The 1920s are frustrating for me to write about. There were many current rip tides, full tides, ebb tides, storms, and many revolutions feeding upon each other as we entered the post war decade. The automobile revolution was going full speed. Henry Ford was perhaps the most recognized leader of the auto revolution. He was a master mechanic but he certainly was not an intellectual nor a liberal. He was extremely anti-Semitic and wrote that Jews-the unhappy race were plotting to subjugate the whole world, the source of almost every American affliction, including high rents, the shortage of farm labor, Jazz, gambling, drunkenness, loose morals and even short skirts. Perhaps the automobile was much more responsible for all of these evils (if they were evils) than the Jews. It was period of the most violent intolerance, religious fundamentalism, racial animosity, protestant dogma, that targeted communism, Catholics, foreigners, Jews, Negroes, and contributed to the rapid growth of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Not since this period has the Klan been as powerful as it was in the 1920s. I remember watching the march on Washington in 1925. Hundreds of cars moved slowly through our small town on the way to Washington. President Harding had joined the Klan before this. He was sworn in after taking the oath in the White House. As far as I know he was the only President who became a member of this white sheeted army of bigots. Harry Truman joined it evidently before he was president but demanded his $10.00 membership fee back when he listened to a violent speech against Catholics. He was supposed to have said that he could buy a sheet cheaper at Montgomery Ward. I also remember watching the cross of the KKK being burned in front of a family we knew. The warning was typical of the bigots-the family was Catholic and had a name that sounded foreign. Much of the fear, bigotry, and intolerance was the result of the Bolshevik revolution which had occurred in 1917, forcing Russia to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. The strange thing that happen to me was that I never became a communist. One of my students later thought I was. I had the deepest sympathy for the Russian people and their reasons for crushing the monarchy. Another surprising thing was that a liberal President like Wilson permitted his Attorney General to lead such an witch hunt in America that resulted in the punishment of citizens who had never and never could be communist. All this intolerance was fed and cultivated by religious fundamentalist. H. R. Mencken said if you were to throw an egg out of any car speeding across America you could hit a fundamentalist and the chances were great that fundamentalist would be a member of the KKK. Years later I learned that events like (the) Scopes Monkey Trail in Dayton, Tennessee was a fruit of dogmatic and bigoted Fundamentalism. Had I known then what I know and feel now, I would have been standing beside Clarence Darrow as he exposed the bigotry of William Jennings Bryan and forced Bryan to defend the most liberal translation of the Bible. As a child I listened to a phonograph record my father played over and over again. It was Bryan's Cross of Gold Speech. My father worshiped William Jennings Bryan and I knew that was because my grandfather was a delegate to the Democratic Convention that nominated Bryan in one of his attempts to become President of the U.S. In later years I could never persuade my father to read a biography of Darrow. He would have seen that Darrow was a greater spokesman for the poor then Bryan had ever been. The Scopes Trail unmasked the Tennessee anthropoids, denied one the right to disagree with Fundamentalists. Incidentally as late as the 1990s the Tennessee state legislature attempted to pass a similar law denying academic freedom and the theory of evolution that a majority of people accept today. The 1920s had many names in the history books. It is referred to as the Roaring 20s, the Jazz age, the revolution in manners and morals, and the ballyhoo years. At almost the very beginning of this period I remember at the beginning of year of a abject poverty and despair for our family. We were uprooted from the farm. My father was stricken with a severe back injury that was probably due to the heavy lifting required on the farm. I thought that it was also an injury which was aggravated by cranking of a Model T. Ford which often backfired and knocked the crank out of your hand. During this period we were forced to move five times by the early 1930. Our first move was to the town of Shepherdstown and into a house owned by one of my mother's aunts. My dad could do no heavy work and was in constant pain. The little money that we had came from my father selling Fuller Brushes. Shepherdstown was not metropolis but as a small college town. It was much different then the isolation of the farm. The characteristics of the 1920 culture were really more evident than it had been on an isolated farm. The short skirts, the bobbed hair, the wild music as well as the wild dancing along with the automobile and its contributions to the revolution in manners and morals. There are even statistics of the percentage of babies that were conceived on the back seat of a car. Another factor that was more evident in town was the constant battle between bootleggers and law enforcement official in this period of prohibition. The winds of change were swirling around us and it was hard for us to understand what was going on. More about prohibition later. Since I have grown up, had the experience of being the head of a family, I know what those years must have done to my parents. We didn't stay in town very long. We moved next to a little house and dairy farm a few miles from town where my father worked in the dairy. I don't remember too much