File #60: "Brandt_John_1.mp3"

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John Brandt_1

HERB: Testing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 I'm Herb Douglas and I have the privilege of interviewing John Brandt, 80-plus years young these days, and today is May 22 1985 and we are in Mr. Brandt's office at 203 11th Avenue South in Nampa. [00:00:30] He already has been recorded on a number of tapes as he has set forth his memory of how Nampa developed and how his family life impinged upon the development of Nampa for the last 80 years actually or plus but today we're going to try and and see how some of this felt and how his memories of the heart as well as a head come together today. And John you tell me that your [00:01:00] father came here 1900. Now why in the world did he come out to Nampa in the middle of a desert in 1900 and how did he get here?

JOHN: Okay dad had been a farmer and stock raiser back in Nebraska started out with an ox team and a sod house he had considerable difficulties in the start for example after three years he had put all he had into a larger acreage [00:01:30] had a fine crop hailstorm came along and wiped it out but he still persisted and finally when he left Nebraska he had 16 quarter sections of land which he sold for $25,000. Those days that was a lot of money. He came out to Nampa because at that particular era or that time of history there were a lot of people immigrating from Nebraska to the West. [00:02:00] I think maybe dad came here just because he wanted a new challenge he'd done very well in Nebraska considering and he stopped off here at Nampa because there were others here from that area and he went on to Seattle. An interesting side light he went out with some realtors in [00:02:30] Seattle to see what investments might be available they showed him some of that harbor front waterfront he could have bought for his $25,000 but that didn't look good to a farm boy so he went on up to Alaska during the year following the gold rush had a very severe storm going up he said that first he's afraid the boat was going down and he's afraid it wasn't but he got to know him and spent that summer out in [00:03:00] the gold fields some interesting stories there but coming back to Nampa he did not invest in Seattle he came back here and he thought he he saw a great future for this so he bought sagebrush land and developed it into farmland. Now he wasn't married at this time. No he was not married and then because of the fact that he was interested in land he [00:03:30] opened a real estate office and had a partner it's rather interesting my mother then had been a schoolteacher in Kansas she'd saved her money and family who were friends of hers were immigrating to this area from Kansas in what the Union Pacific called an immigrant car with all their livestock their machinery their household goods and their family so she came along and [00:04:00] we used to kid her yeah you're you're looking for maybe looking for a husband and she wouldn't quite deny that at at any rate she came out here and dad was in the real estate business and had a good reputation so she told him she was looking for an investment he took her out in what's known as the lower Fairview district northeast of Nampa he had an 80 acres there which he considered one of the best that he ever owned [00:04:30] and he sold her one cornering that which she owned privately personally and looked after until she was 87 years old when she finally said asked me to take it over.

HERB: All right your dad came in 1900 and they were married in 19...

JOHN: My mother came out then in 1903 and we used to kid him yeah he sold her this 40 acres and then married her to get it back. June 1903 then they were married back [00:05:00] in Kansas. Dad built the house which is now 503 10th Avenue South a red brick which has since been stuccoed but that's where I spent my first 10 years and then at that that time they had three boys and dad said town was no place to raise boys so we moved out on the farm where...

HERB: Now he felt you weren't getting enough work done or were you getting into too many...

JOHN: Oh he thought there were too many too many [00:05:30] opportunities for diversion.

HERB: Too many activities that he wasn't ready to...

JOHN: Out there we were busy all the time. I've often said this the South Pastures we call it and a lot of lava rock in one. Dad couldn't find anything else for us to work at. Well dig some rocks out of the South Pastures a day boys so so we were always busy.

HERB: Now that means that you must have spent the first few years of elementary school in Nampa.

JOHN: My entire elementary [00:06:00] school was in Nampa. We walked walked back and forth and then there was a streetcar, an interurban streetcar which ran from Nampa to Caldwell to Middleton Star, Eagle, Boise and then Nampa again. So in bad days we could ride the streetcar or dad would take us. My earliest grade school was in old Kenwood school which is where now the home federal is and then Lakeview and then back to Kenwood. High school [00:06:30] was held there at that time. I went eighth grade.

HERB: How many children in the elementary school?

JOHN: Oh boy, I don't really know but I suppose that there are. Well by the time I was in 1904, and six'd be 1910, there had been quite a growth. Lakeview and Kenwood were the two grade schools and I suppose there were [00:07:00] several hundred by that time.

HERB: Certainly not one-room schoolhouses.

