ketchum, they had the poultry house. Hope, Rena and Faith were their daughters. Clyde and Mrs. Ketchum. Mrs. Ketchum drove.
EM: [Inaudible]
RB: Excuse me, another one that drove was Mrs. [Mary] Pearson, Doctor [John Maxwell] Pearson’s wife. They were from White Plains, New York and nothing daunted Mary Pearson. She was one of a kind. I remember so well the gossip that I would hear among my mother’s friends about Mary Pearson when they came to play cards. If it was summer she [might] have on a voile dress and what they called at that time, teddies. The underneath garment was long and came down to about here, and made like a pair of trousers, with straps over the shoulders. Why they called them teddies, I don’t know. In recent years they have come back with that word and the girls now wear one piece underneath instead of separate pants and a bra the whole thing is together. Mary Pearson wore this teddy. She might have on a silk dress, a voile dress or what not, but whatever it was, you could still see the teddy underneath, where they cut off. [Laughter] She also went without hose. She was the talk of the town! She was a very nice person. If it [hadn’t been] for Mary Pearson, we wouldn’t have the Glendale Library.
EM: I remember her. I think I got my first Model-T─
RB: Mary Pearson and Vic Messenger were the two who were responsible for the Glendale Library.
EM: Yes.
RB: Vic was in the Ryder Building, on the west side, where they have put that monstrosity of a city hall now. He had his own collection of books. I can remember going upstairs over Vic Messenger’s store [Ryder Lumber and Hardware] to his living quarters and choosing books before we had a Glendale Library. He and Mary Pearson were definitely responsible for us having a library in Glendale.
JA: Interesting!
RB: He gave all his books to the library when it was formed.
JA: Yes.
106
RB: Mary was all for eccentricities like going along with the see-through dress, driving the car, and going without hose. Basically, she was a go-getter. We will get this done! You come on, we are going to have a library! You are going to put up such-and-such amount of money or you are going furnish so many books! That was the way she was!
JA: [Laughter] Okay, just a second before we get Edna’s ─
[END OF TAPE 92-013 – SIDE ONE]
JA: Tell me from your vantage point about cars.
EM: I bought my first one in 1923.
JA: You bought your first [car]?
EM: My first Model-T. I taught a year and one-half, saved my money and paid about $650.00 for it.
JA: Was that a new one?
EM: Sure, it was a new one!
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I wasn’t going to buy a second hand one!
JA: That is true! [Laughter] I can’t imagine that!
EM: I know in 1926 dad bought a big Nash and I drove it.
RB: Did your mother drive, Edna? I have forgotten.
EM: My mother never drove.
RB: I didn’t think she did.
EM: She never did.
JA: Was [it] common [in] your parents generation for the women not to learn to drive?
EM: My mother didn’t. I guess her generation didn’t but my generation all [did]. The first car that I ever drove was an old Studebaker, driving out from the Rural School in Tempe. You know where it was?
RB: Yes. Rural School.
107
EM: Vida Robertson and I got to teaching out there at the same time and we drove the old Studebaker. That is where I learned to drive. You had to drive it or walk! [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter]
EM: She didn’t know how to drive and [neither did] I but we learned.
JA: Did you borrow the Studebaker from someone?
EM: It belonged to the school.
JA: Oh? Okay.
EM: They furnished it for the girls to go out there.
RB: They were doing practice teaching at Rural School.
EM: We were doing practice teaching out there.
JA: Okay. Good. Did your father have mechanized farm machinery or did he do all his [work] with horses?
EM: Oh, no, he had horses until we moved to Glendale and then he got a little tractor. On the old ranch they had horses, horse-power!
JA: Yes, lots of it!
EM: They started to use machinery just a little bit before we moved to Glendale. [It was] about 1916, I guess, when the cotton and vegetable farmers started, they got those new fangled tractors. [Laughter]
RB: I would say, Jerry, thinking about it, back in the early 1920s due to the fact that so many of the men were heavily involved, as Edna said, in cotton farming and producing vegetables, and they worked at it twenty-four hours a day. It was a situation where they could make lots of money. I think this put pressure on the women in order to get to the market. Probably a proportionally greater number of women in this area drove than you would find, for instance, in New York City [New York].
JA: Yes.
RB: I have friends, right now, living in New York City who haven’t the slightest notion of how to drive a car. But who do I know out here who doesn’t drive a car?