about this move. In fact I didn't remember any of these moves. I know there were no moving vans. We couldn't have had much furniture. The best thing was that my father could work as long as it wasn't too strenuous. This little house had a yard the north end of which bordered the farm we had left. So I was familiar with the woods and fields. I know how to set box traps for rabbits and I had 2 or 3 leg hold steel traps. One evening I set one in a den that looked well used. The next morning I checked it before school and I had a skunk. I was too young to have a rifle so I sharpened a long pole and attempted to spear the skunk. An amazing thing happened. Just as I was about to spear him he did a quick flip and then a stream of his scent hit my face and eyes and mouth. It was a yellowish green substance, and a constant stream. It didn't make me sick but I was sent home from school that day. Another event I remember was our dog Jiggs-a mean Airedale. All we had to do was give him the word and he's go after anything. In the beginning I wrote that a short distance from where I was born, when I was 2 years old a little girl was born. I didn't know she had an older brother, but her parents had given them a pony and a 2 seater pony vehicle. One day they passed our home and we gave old Jiggs the word. After them he went biting at the pony legs with his meanest snarl. Fortunately they kept the control of the pony. Years later I learned that their mother had forbidden them to go near these mean Morrow kids. All I remember was that she was a very pretty little girl with back hair. Within a very short while we moved again not more than a tenth of a mile from where we were living. It was an old house. I can never forget the bed bugs-thousands of them visible on the walls when you lit a lamp. My sister also remembers this vividly. My mother did everything she could but it didn't help. Our economic condition was desperate. A stream close to the farm had water cress and my mother gathered greens in the fields. This was the worst conditions she had ever experienced. We had relatives near but no one offered any help. I often think of the story of Brer Rabbit and the fox. Brer Rabbet saying to the fox-please do anything to me but don't throw me in the briar patch. As fox wanting to do the worse to him threw him in the briar patch and the rabbit shouted thank you. I was brought up in the briar patch. The 20s were our briar patch and when the great depression came we were happier because it couldn't be as bad as our condition in the 20s. We had lived in the briar patch. We soon moved again this time about 3 miles to the small village of Scrabble. Things seemed a little better, especially for me. For the first and only time we went to a one room school, a few steps from our house. The school was on the banks of the same stream we had gotten our water cress from. I had plenty of friends my age. I got into trouble pretty quick At the end of the play ground were two outdoor toilets. The one for the girls was on the bank of the stream and I noticed erosion was eating at the foundation more than I expected. One day I gave a little push and away it went crashing into the stream. I didn't have any recess for the next three or four months. This steam was the dividing line between Jefferson and Berkeley Counties. For the first time we were living in Berkeley County. Eventually I would be married in this county and it would be the birth place of our first child. We soon moved again but would continue in the same school. Eventually we would go back to our schools in Shepherdstown. By then I could drive a car and I drove the car to school. I got my driver licenses at 14 and only had to send 50 cents to Charleston, WV to get my licenses. Our car soon became the Ford model A-a touring car with clothe top and curtains for bad weather. The Model A was a revolution in itself. It had a gear shift similar to model cars and was capable of speeds up to sixty to seventy miles an hour. My sister will tell you that I knew this well because she became afraid to ride with me. We had moved into a large white house high on a hill over looking the Potomac River at Dam No. 4 which was an old dam built to pump water into the C & O Canal on the Maryland side of the river. The dam had been rebuilt to furnish water for a hydroelectric power plant by the Potomac Edison Co. My father had gotten a job as one of the operators of the plant. The house we lived in was owned by the power company and we had free electricity. This is where I became a river rat. My father's salary was $80.00 a month which seemed like a lot of money at the time but it had to provide for a family of five. I soon became expert fisherman and lived at the river. My mother was soon to say to my father "If we don't get Jr. away from the river, he'll become a second Bill Swope. Bill Swope was a river man who made his living catching catfish in the summer and trapping in the winter, and I was on the way to following his footsteps. We had plenty of fish to eat and I had gotten my first rifle-a single shot 22 caliber-good for rabbits, squirrels, and occasionally a fox. It was here that I learned all the details of the 18th amendment that outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Most of the moonshine in our area came across the river from Maryland and since Dam No. 4 was pretty isolated a lot of moonshine was brought across the river into West Virginia. They were often assisted by one of the operators who worked with my father. My father often worked at night and I frequently stayed with him. The plant had a cozy little room in the floor with the dynamos. The room had supplementary heat and a small cot along with a desk and chairs. I did my homework here many times. And frequently my father brought the car on the floor to do repairs. I remember