Rachel Bloom

January 29, 2004

Jean Rita Kiser

Lived Through Depression and World War II

Jean Rita Kiser was born in a small railroad town called Hosington, Kansas about ten miles away from Great Bend. She was born on January 6, 1927 just two years before the Depression started. When I sat down with my grandmother, a 77 year old Swedish, petite woman, she described a life that opened my eyes to a much simpler and harder life of the 1930’s. Her fondest memories are of the Home Rule Café, a restaurant where her parents’ worked. During high school, one of her responsibilities was to help prepare lunches for the troop trains that would arrive in Hosington. After high school, she went on to pursue a career in teaching. Although she made teaching a career, she has always considered her major accomplishment her family.

I was born in Hosington, Kansas on January 6, 1927. I am half Swedish. My mother was full-blooded Swedish. My grandfather [did come from Sweden]*, but my grandmother was born here. The Swedish heritage has had more influence on me than my dad’s side. [His mother] was English and [his father] was German and Dutch.

My father was a cook in a restaurant, and my mother stayed at home with me for a few years; and then, she was a waitress in the restaurant. The name of the restaurant was The Home Rule Café. The restaurant had a horse shoe counter and behind the counter was shelves. On one end of [the counter] Grandma had a rocking chair. A lot of times I would sit there and rock myself to sleep, and sometimes she would rock me. I always remember her reading the (comics)* to me on Sundays.

[A meal at the restaurant consisted of] chicken, salad, vegetable, three slices of bread, two pats of butter, coffee, and dessert for only thirty-five cents. They were open twenty-four hours a day because the [Missouri Pacific Railroad] went through Hosington. It [had] a terminal where the crews would get off and stay overnight, and then take another train back the next day. These people had to have a place to eat and stay in the hotels.

We (always lived) in the same town, but we moved four times [within Hosington]. My folks built a house in 1939, and it had two bedrooms, a (bathroom), a living room-dining room combined, and a kitchen. They paid 4,700 dollars for it. Hosington had two grade schools, one on the east side and one on the west side. I went from the first grade to the sixth grade in the west school. We didn’t have school sometimes because it was too dark, especially during the dust storms. We did not have lights in the school. The PTA decided they were going to have a money making (event) to put lights in the school, so they decided to put on a play. [They ended up making enough money to put lights in the school.]

When the neighborhood kids all got together, we liked to roller skate on the sidewalk around the block. I remember once we had a club. We had a secret word to get in; you couldn’t get into the club unless you knew the [password.] It was “Amconreview,” but I don’t know what it meant. I can’t recall too much about the club itself. We [mainly] just played outside. We played rope, [and] jacks was really popular. I remember running after the ice truck. It would come and deliver ice to the homes. We didn’t have refrigerators, we had ice boxes. You put a chunk of ice in it, and that cooled off the ice box. Entertainment at night was “Jack Armstrong”, “Little Orphan Annie”, and “Always Lucy Too” on the radio. (The radio shows) had secret code rings you could order. I know Ovaltine sponsored “Little Orphan Annie.”

I remember I would go and spend a week with my other Grandma, [Grandma Nelson]. [I would take the train to visit.] The trains were something then, too. The soot (used to) come in the windows. I remember I had a white hat of some kind, and I laid it down on the seat next to me. It was just full of soot (when) I went to pick it up.

[Another thing I remember was the dust.] It would blow in from Oklahoma, that red dust. [In] the houses, the real fine dust would just shift in. It was just like you were in a fog, but it was dust instead of fog. In fact, my mother, put sheets on [the living room set] to try and keep the dust off of it, that was just one way of trying to keep it clean.

One time, one of the waitresses that worked at the restaurant went to beauty school and graduated, and had a beauty shop about ten miles west of Hosington. She wanted my mother and I to come up, and she would all give us permanents. I must of been a third or fourth grader. Dad drove us up and the wind started blowing and that dust started coming in. As soon as she got through with us, we got into the car and came back home to Hosington; but along the way, mother was looking out one window and her friend was looking out the other window [trying to see], Grandpa was trying to drive, and he went in the ditch because they were telling him to go this way, and then this way, and so forth, and he went in the ditch. I said, “Well, what are we going to do?” Finally, a pickup truck come by, and we all crawled in the back of the pickup and got to town. Needless to say, we had to wash our hair right away. But that dust was terrible, just terrible! You couldn’t believe how it would just sift into the house.