JA: Yes.
108
RB: I think that [this is] due to the fact that there was a necessity for women to drive. I can’t think of a Russian woman who drove.
EM: No, I don’t remember the Russians driving.
JA: What about the Japanese farming women?
RB: Oh, yes, they did the driving and the men sat in the back!
JA: Oh?
EM: So did the Indians! [Laughter]
RB: Yes.
JA: And the Indians as well?
RB: Yes.
JA: How about the Mexicans?
EM: They talk about when they go on the reservation that it is the women driving.
RB: Yes.
EM: And the men are in the back.
JA: How about the Mexican families?
EM: I don’t know so much about them. I never saw too many Mexicans.
RB: I didn’t know too many Mexicans, Jerry in my day, who were students along with me through high school, whose families had cars.
EM: They were kind of destitute.
RB: Yes.
JA: So how did they get around? Mostly by animals? Horses? Mules?
RB: They either walked, or they went on the bus, the stage, or the train. If they wanted to go into Phoenix, they could ─
EM: A lot of the farmers went to town and picked them up.
109
RB: Yes, if they were working for a farmer, he went [in] and got them and brought them out to the farm.
JA: Yes. Speaking of the Caucasian whites, what was the general attitude of Glendale residents [toward] the Mexican population? Did they simply consider them laborers? Or from your perspective was there more respect? Edna, what do you think?
EM: I think they kind of considered them laborers.
RB: I think because Edna, at that time, they were laborers.
EM: Yes, they were.
RB: From those people, some of their children went in to high school and on to the Normal School in Tempe and [became] teachers. But basically they were laborers, not necessarily in the fields, but wherever they could work they were laborers.
JA: Yes.
RB: It wasn’t until I was in college that there was any number of Mexican students at all.
JA: At the college level?
RB: Yes, at the college level.
EM: I don’t remember any being there when I was in [college] or in high school either.
RB: I would say, generally, for the Glendale-Phoenix-Mesa-Tempe-Chandler-Gilbert-Peoria area, after World War I we had all those people who came in from Europe to our area. Why they chose this area, I haven’t the slightest notion because at that time I wasn’t curious enough to find out why. We had an influx of Mexicans about that time. There was not a feeling of rejection among the people of Glendale because we had to have those laborers.
JA: Yes.
RB: Prior to this particular time the sugar beet factory was in operation and they required a lot of laborers.
JA: Wasn’t that one of the prime reasons why the Russians came to this area?
RB: Yes, to raise sugar beets.
JA: Edna, you said that even when you were in high school that there were not very many Mexican students?
110
EM: There weren’t any Mexican [students] in high school that I remember. But then there weren’t more than sixty pupils either! [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] Percentage wise!
EM: There weren’t [any] Mexicans going to college, no Blacks, no Japanese.
JA: Chinese?
EM: Chinese.
RB: I went to ASU [Arizona State Teachers College] in 1927 and there was one Black student.
JA: Do you remember his or her [name]?
RB: Priscilla Franklin was her name. She and I became very good friends. We were in gym class and you had to select a partner to learn some dances that we would [have to] teach when we became teachers. Nobody was showing any interest in taking Priscilla. I went over and asked Priscilla to be my partner. She was tall and a very good-looking Black girl. She and I were partners all that semester. She felt so obligated to me that she would come to the dormitory and practically cry because I wouldn’t let her do my laundry. She wanted to repay me in some way for choosing her as a partner.
JA: Mmm.
RB: All my life, and all of my family’s life other than my brother [Charles] we had no feeling against anybody else. When I went to the Orient I could not have any feeling against any of the Orientals. To me, they were people, they are all people.
JA: Did you note that was not the [way] most people treated them? Or is that more of a modern glance looking back?
RB: No, I think at that particular time after World War I, I would say the people of Glendale were quite broad-minded about all of these foreigners that came in.
JA: What do you think, Edna?
EM: I don’t know. I guess they were. Goodness, I was used to the Mexicans. They used to live on the ditch banks.
RB: Yes.
EM: I remember when I was little [that] if a Mexican man was working there at meal time, he came in and ate with the rest of us.
111
RB: Yes.
EM: He couldn’t talk English, maybe, but he could eat! [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] When you say that they lived on the ditch, did they have tents?
