Leroy E. Harsin

Leroy E. Harsin

Employed 1953 at JPG

Interviewer-Kirt Knobel

December 3, 2000

If you can start off by telling us if you were born in this area or the first time you came to Southern Indiana.

My name is Leroy Edwin Harsin. I came to this area in 1922, in what is now the

area 53 in Jefferson Proving Ground. Anything I say here is not condoned, accepted or meant to be an official word of the U. S. Government.

I started working at JPG in 1952 and worked there until they shut down in1958. And went on standby until 1961, I was reemployed in the spring of 1962 and worked until January of 1978. I worked as a Proof Technician, you might say all over the Proving Ground. The Proving Ground has a firing line of about three and one-half miles and it had several, 30 or 40, gun installations along this firing line and I worked on most of them. I didn’t live on the Post.

I had more than one job on the Post. I was employed as a Proof Director and after a certain amount of time I was advanced to the job of Chief of Proof Technicians. And then we had a slow down and I went back to Proof Directing. In 1967 when the Proving Ground took on the additional mission of testing propellant they sent me to Aberdeen Proving Ground to learn the job of testing propellant. I became a propellant tester for some time and then was advanced to Gun Proof Leader, the chief of the section of propellant testers.

Training I received was simply training of working under proof technicians to learn certain jobs and when I became proficient I would take over the job.

Equipment I used was, I had a whistle that I blew that would signify the firing the weapon. I had directions, like specifications, of what the ammunition was supposed to do. I had a fully operation procedure that told me all the rules, such as how much ammunition to lay out on the test thing there, how many people were allowed to be in the test area & the direction how to set up the signs on the building we were firing, and of course a clipboard with the blank information I had on the test I was firing.

The computers were just coming into being when I retired from the Proving Grounds so I didn’t have to much experience with computers.

How much I made on the first job I can’t really remember. I do remember in 1962 when I hired back in I made $7200 dollars a year.

The atmosphere we had was a very good atmosphere, work environment. Actually we dedicated ourselves mainly to testing ammunition so that it would be safe for the service to use and handle. We had explosions that showed the real purpose of that test. Explosions that happened that if they had happened out on the field with the gunners around the gun, that could have annilated them.

I don’t know that the atmosphere changed significantly. We had a good atmosphere ? like various things that were handled by Union and manufactures and something like that.

Women were ? even as the test directors? They had women that were my age, print of graph operators, and even some that were good observers that went out in the field and observed the firing.

The best memory I had of JPG was that I was able to go out in the area. Since I was born there it was like going home. And I was able to hunt and fish in little groups and things like that.

The worst I remember is that after it was closed I am not able to do that anymore.

We had one particular commander who made quite an impression over my life. I’ve got his picture around here someplace, I don’t happen to have it with me. He’s a Kernal Ben Hardequist that lives at Bell Harbor, Wisconsin. Mary and I have visited him after I retired and after he retired and he has visited us here in our home.

Serious accidents, we had one fatality were the gunner was supposed to arm a ammunitions and then they would be placed on the fixture. He was supposed to be armed and then he would retire behind a barricade and proof director would note the firing. This thing when he armed it, it went off and killed him and crippled another fellow for life. We had several minor accidents but no more fatalities

My thoughts when JPG closed in 1995, was that I hoped that I lived long enough to see what happened to it. Whether it was cleaned up, whether part of it would be resold to the people or whatever happened. Apparently I have lived that long. It has been delegated a Wild Life Preserve now and renamed the Big Oaks National Wildlife Preserve.

Memories and stories I would like to share, not anything I would like to talk about.

Now then Lee why don’t you go on with the rest of your story. As long as they have time, the things that they have prepared.

I think I already stated that my talk won’t be a complete history of the operation or anything at all because the scope of it is so great.

Lee. why don’t you start out by telling this group, since they are recording it, that you were born there and a little bit about your life there.

I am Leroy Harsin I was born in 1922 at a place called Big Creek in which is now Jefferson Proving Ground. I lived over 18 and ½ years before the government procured this area for a Proving Ground.

I was a little old farm boy who grew up in the country and went to school in a one room school. I got married in October before the government took this over in 1930 -1941. I have here a picture of myself and three people who were at my class at Common School, this was taken recently and now here we are in 1938, if you would like to pass that around.