JOHN: Oh no. Not in there.

HERB: Were you divided up into grades?

JOHN: Yes, grades and even had A and B grades. I did that for a great many years. I recall I skipped the fifth B for example when we were having fractions and I always did have trouble with that as a result.

HERB: And then the high school?

JOHN: High school [00:07:30] was out where the present City Hall is. My class, which graduated in 1922, was the second class in there. We went in in the midterm. They had A and B grades. I skipped one so that put me into the midterm there.

HERB: What was an ordinary day like when you were, we'll say, ten years of age? An ordinary day?

JOHN: Well, [00:08:00] I suppose that I was about ten when I moved out on the farm. Prior to that time, I can recollect raising a garden. I remember one time I raised a lot of sweet peas. I was going to sell bouquets of sweet peas. I managed to sell one to our mailman. Other than that, I have a few recollections of that early time. For example, the [00:08:30] streets were not paved or gravel. They were dirt streets. Each morning, a sprinkler would come by with a water wagon, which would lay the dust.

HERB: Horse-driven?

JOHN: Horse-driven. And every kid in the neighborhood, we'd go out there barefooted. By the way, everybody was barefooted in the summer. As soon as we could get a chance to get our shoes off, we were barefooted. We enjoyed following that sprinkler and having that sprinkler feed.

HERB: What [00:09:00] kind of books did you have in high school?

JOHN: It was rather the normal and usual courses in high school.

HERB: You felt you had a good education?

JOHN: Yeah. It was somewhat scheduled toward college entrance rather than practical school.

HERB: Did you take Latin and preparatory courses [00:09:30] like that?

JOHN: Yeah, Yeah, I had Latin and geometry.

HERB: You were pushed? You felt pushed all the time in high school that you had to make your grades?

JOHN: Yes. Even those who were not quite as zealous as I was, I was always one of those little guys on the front seat waving my hand. Yes, I think there was considerable motivation. Probably more kids dropped out [00:10:00] many times because of work means. The academic didn't appeal to them. Unfortunately, that's about all there was at the time.

HERB: What kind of games did you play in high school?

JOHN: I was never very physically able. I did go out for track, but other than that it was just impromptu [00:10:30] playground activities.

HERB: School was over what time in the day? Four day?

JOHN: Four o'clock.

HERB: Four o'clock? That's a long day.

JOHN: We spent a full day.

HERB: Did you walk home most of the time?

JOHN: Yeah.

HERB: How many miles?

JOHN: Oh it was about, from high school. It was about four, four and a half miles.

HERB: Every day, unless it was...

JOHN: If it was real bad, there was a streetcar, fortunately, that came by [00:11:00] within a quarter of a mile of our place, so we could come by. Dad was pretty good at that. He said, I'll give you the money to ride the streetcar every day if you want to, but if you save it, it's your money. He taught us a little financial lesson there that was good. Eventually, before I got through high school, they had started a school bus, and that was a truck covered with a canvas with benches on either side, so that we rode in on that school bus. [00:11:30] In bad weather, when the bus couldn't run, there were no paved roads, and the gravel roads would break through and so on, so that they had a lumber wagon with a team. If one team couldn't pull it through the mud, they'd put on two, so we rode in that way.

HERB: What time would you leave in the morning if you had a team?

JOHN: It took a good hour [00:12:00] that way.

HERB: Oh, they picked you up at 9?

JOHN: No, school took up at 9, so we left home between 7, 30, and 8.

HERB: What kind of chores did you have to do before, just part of the day?

JOHN: Well, as a youngster, I was 10, 12 years old. In the summertime, or fall and spring, we raised a garden, but there again, Dad worked it so [00:12:30] that we had an interest. In In fact, I saved up my money before I was 10. It was rather interesting to think of it. We moved out on the farm, and he didn't try to dictate. I had $10, I had about $15 saved up. I bought a shovel, and a calf, a heifer calf, and a coyote trap, of all things.

HERB: Now, Now, you've got to tell me about that. Now, this is unreal.

JOHN: Coyotes often came right into the yard there and pick [00:13:00] up a chicken or so on, but I was kind of a nervous kid, and I thought, boy, I'd better trap those coyotes. And my mother took me down to buy these, and didn't bat an eye. She let me buy the coyote trap.

HERB: And?

JOHN: And, of course, I never used it.

HERB: You never caught one?

