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John Brandt_2
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John Brandt_2
JOHN: By having to milk my cows and go on the street, I couldn't get there for an 8 o'clock class. I never did get to take botany from Dr. Boone, who was quite an outstanding person. And I didn't get to go out for glee club or athletics. Of course, athletics, I was no good anyway. But finally, the fourth year, I did stay down, and that way I... Well, I made my letter in debate. In fact, I was president of the I Club as a result. And then went out [00:00:30] and got to take part in some of the light operas and so on.
HERBERT: Were you a singer?
JOHN: Oh, not much, but enough that I enjoyed it.
HERBERT: You got by, huh?
JOHN: Got by and got that experience.
HERBERT: And you graduated in good time, and then you went off to study.
JOHN: Some courses that I would change very much, I majored in Romantic languages and minored in English. If If I were to do it over, I'd [00:01:00] stress economics and sociology and geo logy and so on. And I probably worked for grades more than I should. I got a Magna Cum Laude, but I probably should have taken some harder courses and not worried about grades.
HERBERT: You're a very modest man, but those must have been tough courses too.
JOHN: At any rate, my ambition had been to be a college professor, and I went and talked to the dean. I was probably immature. I [00:01:30] didn't mature early like some people do, but at any rate, he recognized that. So he suggested I go out into the public school field. I wanted to be a teacher and get some experience, which I did. Fortunately, there were jobs available, and I had three of them. Well, it stood of them. After I graduated from college, through my dad's influence, I had the wholesale agency for a Texas company here [00:02:00] in Nampa, making $500 a month, in Nampa, making $500 a month, which in 1926 was pretty good. I quit that and took a $175 teaching school, I guess just to try out my own wings and see if I could make it on my own. I never regretted it. I still, at that time, had the ambition to be a college professor, so I went to Stanford University. My master's was in [00:02:30] educational administration.
HERBERT: Who was your major professor or some of them at that time?
JOHN: Almack and Coverley. Almack, I think, was my major professor, but I had courses with Coverley. I never had one with Terman.
HERBERT: I was just going to mention that. I wondered if you had such a thing.
JOHN: I did have **EOs**, and that's all I remember right now.
HERBERT: Of course, at that time, Stanford was coming into [00:03:00] its own.
JOHN: Stanford was the biggest school in the West for education, Columbia in the East and Stanford in the West. But by the time I got that far along, I had decided that academic life wouldn't appeal to me. It was too detailed. Who was it, Nicholas Murray Butler said, learn more and more about less and less. That detail would have killed me. I finally recognized it and came down here and started [00:03:30] in 1936 in the real estate business.
HERBERT: Well, that was a great year to begin real estate, wasn't it?
JOHN: Boy, it was a tough going.
HERBERT: What was it like during the Depression here in Nampa? I can remember it.
JOHN: Not bad. Let's say that advisedly, because every farmer at that time had a bunch of cows, maybe 10 up to 20 cows. That was always a meal ticket. He didn't have any money to spend, but he could exist.
HERBERT: [00:04:00] Barter?
JOHN: Yeah, a lot of barter. Even doctors would take a chicken for pay, you know. At that time, for a few years there, I believe it was a 10-mile radius around Meridian, Idaho, had a greater concentration of milk cows than anywhere in the United States. Now, it's a vastly different thing. In fact, before I quit milking, when I came down to Nampa and started in the real estate business, I moved on the farm where I now live and [00:04:30] I'd saved a little money teaching. Although they said it couldn't be done, I bought a few cows and milked the cows morning and night and came to the office in the daytime.
HERBERT: You'd think that the price would be low if that many cows were in one place.
JOHN: Yep, I sold cream. People would hardly believe it, but even when I was teaching school, I milked a cow. I sold cream as low as 13 cents a pound.
HERBERT: Now, by this time, were you married?
JOHN: I [00:05:00] got married while I was still teaching. My wife taught school for one year. She had taught before. I taught school 10 years. She taught 7, I believe it was.
HERBERT: Now, you were teaching during the beginning of the Depression, weren't you?
JOHN: Yes.
HERBERT: What was your pay?
JOHN: I was superintendent. I forget what I was getting at that time. I know I kept going downhill until I was...
HERBERT: [00:05:30] Fifteen dollars a week?
JOHN: No, no. No, it was never that low. I think I got down to $135 a month, though. I started in at $175. When I started in as superintendent, it seemed to me it was $2,700 or $3,100, something like that. At any rate, it was a tough going when I first started in the real estate business. I did two men's work.
HERBERT: Now, why did you pick real estate? Now, your dad was in it to [00:06:00] some degree.
JOHN: Yes. My dad had been in it. He'd quit then and had retired on the farm. Of course, he finally gradually turned the farm over to us. But after I was away from home teaching, he... Well, frankly, I was in the hospital at the time with a stomach operation. My mother was over with me, and he had a very [00:06:30] severe eye pain. We found out it was glaucoma afterwards. Didn't know much about it those days. My mother got home, and he was delirious. She took him to the doctor, and he said, Well, we should operate immediately. Well, he wasn't of any great authority to her, so she waited until the day and took him to a doctor in Boise and was too late. So at any rate, he practically lost his [00:07:00] eyesight. But he was so ambitious, and the old folk saying was, **Work well, you couldn't sit.** So he started in the real estate business again. So he was doing that. He had just a desk in a café when I came down here. And so I started in, you might say, with him. My first experience in the real estate business was from a desk in a café.
