Omaha Folklore Project: Interview with Stanley Dygas

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-MEG GREEN (MG): This is an interview with Stanley Dygas of 1220 South 23rd street in Lincoln, Nebraska. The interviewer is Meg Green. Okay, what, when and where were you born?

-STANLEY DYGAS (SD): I was born in Omar in New York, in, let's see, September the 15th, 1916. In Omar, New York with a (inaudible).

-MG: What does your father do?

-SD: My father, of course is deceased, but he was a steel worker, he worked in mines when he first came to this country, then he went to the railroad and after he got hurt there he went and worked in a steel mine. Then of course 00:01:00he worked in foundries and so forth.

-MG: When did your, did both your father and mother come over, or?

-SD: They both came from, really they're both naturalized, they came over here from Austria, Hungary, which they spoke, my mother spoke Polish and my father spoke Polish and German.

-MG: What were the reasons for their coming over?

-SD: Well as far as my mother, relation, her aunt, or cousin, I can't remember what relationship, requested for her to come, and of course there were five kids in the family so she came and now my father, he came more so to avoid 00:02:00conscription into the German army, cause he came here right after 18 years old so I figured that's what it was and also he's stated that he didn't want to go in the army, so he got people to back him up so he could come to this country but when he landed in this country he didn't know any English whatsoever, all he knew was Polish and German, so he had to rely on people that could help him, and of course the first job that he got was in the mines in West Virginia.

-MG: So he came to West Virginia first before he came to New York.

-SD: Oh yes, really he landed in Baltimore and from there he migrated to West Virginia.

-MG: Did he have relatives over there, is that why he chose Baltimore instead of going to New York City or just, do you know, was there any reason for why he went where he went?

-SD: Yes he had a relationship here but I really don't know the full extent of it, was it a second or third cousin or something like this, anyway, but he did have a cousin in Detroit, Michigan. And also he had one in Chicago but I never met any of them, I had met the one from Detroit, but this has been, I was only a little kid myself, and heck I'm 62 now so you can just see how.

-MG: Why did they choose New York, was there any reason for that, was there more jobs?

-SD: No, my mother's relationship ran an employment bureau in Jamaica, Long Island and she was the lady that talked my mother into coming to this country and also talked her parents into letting my mother come to this country more than anything else and as far as my father migrated by working in a railroad, he migrated to Long Island working on a railroad, that's how he met my mother, I don't know the circumstances, but being Polish, both of them, he could understand, talk Polish and anybody that goes through Polish or German dance or 00:05:00so forth, that's how these people had to get acquainted, they couldn't get really acquainted in any other way because it was difficult for the relationship back in those days back in the 1900's to talk to somebody without having a, somebody to speak for them, you see, now only place that was really open was the dance halls, their church, and they would come up and speak to somebody and there wouldn't be any repercussions from that, and this is the only way I can 00:06:00understand they got acquainted, of course when we grew up, just so we had 19, or 20, we left, we never did get, we never did stay as a complete family, just when we were old enough, we took off. So we didn't really have what you'd call the same relationship as a lot of families that stayed until they were 30, 40 years old in the household and of course we just happened at that time to go into the military service, the winter came along so we were all in that age bracket.

-MG: Did your father, did he run into, as a recent immigrant, did he run into 00:07:00discrimination, hard time finding jobs?

-SD: Naturally there was discrimination all along, we still have it today, white people have discrimination probably even more so than they call minorities, the only way a white person in this country can survive is that he has to know how to cater to other people, if he hasn't learned that, if he keeps a chip on his shoulder, he'll never get there, that's the same way with any race of people, that's just facts of life. So I don't believe, my father, he knew, in his early days he learned how to cater to people. He never had the trouble that 00:08:00I had when I was his age, coming into America, I didn't learn to cater 'til I was 42, now my son, he learned to cater when he was four, five years old but it was just the opposite for me. But I was the only one out of the whole family, I was the only one that couldn't cater, couldn't, I wouldn't give up my rights for no matter what it was, money, or chocolate, I had to be, if it wasn't that way, the heck with it.

