Jenny Inzerillo and Doral Mancini

00:06 Hi, I'm Jenny. Inzerello. I am I think 45 years old and today is Wednesday, November 25th, 2020. I am sitting in the basement of a 1930s department store in Downtown Amarillo, Texas at High Plains Public. Radio's Amarillo studio today. I'm going to be speaking with one of my favorite people on Earth much less the high plains we got skip Mancini she is the host of High Plains Public radio's award-winning segment growing on the high plains, and I'm so excited to be talking to you today. Skip I'm excited to be here and talking to you too.

00:46 Do any want my intro Sal K. Today's date is Wednesday, November 25th, 2020. I am Believe It or Not 78 years old. Yes, and I am currently located in the Upper Floor of our architectural design house and Western Kansas and Haskell County. We don't live in a town. We live out in the country and

01:18 I think I think I said everything that needs to be set on this list.

01:24 Okay. Skip this is one of the things when I found out we were going to do storycorps. I knew I definitely wanted to make sure we captured some information from you. When I first moved to the high plains and I heard your segment. It was just absolutely magic to me. I know you through High Plains Public Radio when I moved here, I immediately started volunteering with them and when I first moved to Texas and I was and I found that we had an NPR station and her growing on the high plains. I just got this really wonderful sense of place and I felt very much at home. And I just am so excited to know that you're still doing the segment and not to mention being a part of growing on the high plains for all these years. You also helped I get the station started. So to me that you really are a high plains hero, and I just want to talk a little bit about your experience with the station through growing on the high plains first and foremost and you're just talking about plants and animals and weather and growing food.

02:24 What compelled you to start this series in the first place actually?

02:31 It it didn't it wasn't really the first thing that I started on air. As you said. I was very very much a part of trying to get the station here in the middle of the country. There wasn't anything like it anywhere around and I knew Quentin hope the founder of fairly well in Garden City Kansas and so both my husband and I were involved in those preliminary work sessions idea sessions then going down to town person-to-person trying to drum up support in many ways. So that happened a long time ago 40 years ago. I think it was and from that point on I was involved one way or another with the station. I was teaching at a community college in Garden City.

03:29 Most of that time part of that time and I also doing community theater and working with children and continuing work in Western Kansas that I had started in the San Francisco Bay Area years before so I was kind of jumping back and forth from one thing to another but the station was always very much a part of my life and

03:56 And so and it still is to this day. So I started out actually being on air and of course one drives and then I also started a whole series of informational Snippets bits 5 minutes shows or conversations. Sometimes longer than that and from everything from the history of the area where the station was was founded and then I actually going on down into Texas and I'll gosh I did I did a show in a series of interviews and visits to a wonderful dance platform and Lipscomb, Texas and went to Amarillo several times was involved with the developing the financial support for that area so that we could become more than just southwest Kansas. We could we could move on to the

04:56 Texas, Panhandle, Colorado

05:01 Western Kansas, you know all the way to about half of the state Oklahoma Panhandle and even has snippet up there in the corner of Nebraska listens to us. So there was a wound up being a pretty broad audience but everybody seemed to be interested in talking about their history and where they came from not them individually, but their areas and having it to become a part of the history of High Plains Public Radio. And then from there I did stories I did a series of stories about the history of each of those areas, but but not working with a history committee, but actually going around and knocking on doors and talking to people and say you know, what? How did you get here where you born here getting that kind of up?

05:57 A background going into a series of shows and then from Dad I did something on the Arts and all those areas architectural e the courthouses the famous and Infamous buildings of this broadcast area and I had always loved gardening always loved it is always been a part of my life in one way or another even when I when I lived in San Francisco, we lived in a three-story walk-up pre-earthquake old building had a tiny tiny little space where you can kind of Court cross you the window and be outside in a little square there and I actually you don't put up plants my pot plants and that was gardening in San Francisco for me. And then when I came back, of course gardening was always much a part of my life and it became a show called growing on High Plains on

06:57 Public radio and it still is

07:01 So when you say that gardening was always a part of your life tell us a little bit about growing up you always talked about on your program talk about growing up and your family, can you share some of those fond memories and whether or not you know, did you grow up with your hands in the garden? Where did you always have one at home when you were little?