JPG, the best reason that I can give for JPG was that it was to assure our people in service, our troops, that they are handling the best munitions that are possible to be made. Now the Charlestown Powder Plant that was connected to this testing was built in 1940 and 41. I was employed there from February of 1941 to May of 1943 when I was inducted into the Navy. At the Powder Plant we made Powder out of cotton. Now powder can be made either out of cotton or of wood pulp. It’s a dry grade, very dry, and then soaked in acid and starts through a process of boiling, grinding and either mix, pressing and cutting and so on. And then they elevate it into what they call a blending tower, which is 150 feet high and holds 150,000 powder at one time. Now this is the product of one day’s operation, one product, one line and there were six lines. The idea of putting it up in this blending tower is that it was dropped and in the dropping process it was mixed so that it was uniform all through the lot. It was given a lot number and it goes to the loading plant and a sample goes to the Proving Ground and that is loaded into the ammunition and the lot number is maintained until that ammunition is finally fired or disposed of.

Powder is the size depending on what use they are going to make out of it. Say as a grain is graded that long and an inch in diameter it will have seven holes in it. When it was pressed through the press, there are little wires in the press that leaves seven holes in this grain of powder. The idea of that is to give a larger burning surface to the powder. As it burns it burn in those holes and gives more burning space. It is called progressive burning. If it only had one hole in it, it is called degressesive burning , because as it burns the burning wire increases instead of decreases.

I was in the Navy. I got out of the Navy in December 1945. In the Navy I spent 22 weeks in Gunnery School and became and instructor in Anti-Aircraft Gunnery. Those 40 millimeter shells, and they were the biggest ones there, was something I brought home in the 40’s for the holes in the casing are in her garage. We use them in practice loading machines. They don’t have any explosive charge in them.

After getting out of the gunnery business, I was an Instructor for 23 months, and after getting discharged I had a stainless handle arcrylic. Then in 1952 was when I took the job as proof director in the Navy. And they hired me in the Proving Ground. The work load was very heavy at that time due to Korean War. We had something like 1700 employees at the Proving Ground at that time. With seven sections, as I recall, each with a certain type of test to perform. I was on the night firing section. It was easy to get a job on the night firing section and I worked on the night firing section until it was dispensed of in 1957. Night firing sections had mainly firing at time fuses, for instance, they had the machinery, you might say, to record the time of an air burst. We had one particular fuse I recall, we had something like 60 test fuses out of a lot of 5,000 that we sent to the Proving Ground. Of those 60 we fired about ten with a 30 second airburst and about 10 with a 45 second airburst and ten with a 60 second airburst and then we had about 10 rounds of that group that we fired at 400 feet at wood coverage and another 90 millimeter test that was a fire burst also. Now we had great mirrors, such as the spotlights in the Army, that would pick up this airburst and set it in and stop the clocks that had been started when the fire was initiated. Something like a 60 second airburst. On a 30 second airburst the gun was elevated to 300 mills and on a 45 second airburst it was elevated to 460 mills, and on 60 second airburst it was elevated to 600 mills. Now that gun had the capability of firing outside the Proving Ground. Now we took a little bit of that later.

To observe these airburst, we had observers located in Building 488, which is the building on K Road, which is made out of concrete and had windows that were slanted on the second floor, so the observers could watch out. These windows, of course, were bullet proof glass. The observers were on that road (indicating a rough sketch of the Proving Ground) and these last 60 second fuses would break in the air at about 16,000 yards. They were close enough, these airburst, that sometimes a little shrapnel would rain down on that building. Well one night we were firing and the observers said, “ There is some coon hunters out here with lights.” Lanterns. We hadn’t started firing yet and they said go ahead and fire. Which I fired around and the light went out. They didn’t stay around very long.

In this Proving Ground they had numerous bunkers at the firing impact area and at that firing impact area we would have a concrete bunker at approximately the south end and at the North end we would have another concrete bunker which were 3 feet concrete, reinforced, and then they covered them with about three or four feet of dirt. And they had a door opening to the north and inside was a bench, a telephone, a little stove and a sighting bar. We have telephone contact with these observers all during firing and we would fire around and they would observe it hitting out here on the field, now these of course were not airburst. We fired a lot of ? that we need to know if this round hit to far to the left, to far to the right, to far to the range of ?. So these observers with their sitting bars can take a reading on each impact and write it down. And the end of the firing they would bring that in and give it to the ballistic section and they would figure whether this round had come within specifications in it’s range, and in ? and everything. The weather had a lot to do with that. We had a weather station that sent up a balloon every morning and during the day if it was necessary. Incidentally on the day that we had the tornado in April 3, 1974. This radio station reported that the overhead winds at 20,000 feet were over 200 knots during all that day. That had something to do I am sure with the tornadoes.

