Greenwood County History -
Memories Of Perry Rubart, Part 3 of 4,
Perry Rubart was born in 1931 near Madison, and died in 2023 in Fayetteville, Ark. Starting in the 1970s, Perry started a book titled Dare To Dream, and completed the book in 2011. This series features highlights of that book.
“The transformation from horsepower to gasoline power was slow in Perry’s part of the country, partially because of hard times and because the older people just couldn’t see changing their way of life for newfangled inventions.
“One sight that made a barefoot boy stand still was a Mr. Harrelson and his son moving a three-story house by his place with 40 head of horses pulling it. It was hard to visualize how he could jack and block up a house of that size, put wagons underneath it, feed, harness, and care for that many horses and haul it some 30 miles and set it down. Perry can still see him perched on the roof of the front porch of the house with full of reins, coaxing his team to keep pulling away, with someone’s dream home moving slowly down a country dirt road.
“Perry remembers a time when one of the horses named Newt ran away with the manure spreader, knocking down the gate corner post. The impact threw the machine into gear, scaring Newt and the other horse in the race even more. By the time they had run until exhausted and sheepishly returned to the barn, they had broken the tongue out of the spreader and reduced it to a useless piece of scrap iron.
“The caper that almost cost old Newt his life prematurely was when he was fighting flies one summer day while hooked to a disk harrow. As he swung his head around, he caught his bridle on the fly nets (sometimes called shoo flies) pinning his head to his side. Rearing up in retaliation, he came over backwards, cutting his thigh very deeply on an exposed disk. Perry’s dad brought him to the barn and tried to stop the bleeding with dirt, flour and ground feed bandages. By nightfall, he had lost so much blood he was getting weak and wobbly. Perry’s dad called the vet from Eureka by the name of Van Vovius. He arrived at the farm late that night and gave old Newt a shot, sewed up his leg and gave them a powder to apply to the wound.
“After he treated the horse, he stayed and visited for a couple of hours to make sure the bleeding stopped. He told stories of traveling all over the world as a young man, finally ending up in South America on a ranch in Argentina.
“Perry’s first chance to work in the field with horses was to drive a gentle team, seated on a corn-planting machine in furrows to pack the soil that had been listed to corn or milo. This was done to ensure a good stand of crop. The next was using a single horse with a small five-shovel cultivator with plow handles to guide it in between the rows. Later, standing on a platform on top of a single row curler- type cultivator behind two horses, he was ready to take on the world and all it could offer.
“Perry and all his siblings went to Prairie Light or District 15 rural school for eight years. The school was later moved to Madison and was used as the public library for many years. It had a full basement and a coal fired furnace in the center of the room.
“There was a sink with a pitcher pump, which could pump water from the outside cistern in the schoolyard.
“A dipper pump with a chain link and dipper was directly over the cistern in the school yard. A long period without rainwater collected by the roof of the school meant water from town had to be hauled and dumped into the cistern. Water fights and other wasteful practices were forbidden, and most of the boys were very good about not wasting water washing our hands and faces.
“They had a very modern school for that day and time as they had inside bathrooms hooked to the septic tank. Perry’s house never had indoor plumbing or running water. Lighting for home and school both were provided by kerosene and Aladdin-style lamps.
“The school yard had several large American Elm trees, which were welcome shade to eat lunch under in the spring and fall. There was always trading of sandwiches, cookies and fruit. Perry’s trading ability really showed up while engineering a swap of a sandwich of homemade bread and sugar-cured ham for a couple of storebought cookies. The important thing was both Ralph Dobson and Perry thought they had skinned the other one.
“‘In eight years of school, nothing was more embarrassing than the first day of school. Mrs. Mary Ellen Thornton, our first-grade teacher explained in detail the signal that would give us permission to go to the bathroom.’ Perry’s plan was much simpler, just wait until recess. ‘That plan was ill fated, as my denim overalls didn’t disguise the wetness that soaked them and, much worse, trickled out on the hardwood seat of the desk. Perry slid over, thinking no one would notice. Mrs. Thornton came back and told me I could be excused to go to the bathroom.’ A red-faced, small boy hot footed it out of the classroom and used the signal system from that day on.
“The spring of the year always brought the county health nurse and shots for the students. That always reduced all those big boys that talked tough and acted the same to mild-mannered schoolboys. ‘We viewed the county nurse as a witch-like person who really enjoyed hurting the students. She always seemed like an old maid type, who seldom smiled and was always poised to stick a needle in our arms.’