07:19 Yeah, that's Jenny. I love that. How did you grow up with your hands in the garden? Actually, my little rear end was in the garden a lot more because I was I was born in August of 1942. I was born two weeks before my father left to fight World War II and

07:46 So I I was raised the first four years of my life. I was raised at the edge of a garden by my mom and my grandmother my dad's mother they they work the ground at times they worked for a wage but usually they work to come up with you know with food for the table and for the rest of the year Accounting in the processing in the keeping of the garden. So actually from the time I was two weeks old and my dad left every every day that we could that we were outside and I was on a pallet on quilt at the edge of the field and so I got to know the soil pretty well and from that, you know, I learned a lot from mainly my grandmother. My dad's mother was very much. She was from Kentucky and she was very much they lived in Kentucky up in the Hill Country.

08:46 What time when they went into town in Paintsville once a year to buy salt because they produced everything else they needed. They they actually you know, I mean it was a it was a Pioneer Family and many senses, you know producing their own fabric making their own clothing of course making their own food growing their own food. So that that background I think has stayed with me in a way. Of course. I don't produce my own fabric in life. I don't know how to run a sewing machine. I tried to learn but I couldn't get in there to it is to Mechanical give me the soil and the Earth that don't give me machines very much as you can tell by what we've gone through to get me talking on a machine. It's

09:39 And it's something that is a challenge to me. But anyway, sorry, I was raised in a garden at the edge of a garden than in the garden flowers vegetables everything that grew and and it just kind of stayed with me. I went into theater and dance and I was very active in that in San Francisco. Not not in a hippie sense. I always like to modify that a little bit because I actually worked in a section where the the Black Panthers helped me get safely to my classroom. So but it was yeah, I still had that little square outside our apartment where I could grow a few pots of herbs and things and I kept it going there and then

10:36 When I came back I continue to do the Arts, but I went back into the garden again.

10:44 And the way we raised it, we we've built our own home. And so we have a very large area here of flatland flat, Kansas Plains, and I use it.

10:58 So you mentioned your architectural home. Your husband is an architect. He has he had designed that home you live in that home and it's just one of those spectacular sights I've ever seen when I was coming to your house, which of the directions were things like turn left when you see cows turn right at the giant golf ball. I mean, it was not easy to find you come down this dirt road after passing a feedlot way back there and you're going through all of these things you see combines and just want to paint a picture for people you have. What is it Milo or sorghum all around you got corn and then all the sudden yeah, you passed this line of trees this really tight shelterbelt of trees and all of a sudden Here Comes this beautiful kind of Frank Lloyd Wright ass quite beautiful. Gorgeous Lee Design house that looks like it should be somewhere, you know in outside of Chicago. Can you talk a little bit about your

11:58 Prairie Swift is the name of our our house by the name of our place and not as you said it was designed by my husband brooklyn-born architect. So he was new to this area very much. So but it does it worked really well for and with him and

12:25 The house it actually sits on 15 Acres that isn't produced for you. No weed or something. It used to be that started out as dry land Prairie and then it became Dryland wheat and then back in the late 50s everything around here became water because we discovered that we had a huge ocean underneath us and we can pump that ocean up and water all kinds of crops and we could grow all kinds of things into consequently feedlots beef production pork production milk cows in massive quantities. All of those things came into the area, but it it's still basically growing land I think and eventually is going to go back to that because our water is becoming short supplied now, and so it's it's it's a serious situation, but I hope

13:25 Play will be able to weather that and continue to garden and continue to live here fairly comfortably but the house was he he design in the house. It's an architect named mies Van Der. Rohe is really pretty much the style that I guess you would say this house is and it is really an amazing place. It's a wonderful wonderful place and it's designed so that it operates not just our living but are working there's an area he has a nice office space in an area where he can draw and and work and not actually there's an areas in it that we have used as stages and I've done a little short plays and pieces of dance and things like that for friends and family so it can become a theater also, but it is a wonderful place it really is.

