Interview with Amos Harber
In 1981 Tom Isern did an interview with Amos Harber, who was born in 1903 and lived most of his life in the area of Neal.
“My father was born in Texas and then moved to Tennessee and lived there for a few years and then moved to Kansas. My mother was born on a farm out by Neal and lived there all her life. They were farmers and I was born there. They did not own the farm. They had some cropland and stock. There were about 40 acres of cropland and 120 acres of pasture. We raised corn and kafir corn. We also had some alfalfa. We planted it all with horses. We did not have a tractor. For a long time, we had a onerow planter. We would cultivate it about three times and hoe it also. That was something I did not like to do. We would hoe it once. The first job I had growing up was driving that one-row planter.
“We harvested the corn by hand. I was not very good at it, probably because I did not like to harvest it. We would walk and shuck the corn into the wagon that had a bang board on one side to keep the corn in the wagon. We would tell the horse to stop and move along. I shucked by myself. My father and mother shucked together. We would cut the corn fodder with a sled. It was about three feet wide and that long also. It had a knife out one side that cut the corn stocks and you would collect them and put a load on the sled. We just had a one-row sled, but they had two-row sleds also. There was one horse and I stood on the sled. We did not grind it, we just fed it by the ear. We fed it to hogs and the horse and usually broke it in half to feed to the cattle. We would harvest kafir with a binder and put it in shocks. We would bring out a wagon and take the shock and lay it on the wagon, which had a knife that would cut the heads off, and the shock or butts we would shock back up. Now they combine it out in the field. We would feed kafir to the chickens or most anything you wanted to.
“We stacked the alfalfa and baled the prairie hay with a horse drawn baler. We had one John Deere mower. We were not big enough to have more than one mower. We had a hand rake to start with. We had a hay butt where we gathered it up and then stacked it. We had a two-horse hay baler. The horses would walk around one end and step over the baler each pass. On the other end was the hopper where you put the loose hay in and compress it into a bale. One person leads the horses, one person threw the hay up to the baler and a man stood on the baler with a short fork and put the hay in and another man tied the bale as it came out.
“The person up on the baler would push the hay down with his foot and you could lose a foot or leg if you did not pay attention. You had a man bucking hay up to the man on the baler. ( The Greenwood County Museum has a baler like the one Amos described on the north side of the museum).
If you got 10-ton a day you were doing well. We eventually went to a self-feeder baler. We stacked the alfalfa with a Jayhawk stacker. The wheels were wide apart like mower wheels and the horses would slide the stacker under the alfalfa and then there was a cable that raised the alfalfa up and you took it to the stack. There was a trip and it dumped the alfalfa on the stack. There was also a pole stacker that had metal clamps and grabbed the hay and then you would lift the hay and swing it to the stack and release the clamp and it would drop the alfalfa.
“We did not have a very big cowherd as we did not have much money. I do not know how, but we lived. We did not spend money. We did not have an auto or tractor. My dad went to the harvest several years to make some money.
“I got married in 1924, I think. When I was 9 years old, we went to Colorado as dad had a claim and we lived in a dugout that was on the claim. This was at Connan, Colo. It had a store and post office and that was all. We had one room. We were not in the mountains. We burned cow chips. The next spring, we came home. We went out there because we had an uncle that had filed on a claim and got it and talked dad into going out there. We rode two miles to school each day on horses and there were two negro families out there also. One day one of the negro girls spit down my sister’s back. My sister knocked down the negro girl. The teacher came to get my sister. I ran up and told the teacher that if she hit my sister, I would hit her. The teacher said she was going to whip my sister or we had to leave, so we went home. My dad was one who, if you got in trouble at school, you got in trouble at home. We told him what happened and he said you did not have to let a negro spit on you. My dad went to the teacher and talked and the teacher said the children need to go to school. My dad said they would not go to this school. We went to a school in a ranch house after that. That spring we came home. I always wanted to go back out there. I do not know why. About five years ago I went with my sister to South Dakota and then to Colorado and I did not know exactly where it was at. We stopped at Holly, Colo., and I asked a fellow at the gas station where Connan, Colo. was. He said you are drunk. There is no place like that. I said I went to school there when I was a kid. We went across the line to stay at a motel and I asked the lady if she knew where it was and she had never heard of it. She became interested and we were eating in the restaurant and she asked everyone if they knew where this place was. One older lady in the corner said she knew the vicinity, but not exactly. She said it was about 35 miles straight south. We got up the next morning and she said you go to Wallace; ( this might have been Wallace, Kan., not in Colorado) you probably know where that is and they will tell you how to get there. When we got to Wallace, we went to the gas station and the old boy said, “just go to the park and go straight east and you will run right into it.” When we were out there years ago there were no trees. He said there is nothing out there but a school house and they do not use it anymore. There was a cemetery and my uncle is buried there. We got there and there were trees and we went a little further and found the cemetery and there was Connan on the big arch at the cemetery. We could not find my uncle’s grave. The weeds were high and the sand had blown over the stones, it was a mess. Right east of us was all wheat and the road went south and we went south about a mile and back east and there was a little slope and when we got to the bottom there were two dugouts on the south side of the road. I said there was where Scott Campbell and the Sites lived. On the north side of the road was a dugout all furnished like someone lived there. We have pictures down at the house. Well, this fellow came along in a pickup and I asked him if he knew where the Sites live and he said, I know where Glen Sites lives. I followed the man and he showed me where Glen lived. I knocked at the door and his wife came to the door. I said, “is Glen here?” She said he was at home. He came to the door and I did not recognize him. I said my name is Harber and he grabbed me and said is your sister still living? He asks me in and we had the nicest visit. I went to school with him and another boy named Rockhart, who lives at Elkhart, Kan. I asked him if he knew where our old dugout was and he said he would show me. We got back in our car and went west a ways and south a ways. There was a field of wheat so tall and he said pull in here. I said we would run over the wheat. Glen said, “I got 6,000 acres of wheat, so what do I mind if we ruin a little.” He showed us where the dugout had been. He said, “you see that old windmill up on the hill?” That’s where your folks carried the water from. We then came back home. We did not stay very long, that’s for sure.
