PDF Text
Text
Sumner M Johnson _2
SUMNER: And they plowed into that train. And the gas tank was in front of the windshield in those days, and it exploded and caught fire. And of course, that was the end of the three boys. And of course, that news came back to the PTA before it was over, and of course, that was just a nightmare.
KEN: Oh, a real tragedy, yeah.
SUMNER: Another thing that that was asked, out there, The Phyllis Canal, the swimming hole in the Phyllis Canal was about a mile from our house. And of course, we would go down to that swimming hole, where there was a ladder, and swim. And that would be in the summertime, after we got the haying done, or the threshing done, [00:01:00] or whatever the field work was, why, we’d go down there and go swimming. That was the form of a bath. And I don’t remember it, but my dad and people tell me that we used to swim in Boise River too, which is about a mile and a half north of us. And I don’t know how big it was in those days, but it wasn’t dammed up like it is now, but I supposedly swam across the Boise River when I was seven years old. I don’t remember it, of course. And then, when we moved here north of Nampa, that Phyllis Canal is right by the place, of course, and we swam in it every day as kids also, and believe it or not, went over to Mason Creek, which is in an area, which would be north of the interstate highway now. And we had a swimming hole there that we swam in. And it was...
KEN: That [00:02:00] must have been one of the big summertime pastimes, recreations, swimming in the swimming hole.
SUMNER: Oh, yes. Yeah, and laying around in the dust. And of course, quite frankly, the swimming suits were not vogue. (laughter)
KEN: Well, those things you could do without, because you didn’t have them.
SUMNER: Yeah, so we’d... Some of the other things that we did, we pulled our pranks too. As I got older, the neighbors would have cherry trees, we’d have to slip down and eat a few cherries. I can honestly say that we didn’t destroy, like some. I’ve raised apples and I’ve had kids get in apple fights with my apples, but what we went out and picked, we put our mouths. And then we’d [00:03:00] do the same with the apples. And my granddad of course, living over there where he lived, a guy by the name of Mossman lived on the east side of Midland Boulevard in what is the old Stan Keim place. And he had a watermelon patch where the Press Tribune facilities is now, that field, clear over to US-30, as far as that goes. And I remember the big boys telling about trying to steal his watermelons and he’d come out with his shotgun and pelt them salt pellets. But I never was brave enough to get involved in that kind of excursion. We’d even go down, a guy had a bunch of honey beehives and we’d slipped down there when they were kind of dormant, and [00:04:00] pull out one of those honeycombs and get us some bread. And we’d do our share of the pranks. One time, we got stung and my mother wondered, what happened to my cheek? Well, my friend’s elbow hit me there. I don’t think she believed me, but at least I thought I had her believe me.
KEN: What was it like at Central, now that was called the junior high?
SUMNER: Yeah, it was the seventh, eighth and ninth grade.
KEN: What are some of your recollections there, and some of the teachers you had?
SUMNER: Well, Vernon Woodman was math teacher, a very excellent teacher, somebody I’ve always admired and appreciated. I remember one day -- math was kind of an easy subject for me, and I enjoyed it, [00:05:00] and one day he called me up the room and gave me the key to his house. He called me up, he gave me a key to his house, and he had a little diagram drawn out, and I got on the bike and pedaled over to his house, wherever it was, and went in, and turned off the electric stove, because he’d left at noon and forgot to turn the stove off on something that his wife had cooking, and he was supposed to turn it off. I can always remember that. But we had a playground there that was just gravel. And played, actually, tackle football, believe it or not.
KEN: On a gravel field.
SUMNER: Yeah, on sandy gravel and it would pure wear out the knees of your britches.
KEN: I’ll bet it would.
SUMNER: And then of course, the gym had been just completed.
KEN: That must have been a major thing, [00:06:00] that gym.
SUMNER: Yeah, and we just were we just thought we were in hog heaven because we had that wonderful gymnasium and played basketball and I remember shop classes down in the basement classrooms, under the stage. And we thought the dressing room were superb. By modern day standards, of course, they were very mediocre. But it was it was something as far as we were concerned. Bill Gillam was our principal. And he went from there to principal of the high school, and then I think he went to Emmet as superintendent, I believe. But he was a former football coach here that ended up in administration.
KEN: Who were some of your classmates during a time that we might still know around [00:07:00] here?
SUMNER: Well, Reid Faylor, Dr. Reid Faylor was a classmate; our dear friend Marguerite Brown, Marguerite Spencer, she and I are classmates. And then Bob Brown, who’s the realtor now, his folks were in the trucking business, then, he had followed that for a long time. Gil Keim was a classmate, he at Keim Packing company. And Cal Flora, who’s retired now from the telephone company. Bob DeCoursey, a farmer out northwest of Nampa here, classmate.
KEN: What were some of the, [00:08:00] what I guess kids today would call the in things to do, kind of dress, the dances, the parties?