When a lot of ammunition came to the Proving Ground, it was reported to the Section Chiefs and each Section Chief would have a board where he would record this lot of ammunition. The data came the proof director signed to it and the data was fired, the date the teletype was set, you accepted or rejected and the date the record left the proof directors hands.

We had a scheduling route which met with these resection chiefs and branch chiefs and anything concerned electricians, machinist. It was about 20 people met at 10 o’clock everyday for a scheduling session. The assembly people were there, we would decide what would be fired the next day. Of course, Lagrange Control people were there and they would tell us whether it was going to interfere with things that they had planned. They planned the road work, the electric lines and the telephone lines and everything. When this was completed they made up a copy of all the ideas that what would go tomorrow. They would make several copies of it and distribute it around to all the people in the Proving Ground, and they would know what to expect tomorrow. People at the assembly might call the test director and ask him something about the makeup of the ammunition. In fact in some cases the test director had to go to the assembly and check the makeup of the powder and such as that.

Going to the ? line was the proof director would take the standard operating procedures, his ? worker and his two ? and his whistle and go to the firing line. He’s ? would be there and have the ammunition laid out on the bench in a crew shelter. And the Proof Director would check to be sure the ammunition was laid out correctly, and it applied to fuse setting? and everything that applied to the firing. And then he’d go out and he had to check the gun number, the tube number, the recoil number, and he would check the laying in of the weapon with the gunner’s quadrant. Then whether he was taking his citing off the right citing stick and so on. And after he did this he measured the coils that were necessary for taking the velocity of his round. And then he goes back into his shelter and calls up cartagraph and she can tell you how fast the ground went through the coil. He would call ridge control, this place called B Tower. And he has to do with all the clearances that are given from the entire Proving Ground. You give him the information that you are going to fire, such as a type round, the gun, the gun position and all. He has plastic made up where he gives you a clearance, or gives anybody a clearance, and lays these things on from the gun position until the danger area. He may have as many as 20 or 25 of these during the course of the day. So he is able to at a glance anyone that calls in for a clearance, if they would be in the danger area, and if he can grant them that clearance. You see many of these danger area would overlap.

Now when we get our reports, you would get the cartograph operator on the line and ask her if she’s ready, and get the observers on the line and say, “Are you ready?”. They would need the type of ammo and what we expect of it and all that and they keep a written record of course. That being done then you would give the gunner’s the okay to load. So they took one round out to the gun and load the gun and close the bridge, come back to the ? Shelter. But first if it is a gravel taking velocity we would magnetize the round, which would kick on these coils that we shoot through.

Leroy Harsin

Childhood memories of life on the farm during the 1920’s and 1930’s at the present site of JPG

Interviewer:

Date

He is going to tell us about the childhood at the Jefferson Proving Ground, he was born and raised up there, it was a family farm.

This is Leroy Harsin I was born and raised in Jefferson Proving Ground; I am going to relate a few of the experiences that I encountered when I was a boy on the farm. Our neighborhood consisted of a blacksmith shop, a telephone exchange, a country store and my father operated a feed mill on every Thursday. At this country store we had 3 boys and a girl, who were, should we say, the nasty boys and girls of the area. (Maybe that’s not the right words)

The troublemakers?

Yeah they got into trouble like; we had a friend named George Gurley and George would come down there and visit and they one day wrapped him up with tape that you wrap up groceries and left him out in the yard. It was like a mummy. The same boy, they hung him in the tree in the schoolyard one noon, and classes took up and the teacher said “Where’s George” and somebody said, “He is hanging out there in the tree by his feet”. Things like that went on. This one boy at the store was my age, his name was John, and John and I were buddies from way back. I remember him about the first thing that I remember of anybody. He would steal groceries like Vienna sausage and pork and beans and things like that and bring them down along the creek where we lived. He and I would eat them and also we would catch crawfish and fish. We would make a little rock in front of us and we would peel the crawfish tails, and have a baking powder can lid with lard, and fry the crawdad tails and the fish.

