Barbara Carper and Janet Carper

00:06 My name is Janet Carper. I'm 68 today's date is Sunday, December 1st 2019. The location is Yuma Arizona and the name of my interview partner is my mother Barbara carper.

00:24 I am Barber Scott Barbara Jean skala carper.

00:29 And I live in a mobile home in and out.

00:38 Your age ma my age is 91.

00:43 And I live in you know today is the date say today is December first first.

00:51 2019 1 p.m. Location. Where are you?

00:58 I'm in Yuma, Arizona.

01:01 And my relationship to my partner's my daughter.

01:08 Okay, Mom tell me what it was like living in the Great Depression. Well, I was only a year year old when it happened and if the stock market crashed and they were about 5 Larry rich man, who controls the stock market's at that time. I did your father have stock in any of the companies that went bankrupt all but he worked for a big company back in Chicago. What was the name of the company Hibbard Spencer Bartlett company and when he was a traveling Hardware Wholesale Hardware salesman, and he travels in Oregon Washington and Idaho, and we would in the summer we would travel with him.

01:58 And who's we might my mother?

02:03 And myself and then after five and a half years, my sister was born. She's five and a half years younger and and then it the first when I was really little my grandma also went with us.

02:18 And we took we had to take our dog. He she wrote on the on the running board of the car.

02:27 Are you took the dog when Grandma went with you? Yes, we did Trixie. Haha and wear when you travel with your dad, where did you stay we stayed and cabins not motels cabins. We had a community bathroom most of the time and one year. I got athlete's foot so bad. I didn't think I was my folks had a terrible time getting healed up. And so that's how clean it long was.

02:56 Will do it how many cabins were where the cowboy well on the cabins privately owned and it was a business for them and they did have bedding, but it was cost more so we took our own bedding and

03:18 They took your own bedding. Did you eat? Did you prepare your meals in the cabins? Are you took everything with you? We didn't have to take so you two Souls. So the company had they had stuff like that in there. I think I wasn't too much for on unit with the cooking their butt.

03:40 Do they have ice boxes in those in the cabins? I don't remember. I think they probably not they wouldn't be ice. I don't know I guess they did. I can't remember that part. I wasn't involved with it. So, how long would you be gone when you go with your dad on the trip three weeks it took over the whole territory. Oh, wow. So we did a whole route. Did you have trouble getting gasoline did where you know, why would we do that while I just wanted cuz it was okay if I wondered because it was The Depression if there were if there was a shortage of gasoline or anything like that because of the depression we had to wait until the War World War II before we had gas rationing. Okay. Well anyway, let the okay. So you traveled with your with your parents tell me what it was like living in the house. They're in La Grande, Oregon.

04:36 There were three town at one time. There were three families living in a three-bedroom house who are the family and it was my my grandma and grandpa on my dad's side. He owned the house actually and my mother and dad and my aunt and uncle uncle and my dad were brothers.

04:58 And why why was why were your grandparents and your aunt and uncle living with you? Well, my grandfather had a hardware store. So he was working and my dad was working but my uncle had a bent back from arthritis estranged inherited at Arthur type of arthritis. And so he didn't have a job until they started the Deep the WPA and then he was a bookkeeper which for the highway department which he had all the rest of his working life.

05:34 And my aunt was a nurse and she worked all the time. She was the railroad to nurse for years.

05:43 So tell me what it was like living in the house preparing meals and everything will my grandmother and my mother actually my aunt to but she wasn't there too long, but they were absolutely wonderful Cooks. My grandmother was a baker and they both really could bake make wonderful meals which they did every day is better than than I did the rest of my life when I left home. So talk about did you raise your own vegetables there even though you lived in town? We didn't the only thing my grandma raised was poppy seeds Poppy and some other spices that I think probably I don't know if Caraway maybe I don't know if she raised Sage but she we had a little garden outside. It was mostly flowers and

06:34 That it didn't have any vegetables. So did you have a refrigerator? I was 8 years old when we got our first refrigerator. We had a seller and there was a trapdoor that's about the size of your of your door in your house and it went it was flat on part of the floor.