SUMNER: Well, the in thing to do was to go down to Peter Pan at night, especially on weekends. And that’s where everybody congregated. It was an ice cream joint, about where -- what finance company is that right there, just east of the entrances to Schiller’s Law Offices, now?
KEN: That’s Capital Escrow. Oh, around the corner.
SUMNER: Back towards the alley.
KEN: Yeah, that was Pacific Finance.
SUMNER: Yeah, I think it was.
KEN: Even better.
SUMNER: Yeah. And that’s where the Peter Pan was, and that was the hangout spot. And I remember this friend of mine, Bill Hunter. Alex Hunter’s the former city councilman for years and president of the council, his son. They lived just north of us, [00:09:00] about 1,000 feet or so, just far enough away that we could holler and hear each other. We had to wait for the sound wave to carry, but we could communicate that way. Didn’t have phones, you’d holler. And he and I would go down there to the Peter Pan. And I didn’t know too much about what girls were in those days. And we would each order a quart brick of vanilla ice cream, and a spoon, and sit there and eat a whole quart of ice cream, when we were in high school, of course. But that was the gathering place. And then they had dances in junior high school, but I was just embarrassed, and two left feet, and everything else. And I never took up dancing, [00:10:00] never got the hang of it until I was well into my senior year in high school.
KEN: What about sports? Were they a big thing in the high school, in junior high and high school?
SUMNER: Yeah, well, that was a very important thing. We had a real competitive basketball situation, with Boise as our big competitor, of course, Caldwell. And of course, football, as ninth graders, we would come over to the high school and play on the fresh-soph team. But in the seventh and eighth grade, they really didn’t have any organized football. Like I said, it was out there, noontime, on the sand. And didn’t have any organized baseball for the junior high school. We played softball at noon time and so forth.
KEN: See now, [00:11:00] let me just be sure I got the perspective on the time period. That would have been, you said ’36 was about the year that the gym was completed.
SUMNER: Yeah.
KEN: And that’s right in the heart of the Depression. What was the Depression like, as you recall it, here in Nampa, in those days?
SUMNER: Well, of course, I was young. I didn’t know any difference because I always had plenty of food, being a farm family that raised food.
KEN: And never having any money, so it was nothing different.
SUMNER: Yeah, but I didn’t even know that we didn’t have any money. See, and I think of my grandmother. This is an interesting, I’ll just throw in a little philosophical situation here. See, my granddad died in about probably 1933 or ’34. And then it left my grandmother with -- [00:12:00] ad he’d got caught in the Depression, and the only thing he ended up left with was the 21-acre place. And nobody would buy it. There was no money. It finally sold, I think, for something like 5,000 dollars, the house, barn...
KEN: The 21 acres?
SUMNER: Yeah, that’s not a factual figure. It was a very, very low figure.
KEN: Was that in the Depression, that she sold it?
SUMNER: Yeah, or she had to sell it to have some money to live on, and she couldn’t run it, and so forth. Anyway, in Granddad’s will a lot of the stuff, believe it or not, went to kids and didn’t leave it to his wife. And she ended up penniless. And my mother was the only one of her daughters that she could get along with. One of them she wouldn’t even speak to. [00:13:00] Three of them, she could tolerate, or they could tolerate her, whichever way it was. So, she lived with us for a while, then she’d go to daughter number one, then she’d come back with us. And then she’d go to daughter number two, and then she’d come back to us, and she’d go to daughter number three, then she’d come back to us, and then she’d go back to daughter number one. It was a cycle about every three or four months. And I have, today, an old rocking chair of hers, that Dad and I moved about 100 times. And Dad always said that he was going to have that chair and she left for him, and then, he gave it to me. And I’m very proud of it. And I have my granddad’s old rolltop desk, too, that he bought 1907. I’m very proud of that. But anyway, here, [00:14:00] my grandmother ended up being penniless. Well, it was no problem around our place as far as shelter and food, but she didn’t have any money. And so, if she needed a new flannel nightgown or a new cotton dress, Mom had to come up with the dollar or whatever it was to go buy the material and they’d make it. And the point I’m making is that was when Social Security had its founding. And Social Security was not created to live in luxury, which lot of people think today that it is. It was created to live in dignity. If she’d had 10 dollars a month in those days, she could have lived in absolute dignity because she could live with us, and had her food and shelter, but she would have had money to buy an all-day sucker [00:15:00] for each one of the kids on their birthday. She had have 25 or 30 grandchildren. And she could buy a little bit of Christmas presents, and so forth. And it’s unfortunate that we’ve got to thinking that Social Security was designed so we could retire and live in the luxury that we couldn’t afford while we’re working.
KEN: Yeah, that’s interesting.
SUMNER: And I don’t know how anybody ever got the message that it was designed that way, because it was designed so you could live with dignity.
KEN: That’s a good point.