HERBERT: Just in an open café where people came in to eat. [00:07:30] They rented out a little corner to you?
JOHN: Yeah, just charged so much for having a desk there.
HERBERT: That's pretty good.
JOHN: I did that for, I don't know, a year or so.
HERBERT: How many other real estate men were in town operating at that time?
JOHN: Well, not very many. At that time, **Van Mode** was a salesman for H.E. Martin. And let's see, Walling, [00:08:00] who later was postmaster, was in business. And that's about it. There were only a few. That didn't last very long. They began to amend along about 1941 along in there. At that time, we then had one woman enter the business. And that's rather changed from now. Now there are more women real estate dealers, salesmen, than men. [00:08:30] But it's been a very encouraging business. It's been satisfying. I have done well financially, and I've been very active in the community. And I felt that every time I located a person on a farm where he made a good living or in a house where he was happy, I performed a service to him and the community. And so part of the reason you work is money [00:09:00] that exists. Part of it is satisfaction of doing something worthwhile.
HERBERT: I'm sure that's how people came back by referrals and all that. When you were 10 years of age, what was Saturday night like?
JOHN: That was a big night. Saturday afternoon, in fact, was a big day for all the farmers came to town. The stores were all open. They hitched their horses to the rack and spent the whole afternoon visiting. [00:09:30] And then people who were occupied, the wage earners or farmhands or whatever, often, and younger people too, came out Saturday night and shopped and visited. I know at that time there was no regulation against it. One of the things that we kids got the most kick out of was opening a cutout. So that they had a cutout, as it was called, in the [00:10:00] exhaust. They didn't have mufflers, but they had that cutout. It gave us great pleasure driving back and forth down Main Street and opening that cutout and making all the noise we could. We had a little movable, lighted radiator cap rotated. We'd drive back and forth and open that cutout for a while to attract attention and then and then shut it [00:10:30] off and seal the radiator cap. These were crazy things I hadn't thought of for years. But there was very little rowdyism, frankly. The chief of police then was named Larry Maloney. He had a good rapport with the kids. Of course, those days there were lots of hobos came through. He was pretty good at getting rid of them. That reminds me of a little story too. [00:11:00] Even before I moved on the farm, many of the people at least burned sagebrush in their cook stoves. They They didn't have electric stoves. Sagebrush, the virgin stand, was quite a sizable stock on it. They'd have a pile of sagebrush out back and chop that up and use that for their fuel in their cook stoves. My mother was rather tender-hearted. I [00:11:30] guess these hobos would come by. I found out later that they had it all marked. They knew where to go. They'd come by and ask for a handout. She'd get them a meal and set them down and feed them and so on. Finally, that got so common that Dad says, I'm going to put a stop to that. You're just working for hobos instead of having any leisure time. He says, next one that comes along, tell them, while I get your lunch ready, you go out and chop some sagebrush. He said that [00:12:00] soon stopped it. They weren't willing to chop sagebrush to get a meal. I guess they got the markers off our house and went somewhere else.
HERBERT: You mean some actual physical markers or just word of mouth?
JOHN: No, it was apparently a physical marker. I've seen research made on that later and found out that the hobos had a system of marking [00:12:30] where they knew where to find it and nobody else did, I guess. That got them to come to certain houses where they were soft touch, I guess.
HERBERT: Now, as a youngster, I will say at 10 or 12 years of age when you came to town, you certainly weren't driving around in automobiles. There weren't too many automobiles.
JOHN: No, we didn't have an automobile at all. Our house was at 503 10th. [00:13:00] We had two lots in front, which were landscaped, and Dad took great pride in that, I remember, the American Beauty Climber, for example. Then behind that we had a barn, and that took two lots. The rest of the half lot was sagebrush. Now, that's right downtown now. But he took great pride in having top quality horses when he took his customers out. He had a nice [00:13:30] buggy. Many, many times I accompanied him on these trips as a youngster. A lot of these what are now drain ditches were waste ways, creeks, or forded. That's another thing that makes the story come to mind. We had great big bullfrogs, green bullfrogs as big as a platter, a plate. Dad would have 22 long. [00:14:00] He didn't have to hit them. If he hit near 'em the concussion, it would knock them out. He'd let me shoot those bullfrogs and bring them in. They had a leg that was much bigger than your thumb. They were very delectable white meat. My mother would cook them. That's an early recollection. At any rate, we had horses for a number of years.
HERBERT: Did you race horses between fellas?