once he had the engine out and back in time for me to go to school the next day. This particular night the temperature was near zero and the river was beginning to freeze. I was in the room being lulled into sleep by the hum of the dynamos on the floor outside the room. I was asleep when I was awakened by a lot of confusion in the room. It was packed with people and two or them were very wet and cold. Three of the other people were county and state police. The two men who were wet and nearly frozen were to brothers who made their living bringing moonshine across the river by the gallon and selling it by the pint or quart for a good profit. The police were hiding at the boat landing and shouted to them as they pulled into the boat landing that they were under arrest. The two brothers jumped into the river into water about waist deep breaking the ice that was beginning to form and the officers were shooting in the water around them. They had broken some of the gallon jugs but enough was left for evidence. They were brought into the plant where I was asleep to warm them up and then to jail. They were soon out and at it again. This of course was going on all cell the years of prohibition up and down the Potomac River. Shepherdstown was on the Potomac River. A few miles down the river on the Maryland shore was an area called Frog Hollow. Most of the moonshine brought across the river was the Frog Hollow brand. The west end of Shepherdstown was all negro and high school and college boys who knew the suppliers of moonshine-retail. I had tasted it enough to get sick on it. The East end of town was know as Angel Hill and of course it was everything but angelic-maybe angels with dirty wings. There were suppliers of moonshine here too. Years later we knew of well-to-do and successful business men who had made their capital in the moonshine liquor business. Under the main street of Shepherdstown is a stream that ran under the main street, across the college campus and eventually into the Potomac River. I have witnessed State Police stopping cars searching them and dumping gallons of moonshine into a manhole over the town run, which incidentally is a trout stream. At one time at Dam No. 4, a group of men were camping adjacent to the Power Plant. They were will supplied with moonshine but must have been running short. They apparently wanted to keep pretty much intoxicated for a weekend. They delegated one of their number to cross the river and secure a new supply. The little man they selected to cross the river was not all familiar with the river. Boats had to cross above the dam where there was a current that most men would not have been aware of since the water was very deep and appeared very smooth. I knew that to cross the river above the dam you must go a distance up the river and slowly veer toward the Maryland shore to escape the strong unseen current. This boatman didn't know that and he headed straight across the river where the current was very strong and midway one of oarlocks split and he was left with one oar. He tried to use it as a paddle, but was slowly drifting toward the 20 foot dam. One of his brothers was standing next to me as the event unfolded. He knew and I knew that his brother could not swim. No one could do anything for him now. As the boat neared the dam he got to the back of the boat and over it went into the swirling water below. Both he and the boat disappeared. Fortunately for him when he came up the boat came up beside him but upside down. He managed to get a hand hold on the boat and holding to the boat began to drift down the river. The nearest boat available to reach him was more than a mile down the river on the Maryland shore and a rescuer came out and brought him safely to the West Virginia bank. The first thing he did was look at his pocket watch and reported that it was still running. That evening a very sober group of men broke camp. While we lived at Dam No. 4, we walked about a mile to our school at Scrabble. I don't remember much about what I learned in school but I was probably learning more from experience about people and the passing events of the period. I knew we had three Republican presidents during this period; Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, and that 1920s were still roaring on at a faster and faster pace. The country seemed to be on a continuing high and some day there would come a crash and a big hangover. I listened and read everything I could find on Lindbergh's non-stop flight from New York to Paris in the Spirit of St. Louis. I had always been fascinated by airplanes. One of my uncles had given me a large book on the principals of aeronautics. I was never able to learn to fly but in later years became an expert aerial photographer and loved to take aerial photographs commercially. When Lindbergh married Anne Morrow I became very interested and curious to determine any relationship to our family. Dwight Morrow, Ann's father was ambassador to Mexico. We had an aunt Josephine Morrow who had gone to Mexico as a Presbyterian *1 Missionary. While there she married Sir Thomas Dale, British Vice Consulate to Mexico. She occasionally sent us 4 and 10 dollar gold pieces. She informed us that the relationship to Dwight Morrow, when she had met frequently was very distant. *2 In spite of this I felt very close to the Lindbergh's. During these years at Dam No. 4, I kept a fish box, built of wood with screen across it so it would sink. The small creek that was the same creek with the water cress and that came by the school playground, emptied into the Potomac at Dam No. 4. My fish box was kept in this creek, well concealed and usually full of bass, bluegills and catfish. We also had at the power plant a 10 by 10 foot dip net with steel bows and fastened to a cable with pulley's so we could raise and lower it