SUMNER: It’s unfortunate that we’ve got away from that. Of course, digression back again to those days, and this started when I was probably about 11 or 12 years old, but I think that’s when the 4-H age limit was. Dad was a 4-H leader, and I think I went in one year early, because of that. But you see, we had Jersey cattle and I raised those and had Poland [00:16:00] China pigs, and I worked in those, and we’d take to the Caldwell fair, over at Caldwell, it was held there at the armory, at the Old City Park. I don't know what they call it now, but they’re going up to the west of Caldwell, there. And that was a big highlight. And then the Nampa harvest festival had a little dairy show and so forth down in the old cavalry bar. But the harvest festival was on Main Street. And they’d set up all the booths right down there, right down Main Street there, First Street south, going from 11th Avenue, as I recall, down to 14th, maybe 15th and there, and then, [00:17:00] some on the side streets over to Second Street. And all the carnival activities, and that was a big deal for everybody go down, mill around, and throw at the bottles or whatever. But I always got involved in the 4-H dairy shows. And then the big thing was over to Western Idaho fair, in Boise, which used to be where there’s an industrial complex now and the interstate highway goes right through it, this side of Orchard Avenue, west of Orchard Avenue and south of US-30 or Fairview, there. And we’d stay there in the lofts of the dairy show barn for about a week. Our bedding up there, and we had straws, we didn’t have air mattress, so you’d put down straw, and then your bedding. And there was no way to keep that straw from [00:18:00] out of your sheets. It was a mess. But anyway, we wouldn’t have had it any other way, because that was the highlight of the year to go there and stay a week. And Dad would show quite a string of dairy cows too, and so, in the process, we’d stay there and run the string of cows while he’d go home and do the chores at home at night. And anyway.
KEN: That’s interesting.
SUMNER: Another thing that I did in those days, the Oddfellows Hall, I was a junior Oddfellow. And they had a pool room up there. I used to go up there and play pool by the hours.
KEN: Is that in the same location?
SUMNER: Same location. And I haven’t been up there for years, but they’re still in the same facility. I suppose they still got pool tables; I don’t know. [00:19:00] I haven’t been up there in so long. Then, when we got into high school -- well let me back up. Junior high school, you see the points for your letter... There was some kind of a letter system and then you could get chevrons that you could put on, that was a big thing, to get two or three of those, and then to get a star. Now, that was the ultimate. Well, you could get points by participating in sports, being on student council, making honor roll and so forth. So, that’s what the whole goal of my friends was, was to get as many points as possible so you could put it onto your school sweater and end up with that star. I never did make the star, [00:20:00] as I recall. There was only about two or three people that made the star. They started that at the beginning of the eighth grade, as I recall, and it was pretty tough in two years to make a star. Jackie Everly did, I remember. I don’t remember who else did. She ended up being student body president of the high school. She was student body president of her junior high school, too. Anyway, we moved on into high school and played sophomore football and was a scrub on the baseball team. And really, basketball was not my forte, but I did go out and was second stringer, and enjoyed it just because of the comrade, the fellas and that.
KEN: Well, it sounds like there were enjoyable times. [00:21:00] And I guess history talks about the Great Depression and the tragedies that went along with that, but the survival of that was a lot in attitude, wasn’t it? You enjoyed those times and probably didn’t know. Did you, as a youngster, and as a student at the time, have a perception of a great economic tragedy across the land?
SUMNER: No, no. Now, my folks probably did. They probably went through all kinds of mental anguish.
KEN: Yeah, I’m sure they did.
SUMNER: But we didn’t, like I say, as long as there was plenty of food, and we’d work, worked hard. When I was, like, 10 years old, I was the derrick boy on the haystack and operations. [00:22:00] And that means you lead the horse that would pull the cable that was hooked to the mechanism to the derrick that raised the hay up onto the stack. And so, all you had to do was lead the horse, but then, probably the time I was 14, or even sooner, I was out running the wagon. And we use slings, so it didn’t take a whole lot of strength to make the connection. And then probably at 15, I was probably running a bundle wagon on a threshing crew. And you got your two bits an hour, that was spending money. But you were happy. Now, [00:23:00] I suppose, if we’d have been down and out and had nothing to eat, that’d be a different situation.
KEN: Well here at the high school where we’re sitting now, where city hall is, you attended classes right here in this location. What was it like? What were your high school days like?
SUMNER: Well, it was always fun. I probably didn’t socialize as much as the average high school kid because I rode my bicycle something like a mile and a half, and I had morning, and I played in participated in football, basketball, and baseball, so after school you were occupied, fortunately. And I think that’s wonderful. Kids should be. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of free time, [00:24:00] because when I’d go home, I’d have to milk cows, and feed dogs, and stuff like that. And I’m somewhat envious of some of them my buddies because they’d tell about their big date tonight before something and I was home doing chores, but probably better off for it. And it was just a fun time. In fact, I think high school was -- my mother tells about college days being her most enjoyable days, but high school was my most enjoyable days. Just fun times. And I did have a setback in the fall of 1940. I had a mastoid operation in the back of my left ear and was in Samaritan Hospital for 30 days. And my mother just ran [00:25:00] across that bill. The total hospital bill was just over four dollars a day. And I’m on the hospital board now, and I’ll tell you, it’s a different world out there, now.