JOHN: No, [00:14:30] we just had top quality horses. They talk about the surrey with the fringe on top. I'll never forget one Sunday after church, we all got into the surrey and hitched up the team and drove out to where we later, where Dad built, where we moved out to when I got to be 10 years old. For some reason, I [00:15:00] hadn't thought of this for years either, but one story reminds me of another. They used to, it was just dusty roads. They developed what they called potholes. Dust would be a foot deep and you couldn't see it at all. Your wheel would drop in that and it would fairly jar your eye teeth. At any rate, we went out there and, of course, the buggies had kind of a burr on the end of the axle. You'd take that off [00:15:30] and grease your buggy and then put that back on. Apparently, they had failed to put that back on because it turned on the same way the wheel ran, so it kept it tight. Apparently, it failed to be put back on. We got out there and dropped in the chuck hole and the wheel came off. We were all more or less dressed up, t' the church, we scratched through that [00:16:00] dust two or three inches and the pothole was a foot deep trying to find that. We never did find it. Went back to the home and got another and put it on there and went on up.
HERBERT: Now, I understand that Nampa, one story leads to another, that's for sure. In Nampa, they tell me that they went dry in 1910.
JOHN: My dad [00:16:30] was very much dry. I remember the Deweys, for example. Ed Dewey was a close friend of my dad's. Ed told me this himself. He said, the main difference between me and Herman was he was dry and I was wet. I never could understand that, why an intelligent man and had to go for liquor.
HERBERT: Apparently, many, many more people [00:17:00] agree with you. Was this for religious reasons primarily?
JOHN: I don't think so. I'm sure that overtone was there because Nampa has always been kind of a church town. My folks went to the Baptist church. I can't remember, but they first were in a little cubbyhole downtown and they built the one where it is now. That was a frame building for many, [00:17:30] many years. I'm sure it was built when we were still in town, so it was built before 1913. Folks took us to church, to Sunday school, and they stayed on to church. We were little kids. I'll never forget that. At that time, there was [00:18:00] a strip of white clover along the edge of the church. For some reason, that was just filled with four-leaf clover. If all the folks were in church and we little kids were out there, we were hunting four-leaf clovers. Sunday school was over, understand, rather than trying to listen to the sermon why they let us go out there and wait.
HERBERT: Obviously, when the state went dry in 1916, there were people who still got their liquor. [00:18:30] Can you remember any stories?
JOHN: Yeah, bootleggers. Of course, I was reared in a very strict family. Liquor was not only out, but we didn't work on Sunday. There was no playing cards in our house, so we weren't in contact with the [00:19:00] element that were...
HERBERT: Did it bring in any criminal element that came into that?
JOHN: I don't think so. This is, I think, authentic, although somewhat hearsay. There were bootleggers, some of them out in the country. Those who wanted liquor, they did get it, but I don't think it brought any criminal element in. It may have made some law violators. In fact, it did make law violators out of [00:19:30] some otherwise law-abiding citizens. Make money by that.
HERBERT: World War I, of course, was kind of a romantic war in a way. Do you think, did it have any particular change in Nampa? How did Nampa react in World War I?
JOHN: Well, I think that I never heard that word applied to it before, but maybe so, because we call it idealistic.
HERBERT: [00:20:00] Yes, a war to end wars.
JOHN: I was too young to be involved directly, but some of my friends were. And I know that many of them actually volunteered. They were going to make the world safe for democracy. And Kaiser Bill was a demon and so on. And there was a lot of hoopla, would you call it, [00:20:30] songs and bands and so on. Many of the people who actually went and many of the parents felt that it was not only a duty, but that they were somewhat of a crusade. My dad was violently opposed to war. And that, [00:21:00] of course, may have been where I became so. I don't think that war is Christian in any sense of the term. There never was a war, but it was fundamentally commercial. Even the Crusades became very commercial. And I know Dad was so disturbed by that the minister of the Baptist church preached that this [00:21:30] was a worthy cause and so on. And Dad became so disenchanted that he quit going to church even over it. My mother continued and she took us kids. Dad said that's not the Christian religion at all and if that's what they're going to teach, they're not going to go to church. Whether that was right or wrong, that still was evidence of the fact that there were some people who felt that this was not justifiable. [00:22:00] But by and large, I think you're correct that there was a certain idealism that caused a lot of the people to go. And, of course, it became very personal because in a smaller community at that time, you knew all the boys that were going. In fact, Dad sent each one of them some money and sent them a letter. Sent money to [00:22:30] everyone who went from Nampa. And, of course, some of them didn't come back. Not only grieved their parents, but people like my dad.
HERBERT: Would you say ten? Ten didn't come back?
JOHN: That, I just don't have enough. I can name some who didn't. For example, Joseph Murray. Dr. Murray was the old family doctor. Dr. Kohler was the first one here. [00:23:00] Kohlerlawn the cemetery was named after him. But shortly, Dr. Murray came and I think Kohler must have died. He was our family doctor and everybody's family doctor for many years. And his elder son didn't come back. And the present legion, American legion, is named Joseph Murray Post. So he was one example. You know, they were close enough and everybody was [00:23:30] friends and acquaintances.
HERBERT: High school friends.
JOHN: And not only that, but in a small town, lots of close associations.
HERBERT: And Nampa at that time in 1917 was what, 2,000? 3,000?
JOHN: That would be a pretty good guess.
HERBERT: About as big as Eagle or almost as big as Eagle?
JOHN: When I came back here in 1936, it was only 10,000. So [00:24:00] I suppose that's probably not too bad of a guess. It was bigger than Eagle, I suspect. Probably more like Payette or, you know, Weiser. Probably could have been as many as 5,000.