14:25 Now when he was designing the actual building structure, did you have a lot of say on how the garden was going to look did you did you have mandates? No, not not really at all because it was all building all the time y'all structure all the time and I had just always felt wealth the garden will be around it. You know, the garden is going to be away from it to a certain extent. Although we do have an area inside the house that incorporates a fish pond and potted garden garden, you know plants in pots around the fish pond.

15:02 People out there can't see this but I see that you have an owl on your sweatshirt and we're talking about animals and fauna that you have all around your place where you live you quite a relationship with the animals as well as the plants around where you live. Can we talk a little bit about the owl Nest that you have and there's a little a nice little thing. You have a on the tree you made a nice little home for your owls. Yeah that's architecturally designed in it and it works really well, but the idea actually came from some some drawings that Vincent looked at when we were going through the county fair in Garden City and Finney County. And they and one of the state guys had a had a booth Aaron was giving out information and plans about how to attract owls to your home. So yes, we have owl Nest we have we started with two nests and kind of knowing that only one with

16:02 Used but giving the owls of choice because these are great horned owls and so they don't want any other else around. So if if another kind of owl shows up or another great horned owl besides the pair they are swiftly disposed of by a saying get out. Get out. Get out by the by the two that live here and they come back each year. They travel a little bit usually in October. They are here now. I heard the two voices the other morning before the sun came up. So I knew that they were both there. The mom has a bigger voice than the dad. So because she is a much bigger owl and she is the protector of the nest and the babies and he goes out and goes to work every day and brings home the bacon identify with her deeply. So anyway, we have are owls and and then we have some other

17:02 I'm I'm trying to get bats and now I want bats and so we have a couple of bat houses. We have one up on the house now and the other one is waiting to be put up the spring and tall tall Polo, but we're hoping we can get bath because that will help with all of the Myriad of insects that we wind up with her specially in the summer. And then let's see what else we have cayots that we try to keep away because we also have cats and and a dog a Doberman dog and the Doberman might help keep the cats out to write a little bit. I think just the the sense of our being here. But anyway, we we do deal with cayots occasionally coming up and and we the house is surrounded by rows rows of trees which may seem like what a fake mean you're saying there, you know because this is the Prairie and this is grasses in this is

18:02 How dare you put all those trees but believe me the trees have paid for themselves and and all the the work that we put into over the years keeping them alive because they are they are the only port in a storm of the snow ice wind occasional rain very off of dirt dust if we've had dried St days and a season with no rain and we have had dirt blow into our tree Rose and we've had to go out and shovel it out like shoveling snow. Hopefully that only has happened a couple of times it won't happen again. But but anyway, there's all those Prairie things there animals and weather conditions that that you deal with and

18:56 And you love and some ways and other things you kind of wish didn't happen, but you have to deal with them.

19:02 So it just hearing all of that to me it it just brings up the fact that when I moved here and I started meeting people from across the High Plains Public Radio listening region. People are just really good stewards of the land and I love that you have this relationship with not just the plants but with the Earth with the you know, creatures that live around you and the respect and the you know conservation the thinking about that. This is just something that I find to be really common to this region and people in this region. How would you characterize your relationship with the earth now that of course we're hearing tons about drought we're hearing things about climate change or hearing things about a threat to the Ogallala Aquifer, which is that, you know part of that giant ocean that we have underneath how would you feel know that you knowing that you've been tending this land for so long watching it change. How would you characterize you know, how you how you relate to the Earth right now?

20:00 Well, I think

20:03 As I said, we'd

20:06 There was a time before we lived here. But but the land was owned by my father and mother when they went the route of everybody that was here and that is irrigation, but it didn't really feel right about it. And it didn't my dad could look down the road and say and see and say, you know, this this isn't always going to be here and if we're not careful, it's it's going to be gone faster than then we know and so he was one of the first to pull out and pull away from irrigating and say we're going back to dry land which we did he did they did he was as a said he was a pharmacist and had drug stores. So he what he didn't he didn't live on the farm here, but he was always a farm boy in many ways in that, you know that background of a family that didn't have much you had what you could grow basically was.