KEN: Indeed, it is. Indeed, it is.
SUMNER: The basic room is 215 dollars a day, and it’s going to go up. And that’s just the beginning of the charges you can get. Four dollars a day in 1940.
KEN: Who were some of your teachers, you remember here at the high school?
SUMNER: Well, Paul Jones was one of my teachers. He was a track coach, too. Annie Laurie Bird was, of course, famous here. But I never did have her. [00:26:00] And she told me that I was the only football captain that she never had as a student. But I never did have her. She was kind of prone to take care of the football boys, they tell me, but I didn’t have any trouble with study, so a teacher didn’t have to take care of me. But of course, Leo Matthews was in junior high school. I don’t think he was ever -- yeah, he eventually came to high school. Was he here, then? I don’t think he was. Doc Caldwell was my science and math teacher, Webster. And then, Dr. Lyle Stanford, who went to C of I and quite a noted teacher over there. While he was working towards the doctorate, he taught biology and sciences here and I had him. [00:27:00] He was an excellent teacher. And Evelyn Haglund, God bless her, I loved the dear lady, but oh, she was English teacher, and I had some kind of a quirk that I was a prankster to English teachers. And I led her a merry chase and I’ve felt guilty about it through the years, but I can say that when I was on the school board in the late ’60s, she needed some special help, because in some way, she was about to lose her retirement, not lose it, but somebody was trying to get it away from her. And between myself, and Dick Reardon, her attorney, we were able to ensure that got rescinded and got back to, her and I always felt that I repaid for my sins. (laughs) [00:28:00] And of course, who were some of the -- Harold White was our football coach and of course, and baseball, basketball, coached everything. And I thought he was just God. A guy by the name of Bob Hard was our sophomore coach, and football, and basketball and he ended up over as principal at high school at Emmett, as his hometown. I can’t remember offhand who all the rest of them were. There was this pair -- Mrs. Billick, I think, was in the system then but I never did have her as a teacher.
KEN: Well, after you [00:29:00] graduated, then you went on to the University of Idaho.
SUMNER: Yeah, I went up there and I got a Union Pacific Railroad Scholarship for a grand total of 100 dollars. I thought that was a big deal. And that was in the fall of ’42 and then the war came along, World War II. And some of the guys were already signed up at the end of the first semester. Reserves and so forth took them. I went ahead and finished and then that spring of ’43 went took my physical for the draft, and unbeknownst to me, they said I had a perforated eardrum, and declared me 4F. That was probably the biggest shock in my life, because here I was thought I was...
KEN: Perfect health.
SUMNER: Yeah. And so, [00:30:00] I went on back to school, worked on the farms in the summer because farm hands were short, and you worked long hours, naturally, and then went back to school. And finally, in I think, late ’44, early ’45, they reached the bottom of the barrel to get bodies and so they called me up for a re-physical. Well, I had about five doctors looking in my ear, and there was absolutely no sign of perforation. All they can figure out is somebody saw a piece of wax or something, it was thought from that mastoid it had been perforated. And so, then, I was drafted and went into the Navy and Aviation Electronic School program and ended up coming out as an aviation electronics technician. [00:31:00] Went back to school in the fall of ’46. Well, I might add, war is hell. When I was in that school when the war was over, and so, they closed the school, but I couldn’t get discharged. So, I got transferred to the PE department of this base in Corpus Christi, Texas. And four of us were assigned as our duty to keep the baseball diamond in shape. And we were on the baseball team. And we flew all over the Southeast United States playing baseball. And all we had to do on the diamond was get the home base and the pitcher’s mound shaped up, the way you do, float the infield, and line the field. All the mowing was done by public works. And we just played baseball and had free access to the gym and a swimming pool and a golf course and the whole works [00:32:00] of it. I say, war is hell. That was for about three, four months. Probably the most carefree, unencumbered period of my life, because we were on the baseball team, we were fed in a special section in the chow hall, and just had the life of a king, really. Anyway, went back to school and graduated from University of Iowa in the fall of ’48 in civil engineering, I’d switched from ag engineering, and went to work for the highway department down at Rupert, State Highway. I worked there five months. And then they needed an engineering assistant here in Nampa and Peter E. Johnson [00:33:00] and Alex Hunter, who was my longtime friend, because I’ve run around with his son, he’s the one who sponsored me, to get me to come and interview. And they ended up hiring me and after I’d been there about a month, the mayor called me in one day and asked, well, was I ready to take over city engineer? “Well,” I said, “Wait a minute, Mayor, I’m not licensed. I won’t be for three and a half years.” And he didn’t realize that, and was, quite frankly, wanting to can the city engineer. But that was something I didn’t know about when I got into the thing. But it worked out all right, and I went on. John Griffin was the city engineer. And he left, then they hired Clark Murphy. And I stayed there for three years as an assistant. And it was an interesting period. [00:34:00] They let the contract for the first major waste treatment facility...