HERBERT: After World War I, we sort of settled down again, thinking there was going to be no more wars. Did anything particularly change here as far as agriculture or industry? Did [00:24:30] new industry come in?
JOHN: It changed as a result of the war, yes. For example, labor was very short during the war because the boys were away and so on. The need was greater. There were two things that resulted from that. First of all, certain foods were short. [00:25:00] Wheat wasn't enough to go around, and they had substitutes like barley and rice and oats made into flour. In my dad's practice for many, many years, every time at threshing time, they didn't have combines. It was threshing machines. He'd take some of that wheat in and trade it for flour. We had usually a dozen sacks or more of flour stacked [00:25:30] up there for the year. When this came about, he took it all back. He said, we're not better than the rest of them, so he took it back.
HERBERT: Why did he say this?
JOHN: Well, just like I said before, he wouldn't teach us German because he said we're Americans. He wanted to be loyal. Although he had the wheat there, I mean the flour there, he took it back and we ate the barley. My mother got pretty good [00:26:00] at baking the rice flour bread.
HERBERT: It must have been a bitter year or two or three for farmers because if there was a scarcity, the prices must have gone up.
JOHN: It was, and I can recollect during that time we sold our wheat at $350 a hundred. You know, it was terrific, really. Goodness, it's only been, within the last decade, we got up to $350.
HERBERT: Yes. [00:26:30] How many bushels an acre?
JOHN: Okay, that was another thing. Dad, we had sheep, so he planted some Turkey Red wheat in the fall. It was a hard wheat, and that would get up and he'd graze those sheep on it in the fall. We harvested that, and I remember one time particularly we got 55 bushels an acre. And I was talking about that all over the valley, 55 bushels. Now if we don't get a hundred, we think it's nothing.
HERBERT: Yeah, [00:27:00] more controlled.
JOHN: Well, not only that, but the fertilizers and better strains of wheat. Not hybrids, but just better development.
HERBERT: Have you noticed that you...
JOHN: Excuse me, labor saving came in at that time. For example, Dad used to have us make little, very neat little shocks of hay and couldn't get help. [00:27:30] We took a bunch rake and just dumped them and made big, big old flat shocks. So we did everything we could to try to save time. They developed, instead of the Jackson fork, developed what they called slings, slips and slings. It's just sort of a sled, and you'd lay out a chain on that with the hooks on and take the whole half load up at a time. So probably the effect was it created more efficiency.
HERBERT: [00:28:00] Now about this time, tractors must have started to come in.
JOHN: I can recollect one of the two extremes. A fellow named Weerheim here had a Brumley oil pool. He pulled, oh, it must have been a dozen plows all one way. That was one. The other was, well, the Ford tractor. Not the Fordson, but the Ford came [00:28:30] out. It out. It had steel wheels and tipped over pretty easy, easily. But it's rather interesting that the farmer who took his tractor to the field and left his horses in the pasture was criticized severely. He says, no good, he's letting those horses [00:29:00] eat away and he's buying gasoline to run that tractor with. That was not very good husbandry.
HERBERT: I can see some of that. Now, how many horses in a team could draw your largest plows? What have you seen around here? Four horses, obviously.
JOHN: Yeah, I think in [00:29:30] our case about, I guess four is probably the most I ever had on a plow.
HERBERT: What kind of horses were they, Belgians, Clydesdales?
JOHN: Well, we had mainly Percherons.
HERBERT: Percherons.
JOHN: And I've got a Belgian stud, we had a cross. Most of the draft horses were, oh, 1,600 to a ton size.
HERBERT: [00:30:00] They were beautiful things, weren't they?
JOHN: Yeah, yeah. We always yeah. We always raised lots of horses. And there again, that was one of my playthings when I was growing up and a teenager. Nothing pleased me any more than to go out and curry my, I even rode the work horse, you know.
HERBERT: John, how is it that Idaho, they tell me, [00:30:30] has been sort of a breeding ground or a growing ground for jockeys around the country? A number of jockeys have come from Idaho and many, many racehorses have come from here. How come it's become a place where just horses are raised in such abundance for rodeos and other use?
JOHN: That kind of is a gradual change as they quit raising [00:31:00] the work horses. There were many, many people who still loved horses and they became breeders of lighter. Well, I guess we should go back because even when Dad was in the real estate business, as I mentioned, he had the finest of horses. Like trotters and buggy horses. So that carried [00:31:30] on and I suspect developed more into the saddle horses. When I first managed the rodeo parade, it was somewhat nondescript yet. I recollect even having to stand at the gate and turn back some people who came in with the work horse with the blinders on the bridle, that sort of thing.
HERBERT: You turned them back for what reason?
JOHN: I wouldn't let them go in through the arena. I didn't want them [00:32:00] to have that kind of a showing. I wouldn't let them go in with three or four kids on one horse. Just dress it up as much as possible. Very shortly, it did have an effect and we got much, much better horses. In fact, when Leo Kramer was the first rodeo contractor that we had here, at that time [00:32:30] I asked him if he had any suggestions on how to better our horses.