“After I married, I worked for Tom Gilbert and Mr. Lyle down here. I was a mechanic. I went to Texas for a while, then came back and bought my first truck. I think it was about 1932 when I bought my first truck. The first truck was an old model “T.” Then I got a 1928 Chevy. I kept getting a little bigger and better trucks. When we finally quit hauling cattle about five years ago, I sold my trucks. We had 45-foot dump trailers. In the 1930s we would truck cattle and haul coal. We got the coal from down around Mulberry, Kan., which is close to Fort Scott. We hauled it to school houses like Reece, Tonovay, Neal and Climax. I would take about two or three loads during the school year. I hauled cattle all over the country. Places like St. Joe, Mo. and Omaha, Neb., Wichita and Kansas City. Where ever they wanted to go. I took five loads to Michigan. The first truck I had did have sideboards on it to haul cattle. Wichita was about as far as I went in those early days. You could take those boards off and put grain sides on it also. We bought a lot of gas for 14 cents a gallon. I bought gas yesterday for $1.09. There was a red sign that said 4-cent discount for cash. My son came in on the trucking, so we were in on it together. We went to Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Clare Platt at Virgil, wanted to buy the trucks and put $100 down and the state had it all approved. All we had to do was sign it and they left the zero off and instead of 150-mile radius, it said 15-mile radius. We got the paper down and looked at it and I said that was not right. The state permit said 150 miles, so we called the lawyer up in Topeka and he said that was an over sight of mine. He looked at the copy he had and said we had left a zero off. So, I’m about out of business. My boy is not. We sold our stock trucks. Bob still has a truck and hauls for Emporia Blacktop. When I started, the roads were just dirt. If we were going to Wichita, we would take highway 54 to El Dorado and then south to Augusta and into Wichita and north to Central Street, then west to Broadway then north to 21st Street. Some of those roads were gravel and some were dirt.
“When WWII came along, I did not have any trouble staying in business. There was a fellow in Yates Center that had my insurance business. It was hard getting tires. I needed a tire and I came to the government board up here in Eureka that approved requests. They ask me what I hauled and I said cattle to market. The man said they could haul them on a train to market and you would not need tires. You had to send in a card about every two-weeks telling if you were staying busy or if you needed more gas. I said I will call Neal Tateman over in Wichita, he was one of the big shots and I will tell him to cancel my insurance, as I will not need it. The man on the board said, “you would not do that.” I said you just watch and I did. The next day I got a phone call from Mr. Allen, who was on the board to come up and they said we are going to let you have a tire as Mr. Tateman must be a good friend of yours. I said you are going to give me two. I am not going to put an old tire on one wheel. They said they could not do it. I said I would call Mr. Tateman again and after that I did not have any trouble getting tires. They had the tires, but they did not want to let you have them. I got my tires after that and I did not have any trouble getting gas.
“I have been helping people work cattle whenever they are going to ship cattle down to the present time. I worked with Gilbert, Henderson, Sowder and up on the Campbell ranch. In the old days you would drive the cattle into a corner and string some men out to keep them there and a man on a cutting horse would cut out the fat cattle you wanted to ship. Now everybody has pens in their pastures and you drive them into the pens. Now you gate cut the cattle out. In the old days cutting horses did that. I had all purpose horses. I roped and cut on the same horse. They used to bring cattle into Neal on a train and then we would drive them from the train out into the pastures. Sometimes up to 10 miles. After they got fat, you turned around and drove them back to town to load on the train. Now days they bring them in by truck to the pastures and dump them out in the pastures. When they got ready to ship them the trucks came back out. When we started, we would run the calves into a corner and cut them out and dehorn and castrate and brand them. If you had a little pen, a man would catch them by hand. Dick Campbell did it that way when I worked for him. You had a fire and one boy would get the iron and brand the calf. One man could not hold the calf down, so it was more than a two-man job. You marked the cattle with a brand and someone ear marked them. Raymond Sowder had a 1000 head of movie star cattle that belonged to Groucho Marks. Mike Burtin had a bunch. Cattle are branded on the left side. A lot of the cattle were brought in and a middle person got the pasture and contracted with the owner of the cattle to feed them out. One person leased the pasture and then subleased the pasture to the person who had the cattle and that was pretty common around here. That’s what Tom Gilbert and a lot of those fellows did. They usually leased by the acre because you would only put so many cattle per acre, you did not want to over graze the pasture.”