-MG: Did your mother work?

-SD: Only when my father was sick or couldn't work.

-MG: What did she do?

-SD: Mostly she was a general houseworker.

-MG: How much money did your father make at that time?

-SD: Those days he made the goin' wage, whatever it was, when he was 00:09:00a breakman on a railroad of course the wages weren't too high then but they were substantial at the time. But you gotta realize, he only had a fourth grade education when he'd come to this country, now my mother she graduated 8th grade in Europe, so I guess you could say she was a college graduate compared to my father. But my father is the one that really had to learn the history of this country, had to learn to speak, read and write, and he's the one that was, took the exam to be a citizen of this country. My mother, she automatically became a citizen when she was married to my father, so you can't go by how much education 00:10:00you got, it's what education you have, how you use it that counts, I know it because I'm in the same boat, I have 180 hours and I haven't utilized it. Of course I've been blackballed for a lot of things, but that's because like I told you, I didn't learn how to cater, I still don't believe in it, but you have to to get along, I think. I woulda been an excellent monarch of any country, I would be an excellent king, but I guess you could say I'd be an excellent authoritarian, I don't know if I can get that out or not, but that's it.

-MG: What was your school like?

-SD: Well I went to a parochial school, I went to a Polish school that I had to learn, in the morning we'd learn Polish, mostly, and we learned a lot of Catechism and a lot of religion, but we also had reading, writing and arithmetic and everything was in Polish, in the morning, and then everything in the afternoon was in English, in other words we had to write, she'd give it to us in Polish, we'd learn it in Polish and then in the afternoon we'd have to write it from Polish to English or English to Polish.

-MG: Was the school kindergarten to eighth grade?

-SD: Yes it was kindergarten to eighth grade. That's where it stopped, eighth grade, and then we went to academy or went to high school, a public high school.

-MG: You went to a public high school?

-SD: Well in my case, I went, I went to the fourth grade in the parochial school and I stayed a year behind school because I didn't believe in a lot of stuff that they were putting out, but anyway after fourth grade my parents moved on a farm and I didn't want to move on a farm and neither did my older brother and my older sister, but that's all we could salvage out of the 00:13:00depression. My father had several homes and several city property in the city, it would've been valuable today but the interest was hurtin' him so he had to regroup and try to save something and he did, he got a farm out of it, but that farm, he got it awful cheap, he had to leave his property up awful cheap.

-MG: You made a transition then from a city school to a rural school?

-SD: Well when I went to the rural school, though I was a year behind my peer group, I was a leader in the parochial school, I could handle myself 00:14:00physically better than most, put it that way and I'd probably get in a fight every day or every, well if it wasn't in the Polish section, it would be with the Italian section, if it wasn't with the Italian section, it'd be with the Blacks, if it wasn't with the Blacks it'd be with the Irish, I was always getting through it because I had to go through all these areas to get home, see. And but that's the way it was, when we moved on a farm, I didn't want to go to school myself, I was only 11 at the time, and well.

-MG: Were the classes...?

-SD: The classes were all in one room and if you knew the question 00:15:00that she was asking an eighth grader, the teacher would, does anybody in the room know this question? If you knew, you'd pop up and say yes, and she'd give you a chance to answer, no matter what it was, spelling, arithmetic, anything, geography, you knew the answer, all you had to do was raise your hand and of course the other ones had first priority, and if they answered it, of course you'd listen too but you had your own work to do and of course I would say that I learned more in this rural school than I did in the parochial school, although in the parochial school it was bilingual and I had to learn it both ways. But I 00:16:00didn't like the repetition of that type of learning, we had to learn the same thing day in, day out and I didn't think I wanted to do that, that was my difficulty in the parochial school, besides having physical problems. In a parochial school we had the normal reading, writing and arithmetic, and spelling, geography, history, and those were alright but to me those were boring. Those courses were boring, if you had to do it twice, once is bad enough but twice it was boring, you'd get in trouble. Now in contrast with the rural 00:17:00school, I first went to that rural school, the first week I was promoted to the fifth grade in the first week and then from that, that was in April we moved.