END OF RECORDING
JOHN: By having to milk my cows and go on the street, I couldn't get there for an 8 o'clock class. I never did get to take botany from Dr. Boone, who was quite an outstanding person. And I didn't get to go out for glee club or athletics. Of course, athletics, I was no good anyway. But finally, the fourth year, I did stay down, and that way I... Well, I made my letter in debate. In fact, I was president of the I Club as a result. And then went out [00:00:30] and got to take part in some of the light operas and so on.
HERBERT: Were you a singer?
JOHN: Oh, not much, but enough that I enjoyed it.
HERBERT: You got by, huh?
JOHN: Got by and got that experience.
HERBERT: And you graduated in good time, and then you went off to study.
JOHN: Some courses that I would change very much, I majored in Romantic languages and minored in English. If If I were to do it over, I'd [00:01:00] stress economics and sociology and geo logy and so on. And I probably worked for grades more than I should. I got a Magna Cum Laude, but I probably should have taken some harder courses and not worried about grades.
HERBERT: You're a very modest man, but those must have been tough courses too.
JOHN: At any rate, my ambition had been to be a college professor, and I went and talked to the dean. I was probably immature. I [00:01:30] didn't mature early like some people do, but at any rate, he recognized that. So he suggested I go out into the public school field. I wanted to be a teacher and get some experience, which I did. Fortunately, there were jobs available, and I had three of them. Well, it stood of them. After I graduated from college, through my dad's influence, I had the wholesale agency for a Texas company here [00:02:00] in Nampa, making $500 a month, in Nampa, making $500 a month, which in 1926 was pretty good. I quit that and took a $175 teaching school, I guess just to try out my own wings and see if I could make it on my own. I never regretted it. I still, at that time, had the ambition to be a college professor, so I went to Stanford University. My master's was in [00:02:30] educational administration.
HERBERT: Who was your major professor or some of them at that time?
JOHN: Almack and Coverley. Almack, I think, was my major professor, but I had courses with Coverley. I never had one with Terman.
HERBERT: I was just going to mention that. I wondered if you had such a thing.
JOHN: I did have **EOs**, and that's all I remember right now.
HERBERT: Of course, at that time, Stanford was coming into [00:03:00] its own.
JOHN: Stanford was the biggest school in the West for education, Columbia in the East and Stanford in the West. But by the time I got that far along, I had decided that academic life wouldn't appeal to me. It was too detailed. Who was it, Nicholas Murray Butler said, learn more and more about less and less. That detail would have killed me. I finally recognized it and came down here and started [00:03:30] in 1936 in the real estate business.
HERBERT: Well, that was a great year to begin real estate, wasn't it?
JOHN: Boy, it was a tough going.
HERBERT: What was it like during the Depression here in Nampa? I can remember it.
JOHN: Not bad. Let's say that advisedly, because every farmer at that time had a bunch of cows, maybe 10 up to 20 cows. That was always a meal ticket. He didn't have any money to spend, but he could exist.
HERBERT: [00:04:00] Barter?
JOHN: Yeah, a lot of barter. Even doctors would take a chicken for pay, you know. At that time, for a few years there, I believe it was a 10-mile radius around Meridian, Idaho, had a greater concentration of milk cows than anywhere in the United States. Now, it's a vastly different thing. In fact, before I quit milking, when I came down to Nampa and started in the real estate business, I moved on the farm where I now live and [00:04:30] I'd saved a little money teaching. Although they said it couldn't be done, I bought a few cows and milked the cows morning and night and came to the office in the daytime.
HERBERT: You'd think that the price would be low if that many cows were in one place.
JOHN: Yep, I sold cream. People would hardly believe it, but even when I was teaching school, I milked a cow. I sold cream as low as 13 cents a pound.
HERBERT: Now, by this time, were you married?
JOHN: I [00:05:00] got married while I was still teaching. My wife taught school for one year. She had taught before. I taught school 10 years. She taught 7, I believe it was.
HERBERT: Now, you were teaching during the beginning of the Depression, weren't you?
JOHN: Yes.
HERBERT: What was your pay?
JOHN: I was superintendent. I forget what I was getting at that time. I know I kept going downhill until I was...
HERBERT: [00:05:30] Fifteen dollars a week?
JOHN: No, no. No, it was never that low. I think I got down to $135 a month, though. I started in at $175. When I started in as superintendent, it seemed to me it was $2,700 or $3,100, something like that. At any rate, it was a tough going when I first started in the real estate business. I did two men's work.
HERBERT: Now, why did you pick real estate? Now, your dad was in it to [00:06:00] some degree.
JOHN: Yes. My dad had been in it. He'd quit then and had retired on the farm. Of course, he finally gradually turned the farm over to us. But after I was away from home teaching, he... Well, frankly, I was in the hospital at the time with a stomach operation. My mother was over with me, and he had a very [00:06:30] severe eye pain. We found out it was glaucoma afterwards. Didn't know much about it those days. My mother got home, and he was delirious. She took him to the doctor, and he said, Well, we should operate immediately. Well, he wasn't of any great authority to her, so she waited until the day and took him to a doctor in Boise and was too late. So at any rate, he practically lost his [00:07:00] eyesight. But he was so ambitious, and the old folk saying was, **Work well, you couldn't sit.** So he started in the real estate business again. So he was doing that. He had just a desk in a café when I came down here. And so I started in, you might say, with him. My first experience in the real estate business was from a desk in a café.
