Dollie Anilee Watson Wilson Nelson wrote a book of her earlier life. The following part about Vashti and New Liberty is taken from that book. She had gone to live with a sister in Lelia Lake and attend high school. She came home for the summer to help on the farm and could never afford to go back and finish school so her dream of becoming an English teacher was lost in order for her to take care of her parents in the depression years.   Submitted by Dortha Wren

THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE THIRTIES

You readers can read of this in history books. I could have written that book. I was there.

In the spring we increased our turkey crop, and still milked our cows. They had to survive on dry grass, but they did. In the summer Spud and Daisy took Theron home with them to send him to high school in Oklaunion, the nearest one to them. This left me to run the farm. We did not try to plant a crop. I just couldn't do that. Papa was seventy years old now, and more of a detriment than a helper. Mama was fifty two and not old in years, but hard work had begun to take it's toll. Her spirit was gone, and physically she could not cope with it anymore. We decided to raise hogs for the market, so I built a wire fence around five acres to run them in. I dug every fence post, stretched the wire and with mama nailing , we got the fence hog proof. Then we bought four shoats to fatten out. One died soon after delivery, which was pretty discouraging. Then one day I went out to find one choking to death on some object that had lodged in it's throat. I went to the house and told mama we had better try to do something to save it. In a look of utter defeat and desperation she looked at me and said "Let it die, I just don't care anymore." I knew then that the burden was mine, and I must carry it. Life had been too much for her, and in her struggle to keep on keeping on, she had won the battle, but was losing the war.

I went back to the lot and attempted to wrestle the hog to the ground. If you have never tried to catch or hold a hog, try it. I had it by the hind leg and we were going round and round, when suddenly it coughed and dislodged the object, thus saving the hog. On another occasion, one of the milk cows got a nail in her hind foot and could hardly walk. I roped her head and tied it to a post. Then I roped her foot and tied it to a post, stretching her out in bulldog fashion. I straddled her foot, and with pliers I removed the nail and saved the cow. Then I had to haul in more wood and chop it for the cook stove.

By midsummer the weather was so dry that even the grasshoppers and bugs had starved and could not multiply, and this was the main source of the turkey food. So our turkeys were raiding other peoples fields in search of food, and the coyotes were raiding the turkey herds in search of food. It was a vicious circle. Life had become so humdrum I hardly saw other people. Our car had ceased to run, and we could not afford to make repairs, so it was standing. Our buggy had long since worn out. This left us the wagon for any transportation, and we could not go to church. Life was lonely, and life was grueling, but we had it better than others. We had food. Others didn't.

When I returned to the farm from school, I went to town and bought myself a supply of jeans. This old rule that a woman could not wear pants was a lot of hogwash. Certain rules must be abandoned under certain conditions. If I were to work like a man, I must be comfortable. In fact, I thought of getting myself some harness and calling myself a jackass, since I had to work like one.

In the early summer, I received notice from the Baylor College that they were extending my scholarship, and would honor it if I could find a way to attend the fall term. There was no way to come up with cash on the farm, so we went to the bank to see if we could borrow money and the the milk cows as collateral. The few banks that still remained open had no money to lend. No one could borrow. It just did not exist. In fact, my notice said all the scholarships would be extended, and I could attend the college of my choice, but I knew I was doomed to the farm, and my chances for a college were gone forever. I walked out of the house and down the country road, but going nowhere. Just walking. I looked down that long country road, and saw my dreams fade like the evening sun, then I turned and walked toward the house. In the yard I stopped and stood among the lilacs. ( I remembered the day just more than a year ago when I had returned from school and posed by one to have my picture made wearing my beautiful pink hand painted graduation dress. I also remembered I had put it away and had no occasion to wear it since.) Lilacs too were bleak, and stripped of their fragrance, for the spring that had brought the blossoms had turned to summer, and like my life they had faded, all the beauty had withered and disappeared. I stayed there until the evening sun set in the west and darkness settled in. The big round silvery moon was there, hanging in all it's glory, and as I had talked to it so many times in the past when I needed consolation, I looked up and said "It's a long way back to Lelia Lake High School and all it's glories tonight". I went into the house a pasted my scholarships in my book of memories where they remain today, a symbol to a high school English teacher named Dollie Watson, who never was and I knew never would be.