END OF AUDIO FILE
SUMNER: And they plowed into that train. And the gas tank was in front of the windshield in those days, and it exploded and caught fire. And of course, that was the end of the three boys. And of course, that news came back to the PTA before it was over, and of course, that was just a nightmare.
KEN: Oh, a real tragedy, yeah.
SUMNER: Another thing that that was asked, out there, The Phyllis Canal, the swimming hole in the Phyllis Canal was about a mile from our house. And of course, we would go down to that swimming hole, where there was a ladder, and swim. And that would be in the summertime, after we got the haying done, or the threshing done, [00:01:00] or whatever the field work was, why, we’d go down there and go swimming. That was the form of a bath. And I don’t remember it, but my dad and people tell me that we used to swim in Boise River too, which is about a mile and a half north of us. And I don’t know how big it was in those days, but it wasn’t dammed up like it is now, but I supposedly swam across the Boise River when I was seven years old. I don’t remember it, of course. And then, when we moved here north of Nampa, that Phyllis Canal is right by the place, of course, and we swam in it every day as kids also, and believe it or not, went over to Mason Creek, which is in an area, which would be north of the interstate highway now. And we had a swimming hole there that we swam in. And it was...
KEN: That [00:02:00] must have been one of the big summertime pastimes, recreations, swimming in the swimming hole.
SUMNER: Oh, yes. Yeah, and laying around in the dust. And of course, quite frankly, the swimming suits were not vogue. (laughter)
KEN: Well, those things you could do without, because you didn’t have them.
SUMNER: Yeah, so we’d... Some of the other things that we did, we pulled our pranks too. As I got older, the neighbors would have cherry trees, we’d have to slip down and eat a few cherries. I can honestly say that we didn’t destroy, like some. I’ve raised apples and I’ve had kids get in apple fights with my apples, but what we went out and picked, we put our mouths. And then we’d [00:03:00] do the same with the apples. And my granddad of course, living over there where he lived, a guy by the name of Mossman lived on the east side of Midland Boulevard in what is the old Stan Keim place. And he had a watermelon patch where the Press Tribune facilities is now, that field, clear over to US-30, as far as that goes. And I remember the big boys telling about trying to steal his watermelons and he’d come out with his shotgun and pelt them salt pellets. But I never was brave enough to get involved in that kind of excursion. We’d even go down, a guy had a bunch of honey beehives and we’d slipped down there when they were kind of dormant, and [00:04:00] pull out one of those honeycombs and get us some bread. And we’d do our share of the pranks. One time, we got stung and my mother wondered, what happened to my cheek? Well, my friend’s elbow hit me there. I don’t think she believed me, but at least I thought I had her believe me.
KEN: What was it like at Central, now that was called the junior high?
SUMNER: Yeah, it was the seventh, eighth and ninth grade.
KEN: What are some of your recollections there, and some of the teachers you had?
SUMNER: Well, Vernon Woodman was math teacher, a very excellent teacher, somebody I’ve always admired and appreciated. I remember one day -- math was kind of an easy subject for me, and I enjoyed it, [00:05:00] and one day he called me up the room and gave me the key to his house. He called me up, he gave me a key to his house, and he had a little diagram drawn out, and I got on the bike and pedaled over to his house, wherever it was, and went in, and turned off the electric stove, because he’d left at noon and forgot to turn the stove off on something that his wife had cooking, and he was supposed to turn it off. I can always remember that. But we had a playground there that was just gravel. And played, actually, tackle football, believe it or not.
KEN: On a gravel field.
SUMNER: Yeah, on sandy gravel and it would pure wear out the knees of your britches.
KEN: I’ll bet it would.
SUMNER: And then of course, the gym had been just completed.
KEN: That must have been a major thing, [00:06:00] that gym.
SUMNER: Yeah, and we just were we just thought we were in hog heaven because we had that wonderful gymnasium and played basketball and I remember shop classes down in the basement classrooms, under the stage. And we thought the dressing room were superb. By modern day standards, of course, they were very mediocre. But it was it was something as far as we were concerned. Bill Gillam was our principal. And he went from there to principal of the high school, and then I think he went to Emmet as superintendent, I believe. But he was a former football coach here that ended up in administration.
KEN: Who were some of your classmates during a time that we might still know around [00:07:00] here?
SUMNER: Well, Reid Faylor, Dr. Reid Faylor was a classmate; our dear friend Marguerite Brown, Marguerite Spencer, she and I are classmates. And then Bob Brown, who’s the realtor now, his folks were in the trucking business, then, he had followed that for a long time. Gil Keim was a classmate, he at Keim Packing company. And Cal Flora, who’s retired now from the telephone company. Bob DeCoursey, a farmer out northwest of Nampa here, classmate.
KEN: What were some of the, [00:08:00] what I guess kids today would call the in things to do, kind of dress, the dances, the parties?
SUMNER: Well, the in thing to do was to go down to Peter Pan at night, especially on weekends. And that’s where everybody congregated. It was an ice cream joint, about where -- what finance company is that right there, just east of the entrances to Schiller’s Law Offices, now?