“Perry’s friend Jimmy Hollis, though 10 days younger than Perry, was always at least a foot taller and 50 pounds heavier. ‘One evening he was harassing all of the smaller kids on the way home and, unbeknown to any of us, his dad was in the cornfield along the road we were taking.’ He appeared out of the cornfield, fully aware of what was going on, and his mind made up as to the punishment he had in mind for his son. The children rather enjoyed the whipping he received, and from that time on he was a lot better playmate.
“School plays and PTA programs sometimes were preceded by a pie auction or box supper auction. The box supper usually had a young adult who wished to buy the box of a certain girl he wanted to impress or to keep some rival from purchasing his girlfriend’s box. The girls would wrap the box in a certain color or put some identifying bow on it. So, it was a terrible shock, after paying three times the going rate for a box, only to find someone had switched the wrapping or bows, and he got to eat his expensive box supper with a wallflower, while a rival with a cheaper bid got his girlfriend’s box and ate it in his presence. Of course, the boys wouldn’t have ever thought of such a low-down trick without some coaching on how and when to switch the wrappings or how to spread false rumors as to which box was his girlfriend’s.
“District #15 school had seven different teachers in the eight years Perry attended school there. In 1980, at the 30-year high school reunion at Emporia, Perry’s first grade teacher was a guest that night. She was shocked that Perry had grown up and was the master of ceremonies at the event. It seemed only a few short years before, she had been in charge while Perry had wet his overalls on the first day of school. Needless to say, Perry never asked her if she remembered that occasion.
“Mr. Beach, the only male teacher in grade school, was hired during WWII. He was a conscientious objector, so his popularity and respect were somewhat tainted. He lived on the old Ellis place, about a half mile from school, but was often late to open school on time. He was buying milk from one of the students’ parents, and they would deliver it to school in fruit jars. One morning Mr. Beach was late so the students put the fruit jar containing the milk in a snowdrift and then couldn’t find it when he finally got there. The students discovered the jar a few days later while building a snow fort. ‘He soon lost control of the students and the students spent quite a bit of school time scouring the countryside, picking up scrap iron and tin to add to our victory scrap pile in the middle of the school yard.
“The news of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, was first learned by the students after Jim Hollis had heard it over his wind-charged power radio. Rationing of all items necessary to supply the Armed Forces were put into effect. All bacon and lard drippings were saved and turned in to a central warehouse. Women worked at washing and rolling bandages for medical units in combat. Perry’s dad sold a lot of old hay, cut and baled, but not fit for livestock feed. It was hauled to Madison and loaded in boxcars to go to an ammunition factory as packing material.
“An Army bivouac unit, traveling across the country to Ft. Riley, pulled into the golf course and old football field just south of Madison one afternoon. They quickly set up tents and serviced their trucks. That night all the local people drove to town to view the encampment. The town square was roped off, the band rounded up, and a street dance for the soldiers was soon underway. The next day, tents were struck, and the group moved on as quickly as they had appeared.
“One day as Perry’s family was sitting down to eat dinner, a terrible roaring sound suddenly appeared. All the house shook, loose newspapers were sucked to the ceiling and scattered around the room. They ran outside, only to see an airplane disappearing over the horizon. Later they learned it was a P-38 plane piloted by Ralph Martin, a young man whose parents lived about five miles east of Perry’s house. He buzzed all the houses in his old neighborhood just treetop high. He later served in China, taking aerial photographs of the Far East in his plane named the Jayhawk.
“The Greenwood County Fair at Eureka was the highlight of the year for Perry’s dad. He would take the children in the old Whippet, pack a lunch and buy some cheese, bologna, crackers, and a small sack of lemons to prepare a picnic lunch. They would take along a large crock and buy a chunk of ice at the icehouse, split the ice, squeeze the lemons, add sugar and cover it with a towel for the best lemonade ever made. The carnival that always played at the fair had its usual hard-looking employees, who looked prematurely old from their hectic life of constantly moving from town to town, playing the fairs and celebrations.
“Hunting animals was a big part of Perry’s life. A weekend coyote roundup in the spring of the year was a corralling-type hunt where six to eight sections of farms and boundaries were advertised in the local paper as the designated hunting ground. They would choose a relatively flat section for the roundup section. Most of the people were transported to the perimeter of the hunting area by cars and pickups. Then, walking toward the center, the idea was to drive the coyotes towards the center where people would close together and make escape for the coyote difficult. The captains of each side, usually mounted on horses, would move up and down the line, calling for more people in places where the distance between walkers was too great. As the climax of the drive approached, some of the coyotes realized they were enclosed in the human trap. Their break for freedom was made after circling the human chain and not seeing an opening to escape. They would run full speed ahead at the advancing line. A ring of shotgun blasts would usually end the great escape. An auction of the dead animal pelts was the last part of the hunt before everyone left for home.”