JOHN: Never, Never, never even. But they did come up right to the yard. I could tell my duty then, later, to look after the sheep. We had a bunch of registered sheep. Every morning, the [00:13:30] first thing I did was go out and see if the lambs were all right. One morning, I went out, and there was a coyote with a lamb in his mouth, and hit it off. I let out a war-hoop, and then after him, he dropped the lamb. But that's the way it was.

HERB: You hadn't yet learned how to shoot the gun? Your father hadn't?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. But, of course, I didn't anticipate a coyote there with a lamb in his mouth, either. I I remember one time, my mother tried to shoot [00:14:00] a coyote. A coyote came trotting along the road in front of her house. She got out 22 inches out at it, but didn't hit it. And these hawks, chicken hawks we called them, used to swoop down, pick up a chicken, and carry it off. So, it was a little bit primitive, all right.

HERB: Now, obviously, this has changed someone. We don't have coyotes in the area. When did you begin to see this frontier-like [00:14:30] atmosphere change, or did it change so slowly?

JOHN: It was such a gradual change that it wasn't really discernible. As I grew older, when I was being the oldest in the family, it fell on my lot to do the irrigating and to run the binder, for example.

HERB: What kind of a binder was it?

JOHN: Well, it was a seven-foot grain binder, three horses on it.

HERB: Three horses.

JOHN: He used to get so hot and tired. [00:15:00] He had a whip that you hoped to reach him with, but it was difficult. So, we had an orchard there, and one tree was what we called a sweet apple, and it matured a little earlier. So, I'd fill the toolbox on the binder with these sweet apples, and if they got too slow, I'd throw an apple at them.

HERB: Now, you mentioned the irrigation system. [00:15:30] I am absolutely amazed at the enormous amount of work and planning that must have gone into the irrigation system here. Now, was it already in place when you were born?

JOHN: No, no, it really wasn't. There were some little ditches taken directly out of the river. There There still are some, like the Middleton Mill Ditch, Eureka, and so on. The Ridenbaugh and the Phyllis were in, and [00:16:00] the New York Canal. They were irrigating isolated tracts, and that's what Dad would do, for example. He'd reel the brush off of the land and level it and irrigate it and sell it.

HERB: How did they make the land so level so that the irrigation would work?

JOHN: Well, by the end of the day, even after we moved out of the farm and I was there, we had three horses on a Fresno.

HERB: What's a Fresno?

JOHN: A Fresno was a sort of a scoop that [00:16:30] would pick up the dirt and carry it, and then you'd dump it in a low spot to smooth it up. Of course, I wasn't strong enough to lift that, except when they'd move ahead, then I could lift up on it, and the lip of the scraper would catch and dump it, and you tried to hold it back with a rope and a handle and spread it out as evenly as possible. It was slow going in that early day in leveling, a far cry from what it is now.

HERB: Well, did you have a [00:17:00] surveyor's transit?

JOHN: No, we just did it by eye.

HERB: Really?

JOHN: Of course, irrigating was much more difficult those days because it wasn't leveled as well. For example, we'd turn the water in a, we had what's called borders. We'd make a ridge down through it, maybe, oh, 50 feet wide, apart, and that ridge would confine the water in that particular land or several lands, and sometimes there'd be enough [00:17:30] sidefall in that that it all sidled over to one side, and then you had to, we called it, wing it back. You'd lay up a levee of mud and put it back to the other side and let it work over again, and and maybe you had half a dozen of those levees there before you got to the end of the field, picking up the water that sidled over to one dike and putting it over to the other.

HERB: Now, we're talking about wheat now, I suppose.

JOHN: Yes, wheat or any crop that's an annual [00:18:00] crop. After you've seeded it down to hay, for example, and you've got those borders and those levees pretty well in, and all you have to do is patch them up a bit. I remember one time I irrigated an orchard near in our area. That was a pretty forerunner of what we now have, siphon tubes. We had leveled that and had little corrugates or ditches down the [00:18:30] side of each row of trees, and had what we called a spile through the bank. It was four laths nailed together to make a tube, and my main duty after the water was turned on and the gate was put in and it was going through these was to go along with a willow and keep those from plugging up. For many years that was done with these so-called spiles. [00:19:00] Finally, someone conceived the idea of the siphon tube, which had the opening where the water entered underneath the surface, and although it would once in a while suck some moss or something in there and plug it, it wasn't like where it went straight in from the surface like the spile did, so it kept it clean and didn't plug up much.