EM: [Yes, they had] tents and lived on the ditch. They had all sizes of kids and none of them ever fell in and drowned.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: They had sense enough to stay out.
JA: That brings us to swimming holes! I have heard that Glendale didn’t have a city pool at that time.
EM: I guess not, I don’t know.
RB: I can’t remember just when the [Louis] Sands built the first pool [on] Grand Avenue. [The Silver Pool] That was the first and only pool in Glendale at that time.
JA: My dad [was the] lifeguard.
RB: Pardon me?
JA: My dad [was the] lifeguard there.
RB: Oh, really?
JA: Yes.
RB: He would know about when it [was built], Jerry. I don’t remember.
JA: It would have been in the late 1940s or early 1950s, probably.
RB: Edna, when do you think Riverside Park was built? Was it in operation when you were a little girl?
EM: I can’t remember ever going to it. I don’t remember Riverside Park until I got to driving and drove down Central Avenue.
RB: Jerry, I would say that it was there as early as 1918.
EM: [It] probably was.
112
RB: Joyland, which was out on east Van Buren [Street] at the Roosevelt Canal, came along in the later part of the 1920s.
JA: Okay.
RB: We had the Glendale swimming hole. Remember, Edna, right down town where Grand Avenue, and the railroad track, and Lateral 18 came along.
JA: Was that Bethany [Home Road]?
RB: No, right down town in Glendale.
JA: Right at Central.
RB: Right at the intersection of Glendale [Avenue] and 59th [Avenue] ─
EM: [They] had a swimming pool down at 19th [Avenue].
RB: ─ and Lateral 19 out near Edna’s. Across the street from her there was a real good swimming hole. But the one in right downtown Glendale, if you wanted to find someone in the summer you went to the one downtown in Glendale. It had hollowed out where the water came over the head-gate. With the help of the kids, it had developed into a sizable hole. It would be much bigger than this room; longer than this room but as wide as this room. The Water Users [Salt River Valley Water Users Association] didn’t seem to care that we used that as a swimming pool. They didn’t try to stop us. As Edna said, nobody drowned. We were safe swimming there. If you wanted to find anybody in the summertime you went down to the swimming hole because that probably was where they were.
EM: That is where I first saw you.
RB: Yes.
EM: My mother wouldn’t let me go down there. I was too big, anyway. [Laughter] Seeing you pass by.
RB: Going to the swimming hole at on, it was called Lateral 19 then, [and was] across the street from Edna and to the west.
JA: That would be 67th [Avenue]?
RB: [Yes], 67th [Avenue].
JA: [It would be] 67th [Avenue].
113
RB: [Yes], 67th [Avenue and Glendale [Avenue]. That has all been put in conduits [condos] now.
JA: Yes.
EM: All but my acreage, which hasn’t.
RB: Oh, it hasn’t?
EM: It is all in weeds, yet.
JA: Now people picnic at Sahuaro Ranch Park or some other designated picnicking area. Would Glendale families gather together at certain places to have picnic?
RB: I think I told you about ─
EM: My family didn’t as we weren’t very sociable.
JA: No? You [folks] stayed close to home?
EM: Yes.
RB: ─ the swimming beach that was created out on the Arizona Canal between 51st Avenue] and 59th [Avenue].
JA: Yes.
RB: The Salt River Waters Users encouraged the people of Glendale to use that that. The men went some place and got sand and put [it] on the bank of canal. They also built little frames and covered them with palm fronds so there would be some shade. They cut steps, which the Water Users probably wouldn’t permit today, down into the water so that the women could easily get in and out. That was a great place for picnicking! You either went in the evening and swam awhile and had a wiener roast or a regular dinner. On [special] occasions, like Labor Day weekend, you would find many families out there [having a] picnic. Picnicking was a very important source of getting together.
JA: Community activity?
RB: Yes, community activity.
JA: Yes.
RB: You weren’t teaching there when I went I went to [grade] school. You came along afterward. One day a year we had cleanup day. The entire school went around Glendale and when we [were] through that day, Glendale was clean.
114
JA: [Oh.]
RB: The entire school [participated and each] room was assigned to a certain street or area [to] clean. Did they do that, Edna, when you [were teaching] there?
EM: No.
RB: By the time Edna came to teach they had given that up.
JA: That was too bad. It sounds like a good way to keep a city clean.