-MG: Now what year would this be, that you moved?

-SD: 1928, either 28 or 29, I was 11, let's see.

-MG: In your house, did your parents speak Polish in the house?

-SD: I'd guess you'd say brokenly. They'd speak part Polish, part German and part English and you had to decipher it out.

-MG: And the neighborhood, was that mostly Polish people, was it a pretty...?

-SD: When I first started school yes, it was a Polish neighborhood, and then we moved in an Irish neighborhood and I had to move through the Polish section, the Italian section, the Black section and then through the Irish section and like I said I used to get in a lot of problems, I mean it ended in a bloody nose now and then.

-MG: When did you start working? How old were you when you had your first job?

-SD: I started working when I was 11 years old, when my parents moved on a farm, I had to carry water from the well, to the house 'cause we had no running water, there was chickens to feed, hogs to feed, all kinds of stuff, we had duties all the time, I mean of course we had time to play too but what I liked about the rural school, I'll go back to that again, the rural school was, 00:19:00the reason I liked it, it was practical. It was practical work, in other words say in spelling, or say in geography, we would draw maps and make the maps with salt and flour and then we'd color in different colors the states, and each one of us would have to learn a city, why they think the city is important, and we'd go through a whole country, United States, we learned the whole Unites States that way, and same thing in the afternoon we'd have nature study, we'd go into the woods and identify plants and trees and mushrooms, and everything else and 00:20:00we'd have a project, each one of us would have a project. I always took mushrooms because I thought that's the best thing cause you could eat mushrooms and you learned how to test them and everything else, I always had three or four rabbits available to eat mushrooms, sometimes they suddenly collapsed and you knew they were no good. But like I said in a rural school I learned medicine, I learned physiology, hygiene, biology, and I was only in the sixth grade, sixth, seventh grade, and here in grade school they're still doing reading, writing, and arithmetic, well that's fine if you didn't know how to read or write, but if you know how to read or write I think you should go to another section. Or if they taught me shorthand when I was in the fifth and sixth grade, I would've 00:21:00really enjoyed it, because it would be something new, and it would've been a lot easier for me to learn this other stuff. But too much repetition.

-MG: Let's go back, how old were you when you first started to make money on a job?

-SD: Well my first paying job was back in high school I used to work for a farmer, he'd give me 50 cents a day and the days in those days were 12 hours or 13 hours long, but I'd get my meals. And also from that high school, standard, I also got jobs, I also got the opportunity to drive a tractor, drive for a team or horses or a team of mules. All this was through the high school, 00:22:00in other words the vocational training we had in our high school was, you didn't have to go to no community college to learn how to drive a tractor or a truck, they teach you that while you're still in high school to prepare you for a job when you left high school, they didn't wait. Of course if you were not a person that was figuring on going to college, you wouldn't have to go through this, you didn't have to take these courses, you could just take a straight academic course and just learn how to, learn it from the vocarious training, I mean what somebody else did, you'd, checking the time, but you'd mimic that and tell it your own words back. To me that was training without participation, in other 00:23:00words it was vocarious and to me that's not knowing. You have to do something, you have to go and do something you like and if you're gonna play baseball, you can't play it on watching TV. You've gotta go out there and play it yourself, and same thing with anything, I mean you have to participate yourself into it, you can't get it out of a law book, unless they appoint you a judge, then you can do it but if you're just a bystander, you can't do it because it's not you doing it, it's somebody else doing it, you're just listening or reading and that's alright when you first start out, but once you get, like when I went to college, I wanted to be an author, I wanted to be an instructor right in, I 00:24:00didn't want to go to any training business of being an instructor, I wanted to get up in that classroom and show it, right then.

-MG: Did you have any jobs that weren't farm related at all?