KEN: That’s Capital Escrow. Oh, around the corner.
SUMNER: Back towards the alley.
KEN: Yeah, that was Pacific Finance.
SUMNER: Yeah, I think it was.
KEN: Even better.
SUMNER: Yeah. And that’s where the Peter Pan was, and that was the hangout spot. And I remember this friend of mine, Bill Hunter. Alex Hunter’s the former city councilman for years and president of the council, his son. They lived just north of us, [00:09:00] about 1,000 feet or so, just far enough away that we could holler and hear each other. We had to wait for the sound wave to carry, but we could communicate that way. Didn’t have phones, you’d holler. And he and I would go down there to the Peter Pan. And I didn’t know too much about what girls were in those days. And we would each order a quart brick of vanilla ice cream, and a spoon, and sit there and eat a whole quart of ice cream, when we were in high school, of course. But that was the gathering place. And then they had dances in junior high school, but I was just embarrassed, and two left feet, and everything else. And I never took up dancing, [00:10:00] never got the hang of it until I was well into my senior year in high school.
KEN: What about sports? Were they a big thing in the high school, in junior high and high school?
SUMNER: Yeah, well, that was a very important thing. We had a real competitive basketball situation, with Boise as our big competitor, of course, Caldwell. And of course, football, as ninth graders, we would come over to the high school and play on the fresh-soph team. But in the seventh and eighth grade, they really didn’t have any organized football. Like I said, it was out there, noontime, on the sand. And didn’t have any organized baseball for the junior high school. We played softball at noon time and so forth.
KEN: See now, [00:11:00] let me just be sure I got the perspective on the time period. That would have been, you said ’36 was about the year that the gym was completed.
SUMNER: Yeah.
KEN: And that’s right in the heart of the Depression. What was the Depression like, as you recall it, here in Nampa, in those days?
SUMNER: Well, of course, I was young. I didn’t know any difference because I always had plenty of food, being a farm family that raised food.
KEN: And never having any money, so it was nothing different.
SUMNER: Yeah, but I didn’t even know that we didn’t have any money. See, and I think of my grandmother. This is an interesting, I’ll just throw in a little philosophical situation here. See, my granddad died in about probably 1933 or ’34. And then it left my grandmother with -- [00:12:00] ad he’d got caught in the Depression, and the only thing he ended up left with was the 21-acre place. And nobody would buy it. There was no money. It finally sold, I think, for something like 5,000 dollars, the house, barn...
KEN: The 21 acres?
SUMNER: Yeah, that’s not a factual figure. It was a very, very low figure.
KEN: Was that in the Depression, that she sold it?
SUMNER: Yeah, or she had to sell it to have some money to live on, and she couldn’t run it, and so forth. Anyway, in Granddad’s will a lot of the stuff, believe it or not, went to kids and didn’t leave it to his wife. And she ended up penniless. And my mother was the only one of her daughters that she could get along with. One of them she wouldn’t even speak to. [00:13:00] Three of them, she could tolerate, or they could tolerate her, whichever way it was. So, she lived with us for a while, then she’d go to daughter number one, then she’d come back with us. And then she’d go to daughter number two, and then she’d come back to us, and she’d go to daughter number three, then she’d come back to us, and then she’d go back to daughter number one. It was a cycle about every three or four months. And I have, today, an old rocking chair of hers, that Dad and I moved about 100 times. And Dad always said that he was going to have that chair and she left for him, and then, he gave it to me. And I’m very proud of it. And I have my granddad’s old rolltop desk, too, that he bought 1907. I’m very proud of that. But anyway, here, [00:14:00] my grandmother ended up being penniless. Well, it was no problem around our place as far as shelter and food, but she didn’t have any money. And so, if she needed a new flannel nightgown or a new cotton dress, Mom had to come up with the dollar or whatever it was to go buy the material and they’d make it. And the point I’m making is that was when Social Security had its founding. And Social Security was not created to live in luxury, which lot of people think today that it is. It was created to live in dignity. If she’d had 10 dollars a month in those days, she could have lived in absolute dignity because she could live with us, and had her food and shelter, but she would have had money to buy an all-day sucker [00:15:00] for each one of the kids on their birthday. She had have 25 or 30 grandchildren. And she could buy a little bit of Christmas presents, and so forth. And it’s unfortunate that we’ve got to thinking that Social Security was designed so we could retire and live in the luxury that we couldn’t afford while we’re working.
KEN: Yeah, that’s interesting.
SUMNER: And I don’t know how anybody ever got the message that it was designed that way, because it was designed so you could live with dignity.
KEN: That’s a good point.