HERBERT: Just in an open café where people came in to eat. [00:07:30] They rented out a little corner to you?
JOHN: Yeah, just charged so much for having a desk there.
HERBERT: That's pretty good.
JOHN: I did that for, I don't know, a year or so.
HERBERT: How many other real estate men were in town operating at that time?
JOHN: Well, not very many. At that time, **Van Mode** was a salesman for H.E. Martin. And let's see, Walling, [00:08:00] who later was postmaster, was in business. And that's about it. There were only a few. That didn't last very long. They began to amend along about 1941 along in there. At that time, we then had one woman enter the business. And that's rather changed from now. Now there are more women real estate dealers, salesmen, than men. [00:08:30] But it's been a very encouraging business. It's been satisfying. I have done well financially, and I've been very active in the community. And I felt that every time I located a person on a farm where he made a good living or in a house where he was happy, I performed a service to him and the community. And so part of the reason you work is money [00:09:00] that exists. Part of it is satisfaction of doing something worthwhile.
HERBERT: I'm sure that's how people came back by referrals and all that. When you were 10 years of age, what was Saturday night like?
JOHN: That was a big night. Saturday afternoon, in fact, was a big day for all the farmers came to town. The stores were all open. They hitched their horses to the rack and spent the whole afternoon visiting. [00:09:30] And then people who were occupied, the wage earners or farmhands or whatever, often, and younger people too, came out Saturday night and shopped and visited. I know at that time there was no regulation against it. One of the things that we kids got the most kick out of was opening a cutout. So that they had a cutout, as it was called, in the [00:10:00] exhaust. They didn't have mufflers, but they had that cutout. It gave us great pleasure driving back and forth down Main Street and opening that cutout and making all the noise we could. We had a little movable, lighted radiator cap rotated. We'd drive back and forth and open that cutout for a while to attract attention and then and then shut it [00:10:30] off and seal the radiator cap. These were crazy things I hadn't thought of for years. But there was very little rowdyism, frankly. The chief of police then was named Larry Maloney. He had a good rapport with the kids. Of course, those days there were lots of hobos came through. He was pretty good at getting rid of them. That reminds me of a little story too. [00:11:00] Even before I moved on the farm, many of the people at least burned sagebrush in their cook stoves. They They didn't have electric stoves. Sagebrush, the virgin stand, was quite a sizable stock on it. They'd have a pile of sagebrush out back and chop that up and use that for their fuel in their cook stoves. My mother was rather tender-hearted. I [00:11:30] guess these hobos would come by. I found out later that they had it all marked. They knew where to go. They'd come by and ask for a handout. She'd get them a meal and set them down and feed them and so on. Finally, that got so common that Dad says, I'm going to put a stop to that. You're just working for hobos instead of having any leisure time. He says, next one that comes along, tell them, while I get your lunch ready, you go out and chop some sagebrush. He said that [00:12:00] soon stopped it. They weren't willing to chop sagebrush to get a meal. I guess they got the markers off our house and went somewhere else.
HERBERT: You mean some actual physical markers or just word of mouth?
JOHN: No, it was apparently a physical marker. I've seen research made on that later and found out that the hobos had a system of marking [00:12:30] where they knew where to find it and nobody else did, I guess. That got them to come to certain houses where they were soft touch, I guess.
HERBERT: Now, as a youngster, I will say at 10 or 12 years of age when you came to town, you certainly weren't driving around in automobiles. There weren't too many automobiles.
JOHN: No, we didn't have an automobile at all. Our house was at 503 10th. [00:13:00] We had two lots in front, which were landscaped, and Dad took great pride in that, I remember, the American Beauty Climber, for example. Then behind that we had a barn, and that took two lots. The rest of the half lot was sagebrush. Now, that's right downtown now. But he took great pride in having top quality horses when he took his customers out. He had a nice [00:13:30] buggy. Many, many times I accompanied him on these trips as a youngster. A lot of these what are now drain ditches were waste ways, creeks, or forded. That's another thing that makes the story come to mind. We had great big bullfrogs, green bullfrogs as big as a platter, a plate. Dad would have 22 long. [00:14:00] He didn't have to hit them. If he hit near 'em the concussion, it would knock them out. He'd let me shoot those bullfrogs and bring them in. They had a leg that was much bigger than your thumb. They were very delectable white meat. My mother would cook them. That's an early recollection. At any rate, we had horses for a number of years.
HERBERT: Did you race horses between fellas?