RB: Yes, it was. One day and you [had] the whole [city] cleaned up.
JA: Yes.
EM: I know we had to clean the schoolyard but we didn’t go outside the schoolyard. I remember one time Harold Smith gave a big speech about cleaning the schoolyard. He wanted everybody to get busy and clean the schoolyard. If they couldn’t find a wastebasket to put the [trash] in his car. [When] he [left] to go home that night his car was full and he couldn’t get in! [Laughter]
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] I’ll bet it didn’t make that mistake twice! Speaking from the farm side of things, Edna, where would your dad go to get what was necessary to be a farmer? That would include seed, machinery, equipment ─
RB: Fertilizer.
EM: Before we moved to Glendale he went to Phoenix. After we moved to Glendale, I guess, he went to Bonsall’s [Southwest Flour and Feed Company] for his feed. [Laughter]
RB: Southwest Flour ─
JA: Southwest Flour.
EM: And to Sine’s [Sine Hardware] for his hardware.
JA: When [he] went to Phoenix do you remember the name of the place?
EM: Calvert and Humberts maybe and Goldmans Grocery Store.
JA: Goldmans?
EM: Goldbergs Mens Clothing.
115
RB: Mens ─
EM: Korricks for your yardage.
RB: Korricks, Diamonds.
EM: Diamonds.
RB: It was the Boston Store then.
EM: We never went to Goldwaters [because] they were too expensive!
JA: [Laughter]
EM: Freidmans all Jews.
JA: Oh?
RB: Edna, what was the saddle, leather, place katy-corner across from Goldwaters?
EM: What?
RB: They made saddles and boots. What was the name of that [store]?
EM: I know who you mean.
RB: Isn’t that awful that would go away when I have been there so many, many times?
EM: Saddles?
RB: That was where you went to get saddles, western boots and reins.
EM: What is that name? I have heard it a million times! There were three brothers, Porter!
RB: Porters!
EM: Three brothers.
RB: Porters, the people who made saddles.
JA: In those early years, when you would go to Phoenix, to shop for any of these different [items], do you recall seeing Black workers? Black people?
EM: No. There used to be an old Black couple seen on the streets of Glendale. I guess they worked for the railroad. [He] might have been a Porter.
116
RB: There was a couple [who] came to the Glendale Christian Church. That was the only Black couple that I remember in Glendale, Edna, up to the time I went away to college.
JA: Did they stay in the church very long?
RB: Oh, yes, all the time.
EM: When I was going to Lamson’s [Business College] in Phoenix, when your mother was going there also, the only Black person I ever did see in those days was that young boy that worked for McDougall and Cassou.
RB: Yes.
EM: Under [the] Lamson’s. There was a young fellow, I can’t remember his name, [but] he was a great friend of Barry Goldwater. Once I saw something about them chumming together. I remember one time my Aunt Ruby McDougall came to Lamson’s to go home with me to spend some time. She was kind of ritzy, up in society. Her husband was [part of] McDougall and Cassou down underneath. She came up to go home with me and she didn’t have anything but her purse. I wondered how she was going to go home with me [as] she isn’t taking anything. When we went downstairs she said, “I’ll go in and get Malcolm and [he] will carry my suitcase.” She went in and got Malcolm, this Black boy.
RB: [Laughter]
EM: I remember walking with Aunt Ruby down the street with this Black boy following behind with the suitcase! [Laughter] I felt like I was somebody!
RB: [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] Oh, dear! What can you tell me about Sine Hardware in the early years? What do you remember about that place and its importance in the community?
EM: I remember Goldmans Grocery Store. You could buy just about anything at Goldmans Grocery Store. You could buy milk, eggs, vegetables which weren’t much, nails, all kinds of bolts, buggies, and everything in a little old store not much bigger than this house, not as big as this house. [1915 Phoenix City Directory lists “Goldman’s”, grocers, hardware and farm implements at 28 - 30 Central Ave and 1st Avenue and Madison. The 1920 Directory lists “Goldman’s Implement Company” at 128-148 S. 1st Avenue.]
RB: Hardware.
EM: It had everything in it.
JA: Yes.
EM: Just like that old store that used to be at Black Canyon ─
117
RB: Yes.
EM: ─ in New River [Maricopa County, Arizona].
RB: Edna, do you remember when the Sines, the Heatwoles, and the Swishers came to Glendale?