I laid out my jeans in preparation for the coming day's work, and silently climbed into bed. I heard again those words which had inspired me to keep trying. Don't give up the ship.

I had to do something about the turkeys and their destruction of other farmers grain crops, so I started herding them. We built a wire pen of chicken wire, covering even the top, for a turkey can rise and fly like a bird. Also this protected our flock from the coyotes at night. At daybreak, I would have my lunch ready, and with a book, I would turn them out and follow them into the neighboring ranches. When they settled down enough, I would sit under a tree and read. Then at sunset, I brought them home and to the pen. At night, the coyotes raided the pen, and many nights I had to get up to scare them away. If the moon was bright, my shadow would be at my heels. I would run and look back to see if it was still there, for I knew if it couldn't keep up with me it wasn't my shadow. The coyotes would take off yapping, and my shadow and I would run for the house, it leading me all the way. I kept trying to step on it, for again I knew if I could it wasn't my shadow. I was forced to chase coyotes many times to keep the from attacking the turkeys during the day. As the weather got cold, I had to dress warm, for the turkey market opened a week before Thanksgiving. This meant by September and October the rains came, and by November it could be terribly cold. I did this seven days per week from August first to the middle of December the last of them went on the Christmas market. I completely forgot I was a human being. Just a hermit wandering in the woods. In fact, I learned to live in this fashion until the house fenced me in. I felt kinda lonely when all the turkeys were gone.

The winter blustered in with snow storms and the world became a white blanket. Beautiful to look upon, but bleak to eke out our survival. Life then was no parlor game. It was a hard fact that America was in the throes of one of the most critical periods of it's time. And this period went down in history as the greatest depression America had ever known.

It seemed time to leave the farm. The switchboard in Vashti was coming up for bid. We placed our application and were chosen as the future operators. So on December 31, 1930, and just twenty one days after I became twenty years of age, we moved to Vashti, and took over the operation of the board. Coke and Rittie took over the farm.

This opened a completely new avenue of life. We lived right on Main Street, so to speak. Vashti was just a village on a cross street with two stores, two garages, a barber shop and a cotton gin. While we were still on the farm, a disastrous fire hit the town and burned several buildings, and most of it was never rebuilt. But our house, which was also the telephone exchange, sat right in town, and we were only a step away from the store, church and everything, and were able to participate in community activities, Vashti had only about one hundred people living in the town proper, but in the farming communities surrounding it were hundreds of people.

The community swarmed with young people and their activities. I soon began receiving invitations to these things, and being a part of the church automatically placed me in the groups. I had spent my entire life doing as other people wanted me to, and at twenty years of age I had nothing to look back upon but the two years I had spent in Lelia Lake, so I decided it was time I made my own decisions and lived my life. I had found my bridge and I crossed over.

It was no problem to get fifty young people together for a party and on occasions I have seen one hundred in a group. The was the height of the depression and everybody was broke. But we as a group had more fun without money than any group since has ever had with pockets full of it. We would get a fat hen from our chicken house, or somebody else's, we weren't particular. They boys would bring the bread and drinks and we would load into a wagon and go out into some pasture a have a roast. Or we would go to some creek and have a fishing trip. We always took a can of salmon just in case, and more times than not, we fried salmon or we would not have had fish. The farmers all had wagons, and it was more fun to take hay rides. Always it took two or three wagons to hold the crowd. We attended summer revivals in other towns, or just rode and had fun until midnight. Some of the girls had big hearted mothers who did all they could in the face of the tragic circumstances to help us find entertainment, and they would invite us in, and at midnight we would be frying ham, baking hot biscuits, and just having a ball. We proved it did not take money to be happy, for riches we had not, but we discovered something far more valuable, our precious freedom. We learned how to survive in the face of hardship, and above all, we learned how to create something from nothing. The farm boys sometimes rode their horses into town, and after church services, we would all go to some home and sing until late in the evenings. We gathered around the old organ and made merry. We had a good string band in town and they played on Saturday nights for parties.

