Memories Of Perry Rubart, Part 4 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.
“Kansas was considered a dry state as to selling of hard liquor until 1949, when the state-regulated package stores were permitted. Madison had a lot of oil field people living in town or close by in the oil field camps, and many of them were hard drinkers. While Perry was attending high school, they thought they knew of everyone who was a midnight dealer in the illegal spirits. Stanley Curry and Perry found out one night they didn’t know one bootlegger who was operating in Madison. They had been to an out-of-town basketball game one cold, wintery night when the roads were ice covered. They were returning home in Curry’s Ford Model A coupe. Three miles south of Madison they turned off Hwy 99 onto a country road. The car hit a patch of ice and slid into a fence with a sudden stop. It died and wouldn’t start, and upon looking under the hood, they discovered the distributor cap was broken.
“Before they could decide which way to walk for help on that night that wasn’t fit for man or beast to be out, they heard a car in the distance coming down the highway. As they flagged it down, they realized it contained three men in the front seat of a Lincoln Zephyr. They told them of their plight and their reply was that they would take them home, but they would have to crawl over the front seat, as they couldn’t open the back doors of the car. They soon discovered the reason behind this, as the backseat was completely full of a load of whiskey. No doubt the trunk was also full. The three men were businessmen in town and they had never heard a hint of a rumor that they dealt in bootlegging.
“Perry’s farm was one mile west of the Hwy 99 and his road was used to drive cattle from the Flint Hills pastures to the railroad at Madison. During WWII, a lot of old Brahman and Longhorn cattle from south Texas were brought north to be fattened out for slaughter. The cowboys who drove the cattle would tie up their horses at the front gate and walk to their well to get a drink of fresh water. Many of them would pump up a dipper full and then when they tasted it, would spit it out. It was only in later years, after Perry left home and had gotten used to drinking good water, that the taste of that iron and alkali water really seemed so terrible. When visitors came to their house, they always brought their own water, because not only was the taste bad, it also had a strong laxative effect on a stranger.
“One spring day that had spawned thunderstorms all day long developed a really violent one in the southwest. Perry and family watched it out the door for a while only to realize a small tornado was headed their way. Perry’s dad told Donnie and Perry to run to the Hollis place, as they had a good cave for protection. It had rained hard all day and the lane leading to the Hollis place was full of muddy ruts and slick. Perry had always been able to outrun Donnie in any length of a race, but that day Donnie arrived at the Hollis place a full 50 yards ahead of Perry. Everyone crouched in the cave as Jim looked out a small window in the west end of the cave to report that the twister was dancing around the west side of the farm. After it lifted in the sky and the storm passed, everyone walked to their alfalfa field to find the twister had destroyed three haystacks in different parts of the field. A dump hay rake was reduced to a pile of scrape iron and a windmill on the next farm was twisted to the ground.
“After graduating from the little country school, Perry’s dad insisted Perry stay home and help him on the farm rather than start high school. In later years Perry more fully understood that his dad had grown up in an age where schooling was not considered important and his dad sincerely thought he was making the right choice for Perry. Perry had already secretly made the choice that next year somehow his name would appear in the freshman class. The plan was simple, Perry would work hard for his dad, then asked to work outside for the neighbors, saving every dime, while keeping the four head of calves Perry’s dad had given Perry to raise.
“At age 14 or 15 Perry was determined to outdo any grown man that he worked with. They baled hay in the summer and fall and that winter after the corn was shucked, Arch Uhl asked Perry to help him shuck corn. For three weeks Perry would get up before daylight, do the chores, harness the horses and go to the fields at daylight with a sack lunch, shuck corn all day long, then back to the barn at dark, shovel the corn they shucked that day into the granary and do the evening chores before a late supper. The 12 cents a bushel that was paid Perry for that chore was socked away for next year’s high school.
“The following year as school time approached Perry dropped several hits that school was in his plans. As the time grew close to the starting of school, no permission had been granted, so a showdown Perry dreaded was obvious. Finally, the day school enrollment was to start Perry made his move. It was the first time Perry had really outright challenged his dad. Perry told his dad he was borrowing the car and going to town to enroll for school, but knew it would be too much to try to play football.
“Perry rode to school every day with Jim and Clara Hollis and most days he would hitchhike the four miles and walk from the highway to help with the farm work. Later that year he bought his first car, a 1933 Plymouth Coupe, for $300 from Dwight Schaffer. The paint was bad on it, so Perry ordered a mail-order can of paint. A new paint job, two squirrel tails tied to the radio antenna and an American flag on the rearview mirror made it a complete car.
“The situation at home grew worse so Perry sold his few head of cattle and moved to town and rented an upstairs sleeping room from Mr. and Mrs. Joe Walters. They were very kind and good people, never interfering. When Perry came home each day his bed was made and the room clean.