EM: No, I don’t.
RB: Were they there when you came in from down below and moved to Glendale?
EM: They were there when we [moved] to Glendale.
RB: They were there then?
EM: I think they must have come pretty early in the century.
JA: [They came in] 1911.
RB: [In] 1911.
EM: About the time those Dunkards settled out there in Goodyear [Maricopa County, Arizona].
RB: Yes. Jerry says 1911.
EM: Yes, about that time.
RB: [Did] they start the Sine Hardware right away?
EM: I guess they did.
RB: When you [came] to Glendale, it was there?
EM: It was there when we [came] to Glendale.
RB: They had the water ─
JA: Tower?
RB: The water tower belonged to them.
EM: There were three Sine brothers.
RB: Yes, [Savannah C.] “Van,” [Tucker J.] “Tuck,” and ─
118
JA: “Tuck” and Art.
EM: “Van” lived on Grand Avenue. He was Melvin’s father.
RB: What?
JA: Art?
RB: Art is the son.
JA: Is he the son?
RB: Yes, “Tuck” was his father.
JA: “Van,” “Tuck,” ─
RB: “Van,” “Tuck,” ─ [Who] was Paul Sine’s father? Homer.
EM: Homer [F. Holmes]. Homer was Paul’s [father].
RB: Homer, “Tuck,” and “Van” were the three Sine [brothers].
EM: I don’t remember “Tuck.”
RB: Mrs. [Josephine “Josie” (Sine) Heatwole was their sister. Mrs. Swisher [Effie Sine] was their sister. One of them married Mr. [Frank Strother Heatwole] and the other married Mr. [Homer T.] Swisher. There were five brothers and sisters.
JA: Now, this is sort of a mental exercise. I want you to think back to what do you remember about being in Sine Hardware? What impresses you, in thinking back, about the store itself? Is there anything you recall?
EM: I don’t know.
RB: There was an upstairs to it. Have you ever been upstairs?
EM: Yes, there was an upstairs.
RB: There was an upstairs and they had all manner of things that you would use in and around the house. It was a fascinating place to go particularly at Christmas time. They had all kind of toys and dolls so on and so forth, upstairs. But the thing fascinated [me about] Sine Hardware was the fact that [they] had [the] upstairs with all the “goodies” that a young girl would like to see and then down below there was everything! As Edna says, there were buggies, cars, oil, and gasoline.
119
EM: You could get anything at Sines!
RB: Anything that you [would] want. But you were just fascinated by the fact [that] there were these many, many things that you had no idea what they were.
JA: [Laughter]
RB: They were tools or things to be used to repair.
JA: Edna, when you were describing the store, were you describing Sine or Goldmans?
EM: Goldmans.
RB: Goldmans.
JA: That is what I thought.
EM: That was a grocery store.
JA: I wanted to make sure that I had the right.
RB: Edna, probably your dad did business with Sine [Hardware]. Was there another hardware store in the Ryder building? [Ryder Lumber and Hardware was located on the corner now occupied by Southeast corner of City Hall. It was there until the mid 1930s.]
EM: I don’t remember.
RB: I don’t believe so. I think that they only hardware store that we had was Sine’s.
EM: Sine’s.
RB: But even today, if I couldn’t find something in Peoria, I would go down to Sine’s. When I first came to Sun City [Maricopa County, Arizona] to me Sine’s was where I went to get things that I needed around my house. Art [Sine] and I were in the same class.
JA: Really?
RB: Yes.
JA: He is a nice man.
RB: Yes, he is a nice person.
JA: I am wondering if [the store] was a hang-out. When I think of the old country store, I think of Sine’s ─
120
RB: Yes.
JA: ─ and wondered if that was the place people would go.
EM: I don’t ever remember seeing many women in there. I never went in there very many times. It was kind of a men’s [place] but I don’t think that it was a hang-out.
RB: Oh, I don’t either.
EM: It was business.
RB: I think it was strictly business. I think that, if they had a hang-out, it was down at the pool hall which was down near the Glenwood Hotel. And the barber shops. The barber shops were always the hang-out places. There was one on the west side of Murphy Park. From the time I can remember up until the time I came home from the Orient, there was a barber shop there.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: It went through a number of owners.
JA: Yes.