I was [just] a kid, [but] I’m sure that the [Depression] had an affect on our family. I would have been two years old [when it started and it lasted] until I was eighteen. We didn’t have any money then, there was none to be had. A nickel was like “O-o-o” and a dime was like “Wow!” I know that my dad made only twenty-five dollars a week, so that would make him a hundred dollars a month. My mother, when she was a waitress, made a dollar a day, that was seven dollars (a week). [Together they made] thirty-two dollars a week. Our rent was probably twenty-seven dollars a month, almost a fourth of their income. I know that I’d always get a five dollar bill from my Grandma Kiser, and that always went for a dress or some kind of clothes. [The Depression] probably did affect us, to be more--conservative. But like I say, everyone else was in the same situation. We always had enough to eat, and that was the main thing. [The Depression ended with] World War II because it provided so many jobs for people.

As far as the economy in our town, it was better than some towns because of the railroad terminal. They had the shops and the round house down there. They had quite a few of the people employed on the trains. The oil field began to come in at that time, but I was probably in grade school when they started to drill for oil around Hosington. It was pretty good drilling. We had lots of oil men, and that improved the economy (for) people. I don’t think that our town was hit as hard as some because we had that business. [Even then,] money was so scarce; (but) today its so plentiful. Then, if you wanted a dime, you didn’t have a dime.

During the Depression, [there were] lots of men that we called tramps or hobos. They kind of rode the rails, and they stopped at different places. A lot of them were nice, good men. They were just looking for jobs for their family. They would always come to the restaurant and ask if they could have a handout or some food. Grandma always gave them food.

Another thing, since it was railroad, we had some black people in [Hosington]. They lived south of the tracks. There were a few porters on the trains and they would come from Kansas City. They would have to stay overnight in Hosington. They would go down to south Hosington, stay down there. But they had no place to eat, and Grandma would let them come into the kitchen of the restaurant to eat. She never did refuse anyone.

Alberta [and I were close friends]. We would go to the movies on Saturday afternoon and Monday. Saturday [movies] were always a western with Roy Rogers, or Hop Along Cassidy and Tom Mix. There was always a double feature, so you got to see two movies. On Sunday’s there was nicer shows like musicals, but we didn’t go because of the Sabbath. Tuesday was bank night; [at the movies] you would buy your stub, and they would tear it in two. You’d have one and they would put [the other one] in a barrel and pull out names for fifty dollars. It cost a dime to get in, and then they raised it to twelve cents. You could also get nickel popcorn or dime popcorn. The movies were a great thing in those days.

[During high school], I waited tables at the restaurant. Back then you didn’t get many tips. Tips were probably a nickel or a quarter (and that) would probably be quite a bit. We had a party room, too; so we served the KIWANIS club, and I think they’d leave a dollar tip for serving forty people. Lordy me, that was a lot. [In high school I was in] Glee Club, Chorus, and GAA, Girls Athletic Association. I know we didn’t have any honors society or anything like that. There were a few kids that drove to school, but not too many. Mostly country kids drove to school. Almost everyone walked. We had a car, but we didn’t take it out very much. The first one we had was red 1932, 1933, and then we had a green one.

I took violin lessons; and if I would of been smart, I would have practiced better and done much better on it than I did. I also took expression lessons. [The expression lessons taught you how to read poetry.] I really enjoyed that. I went to Great Bend and had a teacher over there, Mrs. Moses. She was very good, and I learned a lot. I recited [poetry] and my mother played “Home Sweet Home”, while I was reciting it. Whenever they would ask if I could do a reading at the such and such, my mom would say, “Oh, sure she can,” without asking me. I thought, “Oh, great!” We went to Colorado and Aunt Lily says, “We are going to meet our ladies. Will you give a reading?” So I did, (and) I think it was (at) that one that Grandma played the piano. We (also) had a coral reading. That’s a whole group that says the poem together. It was pretty neat.