-SD: Oh yes I worked in a farm reaper. Well I first went to the Ccs, and that's where I got my training to really work in different jobs and then from there I got a job in a foundry, (inaudible) and in place I was a shakeup man, after the iron was poured into the molds and then after the iron was set we'd have to take the castings out of the flasks and shake out the sand around the castings and put them on the cart and send them down to the casting.

-MG: How old were you at the time that you worked in a foundry?

-SD: Oh I was 18.

-MG: What kind of wages were you making?

-SD: I was making 45 cents an hour. I was making the same as anybody else for that type of work, we had no unions.

-MG: Were they trying to unionize at all, or did they talk about it?

-SD: No, there was talk about unions but they had, we had a little better deal than the unions, what we had was lotteries. You had a chance to win something, only cost a quarter, you could win yourself maybe 1,000 bucks, of course the mafia was running this but it was a good thing, it kept people hoping and that's all life is anyway, it's all one big hope and anybody's trying to 00:26:00sell you something different hasn't really learned their ABCs.

-MG: Was the foundry, was this in Elmira?

-SD: Well this was in Kennedy Valley, in Elmira, New York, and then after, when I was going into the foundry, I tried it first and I graduated high school I tried to get into the air corps right then, but I couldn't get in because they weren't taking anybody that didn't have any previous training into the service at that time. If I had a hitch in the army or something like that they would've taken me in the air force but that's what they, that's how they required. Well in 1937 that changed and they allowed first termers into the air corps if you were a high school graduate, well by the time they lifted that I 00:27:00was the second one out of that area to go into that program.

-MG: At the foundry, were you working a 40 hour week, what were your days like?

-SD: I was working 12 hours a day, 60 hours a week.

-MG: 60 hours a week, okay, and how did you feel about, what was the general attitude towards workers?

-SD: I thought it was a good thing. But I ran into trouble after I went into the military service, I come back out and I got a job on a construction outfit building a hospital, and I was working on the second floor, wheeling cement up on the second floor and a guy came to me and he was a steward I believe, and he said if you want to work here you have to join the union, and I said yeah, I'll join the union, just put me down, he said it's gonna cost you 17.50, I said it's not gonna cost me anything to join the union, unless, now, 00:28:00unless you wanna come wheel this wheelbarrow and earn that money wheelin' my wheelbarrow, I'll sit down there and watch you do it, and earn that 17.50, I said fine, I'll be happy to do it for you. But I said I'm not paying you 17.50 to join anything. I said no, I had, I was the guy that was gonna make the money off that 17.50, I'd say that's wonderful, I'd do it but I can't see any future in doing that. I said no, if I couldn't speak English, or I couldn't do my work, or if I was crippled or handicapped, I could see joining a union, it would help 00:29:00me cause they'd stick up for me. I said I'm healthy, I can see, I got 20 20 vision, I got 20 20 hearing, and if I don't like the place I'll leave. I said I don't have to be here, I said I don't need that kind of money anyway, and I said I'll go and get a job somewhere else where there isn't any union, where they won't harass you and this guy, he didn't know what to say so he left, the first thing you know what the contractor who hired me, he said I could work there as many hours as I want and he's paying me a very good wage at the time, and he was going to give me overtime and everything but when I refused to join the union he says I'll have to let you go but he says I'm gonna let you work another week, you don't have to join the union but you have to pay 50 cents just to work and I said I don't like paying 50 cents a week for that. I'd rather do that than join 00:30:00the union, paying 17.50.

-MG: At the foundry, did other people want to unionize and you said that the working conditions at the foundry...?

-SD: Yeah I'll tell you what happened, when they tried to get a union in there, the owner closed the plant down. Already I was in the service when this happened. But he called and when they tried to unionize that plant, he says before you do that, he'll close the plant down, and they didn't reopen 'til world war two started.

-MG: What do you remember about the crash?