HERB: Who invented that, or [00:19:30] did that come from some other place?

JOHN: I really don't know. I know the first time I tried it, I just about gave up. In fact, I did give up in despair. I couldn't I couldn't get that to siphon to save me.

HERB: Well, Well, how do we do it so quickly now? What's the secret?

JOHN: There's nothing to it. It's just a matter of timing. You breathe the suction and pull the water over, and if you let your hand off the end too quick or too late, you don't get it to siphon. There's no trick to [00:20:00] it after you once get onto it.

HERB: But all those irrigation ditches had to be dug by horses or just plain...

JOHN: Every farmer had a ditcher which he used to make the ditch with. One of the most frustrating things that came with that early irrigation was that you'd very carefully turn it out of the main ditch, maybe three or four places, and you'd go get some sod and [00:20:30] fit that in around the outlet and think you had it so that it absolutely wouldn't cut out. The next morning it was all going out one and cut a big gully through the field. Real frustrating. Finally, they got these siphons and more. Of course, many other types of irrigating now that are more or less foolproof.

HERB: Of course, the concrete passageways and all that help.

JOHN: [00:21:00] Of course, some of them have gates out through the concrete, but but most of them are by siphons, siphoning over the top.

HERB: Now, surely you had to pay for the water. Somebody had to own the system. How did that work?

JOHN: Well, in the very earliest time, there were companies who came out here. Much of it was New York Capital, by the way. They started several projects, and most of them failed to begin with. Finally, [00:21:30] the major ones that were the early developments were the Ridenbaugh and the Phyllis, the Pioneer in this area, over toward Meridian and the Settlers and the New York. These were all companies later organized as irrigation districts with the users, the owners. Finally, then, in about 1914, the Bureau [00:22:00] of Reclamation had completed the Arrowrock Dam in the Boise River and had made a deal with the Ridenbaugh and with the Pioneer both, mainly with Ridenbaugh, to supply water by using their ditch and enlarging and extending to other. For example, the place we moved out, when I moved out of town, had a certain number of inches and acres that were irrigated by the Ridenbaugh, and the rest [00:22:30] of it came in later and was serviced through the same ditch, but it was government water. That government water was the result of the storage reservoir, largely, although they still had some river flow, but mainly through storage. It was [00:23:00] really what made the area, because otherwise they were just more or less isolated farms. Only a small portion of the total was irrigated.

HERB: How did you know, how did you negotiate the payment?

JOHN: The irrigation district itself, like the Nampa Meridian, estimated as best they could what the cost was going to be to deliver that water to each of us. [00:23:30] It was an assessment and had to be paid before you got water there. Most of the older users went in. There's a small area, it's out in this lower Fairview district, where I first spoke of, that there were some holdouts. My dad and my mother, they wanted to go into the district, but remember a man named Cleek and some others had enough who didn't, so all these years, and still, they have what they call Ridenbaugh [00:24:00] rental water. They never became a part of the district at all.

HERB: I hear there's some marvelous artesian wells around here. Have you had any on your land?

JOHN: I've got a couple, just small ones, however. Up north of town, in particular, Herb Tiegs probably had the most. He had two or three very good wells there. But most anywhere here, one can get artesian water if he [00:24:30] wants to go down deep enough for it. Across the river, in the Oakley and Reynolds area, and up the river to the east, there's some very large flowing hot water wells there. They go down quite deep, 500, 600 feet or more. Even right here where we're standing, sitting here in Nampa, if if you want to go down far enough, you can get hot water. [00:25:00] But whether it would be economically feasible, that's a question. Well, of course, over in Boise, you know, they have geothermal water there. Even the state buildings with it now.

HERB: What was your first job like here, the first time that you got some?

JOHN: First time I ever hired out?

HERB: Yeah.

JOHN: Well, I guess it was either a haying job. I guess it was haying, driving derrick.

HERB: What does that mean?

JOHN: Well, hay was put into stacks by a [00:25:30] derrick. A derrick was a mast, usually supported by a framework, with a boom or a swinging pole on the top.

HERB: I see a number of them still around.

JOHN: There's still some of them. One gal told me, she says, that's just as characteristic of this area as the windmills of Holland. Every farmer had one. And old man Gowan, whose building is still standing on the corner of 1st and 11th North, built [00:26:00] most of them. He built a very sturdy, very usable derrick, which would be as safe and as trouble-free as possible. And we had a Jackson fork, they called it, which was a huge, either four or six-tine fork, with a nail on it which would hinge down. By setting that on its nose, as we called it, you could get a pretty good load.