JOHN: No, [00:14:30] we just had top quality horses. They talk about the surrey with the fringe on top. I'll never forget one Sunday after church, we all got into the surrey and hitched up the team and drove out to where we later, where Dad built, where we moved out to when I got to be 10 years old. For some reason, I [00:15:00] hadn't thought of this for years either, but one story reminds me of another. They used to, it was just dusty roads. They developed what they called potholes. Dust would be a foot deep and you couldn't see it at all. Your wheel would drop in that and it would fairly jar your eye teeth. At any rate, we went out there and, of course, the buggies had kind of a burr on the end of the axle. You'd take that off [00:15:30] and grease your buggy and then put that back on. Apparently, they had failed to put that back on because it turned on the same way the wheel ran, so it kept it tight. Apparently, it failed to be put back on. We got out there and dropped in the chuck hole and the wheel came off. We were all more or less dressed up, t' the church, we scratched through that [00:16:00] dust two or three inches and the pothole was a foot deep trying to find that. We never did find it. Went back to the home and got another and put it on there and went on up.
HERBERT: Now, I understand that Nampa, one story leads to another, that's for sure. In Nampa, they tell me that they went dry in 1910.
JOHN: My dad [00:16:30] was very much dry. I remember the Deweys, for example. Ed Dewey was a close friend of my dad's. Ed told me this himself. He said, the main difference between me and Herman was he was dry and I was wet. I never could understand that, why an intelligent man and had to go for liquor.
HERBERT: Apparently, many, many more people [00:17:00] agree with you. Was this for religious reasons primarily?
JOHN: I don't think so. I'm sure that overtone was there because Nampa has always been kind of a church town. My folks went to the Baptist church. I can't remember, but they first were in a little cubbyhole downtown and they built the one where it is now. That was a frame building for many, [00:17:30] many years. I'm sure it was built when we were still in town, so it was built before 1913. Folks took us to church, to Sunday school, and they stayed on to church. We were little kids. I'll never forget that. At that time, there was [00:18:00] a strip of white clover along the edge of the church. For some reason, that was just filled with four-leaf clover. If all the folks were in church and we little kids were out there, we were hunting four-leaf clovers. Sunday school was over, understand, rather than trying to listen to the sermon why they let us go out there and wait.
HERBERT: Obviously, when the state went dry in 1916, there were people who still got their liquor. [00:18:30] Can you remember any stories?
JOHN: Yeah, bootleggers. Of course, I was reared in a very strict family. Liquor was not only out, but we didn't work on Sunday. There was no playing cards in our house, so we weren't in contact with the [00:19:00] element that were...
HERBERT: Did it bring in any criminal element that came into that?
JOHN: I don't think so. This is, I think, authentic, although somewhat hearsay. There were bootleggers, some of them out in the country. Those who wanted liquor, they did get it, but I don't think it brought any criminal element in. It may have made some law violators. In fact, it did make law violators out of [00:19:30] some otherwise law-abiding citizens. Make money by that.
HERBERT: World War I, of course, was kind of a romantic war in a way. Do you think, did it have any particular change in Nampa? How did Nampa react in World War I?
JOHN: Well, I think that I never heard that word applied to it before, but maybe so, because we call it idealistic.
HERBERT: [00:20:00] Yes, a war to end wars.
JOHN: I was too young to be involved directly, but some of my friends were. And I know that many of them actually volunteered. They were going to make the world safe for democracy. And Kaiser Bill was a demon and so on. And there was a lot of hoopla, would you call it, [00:20:30] songs and bands and so on. Many of the people who actually went and many of the parents felt that it was not only a duty, but that they were somewhat of a crusade. My dad was violently opposed to war. And that, [00:21:00] of course, may have been where I became so. I don't think that war is Christian in any sense of the term. There never was a war, but it was fundamentally commercial. Even the Crusades became very commercial. And I know Dad was so disturbed by that the minister of the Baptist church preached that this [00:21:30] was a worthy cause and so on. And Dad became so disenchanted that he quit going to church even over it. My mother continued and she took us kids. Dad said that's not the Christian religion at all and if that's what they're going to teach, they're not going to go to church. Whether that was right or wrong, that still was evidence of the fact that there were some people who felt that this was not justifiable. [00:22:00] But by and large, I think you're correct that there was a certain idealism that caused a lot of the people to go. And, of course, it became very personal because in a smaller community at that time, you knew all the boys that were going. In fact, Dad sent each one of them some money and sent them a letter. Sent money to [00:22:30] everyone who went from Nampa. And, of course, some of them didn't come back. Not only grieved their parents, but people like my dad.
HERBERT: Would you say ten? Ten didn't come back?
JOHN: That, I just don't have enough. I can name some who didn't. For example, Joseph Murray. Dr. Murray was the old family doctor. Dr. Kohler was the first one here. [00:23:00] Kohlerlawn the cemetery was named after him. But shortly, Dr. Murray came and I think Kohler must have died. He was our family doctor and everybody's family doctor for many years. And his elder son didn't come back. And the present legion, American legion, is named Joseph Murray Post. So he was one example. You know, they were close enough and everybody was [00:23:30] friends and acquaintances.
HERBERT: High school friends.
JOHN: And not only that, but in a small town, lots of close associations.
HERBERT: And Nampa at that time in 1917 was what, 2,000? 3,000?
JOHN: That would be a pretty good guess.
HERBERT: About as big as Eagle or almost as big as Eagle?
JOHN: When I came back here in 1936, it was only 10,000. So [00:24:00] I suppose that's probably not too bad of a guess. It was bigger than Eagle, I suspect. Probably more like Payette or, you know, Weiser. Probably could have been as many as 5,000.
