- The Journey Is The Reward – Installment 5 of 6 -
Jean Courter Marchand was born in 1921 and grew up in the Climax area. In 2000, she wrote this article on her memories and perspective of events and people she came in contact with, focusing more on the first twentytwo years of her life.
“Dad’s siblings, other than Anna who lived with us, lived in Ohio, New Jersey, western Kansas, and Topeka, so we rarely saw them more than once a year. Mom’s relatives were almost all within Greenwood County, and there were frequent gatherings of her relatives for a Sunday dinner, generally at the home of the individual having a birthday. Each family brought food to share with the other fifteen to twenty-five people. One year, instead of going to Great Grandma Snider’s home on her birthday, her fifteen grandchildren and their families met along Otter Creek for a picnic. One of the men had a rowboat in which he took me for my first ever boat ride. There was an inch of water in the boat bottom from a rain the previous night. The next day I put my new experience to use. Around the barn I found a crate, made of wood used in those days to ship oranges, and took it and my twoyear-old brother Bill to the slough that ran through our cattle feedlot. With Bill seated in the “boat,” I launched it with a shove. For some reason my boat didn’t float like the rowboat on Otter Creek! I couldn’t understand why, I had plainly seen that my boat had water in its bottom, like the rowboat. My parents were not favorably impressed by my boat, mired in three-inch mud which pretty well covered Bill before I got him to shore. I had to clean him, my boat, and myself from the feedlot mud.
“Neighbors helped each other by trading work, maybe a day of hauling corn to fill the silo in exchange for a day’s help with threshing. There was no restaurant in the community to provide the noon meal, so the woman of the host farm provided a heavy meal for the farm workers, sometimes the wives would accompany the men to the farm and help the hostess prepare the meal. There were often as many as eight or ten hungry adult men who were fed what was called a square meal, always meat and potatoes, other vegetables, often a salad, always dessert and coffee or tea. This was eaten inside the house after the men washed their hands and faces, usually outdoors, drying themselves on towels provided by the hostess.
“A critical responsibility for farmers particularly in the summer time was providing workers with drinking water. A task given to boys too young for field work was to carry buckets of drinking water to the workers in the field. Generally, everyone drank from the same water dipper. My dad carried his own gallon of water in an earthenware jug wrapped in a wet burlap bag when working in the field for himself. During the drought years furnishing water for farm workers was even more difficult.
“For many people of my generation church played a significant part in life. This was not true for me. I don’t remember going to church at all until I was at least ten years old, and then only intermittently. There were likely several reasons my parents did not go to church themselves or take me, first it was five miles to Climax to the nearest church, second, there were several hours of chores that simply had to be done every morning, and third, my parents did not agree with some of the local church leaders on issues of race and secret societies. My moral education was not completely lacking. My parents made it clear to me that they believed in “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Our school readers, the Bobbs-Merrill series, had some Bible stories and other “character building” entries.
“The year I was born the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in a field adjacent to Climax. Many well-placed Climax males participated, but not my dad. I never heard my family speak on the issue of the Klan, but their actions communicated to me that they disapproved of the treatment given to black people. As a child Dad had lived in Topeka where he had contact with blacks and perhaps was more sensitive to their problems. My parents made efforts over the years to present blacks in a positive light. One summer evening after the evening chores were done, they took the family to the Methodist Church in Eureka to a musical program put on by a black church group from a southern state. In the early 1930s the local Farm Bureau put on a fundraising minstrel show with participants in black face. There was not a great turnout. That was about the time that some Kansans became sensitized to the racism of such shows. My maternal grandfather Hugh Devier was born in Virginia in 1863. His family owned slaves. Mom remarked that her grandmother said their slaves were well treated. It seems unlikely that a slave owner would be in a position to judge impartial treatment. I would suppose that, even if a slave was well fed, clothed and housed, but did not have freedom, he was not well treated.
“My parents were Democrats. Dad said that they, Glen and Kate Rice and Bob Essick were the only democrats in Fall River Township. This may not have been literally true, but certainly Republicans were the dominant political party in the area. Dad served several times on the election board, in those days, paper ballots were used and tallying the results was time consuming, so election board members did not get home until quite late on election night. Another responsibility of citizens of that time was to pay poll tax, a tax of a fixed amount per person levied on adults and often payable as a requirement for voting. Some men worked it off by building or maintaining roads.
“Each Sept. 28, Frances E. Willard Day was celebrated. Mrs. Willard was credited with founding the Women’s Christian temperance Union, a national organization with the goal of eliminating use of alcohol and nicotine. It was very successful in getting the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution passed, which became effective in 1920 and made intoxicating liquors illegal. On Sept. 28, Mrs. Delia Croft or Mrs. Essie Thomas spoke to the entire student body on the evils of “demon rum” and of “coffin nails” (cigarettes). Mrs. Thomas asked us high school students to make a pledge to avoid them. I didn’t make the pledge, not so much, I think, because of any high-minded ideals as because it seemed unnecessary. My family did not use alcoholic beverages and, as far as I knew, neither did any respectable person. My aunt did giggle about Grandpa Devier’s bottle of “medicine” in the cellar, but I don’t think it was opened frequently. There was a man of questionable reputation on the fringe of the community who was said to have a still, he had many frequent visitors who stayed only a few minutes. The husband of a cousin of Mom’s made a trip to Missouri where liquor in larger quantities was more freely available. On the way home, he tried to outrun the law and ended up wrecking his car, breaking a lot of glass bottles, and skinning up his four-year-old son quite badly.
“Before the days of the commercialization of medicine and of death, the community was usually intimately involved. Neighbors really did look after each other. Hospitals in rural areas were rare and too expensive for depression era farmers, so when someone was very ill, the neighbors took turns, usually in pairs, sitting with the ill person in their home during the night, so the daytime caregiver could get some rest. If someone died, again the community pitched in. Food was brought in: in season neighbors cooperated to plant or harvest crops for the mourning family. In 1929 a neighbor, John Olson, died, and my parents “sat with the body” in the Olson home, along with half a dozen other neighbors, during the night before the burial. I do not believe his body was embalmed, it is my recollection that Mr. Olson was taken by wagon to the cemetery along Otter Creek, just west of where it joins Fall River. The graves from that cemetery were moved to high ground when Fall River Reservoir was built in the late 1940s.
“I must have been a fearful child. I was afraid of the dark, even afraid to go into an adjacent dark room. In February 1933 when my Grandfather Devier was dying, each evening my parents tucked us kids into bed after supper and then walked three fourths mile across country to the Devier home to see him. Grandpa Courter was ninety years old and somewhat frail, sleeping in his bedroom downstairs. I couldn’t get to sleep, as I lay in bed one wintry night, I heard what I thought were moans. They grew louder and I became uneasy, then I became frightened as they went on for what seemed like hours. I was sure it was Grandpa Courter who was dying in his bedroom downstairs. I was too scared to investigate and I lay in bed terrified, the next thing I knew it was morning and my parents were back in the house after doing the morning milking. Grandpa was all right, too. Now I know that the moans were from our dog Brownie baying at the moon that caused my fright.”