One night when there was ice on, he and I were down at this creek we had a bon fire-

Why don’t you tell us what creek that was?

This was Big Creek. Of course! So he and I were chit chatting, and he was probably eight or nine years old and I was the same age. He already rolled his own cigarettes out of Bull Derm. So he rolled his cigarette and wanted me to take a puff, which I had never ever smoked at all, so I took a puff. He says “Now swallow” and I swallowed and it was like swallowing fire. After I got my breath I didn’t try any smoking for a long while.

Another thing I remember of course the first thing. I always went fishing when I was too small to bait my hook. I would bring my pole up to the house and my Grandmother would bait my hook and I would go back down and fish until I lost that worm and then go back and get another worm.

Wife: Tell them who your Grandmother was.

That was Grandmother Smart, her maiden name was Schwartz. We lived together, my Dad and Mother and Shirley & Agnes and my grandmother. She died when I was about nine or ten years old.

Did she live on the Proving Ground too?

Wife: Oh yeah! They lived in the same house, Betty. She was the one that was born in the house that he was born in.

? a sister was about a year and a half older than I.

Had various things to go on here and I don’t know if any of them is to much interest or not. Back in this winter of 36 we had a very big snowfall on Christmas Day.

Wife: Was that when the blizzard was?

Oh Yeah, on Christmas Day in 36. And of course we were off for Christmas vacation for about a week, but then after school started we carried a scoop shovel in the school bus and I being kind of the biggest bullies we would get out and help scoop the tracks open so the bus could get through.

Wife: O that was when he started to high school.

And the tracks would blow shut every day. So every morning and every evening coming home, we had one area where the tracks would always blow shut.

Mary suggest that you go back and talk some more about grade school.

Grade school, Johnny and I spent together, Johnny Radgers. We had two people to the desk. One thing I remember was we were setting there one day, and he and I was setting close to the great big old pot belly stove. And all of a sudden the pipe fell down, right between us. Of course that caused some consternation.

We had things like my uncle and his family lived in our house on another farm and they had about four or five boys that were big enough to play with me and that sort of thing. So we thrashed there one time, they had the new straw stack. And lo and behold all of a sudden from one of the relayers we saw a fire up there and went up there and these boys had tried to grow stopples in the hole in that straw stack.

That’s the same bunch of people, they moved there from Kentucky and didn’t have any support at all. They came down to our house every day and they got a quart of milk. And Clyde said well if we was going to give them milk, we just as well let them have the cow and milk there own. So they took Old Jersey Brooms and everything worked fine until she had a calf. And after she went dry she didn’t have no more calves so they eat the cow.

One particular night, after we were up say maybe 15 or so, it came and ice storm. We were living down on the creek and here’s this hill (Dick knows what hill I am talking about). My friend from up the way, Dusty Smith, came down and we was ready to skate. But he came down in his little green Chevrolet Coupe and it was so slick he couldn’t hardly get the thing turned round there in the crossroad so he gave up and went back home. But two friends, Ralph Field and his brother Don, and Elvin Rose and myself had two sleds so we went up this hill. And it was so slick that we had to crawl up through the ditch in order to get up this hill. And we got up there and here was Forester Wilson, a friend from up there, on ice skates. He got over in Conway’s pasture and was swamping down the hill on his skates. Ralph Field lays down on a sled, and his brother on top of him and over the hill they went. So they worked out all right so Elvin Bruner laid down on his sled and I laid down on top of him and we started over the hill. We got about half way down, and we got up to where Forester was over in the pasture, and his old brown dog walked across the road in front of us. And we hit him broadside and it knocked us both off the sled and knocked us almost senseless. Broke poor old Brownies leg and they had to shoot him.

Now what happened right close to the telephone exchange and that was Ben and Eliza Conway and Ben was the blacksmith. He had a Model T Ford Roadster. He drove that Model T Ford Roadster until I was big enough to have a car of my own, so that was 36 or 37. He traded that roadster for a V8, and he had it parked there in his blacksmith shop. And all of a sudden he got in, he didn’t have anybody to help him learn to drive or anything, but he thought he would get in and start it up just to here it run, I guess. And anyhow he started it up and Per- zoom he came back across the road and into the field across the road. He got her in gear, and where in his Model T he had to push to get it to go, this one here you let it out to get it to go. He came and got me to put his car back in the garage. Now he was always shoeing horses and things like that and when I went to the Navy I already knew the sailors liked me for knowing how to shoe horses.