RB: But there always was a barber shop there. When the people came in with [their] sheep or cattle to ship in the fall, the people who handled the animals always went to that barber shop to freshen up. [They would] have a bath, get a shave and a haircut. If you wanted to find one of the doctors or a dentist or what not, you went to that barber shop because if they weren’t there, they could tell you where they went.
JA: They had the scoop on the town!
RB: Another place you might say, Edna [that] would be considered a hang-out, not in the sense of anything that would be conducted that would be unbecoming to women, was “Doc” Jones Drug Store. [Russell Jones Pharmacy]
EM: Yes, “Doc” Jones.
RB: If you really a person around town you went to “Doc” Jones Drug Store.
JA: Why?
EM: I went there a lot.
RB: Because he was a nice person [and a] very generous human being. [He] did lots of things for Glendale. It was a center of getting together. There were little metal tables with glass tops with four chairs around them. The women went in there and sat and had a Coke.
121
They didn’t serve coffee. You either had a fountain drink or you didn’t have anything. The stage stopped there. That is where you got on the stage.
JA: The Phoenix-Glendale Stage?
RB: Yes. It stopped at the drug store. It was warm in the winter [while] you waited [for] the stage to come along. I would say that the places where people congregated would be the barber shops, the drug store, and the pool hall. Homer [Holmes] Sine, Mr. [Homer T.] Swisher, and Mr. [Frank Strother] Heatwole operated Sine’s. “Tuck” Sine was more of an outside businessman connection. “Van” Sine was a farmer. [Holmes ran a used furniture store and at the time of his death he owned a variety store. He did not stay with the Hardware business very long. Holmes was the owner of the water company which he sold to the village of Glendale.] So those three men were the ones who operated Sine [Hardware]. Not any of them would be, I say, the type of person who would condone people coming in that were just ─
JA: Loitering.
RB: Loitering around [and not] engaged in shopping. I knew each one of them very well. They are not the kind of men who would attract that kind of [a] human being. Not that the human beings were not number one people, but to congregate, no.
JA: How about from you vantage point, Edna? Why did you go to Jones [Drug Store]? What did it mean to you to go there?
EM: Why did I go there? I don’t know. To buy a toothbrush, maybe or something.
JA: [Laughter] It wasn’t necessarily a place to meet somebody?
EM: No, I never went there to meet anybody. I used to stand out there in front and wait for the stage. Freddy Bates and Frank, whatever his name was ─
RB: Yes.
EM: ─ and some of those fellows. [He] drove an old Studebaker. I just wasn’t very friendly, to be perfectly honest! [Laughter] And I wasn’t very popular.
RB: [Laughter]
EM: And my family never did mix too much with the people in Glendale. Most of dad’s old friends were back in the Cartwright District.
RB: Yes.
EM: We moved away from them and sort of lived by ourselves. My folks did not mix very well. They were always too busy. [Laughter]
122
JA: Too busy working to be sociable?
EM: My dad was gone a lot. He had that cow ranch and he was out there so much of the time.
RB: Edna, I am going to in to the bathroom.
EM: Oh, you will find it terribly dirty.
RB: I can’t help it.
JA: I just don’t have the ambition to work much. Edna, if you don’t mine, I would like you to reminisce just a tad about Wallace, if you wouldn’t mind. I would like to find out something about him and what he did since I don’t know much about him. Would you mind tracing his steps at bit?
EM: He was my baby brother, three years younger than I was. We grew up on the old ranch down there and he just did farm work. He started to ride horseback when he was four- years-old.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: [Inaudible]
JA: Yes.
EM: Dad had [some] cattle out on the desert besides the ranch and he ran both places. At a very early age Wallace started going out there with him and became a cowboy. He went to high school two years after we moved to Glendale. After that he wouldn’t go anymore. He spent quite a number of years out on the cow ranch in Aguila [Maricopa County, Arizona]. He went to a mechanical school in Los Angeles [California] for one year and became a pretty good mechanic. When he came back he went to work for these vegetable growers driving a truck. [He did that] for many years. During the war he worked for Del [E.] Webb.
JA: WWII [World War II]?
EM: He was pretty old for the draft. He was [registered for] the draft but he was [too] old to be called [up]. They took the younger ones first.
JA: Yes.
EM: He was pretty close to the edge.
JA: What did he do for Del Webb?
123
EM: [He was] a carpenter.
JA: Okay.