[I remember when I first heard about Pearl Harbor.] I’d been to church and I walked down to the restaurant. My dad was cooking in the back, in the kitchen. He had an old field gold radio there, and he told me to listen to the radio. That’s when I found out about it. This has never happened to our country. It made a big difference later. I was a freshman in high school [when that happened.]

[When the war started], the troop trains came down through [Hosington] on the Missouri Pacific. They would move troops by train, and they would stop sometimes and have meals at restaurants; and you would have to pack lunches for them. So I helped with that at the restaurant, but they would let Dad know probably twenty-four hours before they were in town so they could prepare for them. Then the troop trains would stop, and the soldiers would get off the trains and just flood the streets. I don’t know how many was on a troop train; but it was quite a number, a lot of cars. Another thing, too, is rationing. I know we were rationed on a lot of different things. I know shoes for one thing and butter. We were rationed because all of these things went for the war effort. Shoes were made for soldiers, and very few were made for civilians. We had to have food stamps-- you got so many a month, and that had to do you for the month. You couldn’t [have] a great deal. Another thing was rubber, there was no rubber for the cars. You couldn’t buy tires or gasoline. People raised gardens, good for vegetables. I suppose canned goods [were rationed] too. A lot of that went to the troops because we were not, we weren’t very prepared for that war.

At the restaurant they were rationed on different things, too. My mother always took care of that. She had to go over to the county seat at Great Bend and get the restaurant’s rationed coupons for the month. Then when you would serve troops, you would get extra ones because you had served the army. [Because we were rationed, it made us] value life a little more. (It changed) how you value just common little things in life that you didn’t have.

During the war, we had blackouts [to prepare] (if) foreign bombers would come over. They never did. We always had to practice with blackouts. I think they had a siren that would ring. You would have to turn all the lights out. You had to have these blinds that were real heavy that didn’t let any lights out. It was mainly on the coast, but we had the same thing at home, just in case.

That was April 1945 [when I heard about Roosevelt’s death]. I had GAA, Girl’s Athletic Association (that day). We were out playing baseball or foot softball [when] someone came by and told us that Roosevelt had died. That was very sad. [He] was the only President I knew because he had had four terms.

A lot of the girls I knew went to Washington D.C., and got into civil service after high school. [Civil service] needed secretaries and things like that. After I graduated from high school, another girl and I went to business school in Denver. We were in Denver [when] we heard about [how the war was over]. You should of seen the people! Oh, out in the streets [there was] yelling and hollering. You’d never forget it. We walked because we weren’t too far from where the civic center (was). That’s kind of a congregating place. There was people all over the streets. The streets were blocked. It was very exciting. After that, I decided that I wanted to go to college. So, I went to Bethany down in Lindsborg and got my associates degree in teaching.

There was another teacher in school, Rose, and she invited myself and another teacher to go to her church’s youth picnic. That’s where I met Orville. We got married August 3,1951 in Lindsborg, Kansas, in Bethany Church. That was the year of the big flood in Kansas. I suppose [when we got married] we weren’t the best off, but we never felt like we were poor. However, I know I could go to the grocery store and bring home four sacks of groceries for twenty-five dollars.

After we got married, we lived in [Osage City] for a couple of years. Then we moved out [to the farm.] We’ve been out here about fifty-two, fifty years. We usually had around hundred chickens and one milk cow. We also had a team of mules (whose) names were Mary and Jerry. We had cattle first, then we went to hogs.

For six years I taught fourth grade, and (for) three years I taught third grade. I quit [teaching] when I had Janelle because they didn’t employ pregnant women. I think she was probably about two years old when I started substitute teaching which is a thankless job. I taught quite a number of years till 1970 when I started (at) the [Hallmark] plant. Substituting was fine, but it wasn’t a regular job. So I thought, “Man, I’ve got to find something to help the kids through school.” That’s why I started at [Hallmark.] I wrapped napkins, (and) we would wrap around one thousand to four thousand a day.

My major accomplishment would be raising my family, and seeing that they are good self-respecting Christian people. “Would I do anything differently?” I don’t know, I doubt it. You know you always say, “Well, if I could do this over again I would do it differently,” but you [know you] would do the same thing. The one lesson I would [like to] pass on to another person would be to always do your best, don’t give up, try, and love one another.

This interview was conducted by Rachel Bloom in December 2003.

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