HERBERT: After World War I, we sort of settled down again, thinking there was going to be no more wars. Did anything particularly change here as far as agriculture or industry? Did [00:24:30] new industry come in?
JOHN: It changed as a result of the war, yes. For example, labor was very short during the war because the boys were away and so on. The need was greater. There were two things that resulted from that. First of all, certain foods were short. [00:25:00] Wheat wasn't enough to go around, and they had substitutes like barley and rice and oats made into flour. In my dad's practice for many, many years, every time at threshing time, they didn't have combines. It was threshing machines. He'd take some of that wheat in and trade it for flour. We had usually a dozen sacks or more of flour stacked [00:25:30] up there for the year. When this came about, he took it all back. He said, we're not better than the rest of them, so he took it back.
HERBERT: Why did he say this?
JOHN: Well, just like I said before, he wouldn't teach us German because he said we're Americans. He wanted to be loyal. Although he had the wheat there, I mean the flour there, he took it back and we ate the barley. My mother got pretty good [00:26:00] at baking the rice flour bread.
HERBERT: It must have been a bitter year or two or three for farmers because if there was a scarcity, the prices must have gone up.
JOHN: It was, and I can recollect during that time we sold our wheat at $350 a hundred. You know, it was terrific, really. Goodness, it's only been, within the last decade, we got up to $350.
HERBERT: Yes. [00:26:30] How many bushels an acre?
JOHN: Okay, that was another thing. Dad, we had sheep, so he planted some Turkey Red wheat in the fall. It was a hard wheat, and that would get up and he'd graze those sheep on it in the fall. We harvested that, and I remember one time particularly we got 55 bushels an acre. And I was talking about that all over the valley, 55 bushels. Now if we don't get a hundred, we think it's nothing.
HERBERT: Yeah, [00:27:00] more controlled.
JOHN: Well, not only that, but the fertilizers and better strains of wheat. Not hybrids, but just better development.
HERBERT: Have you noticed that you...
JOHN: Excuse me, labor saving came in at that time. For example, Dad used to have us make little, very neat little shocks of hay and couldn't get help. [00:27:30] We took a bunch rake and just dumped them and made big, big old flat shocks. So we did everything we could to try to save time. They developed, instead of the Jackson fork, developed what they called slings, slips and slings. It's just sort of a sled, and you'd lay out a chain on that with the hooks on and take the whole half load up at a time. So probably the effect was it created more efficiency.
HERBERT: [00:28:00] Now about this time, tractors must have started to come in.
JOHN: I can recollect one of the two extremes. A fellow named Weerheim here had a Brumley oil pool. He pulled, oh, it must have been a dozen plows all one way. That was one. The other was, well, the Ford tractor. Not the Fordson, but the Ford came [00:28:30] out. It out. It had steel wheels and tipped over pretty easy, easily. But it's rather interesting that the farmer who took his tractor to the field and left his horses in the pasture was criticized severely. He says, no good, he's letting those horses [00:29:00] eat away and he's buying gasoline to run that tractor with. That was not very good husbandry.
HERBERT: I can see some of that. Now, how many horses in a team could draw your largest plows? What have you seen around here? Four horses, obviously.
JOHN: Yeah, I think in [00:29:30] our case about, I guess four is probably the most I ever had on a plow.
HERBERT: What kind of horses were they, Belgians, Clydesdales?
JOHN: Well, we had mainly Percherons.
HERBERT: Percherons.
JOHN: And I've got a Belgian stud, we had a cross. Most of the draft horses were, oh, 1,600 to a ton size.
HERBERT: [00:30:00] They were beautiful things, weren't they?
JOHN: Yeah, yeah. We always yeah. We always raised lots of horses. And there again, that was one of my playthings when I was growing up and a teenager. Nothing pleased me any more than to go out and curry my, I even rode the work horse, you know.
HERBERT: John, how is it that Idaho, they tell me, [00:30:30] has been sort of a breeding ground or a growing ground for jockeys around the country? A number of jockeys have come from Idaho and many, many racehorses have come from here. How come it's become a place where just horses are raised in such abundance for rodeos and other use?
JOHN: That kind of is a gradual change as they quit raising [00:31:00] the work horses. There were many, many people who still loved horses and they became breeders of lighter. Well, I guess we should go back because even when Dad was in the real estate business, as I mentioned, he had the finest of horses. Like trotters and buggy horses. So that carried [00:31:30] on and I suspect developed more into the saddle horses. When I first managed the rodeo parade, it was somewhat nondescript yet. I recollect even having to stand at the gate and turn back some people who came in with the work horse with the blinders on the bridle, that sort of thing.
HERBERT: You turned them back for what reason?
JOHN: I wouldn't let them go in through the arena. I didn't want them [00:32:00] to have that kind of a showing. I wouldn't let them go in with three or four kids on one horse. Just dress it up as much as possible. Very shortly, it did have an effect and we got much, much better horses. In fact, when Leo Kramer was the first rodeo contractor that we had here, at that time [00:32:30] I asked him if he had any suggestions on how to better our horses.
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