SUMNER: It’s unfortunate that we’ve got away from that. Of course, digression back again to those days, and this started when I was probably about 11 or 12 years old, but I think that’s when the 4-H age limit was. Dad was a 4-H leader, and I think I went in one year early, because of that. But you see, we had Jersey cattle and I raised those and had Poland [00:16:00] China pigs, and I worked in those, and we’d take to the Caldwell fair, over at Caldwell, it was held there at the armory, at the Old City Park. I don't know what they call it now, but they’re going up to the west of Caldwell, there. And that was a big highlight. And then the Nampa harvest festival had a little dairy show and so forth down in the old cavalry bar. But the harvest festival was on Main Street. And they’d set up all the booths right down there, right down Main Street there, First Street south, going from 11th Avenue, as I recall, down to 14th, maybe 15th and there, and then, [00:17:00] some on the side streets over to Second Street. And all the carnival activities, and that was a big deal for everybody go down, mill around, and throw at the bottles or whatever. But I always got involved in the 4-H dairy shows. And then the big thing was over to Western Idaho fair, in Boise, which used to be where there’s an industrial complex now and the interstate highway goes right through it, this side of Orchard Avenue, west of Orchard Avenue and south of US-30 or Fairview, there. And we’d stay there in the lofts of the dairy show barn for about a week. Our bedding up there, and we had straws, we didn’t have air mattress, so you’d put down straw, and then your bedding. And there was no way to keep that straw from [00:18:00] out of your sheets. It was a mess. But anyway, we wouldn’t have had it any other way, because that was the highlight of the year to go there and stay a week. And Dad would show quite a string of dairy cows too, and so, in the process, we’d stay there and run the string of cows while he’d go home and do the chores at home at night. And anyway.
KEN: That’s interesting.
SUMNER: Another thing that I did in those days, the Oddfellows Hall, I was a junior Oddfellow. And they had a pool room up there. I used to go up there and play pool by the hours.
KEN: Is that in the same location?
SUMNER: Same location. And I haven’t been up there for years, but they’re still in the same facility. I suppose they still got pool tables; I don’t know. [00:19:00] I haven’t been up there in so long. Then, when we got into high school -- well let me back up. Junior high school, you see the points for your letter... There was some kind of a letter system and then you could get chevrons that you could put on, that was a big thing, to get two or three of those, and then to get a star. Now, that was the ultimate. Well, you could get points by participating in sports, being on student council, making honor roll and so forth. So, that’s what the whole goal of my friends was, was to get as many points as possible so you could put it onto your school sweater and end up with that star. I never did make the star, [00:20:00] as I recall. There was only about two or three people that made the star. They started that at the beginning of the eighth grade, as I recall, and it was pretty tough in two years to make a star. Jackie Everly did, I remember. I don’t remember who else did. She ended up being student body president of the high school. She was student body president of her junior high school, too. Anyway, we moved on into high school and played sophomore football and was a scrub on the baseball team. And really, basketball was not my forte, but I did go out and was second stringer, and enjoyed it just because of the comrade, the fellas and that.
KEN: Well, it sounds like there were enjoyable times. [00:21:00] And I guess history talks about the Great Depression and the tragedies that went along with that, but the survival of that was a lot in attitude, wasn’t it? You enjoyed those times and probably didn’t know. Did you, as a youngster, and as a student at the time, have a perception of a great economic tragedy across the land?
SUMNER: No, no. Now, my folks probably did. They probably went through all kinds of mental anguish.
KEN: Yeah, I’m sure they did.
SUMNER: But we didn’t, like I say, as long as there was plenty of food, and we’d work, worked hard. When I was, like, 10 years old, I was the derrick boy on the haystack and operations. [00:22:00] And that means you lead the horse that would pull the cable that was hooked to the mechanism to the derrick that raised the hay up onto the stack. And so, all you had to do was lead the horse, but then, probably the time I was 14, or even sooner, I was out running the wagon. And we use slings, so it didn’t take a whole lot of strength to make the connection. And then probably at 15, I was probably running a bundle wagon on a threshing crew. And you got your two bits an hour, that was spending money. But you were happy. Now, [00:23:00] I suppose, if we’d have been down and out and had nothing to eat, that’d be a different situation.
KEN: Well here at the high school where we’re sitting now, where city hall is, you attended classes right here in this location. What was it like? What were your high school days like?
SUMNER: Well, it was always fun. I probably didn’t socialize as much as the average high school kid because I rode my bicycle something like a mile and a half, and I had morning, and I played in participated in football, basketball, and baseball, so after school you were occupied, fortunately. And I think that’s wonderful. Kids should be. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of free time, [00:24:00] because when I’d go home, I’d have to milk cows, and feed dogs, and stuff like that. And I’m somewhat envious of some of them my buddies because they’d tell about their big date tonight before something and I was home doing chores, but probably better off for it. And it was just a fun time. In fact, I think high school was -- my mother tells about college days being her most enjoyable days, but high school was my most enjoyable days. Just fun times. And I did have a setback in the fall of 1940. I had a mastoid operation in the back of my left ear and was in Samaritan Hospital for 30 days. And my mother just ran [00:25:00] across that bill. The total hospital bill was just over four dollars a day. And I’m on the hospital board now, and I’ll tell you, it’s a different world out there, now.
