During the early 1930s much of America believed recovery had arrived. But the bubble of change was a dizzying deception. Many rancher farmers made down payments on new machinery.
Rural folks I lived with bought a new, shiny Farmall tractor, and, with a neighbor, a huge, more efficient combine. Both expensive. Others also purchased trucks, pickups, cars. They were sure bad days were over. Some folks at the edge of the American Great Plains giddily lived as if the word “depression” no longer existed.
President-elect Herbert Hoover declared America was “nearer the final triumph over poverty than ... in the history of any land.” Ranchers/farmers – habitually conservative – vigorously believed this. But all too soon, such heady belief in a nation-wide revival was shattered by an unkind economy. It made plain that both they and Hoover had dealt in wishful dreams. Bread lines, which had eased a bit, grew ferociously. They never reflected the shrinkage Hoover so grandly promised.
Quarter by quarter the economy went downhill as prices, profits and employment fell, leading to the political realignment in 1932 that made Franklin Delano Roosevelt president. It is important to note that after increased failures, Hoover shifted to ideas laying a framework for parts of what would become FDR’s New Deal. A dying national market, the spread of the dust bowl and horizons blackened by swarms of grasshoppers eating everything before them – not just every crop, but harnesses, clothes lines, fence posts, windshield wipers – boosted the growing sprawl of hunger, feeding the downward spiral of national morale.
Charlie and Charlotte Sphanle – and their daughter, May – with whom I lived on the family’s large farm, were crushed by this second incomprehensible economic attack. They had taken me in at my mother’s request when she luckily found an excellent job. When economic revival seemed to possess muscular growth, she got married. But then, abruptly, a second attack of depression slammed well-being – and hope – to a halt. Nonetheless, she took me from the farm to live with her and her new husband in a small town on the edge of the Great Plains.
Her husband came to western Nebraska from Philadelphia where he was hired to sell radio advertising for a small NBC station. He had never been around children, knew nothing about rural life, livestock or small rural towns. I knew nothing of cities, city folk, or even anything of my mother, and certainly nothing of a suddenly appearing east-coast stepfather.
I was unhappy at being jerked away from the Sphanle farm, the only home I had known. As a raw, puzzled farm kid, I was dizzied by such new circumstances. I didn’t know anyone, not a bit about such “new stuff.” I yearned for farm/ranch life.
Part of the “new life” my mother introduced me to included Catholic school. Life was dizzyingly chaotic both at “home” and school. But this dizzyingly chaotic life soon revealed two mid-sized rivers that ran along the north and south sides of this former frontier town. The largest band of water was on the north. Twisty, both deep and shallow, much of it hidden in a wide slim forest, it beckoned because it was most distant from my parents’ home, and from school. It was impenetrable by vehicles of any kind, and seemed to seldom attract hunters seeking game on foot.
My mother became puzzled by my disappearances to the river, and frustrated by my poor grades. She even scolded me for losing weight. I was used to more resourceful cooking. Boiled hot dogs constituted her concept of a mid-day mainstay. Her friends said she wasn’t feeding me well. My “stepfather” tended to silence on the subject. The grocery bill was being kept down. When it went up, they argued, and I said nothing. I scavenged whatever leftovers I could find. From time-to-time my stepfather asked what happened to the remains of certain meals. I was silent. My mother insisted I eat all the “leftovers” possible. “People ask why I let him get so skinny,” she said. Then they would argue. I went outside with pliers and screwdriver to work on a used bicycle I’d found by the north river. It was in such fair shape, I guessed someone had stolen it, hid it along in the wooded river bank, then lost interest in it.
I grew, slowly, and kept looking for ranch work. My parents applauded such “initiative.” But they wanted me to do things they identified with “town boys.” I was seeking something I knew. A repaired bicycle would take me to nearby ranches. I didn’t mention that. It would displease them.
My plump non-athletic stepfather persuaded his boss to let him broadcast nearby high school sports events: from football to track meets. Quietly I sought pick-up rodeo competitions between local ranches. He didn’t know such things existed. But he was successful with his sports broadcasts. And life became less difficult.
I got my first concussion in a pick-up rodeo between wranglers from two competing ranches. Woke up in a hospital two and a half days after a crazy bronc went up in the air and came down backwards. My step-father said my mother had been crying. The doctor frowned at me, and said no more bronc riding.
A local newspaper reported this “mishap.” Got the attention of the lead wrangler at the “S“ ranch, and helped me find pick-up work. Being a farm kid, I was cheap but experienced. “Just right for this crazy depression,” I’d say aloud to no one, needing helpful-sounding words. The folks I knew all needed to be free of disaster. First, I needed a kid’s way out of odd living on my own.
Third of a series.