-SD: Well I remember about the crash alright. When my father came home and he says he couldn't borrow the money to pay the interest cause he had 00:31:00two apartment buildings, he had this, I don't know it was three or four acres of land, which he had a lot, six lots to an acre or something like that, and that was the only thing he had in his clearance. And he had one house that was clear, but he went, and he hit, somebody talked him into it, buying these two big double room duplexes, and it cost a lot of money 'cause he didn't put a big down payment, he put very little down payment and he had to carry most of it was interest, so when he couldn't borrow the interest the mortgager, the ones that 00:32:00held the mortgage, also because when he bought that property he had already had to mortgage his other home, his regular homes and he mortgaged some of the lots too over a period of time so we didn't move out of there, (mumbling) Oh I think, 00:33:00yeah that's right, when he left, that's what happened. He left there in '28, when he couldn't borrow enough money to pay the interest, he had to get mortgage on his own property when he bought those homes, that's right, and then when the stock market crashed, so he was bring pressured for more payments and so what he did in '28 he just gave it up and I was 12 at the time, I think, and he just went ahead and swapped everything for a farm. He, that's the only thing he had left to do. And he just gave everything, he said I'm getting out of this business, this position. Actually he really lost a lot of money doin' it, but 00:34:00so, I don't know, where were we.

-MG: Did your family make the transition very well?

-SD: No, we moved on a farm, a guy with a hay rack, we didn't go up there with a car or a truck, but we went up there with a team of horses, big Belgians, say come up, they roll all the furniture on up, this hay rack, everything. We went from Omara which was 16 miles, we went 16 miles to here in New York, to that farm, and that farm wasn't what you'd call the best farm, it 00:35:00was a run down, like the buildings were run down, everything, the house leaked when it rained, but when we got there, my sister and my oldest brother and myself, we all got on a bank and cried for leaving the city. You see they never asked us, they asked my youngest brother and my youngest sister if they would like to move, no they asked my two younger brothers, that's right, my younger sister wasn't born yet, but that's what happened, they asked them if they wanted to go on a farm and they said yes, they never asked us, the oldest, my oldest brother was 15 or 16, I was 12, and then my sister was 14, and I tell ya, it 00:36:00was, if I had the power we wouldn't have been there, it was against our wishes.

-MG: Did your father, how much farming did he do?

-SD: My father didn't know which way the collar on the horse went, he thought it went on the tail. No kidding, my brother Al, he went ahead, he never dressed a horse in his life, but he looked at the harness and he threw the harness on, he dressed it up, put the hands over the collar, buttoned it up, just like he knew how to do it, and it was right, the funny thing is it was right. And the guy across the neighborhood from another farm he came over and he says well, by golly I don't have to show him, he knows how to do it, so my 00:37:00father was an easygoing man, people flocked to him like honey. He received the gift of gab in Polish and German even though he talked in broken English, people loved to hear him talk. But he always butter balled people up.

-MG: Did he ever hold another job, what did he do during the depression?

-SD: During the depression, he worked during the depression, he told me Roosevelt got in and he got laid off.

-MG: What was he doing, was he working in the foundry?

-SD: He worked in the foundry up through that time period and just as Roosevelt got in he got laid off. And when he got laid off he was forced to do a little farming, of course on the side he had something like 36 acres of woods, 00:38:00so he'd go ahead and cut wood for a living, in other words he could get two and a half dollars for a short cord, or a dollar and a half for a short cord, and he'd get at least 10 dollars for a big cord.

-MG: Did you have to cut back quite a bit?

-SD: Well once we got started on a farm, I'm not going to say we hated the farm all the time, this was at first day in the depression, crying on the bank and all this, after a while we found out that we had more freedom, we could go places, we could go treasure hunting, we could do things that we never'd thought possible and then once I learned to step out of the school and the practical part of what farmin' is and everything, I thought it was a good 00:39:00transition only the thing was that I thought was harming, we weren't notified of things, that was the harm that caused, and of course that gave us a negative attitude towards our parents also, because we were not alerted that this was gonna happen, now if they told us we were moving on a farm cause they were having money troubles, they're goin' broke if they stay and try to hold on this property, if they were to explain that to us we would forgive them, we would have gone gladly.