06:59 And you would go out and raise that up and leaned it against something else. It was there and you go halfway down and there was a little alcove on the left where they could put their milk keep the milk in leftovers. You can keep them too long cuz it wasn't real cold and down in the back. It was a dirt floor and then you went down the stairs and there were a bunch of there were a bunch of shelves and there we my grandmother and mother can deliver a hundred jars of different kinds of fruits and vegetables and you name it. So they'd go by the fruits and vegetables and then counter when they were in season we bought apple boxes of

07:53 Like apples they made applesauce and pears and peaches and tomatoes and they can do all those things and even grapes grapes and they made all kinds of jams. I remember gooseberry jam was my favorite and I tried to make it one time and that was a disaster what happened? Well, it just it was they have a kind of a of it would be like a a little papers covering on the berries and they're very small about like a blueberry.

08:33 And

08:35 So you have to take all that stuff off. How in the world do you how do you get that off? It came out? It was just a paper thin I mean paper in the old is Aaron in it, you know, it's like a balloon over always see you. Yeah, he'll each and every one of those Gooseberry. Yes, you did so

08:56 Then so all summer. They were canning.

09:01 And everything was delicious in my mother said one. I left home. She said we had a lot of fruit jars left for fruit because you were the fruit eater. So anyway, what else did they did? They can't what you do for me. How did you well we week we bought meat but everybody was fussy about me. I know my mother bought she'd buy Hamburger and they wouldn't just mix beef with it. They didn't put other meats with the hamburger and she would

09:41 If there was nothing in it, which sheep lamb and mutton mutton is the old sheep and it's terrible tasting and smells terrible and she hated mutton. We never had lamp and or mutton and she'd say this this hamburger has mudding in it and then she'd throw it out. So no matter what he really even during the Depression. Oh, yeah. It was yeah. Why did she hate lamp so much. She's didn't like you taste never smelled sheep sheep meat not a cheap, okay.

10:19 What about beef? Well, we bought most of the beef at the store, but my dad one time got to buy a quarter of a beef. So my mother and grandma cooked. I mean the canned it and it was wonderful. And so that was one good thing how they how they cook the can meet when they put it in fruit jars. No. No, I mean, how did they cook it? How did they apparently had it for meals of soups and stews and things like that and things. Yeah. I heard a story about Grandma ring in the neck of a chicken a true story. Will it? Yeah, very well be I don't know if I saw it or not, but I don't think they let me see it. Haha, but we had chickens for a while a few chickens. We were right in town.

11:15 And there was a kind of a Road between the garbage the garage which we had a garage with had an album about a addict addict. And so we start a lot of different things in the garage at had a place other than just for the car and

11:39 I didn't mean to have that in there by 1 to ask you where was the seller? Cuz when I went to the house, I know it's on the back porch on the back was on the back porch when it was dug into the ground cuz they weren't using it whenever I Wonder born where they are. They still using the seller. Yeah, first canned goods always. I don't know about. Yeah, not really not after you were born. This is much later. I met earlier you mean

12:09 So

12:12 Talk about what it was like to have grandma and grandpa live there with you. It was wonderful. My Grandpa bought me a strawberry ice cream cone home every day from work when he came out of his store. He'd get me an ice cream cone and bring it home to me. I can still see him walking down the street with it incidentally with my grandpa when he died my dad took him in to show

12:37 Me my grandpa is in death.

12:42 And yeah, I don't know I tried to I remember I tried to grab him, you know Papa and I was about 3 when he died and the thing is that that's all that happened, but I can remember what he was dressed in and I can remember my dad holding me. It's it's very Vivid. So I had even though I was three years old. I had some way of realizing that it was death and what death was wow, and I can explain it at all. But I got you know, there's lots of things you forget, but I never forgot that so talk a little bit about your grandfather. He was an immigrant rights from yeah, he came over from Czechoslovakia in when he was 14 years old and you had to have a sponsor and his uncle brought him over. He was coming over to get out of the

13:42 Going in to be a soldier. They they they didn't want him to to do that. And then his father had died. He died when he was my grandpa was very young and my grandmother great grandma got married again. And of course then her husband got all of the property that the original father because it went to the man always the women didn't even get to keep it if they got married again.

14:16 So that was kind of interesting.

14:19 And

14:21 We'll wait it was this it was a second marriage for her how many brothers and sisters did your grandfather had not any to my knowledge? I think he was an only child. I don't know if she had more anything. I don't really know anything more about her. Oh, wow, the mother. Okay. And so your your grandfather emigrated and where did he where did he live? Well, of course, they all went to Iowa and they were look down on as being in a Czechoslovakian and they

14:55 And then his

14:59 I don't know how he got to North Dakota. But he did he was trained as a harness maker in Czechoslovakia. So when he came to the United States, he start harness making and then he added a hardware store with it. So that's how my dad learned all about Hardware. He was pretty industrious. Did I have the farm in North Dakota? Yeah. Well that's from him. Right he bought up there that was not in his territory. Like he was lived in the eastern part in this was in the western part. So I thought grandma that the farm came from your grandma. Well, my my grandpa my great grandpa also had a farm and he was in Western or Eastern North Dakota and the other ones tobi's my dad like Grandpa gave the land to them when they came over from Czechoslovakia. He gave him the land that to my knowledge, but I'm sure he'd

15:59 Wow, and so they had a hundred and sixty five acres. I think it is.