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When I was about 5 or so the folks were setting tomatoes and in order to set the tomatoes they muddied the roots. So Mom and I were down on the crick with a tub making mud to mud these tomato roots. And I was running around on the rocks and I fell and split my head open and I still have a half inch scar right on the middle of my head. Of course that was before the days of going to the doctor and they didn’t take me to the doctor They just went ahead with setting tomatoes. At that same place along the rocks there, right now there is a depression that has been hollowed out from solid stone, it’s probably bigger than a ordinary wash pan and about that deep and there is a thinner there and a trough going from the basin out to the end of the rock which is four or five feet away, that somebody has carved that sometime or another. Whether it was Indians or what I don’t know. But know one in my family knew the history of it.

Now this whole thing happened right at the Mill Pond. Right up the creek just a little ways is what we called the Mill Pond, and right in that area is the deepest pond around. That was where the Paper Mill was built at one time and that is where Paper Mill Road got its name. There’s still timbers in the creek, there that have never rotted, because they were under cold water and there were the foundation of this Paper Mill.

Now that brings us to the spring. When we were in school there was a bridge there at the school. Down near the crick there was a spring which had been walled up with rock and the basin was four or five feet deep, the water was only a foot or so deep, and there were rock steps going down into the spring. So of course whenever the creek got up, why if the water got in it and muddied the spring up, within a day or two it was clear. But the teacher would send one or two of the biggest boys over to the spring to get water everyday.

So the spring was close to the school then?

It was possibly, maybe, three or four hundred yards.

But all your drinking water came from there.

It was across the bridge and back to the Blacksmith shop, down over the hill’

Wife: That wasn’t to far from your house.

It was further from our house than it was from the school. You have to be on our place, our place reached over there a little bit on that side of the crick. Anyhow the teacher always told whoever was going after water, “to wait until the water cleared after the (fogs?)dumped in before you dipped in for water”.

Well during the course of this melee, I had a heifer of my own. Dad had given us, my sister and I, a cow apiece. What we got out of them is we would get the veal calf every year. And when the calf got ready to veal it was ours. So this particularly one, I let it grow up so I had my own cow besides the one I already had. When it came time for her to go see a bull, I was going to lead her up to Mr. John Smith’s where they had a white faced animal.

I’ll regress just a little bit. And mention that I always went barefooted in the summer time. Soon as school was out I would come home from school and I’d take off my shoes. And once in a while they would get me to put them on to go to church, but other than that I went barefooted all summer long.

So I’m leading this heifer up the road, and I don’t know if you remember where Newyer’s bridge is or not. Part of the way up that bridge and Newyer’s dog started barking and the heifer turned around and started home. There I was barefooted and I tried to catch her and I mean I had the rope, and she was a galloping and I kept easing up just a little further on the rope all the time until finally I got my fingers in her nose and headed her back. By then we were just center Recover Road, that road that goes North from there, and my feet was on fire. So I got her back there to the bridge and lo and behold I got her across and past the dog and everything and took her on up to see the gentlemen cow. The sad part of it was, was he was way out in the pasture some place and they hunted, and hunted, and hunted, and never did find him. So we come home empty handed.

Along this big creek there is a cave near where we really had a swimming hole. Up from our buildings about a quarter of a mile or so, they had a road that turned off into the creek. And here was this hole, it was deeper than any other place else around there. This hole was up something around your shoulders all the time and there was a great big rock on that side that stranded into the creek. And in that rock was a crack about that big, and there was a sycamore tree growing out of it. I haven’t seen that tree for, I guess, twenty years because they’ve restricted the place. The cave was close there to this swimming hole. Now this was an old bachelor that lived about a mile from the cave.

What was the name of the cave?

The cave, all we called it was Enoch’s cave. Because everybody knew that that’s where Enoch went when there come a storm. And night or day if he’s got time he goes to this cave. I’ve seen him, when I’m up there. I’d go up there and here he’d be setting there on the bank. And he’d say, “Well I thought I’d take a little swim.” but everybody knew that he was setting there waiting to see if a storm was going to hit and then he’d go in the cave. In fact he had a cable, hanging from a tree or someplace, where he would grab a hold of and then he would go down into the cave. And somebody cut that cable on him and let him go ahead over one time. He told me this one time, he woke up at night and he didn’t have time to get to the creek and there was a culvert out there in the Paper Mill Road. I don’t know if you remember it or not but on Paper Mill Road there is a culvert that’s high. It was right close to Enoch’s house and he made it to that culvert and he said, “The water got up to here but I stuck it out”.