KEN: Indeed, it is. Indeed, it is.
SUMNER: The basic room is 215 dollars a day, and it’s going to go up. And that’s just the beginning of the charges you can get. Four dollars a day in 1940.
KEN: Who were some of your teachers, you remember here at the high school?
SUMNER: Well, Paul Jones was one of my teachers. He was a track coach, too. Annie Laurie Bird was, of course, famous here. But I never did have her. [00:26:00] And she told me that I was the only football captain that she never had as a student. But I never did have her. She was kind of prone to take care of the football boys, they tell me, but I didn’t have any trouble with study, so a teacher didn’t have to take care of me. But of course, Leo Matthews was in junior high school. I don’t think he was ever -- yeah, he eventually came to high school. Was he here, then? I don’t think he was. Doc Caldwell was my science and math teacher, Webster. And then, Dr. Lyle Stanford, who went to C of I and quite a noted teacher over there. While he was working towards the doctorate, he taught biology and sciences here and I had him. [00:27:00] He was an excellent teacher. And Evelyn Haglund, God bless her, I loved the dear lady, but oh, she was English teacher, and I had some kind of a quirk that I was a prankster to English teachers. And I led her a merry chase and I’ve felt guilty about it through the years, but I can say that when I was on the school board in the late ’60s, she needed some special help, because in some way, she was about to lose her retirement, not lose it, but somebody was trying to get it away from her. And between myself, and Dick Reardon, her attorney, we were able to ensure that got rescinded and got back to, her and I always felt that I repaid for my sins. (laughs) [00:28:00] And of course, who were some of the -- Harold White was our football coach and of course, and baseball, basketball, coached everything. And I thought he was just God. A guy by the name of Bob Hard was our sophomore coach, and football, and basketball and he ended up over as principal at high school at Emmett, as his hometown. I can’t remember offhand who all the rest of them were. There was this pair -- Mrs. Billick, I think, was in the system then but I never did have her as a teacher.
KEN: Well, after you [00:29:00] graduated, then you went on to the University of Idaho.
SUMNER: Yeah, I went up there and I got a Union Pacific Railroad Scholarship for a grand total of 100 dollars. I thought that was a big deal. And that was in the fall of ’42 and then the war came along, World War II. And some of the guys were already signed up at the end of the first semester. Reserves and so forth took them. I went ahead and finished and then that spring of ’43 went took my physical for the draft, and unbeknownst to me, they said I had a perforated eardrum, and declared me 4F. That was probably the biggest shock in my life, because here I was thought I was...
KEN: Perfect health.
SUMNER: Yeah. And so, [00:30:00] I went on back to school, worked on the farms in the summer because farm hands were short, and you worked long hours, naturally, and then went back to school. And finally, in I think, late ’44, early ’45, they reached the bottom of the barrel to get bodies and so they called me up for a re-physical. Well, I had about five doctors looking in my ear, and there was absolutely no sign of perforation. All they can figure out is somebody saw a piece of wax or something, it was thought from that mastoid it had been perforated. And so, then, I was drafted and went into the Navy and Aviation Electronic School program and ended up coming out as an aviation electronics technician. [00:31:00] Went back to school in the fall of ’46. Well, I might add, war is hell. When I was in that school when the war was over, and so, they closed the school, but I couldn’t get discharged. So, I got transferred to the PE department of this base in Corpus Christi, Texas. And four of us were assigned as our duty to keep the baseball diamond in shape. And we were on the baseball team. And we flew all over the Southeast United States playing baseball. And all we had to do on the diamond was get the home base and the pitcher’s mound shaped up, the way you do, float the infield, and line the field. All the mowing was done by public works. And we just played baseball and had free access to the gym and a swimming pool and a golf course and the whole works [00:32:00] of it. I say, war is hell. That was for about three, four months. Probably the most carefree, unencumbered period of my life, because we were on the baseball team, we were fed in a special section in the chow hall, and just had the life of a king, really. Anyway, went back to school and graduated from University of Iowa in the fall of ’48 in civil engineering, I’d switched from ag engineering, and went to work for the highway department down at Rupert, State Highway. I worked there five months. And then they needed an engineering assistant here in Nampa and Peter E. Johnson [00:33:00] and Alex Hunter, who was my longtime friend, because I’ve run around with his son, he’s the one who sponsored me, to get me to come and interview. And they ended up hiring me and after I’d been there about a month, the mayor called me in one day and asked, well, was I ready to take over city engineer? “Well,” I said, “Wait a minute, Mayor, I’m not licensed. I won’t be for three and a half years.” And he didn’t realize that, and was, quite frankly, wanting to can the city engineer. But that was something I didn’t know about when I got into the thing. But it worked out all right, and I went on. John Griffin was the city engineer. And he left, then they hired Clark Murphy. And I stayed there for three years as an assistant. And it was an interesting period. [00:34:00] They let the contract for the first major waste treatment facility...
END OF AUDIO FILE