16:05 And

16:09 Haha, okay. Well, so you're here and you're so your grandfather was trained. There's a there's a story about that. He sponsored a famous composer. It was supposed to be Dvorak. Haha, and I don't know. I don't know for sure. But my aunt came up with that when she kind of checked into it that he was live with him for a while in Iowa when he yeah when he first got over here.

16:40 And then they eventually had a

16:46 No, I can't think of the name of it. Now. I don't know what you're trying to tell us that a portion of land 165 Acres that they would give away and they gave it in North Dakota. And so my my grandma

17:03 Ace family she had eight sisters.

17:08 Or nine sisters. I mean know she had seven sisters and eight sisters and one brother. There was only one brother in the whole bunch and he lost a leg at a bad age and they took him to Indianapolis, which was right across the border and had tried to tell me he got a peg legs, you know, it was never very comfortable for him and my grandma met her lover.

17:41 And she thought he'd follow her back to North Dakota and he didn't and then she found Grandpa and they got married so

17:51 Well, that's pretty interesting on my dead Grandpa. He had the my Grandma had the first flush toilet. They had the first car that came out and my grandpa just evidently adored her and just bought everything for where was the flush toilet was that he was in North Dakota and North Dakota when my dad was little in my uncle. So when did they when did they go to La Grande?

18:20 Are they went first to allow and he had a hardware store up there and it didn't do too well. So he started wanting Legrand. So he had a hardware store in La Grande, Oregon, Eastern, Oregon.

18:36 I don't know that one, but they did and then my dad would never move out of Oregon out of La Grande if people get into that City and they don't want to leave and

18:50 It's a it's about 9,500 people and it never changed. It's always been about that. Same amount.

19:01 Cuz it's in a little.

19:05 It's a they have Farms. It's between two mountain ranges the blues and the Malolos and it's a volcano.

19:17 Ground, it was like big Slough of the stuff and we had a hot Lake which had a kind of a hotel connected with it and people would come to La Grande and go to hot Lake for their aches and pains like arthritis and stuff and I was one hot like you wouldn't dare get into that cuz it would burn you up and then across the road which the highway went through there was another called leg and it just smelled to high heaven. We called it rotten egg Lake

19:59 So then finally that hot likes changed hands before I was in the picture right there and

20:13 So anyway, so that's that side of the family and then my and my they were all Catholic then my mother.

20:22 When she came on her family, she was Quaker, which is a very far away from Catholic and my dad never practiced, but he went hunting with the priest in town.

20:36 So but anyway talk about your mother's family yellow might. Yeah, okay. So the knowlton's and the Browns my grandmother was a Knowlton and her husband was the brown but they were brother and sister but not physically and when my one of my uncles wait a minute go into detail. Why are they brother and sister did somebody oh, yeah. Are they married Grandma the knowlton's he died? Mr. Knowlton and mrs. Brown died. And so she married.

21:14 The blank reality I get it for the

21:19 Right there. Yeah, they got married and then they said they were brother and my grandfather they were Quakers and so they went they kept building new towns and places and bringing the people in he started the city of Greenleaf, Idaho.

21:38 And also with a college and it's still in operation, so

21:46 He

21:51 My grandfather

21:54 Traveled all over it. So he never he never kept anything. He just gave it to the rest of the Quakers.

22:02 And so a Catholic is about as far away from Quakers you can get so was there a big hullabaloo when they got married?

22:12 You mean my mother and dad. Yeah, I did the parents know they they didn't like it my grandmother skala.

22:22 The time

22:24 That was the other family didn't they didn't get up to that wakers know they were pretty yeah. Well then there is it true that that they were involved in the Underground Railroad when they were they were yeah the Underground Railroad was on the East Coast right now in Derry area and they were one Link in the chain that brought the slaves up.