21:06 That was a big decision for our family to say okay. We're not going to use the water anymore. And any water we use we're going to try to save it. We're going to try to keep it. We're going to try to renew it if we can and I sometimes find myself wishing that everybody felt that way, but I know I know that's not not the case. But but a lot of people are moving in that direction or have already moved in that direction because they can see the writing on the wall and they can see reality. It's spelling out reality. You know, this ocean the Ogallala Aquifer underneath us is not going to be your forever and now it's probably within my lifetime if I live

21:55 Long life. Hopefully it it's going to be history and in some ways. I know and Texas down in the Panhandle. There was a it was a point at which one when my dad was still farming with water. We had to we needed to do some work on the on the irrigation Wells and replace a motor. Will that motor came from down around Amarillo and Lubbock because they had run out of water. And so they were selling off all their watering equipment all their irrigation equipment and I can see that happening here too, you know, so so it's it's a sense of reality that I I hope everybody thinks about it least and tries to tries to make that

22:47 Santa part of their life too and the part of their upcoming families in the future of this whole area. I would hate to see it turn in to a part of the Great American desert, but that's a possibility.

23:03 Speaking of speaking of where you grow up, you know you grew up in a very small town on the high plains and you spent a lot of time and larger cities. Can you share a little bit about that unique path that led you back home? What was it like to return to your childhood Hometown after being away?

23:22 Oh gosh.

23:27 That's a tough one to give a to answer without going into lots of different directions. But actually I'm I was ready. We were both ready for a change and the move although my big city husband at you know race in the big city area and then worked in San Francisco area as an architect.

23:54 He who it was it was a total new experience for him.

24:01 I don't want him to be mad when he hears this I'm not making fun at all. But I think one one way to say it is that when we came back he wore a three-piece suit and tie to the office that he had set up for 2 days and after that it went to slacks and a shirt and then khakis and because it's just a different place than San Francisco or or Brooklyn or New York and different from the University. We both met at the University of Oklahoma. So it's different from a campus setting to but

24:41 I don't know of its it seems like it's worked pretty well. And I know there were a lot of changes in his mind's you know, just in terms of living here the traveling back and forth having to drive 35 miles to his office in Garden City and then 35 miles home. But you know, they do that in California to on late hear the traffic moves pretty quickly here at your transfer your transporting at 70 to 75 miles an hour. So the the drive home isn't is an hours-long coming out of Los Angeles into a suburb or out of San Francisco. So so, you know that's worked out fine. There's been no problem there and there wasn't really a lot of there there were children's dance classes dance studios. Occasionally. There were three very small community college 2-year levels and I wound up

25:41 Working for the city of Garden City developing an arts program based on what I done in San Francisco and the Fillmore District when it was a was not a high-priced area that it is now and so I took those ideas those Concepts working with kids who had dropped out of school had quit on their lives and saying I'm working with a wonderful woman named Gloria Auntie the dancer and director and working with her first as a stage manager and then as a teacher and a director and numb

26:19 Yeah, I'm just saying the Arts is for it can change your life. It can change everything that you know and make it a better place. And so when I came back here Gloria, my boss said you're making a terrible mistake. It will be terrible because you're you're doing so well here and what you're doing here is really important and they're not going to care that they won't even know who you are or what you're doing there because you're you're going into the desert and I said well and you know, I'll just make sure I pack some water along with me. And so I took a lot of her teachings with me and it worked out great and it was very successful. There was a point when we had over 500 people involved as as performers and students and in the program and they drove in from all over Western Kansas to either see place or do plays or dance or take classes or whatever.

27:19 Developed into painting art into Graphics if it was a wonderful time and it was a wonderful place. So it was a perfect change in a way. It was a big change huge change from San Francisco, but it but the concept of developing your own self worth.