with a windlass with platform to stand in. The net would be lowered into the tail race which is the water coming out of the turbines that ran the large generator or dynamos. We had a long handled net so that we raised the big net up to a power plant window to take the fish out of the net. In addition to this my father was an expert carp fisherman and the carp in the Potomac in these years were very clean. My mother knew how to cook carp. They tasted like any other fish. She first par boiled them and then rolled the steaks in cornmeal and fried them. We never were out of fish and the surprising thing is we never tired of fish and to this day we eat fish and seafood three or four times a week more than pork or beef. It was during the 20s that I began to see what man's mortality brings to us all. Death for those we have been close to. The first was a boy close to my age. We passed his home as we walked from Dam No. 4 to school. I knew him as Pug. I remember that occasionally he brought a muskrat tail to school and would pull on the exposed tendons and the large end of the tail and make it begin to curl. Of course in life a muskrat tail never curled. One morning he was up early starting the fire in the kitchen. He poured fuel on the wood. Not aware of live coals in the stove and of course it exploded in his face and set fire to his clothes. I saw him before he died. His skin on most of is body was coming off in layers. He lived only a few days longer. A few years later I had a very close friend and school mate who died of a serious illness, either pneumonia or rheumatic fever. He and his older brother were the only children of a widow. His older brother was hopelessly retarded and it seemed to me at the time that fate was so unjust. The time would come when beliefs like this would drastically change my life. I was a pallbearer at his funeral and at another a short time later. The only grandmother I ever knew died of at a very old age, my mother's mother. *3 It was not much of a shock since she had never very close to me. In fact I can't remember that she ever touched me as grandmother's usually do. A short time later my mother's younger sister *4 died at a very early age. And so the 20s roll on at a faster and faster pace. The characteristics of the culture persisted. A crash had to come. Dresses were shorter and shorter. Some state legislatures were passing laws regulating the hemline of women's dresses. In fact during the 20s the yardage of womans clothes had been reduced by half. Stockings were now flesh colored and sometimes raised so that the knees were visible. Somebody wrote a song: Rollem girls, rollem, roll them below your pretty knees. Young women were slimmer and as flat chested as ever; no breast implant here. Divorce was beginning to be accepted. Population was 100,000,000 and growing exponentially which meant that even a 2 percent growth it would double in 35 or 40 years. There were still 5 horses and mules for every tractor on farms. We were still rural. In 50 years tractors would replace horses. I have often wondered if fossil fuels were no longer available where would the horse come from to work the farms. Spectators sports were becoming ever more popular. But they never interested me and never would. My recreation was always individual and in the woodlands and on the streams. I remember hearing about Red Grange, the four horsemen of Notre Dame, Jack Dempsey, and Gene Tunney as well as other popular figures. I think I must have disappointed my dad who had been a college pitcher but whose older son had no interest at all in baseball or any other sport. I can't remember when we got our first radio, but we would soon be listening to Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy, and reading occasionally Maggie and Jigs, Barney Google, and Andy Gump in the funnies. Incomes in 1929 were very low; 60 percent of the population made below $2000.00 dollars a year . Many of this group at even below $700.00 and I'm sure we were in this group. My reading was becoming wide and varied. We had the complete works of James Fennimore Cooper. I remember the Deer Slayer and the Last of the Mohegan's. And of course in school I got my introduction to America and English Literature and of course the stories of the Bible. And now it is done. There will never be decade like it. It is October 1929. The days are shorter and the evening shadows longer. The foliage on the trees is decked in beautiful fall but there is something wrong. I had no interest in the stocks market and the closing of the banks wouldn't effect us. We had no stocks or money anyhow. But the crash was heard round the world. The Jazz age was running out of steam. And it was a very subdued society that greeted 1930. Apocalypse had come. Many before and after the stock market crash kept saying it is only a period of adjustment. Things will change and they surely did. Poor President Hoover. He fed Europe after World War I but he was at a loss here to feed America. He couldn't muster confidence. It was soon being said that we would see a car in every garage and chickens in the pot, but the chickens were in the garage and the car had gone to pot. We heard it said property was just around the corner but it was a vicious circle with no corners. The beginning of the tragic years of the Great Depression were upon us. John Stein back called it this famous book "The Grapes of Wrath". The cure would be radical and the leader needed to be liberal. An soon we began to see a liberal President with radical cures.
*1 Josie Dale was a Methodist Missionary.
*2 Subsequent research has proven that their no relationship between
these two families. See the section on Anne Morrow
Lindbergh.
*3 Ellen Virginia ENTLER LICKLIDER
*4 Laura Elizabeth LICKLIDER died in childbirth.
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