-MG: Were things, I mean you see books today, we read about the depression, it was a hard time for a lot of people, was it?

-SD: It was in a way, but once on a farm, city folks had it harder 00:40:00than we did because there was no work in the city either and the WPA didn't come on the scene until Roosevelt got elected. Under Hoover, they would give people who were unemployed welfare, in other words 15 dollars a week or a month or whatever it is and they'd pay your rent. And there was not enough work to go around. And so they opened up soup kitchens and everything else and the people that had would share a little of it, of course they couldn't put themselves out too far out either cause they could be in the same boat. In those days, I remember this, that we didn't pay any taxes unless you earned 4800 dollars a year. Well either a professor at college only earned 2500, 3000 a year, school 00:41:00teacher only earned 50 dollars a month. Of course later on, things changed, but during that part there, that's the reason I went to the Ccs after I graduated high school, because of the depression there was not enough of the work available for a young man, of course if we had the funds I could've gone to college. I could've gone probably anyway but I didn't want to relinquish my ability of playing sports, I wanted to play sports, if I couldn't play sports I didn't want to go to college and that's the way it was. So I guess, but I would say that once we got on the farm and started pitching in, everybody put their 00:42:00shoulder to the wheel, we start raising chickens, we had at one time a flock of maybe 150 chickens, of course the meat was very cheap, eggs, we'd go down to town and sell eggs, I remember many times we'd take big hen eggs, Rhode Island reds or Plymouth Rocks, they would lay pretty good size eggs, Rhode Island reds or regular eggs, and red shells, and Plymouth Rocks, the white ones, and then of course White Leghorns for more consistent layers, and I remember myself and we went from the Plymouth Rocks to the White Leghorns, boy I'd go with my father and we'd go and peddle eggs to all the people that we knew and one lady she'd 00:43:00say how come the eggs are so small, and my father, he says lady, he says if I laid those eggs, they'd be large but they happen to be a White Leghorn, today, pull it. And that was it, so then I said well, of course in those days I never worried too much about anything, really, we all ate, of course we didn't dress too hot but I see now that it's a fad now, these days people are dressing like that, they don't have to dress like that but they're dressing with patches and everything else, and you'd think this country had a worse depression than we had in those days, but it's not true, I mean that's just makeup of the people.

-MG: Did you find that the neighbors... was there kind of a sense of a bond 00:44:00because they were in the same boat, and did people take a lot of concern for each other?

-SD: No, once they learned that you were foreigner, your parents came from the foreign country, you were a minority. You were automatically, regardless white or what color you were, you had to fight for your rights. Now like a lot of times there'd be some Americans that've been there for three or four generations in this country and they start giving you snobby answers, well once you beat the hell out of their kids they turn out to be nice guys, that's what you had to do, you had to stick up for your rights. Once you didn't do that and tried to take that punishment for nothing, I remember, I used to stick up for my rights and it worked for me, of course our laws are such that protects a lot of things that, protects more today. Today you couldn't do what I did, today 00:45:00I'd've been in jail a long time ago to do the same things, but those days you could get away with it, all you had to do was have the cheek and the gumption, and the ability and that's all you need. Today you have to have laws to protect, well in post office when I got a job in post office, superintendent starts looking over my shoulder and says you have to do it faster, and I say listen, you don't have to stand in back of me, why don't you get in front of me, tell me that in front of me, I say next time you get back there I'll punch you right square in the nose, and that's the way it is. That's my makeup, you know and a lot of people weren't brought up that way, to fight for your rights. I used to fight for my rights everywhere I went, I didn't care if they were big shots or little shots or whatever they were, they were wrong and I used to tell them that.

-MG: So your family had a pretty difficult time there in the area?

-SD: Well not necessarily, when they found out that we were hard workin' people that didn't slump off on the job they started looking up to us more and when they couldn't get any help they'd always come to us. That's the way we made it.