“Mr. Walters was a rural mail carrier and always brought Perry’s mail home from the post office with him. Mrs. Walter would put the mail on the pillow of the bed. For the next three and a half years that little room in the upstairs of the two-story house with a side entrance was home during the school term.
“Perry went to work first for the Alf Rhodes Construction in oil field construction. This was ditch digging, cement work and general labor. The next job he had was working for Gene Brown’s trucking company, moving rigs and oil field equipment. On days they were shorthanded, Perry would skip school and work. The school teachers and principal never did ask why he wasn’t there on certain days.
“Perry never forgot the day he was working on the Atyeo lease about 20 miles west of Madison. It was freezing cold, windy and spitting snow. They had loaded the mud pump on a large trailer and placed the jack under the tongue to support it. After the truck to pull it was loaded, they backed up to hook onto the trailer. One of the hydraulic jacks slipped and the trailer tongue pinned a man under it, crushing his legs. They got a mattress out of the drilling crew’s doghouse and laid him on it, covered him up with all the coats and tarps, but he still shivered from shock.
“They told Perry to run to the water treatment plant under construction about a mile away, as the foreman there had a station wagon to transport the man to Eureka. After running down there and explaining the situation, the man told Perry he didn’t want to get involved, as his insurance might not cover his liability. Perry was shocked at such an attitude, and after relating it to Gene, he described this person with much plainer language. It must have been about four hours after the accident before the man got to the hospital in Eureka. The work was hard, long hours, as when they started to move a drilling rig they didn’t stop until it was completed.
“Later Perry worked at the Phillips service station for Richard Young and Lloyd Reisbig. That consisted of pumping gas, washing and lubrication cars, fixing tires and washing windshields. His senior year he got out of school at noon and worked from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. The evening hours he was usually there by his self.
“In summer months Perry took a job with Marvin Diehl at Burlington, Oklahoma, working on a custom harvesting crew. If he was not doing custom work, they worked on his farm at about every task you could imagine. One day several of the boys were to paint two old railroad boxcars while Marvin and his wife were gone for the day. After the boxcars were painted white, they painted the two outhouses that were between the cars white also. Then someone decided that a can of black paint they found could be put to good use also. They painted big black arrows on the white boxcars pointing towards each outhouse and painted “his” and “hers” above each of the arrows. Two years later, the last summer Perry was there, the outhouse instructions were still untouched.
“One time they left Oklahoma headed for Granada, Colorado, with three truck and combines loaded on each truck. The first night they pulled into a vacant lot next to a repair garage at Deerfield, Kansas. They were sleeping on army cots by the side of the trucks. Perry went to sleep quickly and woke up at daybreak to see two badly wrecked cars not 20 feet from the cots. All the rest of the crew was complaining that a wrecker brought in the two cars and kept them awake half the night. Perry slept through the whole thing.
“At Granada, after cutting for several days, they went out west of town at a small pond dug beside an artesian well to go swimming. A two-inch stream of water constantly flowing from a pipe was so cold that even in the middle of the summer it would send shivers up your spine. Not far from there was a relocation camp (Amache was its name and about 10,000 passed through the camp before it was closed) for the Japanese people moved from the west coast during WWII. It had been abandoned for two or three years when Perry was there, but all the barracks, mess hall and water tower were still there. History points out this moving of these people to 10 relocation camps was a gross injustice.
“Eventually the custom crew moved on to Nebraska and the nights were getting cold for sleeping on the Army cots, so they went to the surplus store to buy some army surplus blankets. Perry bought a second-hand Air Force sheep-lined coat which was very war. Having bragged that he would wear it at night to sleep in no matter what it looked like. The next time he went to put it on, somehow both sleeves had been filled with black sticky grease that looked like the same brand they used to lubricate the combines with. He tried to clean it, but to no avail.
“During the last summer, while working the wheat harvest, Perry’s 18th birthday was approaching. It had never dawned on Perry that he was supposed to register for the draft. The notice had been sent to Perry’s dad at Madison, but he didn’t know where Perry was, so he contacted Mr. Esslinger at Madison, who knew where to forward the notice in Oklahoma. When it arrived in Oklahoma, the next day was the last day left to register according to the notice. Marvin and Perry left Oklahoma long before daylight for the drive to Eureka, to register for the draft. Perry had secretly wished Marvin would offer to drive on up to Madison to his dad’s place. They arrived in Eureka and it took about 15 minutes to register, and they started home for Oklahoma immediately. Perry told himself that at the next opportunity he would try to mend the differences between Perry and his dad.
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“In December, after going back to Oklahoma after harvest season was over, Perry decided to go back to Madison for a visit. Turning in the driveway Perry could tell his dad was glad to see him. They visited at length about various things. From that day until Perry’s dad died in 1956, they never had another cross word. Perry’s dad had rented out the farm and only had a few chickens, a few head of livestock and his fruit trees and garden to care for.