Okay, you said it got up to his neck, that’s how deep the water got.

Um-hum. He’d come around home and helped up concrete and stuff like that. I can’t forget one time we sat down to supper and we had fried eggs and my Mother passed him the fried eggs and he said, “Well let me see, do I want an egg or don’t I? I don’t believe I do, thanks.”

Wife: He took care of some neighbors’ dog to, didn’t he?

Well I wouldn’t going to bring that up. He killed every dog that come in sight. He skinned them and had the hides in his house. He wouldn’t let nobody in the house, but he had them.

Well did he tan them then?

Yeah!

And made rugs out of them?

Wife: He hung them on the wall.

Wall hangings.

The neighbor that lived back the lane from where he lived, he killed his dog. He came out, and he always had a horse and buggy he didn’t have no vehicles, an he came up past there one day in his horse and buggy and Enoch was out there digging water away from something and he said “ Well howdy Mr. Peak. How are you?” and Mr. Peak got out and whipped him.

Wife: He killed Mr. Peak’s dog.

Of course we had skating parties there whenever there was ice on, but maybe we would go three or four winters when there wouldn’t be enough ice there to skate. But when there was we had skating parties. We’d bring two or three lanterns and I’d get down there after school and drug in a lot of drift wood and make a bond fire. I am sure you have seen this monument over there at Fairmount, that’s got Wilson’s written on it, that was in the creek where we skated. And they kept every year so that when the creek would get up it would move down the creek a little ways. Well Clyde told me one day, “I’m going to get that thing before it gets off my property”. And he used a team and wagon, and how I don’t never know, he moved that thing up to the cemetery where his folks is buried. And then when the Proving Ground took over they moved the body and went down there and hoisted that there in Big Creek in Fairmount Cemetery.

Come the 16^th day of February, one year, this friend of Althio and mine( which was a friend of Ralph Field) and I went skating, with our ice skates. Ordinarily there was no ice to skate on that late in the year. Well there wasn’t that day either because he fell through. That afternoon it thawed enough that there was a bare strip of water up through the creek. And I said, “You’re not going to beat me swimming too much” and I peeled off my clothes and jumped in.

Which one of you won the race?

He fell in in the morning see.

Oh, it wasn’t at the same time then?

No, he fell in, in the morning. In fact he and I went on up there to Edmond Stevenson and got him dried by the stove and got him dried off a little bit.

Wilson’s pond was built in about 1936. The government had this program where if the land owner would furnish the cement, they would; the WPA would build the dam. So they hauled all the rock out there in the creek and used the gravel that they hauled in with horses and wagons. And mixed the concrete there by hand, and drilled the holes for the dynamite by hand and made this dam. It took about a year and a half. In order to drill holes, they had a drill that one fella sit with holding the drill bit and another guy would hit it with the hammer and he’d would turn it about a quarter of a turn and they’d hit it with the hammer again. And if they drilled six inches a day each one of them, they thought they’d done a good days work.

Do you remember when they did that Dick? Dick Roberts is setting here with us, across the table from Leroy, and he was raised up there to and he is nodding his head and affirming that to.

After this thing was completed and everything, that meant it was a six foot dam. So that meant that there was six foot water behind it. And this colored Wilson, who we called Ted, who was only about 5’6 - 5’7 , he was tolerable short, he worked on the county highway. And when he’d come home in the evening his clothes would be sweaty and all, and he would just go in the creek, clothes and all, and cool off and wash and that sort of thing. Anyhow this particular day three of his daughters and my sister and I were up the creek from the dam a little ways. He went in the water here at the dam and was tippy-toeing up there and he got even with us and he stepped off the ledge and went under. So he popped up and about the second time he popped up he motioned for me. I jumped in and he got a hold of me and I noticed when he turned loose of me. I got hold of his suspenders and dragged him out, and when he got done coughing and spitting and everything he said, “I knew that I shouldn’t hold on to you, I would drown us both”. He turned loose.