22:52 To go into free to Canada and be free as they know that was yeah. I think that must have been in the 1850s or something. I don't know and then one of them married an Indian princess or something that's another family story cuz they everybody in those pictures sure looks Indian. My grandpa does my grandpa Brown. He looks Indian still there. We Native American. I'm sure he he really he had dark skinned. He had black hair and he was wiry looking and I don't know if we don't know too much about that, but it's definitely there, haha.

23:37 So they were but the Browns and and the Knowlton State they came over they've been in the United States for since practically practically the Mayflower they came over from Holland. They were they were. I had a great grandfather and grandmother that were nordyke's and that's very touch Aha and yeah, they probably they flee they fled from the British Isles to because there was an

24:14 Princess from the British Isle from London the British Isles from the that one of the princes princesses married into our family that would have been the lowest the Brown's family or knowlton's and

24:34 And they

24:38 Did they have to flee they held a fleet? Yes, they had to they evidently I know that they did actually might grandfather Brown had had it. He looked into the history of the family. Got it clear back to Charlamagne Tha but I've not seen the book and I don't know where it is. Probably one of the other Browns has it, but I wish I could have found it, you know because it's interesting.

25:10 So they went there and then go back now to I'll tell you what so in 19 39, 40 41 42 43. We had a World War.

25:26 And

25:31 So if that's that's the time that the the depression the Great Depression ended because they built all these factories that everybody had a job. Remember Rosie the Riveter. That was the song that they sang because the women started working in the factories because the men were all going to war right and

25:58 So what kind of rationing talk about how you're going to change and I think I was only in 5th grade when they started that so I was ten it was before the war actually started but they started gas rationing and I lived in a farm town. So the boys still had cars but

26:21 Eating all the farmers did and they had gas, but my dad's job had to be left and he then became.

26:34 Text

26:38 Accountant

26:41 And he did taxes.

26:43 But this was after right and right during the war.

26:48 He did that because he couldn't travel for the job because he couldn't get gas cuz he wouldn't get that. I wouldn't give gas or something like that. And so what was it like so be like when you were growing up we didn't cover when you were in grade school. And and in many I'll tell you what in also during the war we had sugar rationing and gas rationing a mice think other things that butter butter was one thing that's when Margaret margarine started and they is a margarine was flight and they sound a little a little capsule.

27:35 Along with it. And so you had to stir this capsule in it turned it yellow like butter.

27:43 So you thought you were eating butter, but you were eating margarine and I didn't like it.

27:47 And when I started school, I was six years old and for all the time that I was in school. I walked 6 long blocks uphill to go to school and then at lunch time. I had to go home. My dad wouldn't let me buy food at the school. So I had to come home to eat.

28:13 And then walk back up the hill walk down the hill up the hill.

28:19 From the time I was six on and there they had kindergarten spit we couldn't afford them so they were not public.

28:31 And okay so fun. We went to school. The first thing we did in the morning was do the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to your palm out to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God.

28:54 And with liberty and justice for all that's the way we said it and then we had to learn.

29:01 Just seeing Star Spangled Banner. We knew I know all the words and all the verses. Yeah, we had to learn it all. Yeah, and

29:15 The

29:20 We learned God Bless America and America the Beautiful.

29:27 And we were all very

29:29 I know I cried whenever they played it from all games then to and every time they played The Star Spangled Banner. I cried when we were in love with our country. Did you listen to the radio broadcast around the radio? Like I see some of the pictures as well. Yeah, I did what we did. There was every Saturday night. They had. I can't remember the name of this family, but they were all Musical and we watch their program which was a lot of music.

30:01 And I can still remember that and we had a picture of the family. I don't know where it is. I don't know if I have it or not.

30:10 Okay, so talk about what it was like to be in high school.

30:19 In the

30:22 Night when we had the Japanese.

30:26 Hit the Hawaiian Islands, then we all were everything stopped and we were doing nothing but building. What was it like in School, Mom?

30:42 Well, we there weren't a lot there the kids couldn't have cars because but we did have farmers who had no I know but it was after after Pearl Harbor was bombed. How did School change? What was it like to be in school then? Well, I was in high school and they didn't take the the young kids and sad but the minute they got out of high school. They went in the service. You know, they had mandatory always mandatory everybody. Everybody had to go. Yeah, and

31:19 Not just the boys, right? Yeah. So where some of your families with some of the Quaker family part of your family conscientious conscientious objectors. Well, they didn't believe in war they believed in they didn't believe enough and they did other things they became Medix or you know, did your cousin still like yeah, your cousin was a medic know, none of well Dale who's my Dale is named after my cousin Dale was in the Navy

32:02 He he didn't they didn't keep the Quaker religion just solid and however Randall.