27:42 And learning how to relate to and work with other people. It's Dave and it and it works still works.

27:55 I think the the fact that the high plains is pretty sparsely populated but is got a really large Arts Community southwest Kansas has a huge arms Community Amarillo has a huge our community and we're a little bit insulated but I love that you said, you know, it was very different to come from a large city. I had a similar experience that I came from Chicago came down here and I found it to be refreshing as well. If it's one of those things where I'm going to share this with people that are exponentially more grateful because I'm the only one doing these things, you know, so I was just curious to say are there any are there any kind of theater Productions? You know that stick out to you as something that you had particular pride and after all these years that you're just like this was proof. I meant or these kids we did this and I watched an actual change come out of this creative theater production.

28:49 Well, I did I did the big flashy fancy musicals with big costumes and Vincent with design sets that would play on Broadway. It was really they were really amazing and the production for amazing but I also did children's things was just a group of little kids in a room and maybe some broomsticks or a couple of soccer balls or something like that. You know, it's it worked here. The ideas worked here. The I think it was a need people realize that and they said had it. Yeah, we want to try this we want to do this. I used to take my college students as we develop the program at the college. I was able to we would do a to musicals. We do a musical every fall.

29:49 And with that money every two years I could take all of my college students who had worked hard enough to two.

29:58 And that I would say yes, you can go. We went to New York for a week and we stayed in New York rule was we didn't do touristy things. We did artsy things. We did a little neighborhood things. We learned about New York and that whole area but

30:18 You know, they they were there for a week and I think that changed their lives in many ways. I know it did for some of them, you know, I don't I don't know I think

30:30 I think that it's this area has needs and had needs at that time. We're talking about, you know, 40-50 years ago when all this was going on with me and it had needs and it still does and hopefully people will continue to fill those needs. I hope so anyway.

30:52 In addition to being a mentor for those kids in the Arts and being an Arts Advocate that surely, you know has affected that area. You also Mentor kids in your garden you have you have some young people that come into your garden can I mean you're retired you've done so much but yet you still continue to Mentor these young people to, you know, get them in touch with growing their own food and how to tend the Earth. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with the kids that are helping you out in the garden? Yeah, usually at a girl's butt sometimes I'll have a boy or two that that makes us somewhere out of learning how to be a gardener very often. It's Mennonite girls girls from Mennonite families who have moved into this area some of the girls up almost all the girls that I've had help in the garden are proficient in a lot more languages than me. They speak English.

31:52 They speak German and some of them speak some Spanish also, but we basically are communicating in the language of flowers and vegetables and plants to and so they're learning they may know lots more languages than me, but they are learning about how to grow Botanicals of all kinds and it's it's really worked out nicely and they they like coming here. They like working they like learning and it's sometimes they learn about Garden. Sometimes they learn about what it's like to go to a big city what it was like when I moved in California or when I would take my students to New York and we talked about those things too. And then they tell me about their lives the Mennonite School said they attend that kind of thing. So it's it's a it's a learning experience gardening as a learning experience all the way around every way that you look at it. I think.

32:52 Oh, and I I wanted to tell you you had asked me about a sign. Do you remember that? There was more you so yeah, that was one of the questions about I was going to ask you about in your garden when I've gone out to visit you and seeing your space. I remember there was this one thing big time that I remember in addition to the many cats. You had just like running all over the place. We had a black wooden sign with kind of like a little kids kids like drawing and white of like a cat and I just when I first saw it, I thought it was, you know, just like kind of a classy version of the garden but you know, just like garden art like kind of a full car in the garden with like the blue Marissa and I was a little cat thing but then you mentioned it had like a historic significance. Can you tell us a little bit about that sign because I think that sign says a lot about me and about about what you find here. If you came to visit me in the

33:51 Olive Garden Center and everything I can look out now and see it on the front of the greenhouse. We have a free-standing Greenhouse here and there is a that song and it's actually it's been repainted by a friend several times, but it is a cat a drawing of a cat and with the tail on the body and the round face and actually that piece of art is called the kind-hearted woman sign and it was very much a part of hobos lives back in the thirties when they were on the road when things were grim and Tok they would take they would carry a piece of chocolate them the Whole Foods would and they would go from town to town. They would hitchhike they would take trains a lot and they they had a language of Their Own.