Wife: He couldn’t swim could he?

No.

So you saved a life that day?

Yeah, I don’t –never mind.

Whenever I had problems around home there and getting into problems. I would get a whipping with a razor strap. So this particular day, I don’t know what I done but anyhow, I come in the kitchen and Mom caught me and started to give me a whipping. And she’d been canning cherries and she had a bowl of cherry’s sitting there on a cabinet, on that porcelain shelf. During the whipping that cabinet got to shaking and the top fell off the clock into the bowl of cherries and dumped the bowl. Had to boil the clock in a hubbard to get it to run again.

Did she quit spanking then?

Yeah but she wouldn’t in a good humor I‘ll tell you.

We didn’t get electricity until 1937. And then it was only because the electric company had to have 6 customers per mile in order to build the line. And each customer had to pay $3.00 a month. This Zella Jones,( Zella Matthews ?)as he comes to this thing, her dad took 2 taps, and my Dad took 2, and Phillip Wilson took 2 in order to get the electric to our place. Of course our place was the end of the line and Wilson’s was the end of that line.

Well before we got this electricity, I slept on a cot. And I had kind of a shelf table and a certain thing there and a shelf there and I would lay in bed at night with a coal oil light and read. So this particular night I went to sleep with the coal oil light a burning. And I unconsciously stretched kind of like this and pulled the lamp in bed with me. Globe landed right between my chest and that arm. I wound up with a couple of blisters about that big around and the lamp went off, when it fell in there.

At least you didn’t start a fire.

No, it didn’t start a fire, but it was kind of hot.

Now I am saying, I always went barefoot which I did. The fire got north of a barn where we burned a whole lot of trash one day. Soon after dark the spot in the middle was burning yet and needed stirring up. So I started walking out to where I could get a torch or something to stir it up, and I stepped into fire. Of course I don’t even know whether I even told the folks about it or not. But anyhow before that foot got well I am walking in the barn one day. And somebody had left a pitchfork laying down there and I run a pitchfork up between a couple of my toes, and that sort of fit.

Did you start wearing shoes then?

No, no, it would take more than that to get me to wear shoes

This here table over there had what they call a crystal radio. Did you ever have a crystal radio Dick?

Dick: No

Tell them what kind you had.

Dick: Well our first one was a big set. It had three sets of batteries and a big horn on top of it.

Was it a Edison Phonograph?

Dick: No. A Cat Water.

Did it take track records or cylinder?

Wife: No Honey, it was a radio.

Oh okay. A Atwater Cat. The first thing we had was a Crosley radio that took batteries. We run the batteries down so much that Dad wouldn’t let us listen only to Lowell Thomas, Amos and Andy and then when Lum and Abner came on we listened to them. Well Dad fixed up a wind charger and kind of helped that A battery but it didn’t help the B batteries any.

Dick: We would change the batteries in the Model T Ford and run one for a while and then run the other one, and keep them up-the A batteries.

When Dad had this feed mill, which I mentioned a while ago, he would grind feed for people on Thursday. They would load it in the trunk of their car or some of them had pickup trucks or whatever. They wouldn’t bring more than four or five sacks a piece at a time, with corn and everything. He also had a corn Sheller hooked up with a belt. Here’s the feed grinder and he had a extra pulley on the feed grinder, and a belt going down here to the corn Sheller. He would always have me to sit back there where the cobs were elevated out and keep the cobs away so it didn’t start pulling cobs back through. So this particular time, I’m sitting there watching the cobs and everything. There was a chain driven thing to bring the cobs up. The cobs were there by me and I thought it would be fun to stick a cob in that chain and let it run around that cub. I did and it broke the chain. Oh boy!

Here comes the razor strap again!

Well Dad never did find out I done that. I went around there with another cob and tried to push that belt off. For here that chain was a flopping see. When I reached in there to push that belt off the chain caught me right there. I have a knot there yet , that I don’t know whether that caused this knot or not because I had another accident on that arm.

He is pointing to his right shoulder when he says that.

Anyhow when that chain hit me, them fingers they just drawed up like that. And I wore that arm in a sling for about two weeks. And I didn’t tell my Dad what happened.