32:12 My aunt and uncle

32:15 And took their 13 year old son Randall's they had two girls and they stayed with other people in California cuz they went to college there and my one became a teacher and the other one became a doctor. She was an anesthesiology right? I know but yeah, but Randall.

32:37 My aunt and uncle went to the Congo Belgian Congo Africa during the war that they were there during the war. Okay surrounding was with him and he is so into her if I didn't realize how old he well he was 13 when he went to the Belgian Congo and he sold him and my aunt and uncle Clayton were.

33:16 We're missionaries for 25 years and one time I my uncle came to my church. So I Presbyterian church and gave his story of his mission work and he had pictures and everything. It was really interesting cuz they saw anacondas, right? You know, they had nasty bugs. They had some noseeums that would get on your skin and boring and they could kill you and it was not a fun thing to do right will back to talk about in high school. What was it like to be in high school during the war when we are all very patriotic. It was everybody got together every loved it. Everybody loved each other. We stood up for each other and

34:09 The high school, you know, we were well aware of what was going on. We were old enough.

34:19 Okay, I should tell you about my one of my good friends.

34:24 It's on the right side races. It's okay. So, you know how they were about like, they'd say no blacks allowed in a restaurant. Okay. Well, we had one black boy and he was very bright and he was a football player and he went with the team like when they went out of town and they go into some place to eat. And if the proprietor said you you can't in he can't eat him here and they doll walk the walk into a department store. And if they said they didn't want him in there. They all walked out. I mean they stood behind him 100% and loved him. Okay, when I was a senior he was president of okay. It was 500 kids.

35:19 And he was the president of the student body.

35:23 In 1945. Wow, he was the only black is the only black in your high school. There was another one but he was older and he I don't know why you left town. I think when he graduated but they were both nice boys. I am a n so years later when we had get together on Li think it was our 50th wedding at high school reunions and my this boy was at the reunions and he got up and said, you know, he was in government in the state of Washington. He was high up in the government and he said,

36:09 I don't have the same feelings against white people like some of my colleagues. He said I wasn't raised that way. You were also good to me. And so that that was wonderful.

36:27 So what was it like when you went to college?

36:31 Oh, yeah, I was I when I graduated in 1946 and they had a college and Mike Town La Grande.

36:46 And so then they in the fall I enroll for college. In fact, I had a scholarship for the the year for and academics thing and tuition. It was my tuition $75 or something really now, it's like 40000. But anyway.

37:09 So

37:13 I was in and my and my husband-to-be.

37:18 Was he he had stayed in the Army Air corps use a P-38 pilot in World War II and he stayed in an extra year because he got to fly everything that they had he they chose him to to go. I can't remember what what Basie was in but he flew other high General different people that had to get hours flying and he'd fly them cuz they didn't necessarily work work pilot, but

37:52 Or flame tube in to certain dinners or to be with some politician or something like that. Cuz I know he said the first thing he did was go to the show cuz he was free, you know, if during the time that they were doing whatever they did.

38:12 And

38:14 So when?

38:17 So he came into a restaurant that I was in and it was like there was a

38:26 The role of stools like a bar on one side then in the middle was where the waitresses could serve you and on the other side of this bar was was the Boost and I was sitting in a booth with another boy and in came the sky and sat down in the in the bar. It wasn't it was just food, they didn't serve liquor but anyway, and and he came in and sat down and I thought this is the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life and I winked at him. I was sitting there with his head.

39:12 Anna

39:14 So

39:16 Then you were in class together. We took biology together and when my girlfriend and I went into two we had to dissect frogs and I said I cannot do that. I won't touch that thing so you got dad to help you so well, so we were standing there and I said, who are you going to choose? I'm going to choose dick Harper and she said well, I'm going to Tucson so so that we both went in and got boyfriend. So anyway would so dick and I started our life together cutting up a frog that's great to hear mom. I couldn't touch it. I wouldn't touch it at all. He had to do all the cutting why that's I would not be a biologist in other words or a doctor or a nurse.

40:03 I know unlike your kids. Yeah. So anyway, then we ended up getting married couple years later. I was only eighteen when we met and he had to finish college and I had to finish college and he went to Portland to finish went to Salem actually and

40:29 So anyway, but we stayed in touch and then you know.

40:34 And then after a year or so.

40:38 He asked me to marry him so and I didn't know I was just

40:43 Nuts about him the whole time. That's a good way to end it cuz we're our time's up.