HERB: It was loose hay.

JOHN: Loose [00:26:30] hay. It It was all loose hay at the time. We'd stack it, shock it in the field, pitch it onto a wagon and haul it in. And swing it on that stack, have a stacker up there, and you'd haul or dump while you pulled the rope, and that would dump the hay down, and the fork would swing and come on, and the derrick driver would back the horse up, and that, they'd fork back down, and you'd do it again. An interesting side light, after I got [00:27:00] a teenager, early teenager, there was a neighbor boy named Al Rosenbaum. Whereas now, they have their pool or some other game where they have their rivalry. He and I were rivals in unloading haystack, hay off the wagon. I used to get very disturbed. Most [00:27:30] of the forkers would take six or usually seven forks to seven forks to get their load off. He got it off at four every time, and I'd always have a cleanup, so I was five, and that used to really get me. But there we were, rivals trying to see who could get the...

HERB: Now, how old are you at this time?

JOHN: Oh, I was probably 14, 15.

HERB: You graduated from high school at what age?

JOHN: Well, I was 18, [00:28:00] because although I skipped a grade, which is a poor procedure, by the way, but at any rate, we had the flu epidemic here, and they closed the school for a season.

HERB: Did you hire out for a year or two before you went to college, or did you go straight to college?

JOHN: No, I went straight to college. However, I mentioned this interurban loop, which was a streetcar. There again, [00:28:30] Dad managed it, so we worked for our money. And so he said, "Now, each of you, by working through the summer this way, you can keep so many cows." I think we had four cows, and we could milk those cows and sell it and keep that money. And we started that, well, when I was probably 12, 13. All milk by hand, of course, at that time. At any rate, I saved my money, [00:29:00] and this is an interesting sidelight. I was saving that money to go to college, and what's now, well, it was the old Shakey's building, and we started remodeling it. It's boarded up right now, but that was the Nampa State Bank. I had saved up, I can't remember just how much, but three, four, five hundred dollars. The darn thing went broke and took my money.

HERB: What year was this?

JOHN: [00:29:30] Well, it was about 1920, about 1920, I guess, or along in there. Because I graduated in 22 and went over to the College of Idaho. But I went back and forth on the streetcar to the college. We could buy a book of tickets. So I milked my cows night and morning and went back and forth to college that way.

HERB: What caused that bank to go broke?

JOHN: Oh, it was bad loans, [00:30:00] without a doubt.

HERB: He was a good banker.

JOHN: There was nothing wrong with that, no dishonesty that, no dishonesty or anything. It's just the case that times got tough and they just couldn't make it. And that wasn't enough for the Stockman's National, which was over where the present library is. They did likewise, but they paid out. Nampa State Bank, I don't remember. We may have got some of it, but not all of it.

HERB: This was 1920. And the good [00:30:30] years were yet ahead for this country, more or less, 22, 24.

JOHN: Well, maybe. Although, actually, a farmer's depression sort of started in 19, now I'm thinking, yeah, 1921. We had pretty tough times there for a while.

HERB: Generally, you were sheep and wheat and milk cows.

JOHN: And milk cows. We were one of the very first customers of of the Carnation [00:31:00] Condensary, which the building still stands. Originally, there was a sugar factory there and the smokestack for that stayed there from 1903, I believe it was, clear through until, oh, it was only recent years, that was torn down. But at any rate, the Carnation Condensary operated there for a great many years. We were one of the first to deliver milk there. Later, they closed the condensary and turned it into a Carnation Can Factory, [00:31:30] which it is to the present.

HERB: Then you went off to college.

JOHN: Yeah.

HERB: And you wanted to take what kind of a course?

JOHN: Well, I don't know if I had any particular course in mind at the time. Like every kid, I was going to be a cowboy or a lawyer or something through the years. But when I went to the College of Idaho, I really planned to go to the University of Idaho in Moscow. College College of Idaho had what they called Founder's Day. [00:32:00] There was a church friend, a a girl from there, who was going there that there that sort of took me under her wing and took me around, introduced me and told all about the college. They had a May fete and one thing or another, a winding of the Maypole. You see a bunch of college kids wind the Maypole nowadays. They'd be too sophisticated, but that was really looked forward to at that time. So I found it so appealing and so friendly that I decided [00:32:30] I could go there two years.

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