We had this old horse named Prince, and I always rode Prince or Bonnie. Bonnie was the other horse but that’s another story. I am riding Prince one day, and I usually ride him into the stable before I got off And I didn’t realize that the manure had built up enough that when he went up into the stable that there wouldn’t room for me between him and the top of the door. And I just got my head under and this arm under when we came up against that door. Well I had enough pull I backed him up and rolled off. But there again I’d hurt my arm, and I am sure I broke ribs under that shoulder blade and there again I wore a sling for a long time.

We had a friend named Harold Monrose.. Now Harold Monrose is Zella’s husband. Now Elvin was, shall we say, sort of a daredevil, or what you say I don’t know. But anyhow he had done several things that an ordinary person wouldn’t do. I never told Mary this. But the day that I was baptized, we had the baptism there in the swimming hole.

Wife: Was that there at the sycamore tree or Wilson’s Dam?

Yeah, at the sycamore tree. I was about eight I guess. And to be baptized; there was Dura, Helen, Russel and Loraine and myself. Now these first, were my cousins. So I had heard through the grapevine that before the baptism there was going to be a fight? Elvin and a boy named Bob Hope, they never did get along, and they decided they was going to have a fight.

After the baptism?

Yeah, when they found out there was going to be a baptism. I was up there and I had to make it home of course to get ready for the baptism and all. But after the baptism, as quick as I could without making it to obvious, I wanted to get my clothes changed and get back up out there for the fight. And I did. Now the whole crew, all the boys that was there and everybody, went across and up on the bank. There is a wall there about fifty feet high or so, thirty-five anyway. Everybody went up there to this field and the fight came off. Now there was only a minute or two, and they put up their dukes and everything and Elwin hit him once in the nose and the blood flew, and that was the end of the fight.

This same Elvin Rose had a bicycle of course. This bridge that we are talking about there at Muniers’ has got a banister about that wide.

Wife: About a foot?

I’d say a foot. Anyway he got his bicycle up on that thing and rode across.

How long is the bridge?

It would be at least as far as from here to the other end of our camper.

Wife: How many feet?

Well I would say 75 feet.

That’s on top of the rail of the bridge?

Yeah.

Wife: And how far would you say to the water?

Down to the water was about 30 or 40 feet.

So he had a big fall if he would have. . . .

Well it would have killed him deader than a mackerel. He not only did it once he did it twice. I’ve got proof of that. I didn’t see him but I’ve got plenty of proof that he did it.

This Mr. Rose they are talking about married Leroy’s cousin, Helen Smart.

One night, late in the evening, me and this Rockfield that I talked about came down there to Big Creek. I was there on the bicycle and Elvin wanted to go up to his Aunts and bring home a jersey bull. Now his aunt lived about a mile north of Big Creek. Where Elvin lived was about a mile and a half south and a half a mile west. So the whole trip was going to be about three miles. And his Aunt had this jersey bull borrowed, about a two year old jersey bull. Here we are with three bicycles and three boys. And how are we going to do this? We would have to leave our bicycles, and Elvin said ,”Oh no, no, no, we weren’t. You watch me we are going to let the bull pull us”. He had ropes and everything so we got up there and the bull was in close quarters and we got the ropes on him. And we roped down his neck and down both sides.

He and I tied some ropes under our bicycles and turned the bull out. Everything went fine out the lane and everything until we got to the road. And when he was supposed to turn right, he went up over the bank, through a briar patch on that side. Bicycles, boy and all. I scooted my feet on the gravel trying to stop him and everything.

Was you barefooted again?

Yeah. Rose didn’t have any shirt on so he hung on to his bicycle and through them briars he went. He just got scratched up something awful. We got him stopped

Wife: Did you roll off your bicycle?

Yeah, Yeah! I abandon mine. So we got him back on the road and everything. This time we didn’t tie the ropes onto the bicycles. We held on to them, so we could turn loose if we had to. But we got everything to working right and we took the bull home that way.

He pulled you on home then?

Yeah.

Wife: What happened to Ralph?

He was a bystander, he didn’t get into it. But that night with this coal oil light I was picking rocks out of my feet yet at two o’clock in the morning and that’s no joke.

We had this Model A Ford, Dad brought new in 1929. When I got big enough to drive it, I don’t know if I was big enough or not, but I started driving it about 1934. He’d built this new house, of course I helped him some, and Mom done a whole lot of work. He would send me to Madison with a two wheeler trailer and pick up part of the items for his house. And I was only about 14 years old.