-MG: Did you ever go back to Omara, did you go back to the city to visit?

-SD: Oh yes, I used to go down there, I had a lot of friends down there, there was, I mean I used to belong to gangs, I belonged to a Polish gang, an Irish gang and I even belonged to an Italian gang, we all had differences but...

-MG: Were they just social groups, you'd get together?

-SD: Everything was double dare you to do this, double dare you to do that and everything, we had also I belonged to an Indian Scout troupe, we had boy scouts in those days but boy scouts you had to have uniforms, being an Indian Scout you didn't have to have anything, you just belonged, they didn't care what you had or what you had to offer, you didn't have to pay anything or anything and we used to go hiking, we'd go in the hills and make a camp, we'd have to ask the farmer if it's alright to build a fire, but otherwise we never asked him about getting his corn, we'd just go help ourselves, of course we got caught several times by the highway patrol, but they let us go, I mean they knew 00:48:00that we could get in worse trouble in the city, as long as we weren't making fires, all we were doin' was taking some corn, roasting them in an area where we couldn't damage anything.

-MG: When you'd go back to visit your friends during the Great Depression, was it a lot harder, you mentioned it was a lot harder for them.

-SD: Oh it was a lot harder for them than it was for us, cause like I said we never worried about a thing, they were worried always about food, and having something to eat, so when I'd go to the city I'd always bring stuff with me so they didn't have to feed me, I brought something to feed them, grain, a bushel of potatoes, a sack of corn, ear of fresh corn. They appreciated that of course, later on after the depression was over we all got together many times, 00:49:00of course now I moved back here a couple of years ago, most of the guys I used to know are all passing away, at the early age of most of them were in excellent physical health, they joined the service, but there's things I don't know, I think it's, it was... Like myself, I never bothered, I never had a headache in my life except when I got hit in the head, I never worry about it, when I go to bed, I go to bed, I don't dream, I tell people off, just what I think, if they're wrong, I tell 'em that. I don't pussyfoot around with it, I tell a 00:50:00senator he's wrong, doesn't bother me. I respect everybody that's different, I respect no one that's wrong, if they're not right, I don't respect them.

-MG: During (mumbling) you were involved in the CCC, what exactly did that entail, what would you do, how'd you get into that?

-SD: Will you shut that off for me? Just shut it off. Very good organization, myself, I didn't like the, I wanted more freedom than I got at the CC, in other words we lived in open bays, maybe 80 guys in one bay.

-MG: What was a bay exactly?

-SD: A long building, beds on both sides, we had this much clearance between beds and of course for the conditions and time I guess you could squawk, I was making 30 dollars a month and I was only getting five dollars a month, myself, the rest went to my parents, 25.

-MG: What year was this?

-SD: This was back in '35.

-MG: What kinds of projects were you involved in? First job I had was a laborer, picking shovels up, I helped load sand on the truck, the gravel, and then later on I got to be on a surveying crew, for Cornell university, we 00:52:00surveyed the land, I was a chain man and then in the winter time I was also on a survey, game survey group where we caught and tagged animals, we picked up all kind of animal and bird dungs to identify it, to find out what kind of nutrition they had and so forth, and we recorded all this, we'd send it in to Cornell with the specimens, what we determined about it, but they had more sophisticated microscopes and everything, they could do a lot better job than we could. And then of course we recorded the rain fall and snow fall, how deep the snow was 00:53:00and we also made records of areas if there was animals dying from starvation and so forth. And we went by the authorities and bring food and drop it in. But I had a lot of diversified jobs, I used to drive a truck.

-MG: How long would the jobs last, usually?

-SD: The jobs would be seasonal, more so, if they say they were going to clear up a track of woods, in other words, like this one, it'd last all fall, we'd trim this whole wooded area, in other words we took out all the dead trees, we made, took out all the brush, we made fire lanes, we had fire lanes through 00:54:00the forest, through the hills, what we have machines now to do, of course, but I can't say anything that was bad about the whole time except one time they had a strike.

