Autumn 1927 in West Virginia, Snow Storms and Flooding, Barn Fire and a Fishnet

Autumn came and school started up again, I was in second grade and five years old. We had a hard winter, right after Halloween, we got a big storm that dumped two foot of snow, then it got real cold, they shut down the church because it took too long to get it warm. Christmas came, the school didn’t put on a play, the way they usually did, so on Christmas eve the whole family bundled up warm and walked to Brandonville to see their school play, we didn’t get any gifts at Christmas, we cracked nuts and mother made candy and cookies and roasted a chicken, we trimmed a tree, we didn’t know we were supposed to get gifts, so we were not disappointed.

After Christmas mothers cows were to calve, so she turned them dry and only milked one cow. Dora and I didn’t have to go to the barn every morning which was a relief, as it was so very cold the snow was still very deep but there were shoveled paths everywhere. In the yard beside the house was a large walnut tree, almost three feet of more in diameter, it had long limbs that hung out over the house I used to lay awake in my bed at night listening to the wind howling through the branches, I was always scared stiff, that some night one of them big limbs would come crashing through the roof. Several of the sheep died that winter, the farms animals got real skinny, as the barn is drafty and it was hard for them to keep warm. March came and we got another foot of snow, which left everything paralyzed, the school teacher stayed at uncle Lloyds, father would get up early and go to the schoolhouse and get the fire in the big pot bellied stove going so the school would be warm for the children.

Around the end of march it got warmer, then started to rain, it rained for a week, and melted all the snow, everything was flooded , the cellar was full of water, our supply of food was ruined, the weight of the snow on the chicken house has caused the roof to leak, the chickens were walking around in water, as the barn was on a hill, it stayed dry, as the water ran down the hill flooding the valley below, the school house had a foot of water in it, they shut school down until the water receded.

Finally spring was there, it was good to see the ground again, and to walk barefoot in the grass and to see the birds busy building nests, it was like coming out of a cocoon.

At the end of April school was out and I passed third grade. [April 1928]

Things weren’t good at home, mother had to sell her best cow, to get money to pay the taxes on the farms, father went around talking to himself, he didn’t sing or play music anymore. One day a man came to the house to see father. Father wasn’t home, he was over at grandfather Maust’s, helping to fix the barn roof, the man told Mother he had a search warrant to search the premises for a fish net, Mother told him to go ahead and search, the man went straight to the granary, climbed on top of a grain bin, and got a burlap sack that was hanging from the rafters, he opened up the sack and there was the big fish net, the man told Mother he would have to go and pick Father up and take him to jail. Mother cried, when the man left, she said “Someone had turned Father in for having the net, as the man knew exactly where the net was.”Mother suspected Minnie for turning Father in, as her kids were always around and knew where everything was. Father got thirty days in jail.

I remember the day he came home, it was around supper time, we were sitting on the porch waiting for Mother to holler for us to come eat, I happen to look up at the barn, and I saw him, he was just standing there looking around, then looked down at the house, and came running down through the yard, when he got to the porch he stopped and looked at us, then he slowly walked in the house. Things had been hard for us, Glenn was seventeen then and lazy, he had plowed the crops in but the weeds were taking over. Mother had no money to buy fertilizer, and just manure from the farm wasn’t enough. Father got a barn to build about a month later, lightning had hit a farmers barn, and he needed another before winter, the farmer’s wife was expecting and wasn’t well enough to cook for the men that would be working on the new barn, so mother was hired to do the cooking. It was raining the day mother and father left and I didn’t feel good, and was crying because I couldn’t go along. Mother told me she would get some money and would buy me something, but that didn’t help, Dora played with me, but I just got sicker, and soon she knew that I wasn’t just crying because Mother had left. When morning came I couldn’t get out of bed, I was burning up with fever and my chest felt like it had a rock in it, and then I started coughing, Ethel and Dora did all they could for me but I still kept getting worse, then one of Minnie’s boys came down and said the kids has whooping cough. As it turned out I had it too, I was in bed sick for a week before I began to feel better. I don’t know how we all managed those months without Mother and Father, everything seemed to go wrong.

One night Rover, our brown and white basset hound, started barking, Rover always slept on an old rocking chair on the porch, and every time he jumped off, the back of the chair hit the house making a noise.

This night Rover let out a loud yelp as he jumped off the chair, he ran into the yard, then back upon the porch again, just then, Bob Seese, a neighbor who was walking home from a date, yelled, “Jimmy the Barns on Fire” we all jumped out of bed and looked out the window, it was Minnie and Charley Harshbarger’s barn that was on fire, flames were shooting high in the sky, Glenn said “The wind is blowing this way, if the sparks get to our barn it will go to.” Everyone got their clothes on and ran to the fire, but I was afraid and started to cry, I refused to get out of bed, Dora stayed with me and tried to comfort me, but when the huge barn collapsed into ashes, it made a loud noise and I was scared more, I covered up my head and couldn’t stop shaking. The next day I went to Minnie’s, but I circled around so I wouldn’t have to go past the foundation of the barn. 

September [1928] came and school was about to start, I would be six years old and in third grade. Ruby Wolfe was to be our teacher and she would be staying at uncle Lloyds. I was pulling weeds the day I heard the wagon coming, Rover, the dog heard it first, he started barking and wagging his tail, I knew it was mother and father, Rover and I ran to meet them, they had the wagon loaded with grain, they didn’t seem very happy to see me, I sensed something was wrong. I don’t remember what I did wrong, but I was sent back to pulling weeds again.

Glenn put the horses away and helped father put the grain in the granary, then he got on his bicycle and rode away, I could hear mother and father arguing, the only thing I could understand was that they had not got any money for their summers work.

School started the following week, I was having trouble with third grade work, Dora didn’t have time to help me with my lessons, and I got behind, I was missing most of the spelling words, I kept thinking about mother and father arguing all the time. Then one day at school, we were all outside, it was recess, we were playing drop the handkerchief, that’s a game where all the kids hold hands and form a circle, the one kid takes a handkerchief and runs outside the circle dropping the hanky behind a chosen one, then he takes off running and the chosen one has to catch him.

Well that’s what we were playing when the health doctors came to the school; in West Virginia, once a year a doctor and a nurse visit the schools to check the health of the children and to vaccinate for smallpox, any child that hasn’t been vaccinated. Always before when I saw the doctor coming I would run home, but this time the kids had a hold of my hands and wouldn’t let go. I kicked and screamed and bit a couple kids, they got me down on the ground and held me until the Doctor took a hold of me and dragged me into the school house and set me on a chair, then he got what looked like a piece of glass, out of his black bag and took my arm, and right below the shoulder he cut a hole, then he put some medicine in it, all this time the nurse was holding me down, When the doctor finished he gave me a sucker and the nurse let me go, I grabbed the sucker and threw it across the school room and ran out the door and home.

Clara Bell Maust Guthrie 1889-1965, James Guthrie 1879-1965, Glenn Ralph Guthrie 1910-1986, Ethel Guthrie Ritchey 1914-2008, Dora Guthrie McNair 1916-1982, William Freeman Maust 1864-1929, Minnie Harshabrger 1887-1965, Charles “Charlie” Harshbarger 1868-1956, Ruby Wolfe Thomas 1897, Robert “Bob”Seese 1910, Lloyd Guthrie 1887-1979