34:50 And it was in drawings and and words in individual words, but that drawing of the cat meant if they actually called it the kind hearted woman sign and so that is the kind hearted woman sign the cat is a kind-hearted woman and if you saw that on a fence outside of a farmhouse or a house on us on a Town Street or something that meant that you probably would be accepted there at the door or at the window of the kitchen and some type of sandwich or pie or something might be found to get you some sustenance and to get help you get on your way. And so the kind-hearted woman lives there. And so that was a way of saying. Hey guys when you go through this, here's where you stop you stop at the at the kind hearted woman sign and

35:49 She'll she'll be nice to you. She'll she'll help you out give you a drink of water give you something to eat. So anyway, I just thought it would be nice to have the kind hearted woman sign up because if you get hungry or Thursday, you can always pull over and stop and help yourself while I can imagine I ask you to get out in the garden and help pull the food before you eat it. But but I can imagine you don't get a whole lot of foot traffic from Hobo's in the location where you live, but it's good to know that pie might be available. Right right. I think that's I think that's a really great way to just kind of sum up what it is that we have here on the high plains people who help one another the spirit of generosity the spirit of togetherness and community that we have on the high plains, which I think is really summed up by High Plains Public Radio 40 years ago.

36:49 You and other people got together made it happen. We're 40 years on now. We're still hanging on doggy paddling like we always have but they said it was never going to be possible and yet forty years later. People are making it possible just by supporting it where one of the few Community license stations in the US and one of the weirdest because we spanned five states of a high plains, very sparsely populated and yet we're still going as are probably final question cuz I bet you could talk about this for several more minutes. What do you hope to see as you consider the future of public radio on the high plains and it can just be you can talk as much as you want about that.

37:29 Well, of course I wanted I wanted to keep going I wanted to still be here. And I I know that this falls on me because you know, we were I was having trouble getting things set up before we started this time. I'm not a big texter person. So I kind of like the fact that I can turn my radio on you know, he is at that old song turn your radio on listen to the music and they are well I can still do that here and that is important. But I think it's also important for all you other people that sucks dick that know how to use the screens and buttons and everything that the station does seem to be hanging in there. Technically. I can't talk a lot about that because I don't know a lot about that, but I do know that that

38:23 You know, it is important for the station to maintain its listenership and its involvement mainly not just somebody that says, okay. I'll turn this on to listen for a while. Now, you got to listen for a while and then you need to get involved in some way, you know, either supporting it financially or supporting it by continuing to Listen by helping out with with programming or just giving us opinions. Let us know what you think. Let us know how things are going for you as a listener. And so I think that's really really important that it still stays the pit. The people's radio station.

39:04 This has been a very very weird year for nonprofits for public radio for everything. What do you find has given you?

39:13 Peace and Solace during this extended lockdown. I mean we are obviously out in a very country set typesetting or a little bit socially Distance by definition on the high plains. What's been making you feel? All right during this weird year Well, it all goes back to Garden the garden helps growing my own food doing something with that giving it away to people having the station having that voice their and and the contact with the outside world, but still having that contact but still realizing that

39:48 We we can be interior here too. And it's okay. It's alright, we're actually very lucky it to be living where we're living right now for several reasons, but one is for survival and in a in a good way.

40:05 I told him yeah, I couldn't agree more.

40:09 All right. Well, this is been such a treat. Skip thank you so much for sharing some of this. Thank you for continuing to be an advocate to be a writer to be someone who supports the station in so many ways not just with your segment that you write every single week. But also during pledge drives where you put up the actual food that you're growing in your garden as an incentive to get people to support it and we hope we Inspire more people across the high plains to continue supporting it because man after this year, we're all going to need it a lot I think so, but we'll make it. I agree. I think we'll be all right.

40:51 All right away.