Since the switchboard had to be attended at all times, this kept either mama or me home at all times, so we alternated. She went to Sunday School and Church in the mornings, and I went on Sunday evenings. We had Baptist Young Peoples Union as well as Church. She became active in all women's' functions, such as the Missionary Society and the Cemetery Association, and I was kept busy helping to entertain at bridal and stork showers, BYPU Socials and whatever.

Also there was much community service to be done. Hospitals were beyond our reach and finances, so the community cared for our sick and buried our dead. Usually mama sat with the sick, for she knew more about nursing, and I sat with the corpse. It was kinda eerie to crawl our of the bed at midnight and go trudging thru the street alone, sometimes thru rain and snow, to arrive at the door of a person where death had just entered or was stalking.

Community service was our way of paying rent on the space we occupied on this earth, and we paid our rent many times over. We shared the sorrows of others, and they shared ours.

Now, I must tell about the country switchboard. It was a dinky little thing, installed in the living room of a four room house that was community owned. We did not have electricity, so it was operated by dry cell batteries, and rang by a hand crank. Instead of lights to identify the calls, it had drops which had the line numbers on them, and when a call came in, the drop fell. It also had a buzz which signaled that a call was coming in. One line was connected to the Bellevue exchange which gave us outside long distance service. Only a half dozen lines to the business places were private. All others were community lines with six to ten party members on each line. They were also wall telephones, operating off dry cell batteries, and rang with a crank. Most every household had a phone by this time. We had owned one on the farm for several years before we moved into town. Our ring was __________ __ __ ___________, identified as one long, two shorts, and one long. All kinds of combinations were used to create rings. But nothing was sacred on a party line. Everybody listened in, and people ran just as fast if the call was for a neighbor. In fact, faster so they would not miss any of the conversation. I soon learned the click of every receiver, and I knew who was listening in. This weakened the service, so I had to repeat many calls. No directories were in existence. We soon learned who was where, and knew everybody's voice. They called in a personal way, as "please ring mama" or "ring Susie" or connect me with Perk and Howard's store", or ring Barrow garage", and we knew the line number and ring. It went like that, and the telephone office was the center of and for information. If a death occurred or a funeral was to be announced, we rang signals. Opened the keys to four lines at a time, rang them at once and announced the news. Of course I had to listen in to get all the news for other people. We burned wood for fuel and kerosene for lighting. In the summer it was unbearably hot in the house, but we had to stay in. In winter, it was just as miserable. We had to let the fire burn out when we went to bed, and in freezing weather, I would sit and shiver while someone talked to Dr. Carmen. We had regular operating hours, from six A.M. to nine P.M., and on Sundays no calls after nine A.M. But emergency calls must be put thru any hour and all calls must be answered to determine if it were an emergency. Needless to say, people imposed on the privilege.

Prices were at the lowest ebb of the depression. We received $25.00 per month, plus 10% of all long distance calls. But if the call was completed, we had to pay for it even if we couldn't collect. Some months, we made nothing. Some, we made most of it.

We had to find ways to survive on this since three of us had to live on it. I chopped cotton in the spring and picked cotton in the fall. We had a lovely garden spot and raised vegetables. By this time we had learned to can, so we could store it. We had chickens and a milk cow, so we ate well. Coke and Rittie raised us a hog on the farm for our pork. Cotton chopping paid $1.25 a day, and pulling boles was 35 cents per hundred pounds. Most people had started pulling their cotton in the bole. But that was all in line with the prices. I quote a weekend special that came out in the Bellevue news: Lee Faulkner Grocery specials for the week featured Maxwell House Coffee, 3 lbs for 78 cents; pinto beans, 10 lbs 40 cents; crackers, 2 lbs 25 cents; Lux Toilet soap, 2 bars 15 cents; peanut butter, 20 cents a quart; rib roast 6 cents a lb; steak 10 cents a lb; oats, 55 oz for 12 cents; ground meat 7 cents a lb; salmon was 9 cents a can; eggs 12 cents a dozen, so we had more purchasing power with our money than it seemed. It was just that we could afford only the barest of necessities. We could get a good dress for $4.00 and shoes for $5.00. A good three to four room house rented for $5.00 per month. The above special came out in the December 15,1933 paper, in the very worst period of the depression.