EM: [He] worked at Luke [Air Force Base, Glendale, Maricopa County, Arizona], the [Reynolds] Aluminum [Company, Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona], and in Blythe [California], different places.
JA: Yes.
EM: [Inaudible] wherever Del Webb built the [United States] Army complexes. After that he went to work for the vegetable growers, [inaudible] Jones and those fellows in the vegetable business. He retired pretty early and that was it.
JA: He apparently did okay in the vegetable business?
EM: What?
JA: He did well in the vegetable business.
EM: He was just an employee [and] never raised any [crops] on his own, just worked for them
JA: Yes.
EM: He made a living.
JA: What were some of the things that he enjoyed doing?
EM: Riding around!
JA: Riding around?
EM: That is what I miss so much.
JA: Yes.
EM: Once he took his daughter and his grand-daughter on a trip [that covered] three summers. They visited every state in the union.
JA: Wow!
RB: Was that after Martha’s death?
EM: What?
RB: Was it after Martha’s death?
124
EM: No, that was before her death. She was in the hospital.
RB: Oh.
EM: After she came out of the hospital and was in the nursing home, they spent three or four summers traveling around. After she died he and I drove around in [Maricopa] County. He didn’t do anything too outstanding.
JA: When did he marry? Was that during the war [World War I]?
EM: When did he get marry? He married ─
RB: Margaret [Wallace’s only child] is sixty so [it] would be 1932 when she was born.
EM: I think they were married three or four years [before she was born]. Let us see, maybe 1928. I think about 1928. He married Martha Stewart.
JA: Was she a local [girl]?
EM: She was from the west end district.
JA: West end . EM: Martha’s mother had a very interesting life.
JA: How so?
EM: Or her grandmother did, rather. Her Grandma Gilbert had a very interesting life. I don’t what state they were in, Iowa or somewhere back in there. She married a fellow and something happened, I don’t know exactly what, but she ran away from him. She took her little baby girl and went to California. She had a brother in California. [The] brother [moved] to Tombstone [Cochise County, Arizona] and this young woman followed him to Tombstone with her little girl. When were there [during] the Wyatt Earp [inaudible] wars.
JA: [Oh.]
EM: Grandma Stewart ─
RB: That was Martha’s ─
EM: Great-grandmother.
RB: Great-grandmother.
125
EM: [Martha’s] mother, Mrs. Stewart, was born in Tombstone during ─
JA: During all of that?
EM: After Grandma Gilbert [arrived] in Tombstone, she was a young widow, and she met up with some Mr. Gilbert. I think he was a freighter [and] hauled freight between Tombstone and that other little town.
RB: Wilcox? Benson?
EM: No, that other little place where the Mr. [David] Roberts was the preacher, Vida’s father. What is the name? [It is] where Vida was born. Anyway, he had [a] freight wagon.
RB: I know what she is thinking of but it won’t come to me.
EM: That is where Grandma Stewart was born.
JA: Okay, so a long Arizona heritage.
EM: She had quite an interesting life.
JA: Yes.
EM: I used to know Grandma Gilbert. She was quite an independent old lady.
JA: [Laughter]
EM: Martha’s grandmother.
JA: She would have to be to [survive] those kinds of experiences.
EM: [Laughter]
JA: Did you ever know your grandparents?
EM: No.
JA: No?
EM: Oh, I can remember my Grandmother Wilky but I was eight years old when she died, so it is just a faint remembrance of her.
JA: Yes.
RB: That would be her mother’s mother.
126
JA: Right.
EM: She was an old, old lady when she died. I think it says on her marker [headstone] that she was fifty-something. [Laughter]
JA: [Laughter] No kidding?
EM: In those days when you got to be fifty, you were old lady so-in-so!
RB: Yes.
JA: Was she only fifty?
EM: No, I think she was about fifty-five, something like that.
JA: She died fairly young [by] today’s standards.
EM: In those days she was old lady Wilky. She and grandpa, two uncles, and an aunt are buried in the old Pioneer Cemetery that they have been talking about off of Jefferson Street [in Phoenix].
JA: Yes.
EM: They are buried down in there.
JA: Are they really?
EM: I have a baby sister [buried] there too.
JA: You should be part of the first families.
EM: I should be, yes, but I am not. I am not a joiner.
JA: Oh, okay, we won’t make you join!