“The decision to stay at Madison and work in the oil fields was made almost the same time Perry renewed his friendship with Dorothy, his future wife. He got a job for Barnard Well Service, as several of his buddies and friends were working there. He started off as the greenhorn and was the floorman on a workover servicing rig. In two weeks, Perry was the derrick hand and had to get over fear of heights very quickly. When spring arrived, Perry discovered the derrick job had several benefits. It was cooler up there on warm days, and it was a much cleaner job, above the grease, oil and salt water. Within six months Perry was made crew leader and ran one of the rigs.
“Perry and Dorothy were married in 1951 and had bought a 1937 Ford for $40 a few weeks before getting married. Perry had a 1941 Ford that was destroyed in a wreck that had hurt Dorothy when they were hit by a drunken driver near Wichita. Dorothy always joked that she married Perry for his money, as their total assets were the car, another $40 in cash and a few personal belongings.
“August 1952 was hot and dry and Perry was working some miles from Madison on a rig. His right side hurt all week. On Saturday night Perry and Dorothy drove to Emporia for a drive-in movie. He got ill and they left for home and called the doctor about midnight. Eventually Perry was driven back to Emporia where his appendix was removed.
“1953 and 1954 saw Perry serving in the Army and spending time in Korea. Perry went to work for Magnolia Oil when he returned to Madison. The job Perry had was on the old Seeley lease, which had 64 wells on Seeley, one on Edwards lease, and two on the Shaffer lease. He did a lot of relief pumping and ran the water injection plant and even ran the old antique pulling unit a few days. The Seeley lease was water flooded with about 700 pounds of water pressure. This water flood was started in 1942, so by the time Perry got there it was on its last leg. This lease was in between the Phillips York State and Cities Service Clapton holdings. On the east border of the leases was the Seeley schoolhouse on two acres of ground. No one had thought of drilling on the school land until a man by the name of Boxcar Jones leased the two acres and set up a cable tool drilling rig in the schoolyard and drilled a well and hit a good one. The two major oil companies were embarrassed by their oversight, so they moved as close to the property line as possible and drilled injection wells and poured salt water to them hoping to flood out the Jones well. The more water they put in, the more oil he got. Perry moved to Drunwright, Oklahoma in 1956 when the oil lease he had been working on was sold to another oil company. Perry also started working some moonlight jobs beside his oil field one. He did repair and painting of his land ladies rent houses and her farm. Soon her neighbors and friends were contacting Perry to do the same for them. The other job was putting up and repairing TV towers and antennas as well as repairing TVs.
“In 1959 Magnolia Petroleum Company was merged into parent Mobil Oil Company. Cutbacks and layoffs took place and whole divisions were being eliminated. Perry was relocated in 1960 to Ulysses, Kansas after Perry chose that site.
“Perry’s job at Ulysses was confined to a small area inside a fence, where the gas processing plant was located. The whole crew of seven men had other, full-time employment. Perry and Dorothy over the next years built a house and Perry bought a 1956 International truck and started a new career as a bulk oil distributor. In late 1962 he bought a new bulk truck and the following year started selling tires wholesale to service station in a 100-mile radius of the home base.
“In 1969 the tire business had experienced so much growth Perry sold the bulk oil and fuel business to a friend and went into tires exclusively. They built a new metal building and Perry’s Tire and Supply was started. There were some ups and downs over the next few years which included a serious accident to Perry when a truck tire exploded. A dishonest employee and a break-in at night and the stealing of the tools and truck tires did not help his business. Hard work and very long hours saw the business expand. Building more warehouse space, adding service trucks and farm tire work over a larger area eventually paid off. Perry sold the company in 1984.
“Throughout the bad times and low points, whether it was physical, financial, or spiritual, Perry’s Savior never failed to provide the things he needed most. One of his goals was to see each of his children graduate from a Christian college. That goal was accomplished.
“Perry and Dorothy opened an antique store after selling the business. He also went on several mission trips overseas and was very active in his church in Ulysses going all the way back to 1960. Perry, with a few colleagues, started a new bank in Ulysses in 1984 and was on the Board of Directors until it was sold in 2000. Who would know what the world held for a young man, born in a weather-beaten house in rural Greenwood County a few miles from Madison, Kansas. “As a young boy bored with endless farm chores, Perry could always find time in the day to dream and plan for the future. A favorite for him was to get in the seat of the manure spreader and make plans for a career in being a soldier, warrior, or world traveler, and many times make a promise to himself if ever an opportunity would be present, he would be a success at something in life. “Dare to dream, and then dare to make the dream come true,” was his motto.”