RB: [Laughter]
EM: [Laughter]
JA: Retha, what other subjects do you have there that we haven’t touched on yet?
RB: Let me see if I have anything that we haven’t [inaudible]. You have the history of Murphy Park. I have on here that at one time we talked about when the KKK [Ku Klux Klan] came into the valley.
JA: Yes.
127
RB: The flood before we had Granite Reef Dam.
JA: Yes.
RB: It came as far as the capitol and flooded the basement of the Capitol [building]. We talked about that and the Glendale Grammar School. You [asked] back sometime in our conservation today, how did we make money? One way we made money was the production of cotton, such as it was. Cotton [that was] sold on the open market for $1.00 a pound. They paid $.06 a pound to pick cotton. Our friend, John Tuckey, had a small cotton farm in addition to his other employment. We could go over to Uncle John’s after school and pick ten pounds of cotton. That was $.60! Shoot, you could almost buy a pair of shoes for $.60!
JA: For $.60?
RB: A lot of kids, the banker’s daughter, the doctor’s daughters and almost all the [young people] that I knew on Saturday and picked cotton. [We] had friends up Lateral 18 [59th Avenue and] a lot of the cotton farms were up there. You remember the Lewises?
EM: Charley Lewis?
RB: Yes, they lived up there and had kids in school. Consequently, they had friends who came out and they would take anybody to pick cotton.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: They tried to get their cotton in and the kids who were able to pick cotton didn’t go to school. They were allowed by the school to take time off to pick cotton.
JA: Because it was that important to the community?
RB: Yes, because it was that important to get the cotton take care of [it]. We had better clothes and shoes during that period than I have today, because it was so easy to make money.
JA: [Oh.] What period are you talking about?
RB: The early 1920s.
JA: Okay. When did the cotton boon bust? Do you remember?
EM: That was one thing that we never dealt in is cotton.
JA: Stayed out of it!
128
EM: Never ever even pick it!
RB: It would be prior to 1924, just to pick a number, I would say 1924.
JA: Okay.
RB: When the bottom dropped out, it really dropped! The people who had plowed up everything, Jerry, they even plowed right up to the front porch. These nice two-story houses [on] 59th Avenue had cotton growing right up in the front yard. They put in absolutely every bit of acreage they had into cotton.
JA: [Oh.]
RB: Many of those people went completely broke. They were extended beyond what they should have been with the feeling that cotton was going to stay up like that forever.
JA: Yes. Did people extend credit pretty easily?
RB: Very easily, very easily. There were people who grew cotton that only paid their bills once a year. My mother worked for the Ray Stauffer Company [General Merchandise]. [It was] a grocery and ready-to-wear store at the corner of Glendale Avenue and [S. 1st Avenue or 58th Drive] the street that goes by the new city hall. It was katy corner across the street from [Murphy] Park on the southwest corner. She worked there [as] a bookkeeper and it was no problem to get credit.
EM: Did you know Rod McGill?
RB: Yes.
EM: I got a Christmas card from him.
RB: Oh did you?
[END OF TAPE 92-013 – SIDE TWO]
Notes
1. Flood irrigation was a major contributor to the growth of the Salt River Valley. Water for irrigation was brought from the snow runoff in the high country to the valley by the rivers and then into canals. By opening flood gates the canal water was released into a system of smaller waterways called laterals. The lateral brings the water to a specific delivery point where the zanjero opens another gate releasing the water into the fields and neighborhoods. Until the late 1940s the laterals were open ditches and were often used as swimming holes.
The zanjero was also called a “ditch rider.” He collected assessments for the canal company and controlled the allotment of water to the fields. He also was responsible for detecting
129
damage or leaks and cleaning the canal of debris. He kept the records of the amount of water needed and the time and duration of the delivery. Zanjeros are still in use today.
The laterals were built 1 mile apart and ran North to South. West Valley laterals important to Glendale were: Lateral 16 - 43rd Avenue
Lateral 17 - 51st Avenue
Lateral 18 - 59th Avenue
Lateral 19 - 67th Avenue
Lateral 20 - 75th Avenue
2. Thomas E. Campbell challenged Governor George W. P. Hunt in the 1916 election and was the apparent winner, but an Arizona Supreme Court decision several months later awarded the disputed election and governorship to Hunt. However, in 1918 and again in 1920, Campbell won the governorship by wide state margins.
130