-MG: Who had a strike?

-SD: One of the guys, somebody didn't want to go to work, it was 20 below zero and they didn't want to go to work, so I thought there was a good reason for not going to work, 20 below, I said why do we have to go to work, so this whole barracks refused to go to work, that one day. Oh boy, that was 00:55:00something. They'd almost call that mutiny. Well anyway our whole barracks refused to go to work, I was in that barrack and I didn't want to go against that whole gang, 80 guys, I said jeez I'll get killed if I don't, so I went with them.

-MG: How long were you in the corps?

-SD: I got in September of '35, and I went in September of '36 or October, no I was in 15 months, I must have gone in there in July or August, and I got out in November, November, that's right, I was in 15 months.

-MG: Was anybody else in your family involved in the reindeer projects?

-SD: Yeah, my brother George, he didn't have to send his money home.

-MG: Was he in the CCC?

-SD: Yeah, he was in the Ccs too but he was 40 years younger and it was a different time, a different era, see I was already in the air corps when he got into the Cs and on top of that, he went in the Cs with the idea that he could keep his money, cause he wanted to go to college, and the authorities let him keep it. Of course my parents, my father was working again, the depression wasn't as hard at that time, but it was supposed to be during '39 I think he graduated high school so he must've been in there in '40, '40, '41, when I got out of the service, and of course like I said he went to the Cs with the idea of 00:57:00getting a college education, he went to college, (mumbling)

-MG: How did your parents feel about the New Deal?

-SD: Well we never worried about the New Deal, it was the same old deal to us, I mean life, living, we had to work on a farm, that wasn't given to anybody for nothin', you had to do something for it, the only thing I can see that expression, the New Deal, the only thing I could see was for people who weren't working, for those people might've been a New Deal, for my father worked in the same outfit for a long time, when he got this other job, he never got, well he did go once in a while, that's right he did work in a WPA for a few years.

-MG: What did he do?

-SD: From '33, I think, '35, when I was going to high school.

-MG: What was he doing?

-SD: Using the shovels, must've been either throwing it on or kicking it off, one or the other.

-MG: What political affiliation was your father?

-SD: My father was a, he'd never give up information like that, he would say well that's the man I voted for, but after it was over with, you didn't know who he was voting for before, in those days, many people would come up and say if you vote for me I'll give you five bucks. This is open, and it's against the law to do it, but my father wasn't dumb, he probably collected quite 00:59:00a few five dollar bills from people. Then he made his own choice.

-MG: Did your mother vote?

-SD: Oh yes.

- She'd never say who she was voting for, neither one, neither one, I'll tell you, I heard many times when I was a boy, you vote for me, I'll make it worthwhile.

-MG: How did they feel about Hoover, did they ever talk very much about him?

-SD: They thought Hoover was the best President we ever had, because we had to get through it on our own. I've never had 15 dollars myself without having any holes, people that did work, they would get less, they would get down 01:00:00in the dumps, so that's one thing about Roosevelt's plan working for him, is at least we were doing something physical, to keep physically fit.

-MG: How did they feel about Roosevelt?

-SD: Well, can't squawk about him, they never squawked about him, but I didn't think myself, the reason I didn't think he was so hot, I thought the principle he was using was bad, because he's teaching people they could get something for nothing. That's the only thing I ever squawked, but they'd say I'm getting something for nothing, there's no restrictions, and later on the 01:01:00restrictions came in.

-MG: How aware were you and your parents, did they pay a lot of attention to current events, things that were going on outside of the United States?

-SD: Well let me tell you this. In those days, first radio I listened to was in 1924 and that was to listen to a World Series, Yankees and Philadelphia Phils I think it was, or Boston Reds, I can't remember exactly, I remember the baseball game, Herb Pennock was pitching for the Yankees that one time.

-MG: I think we're gonna run out of tape soon.

-SD: Current events in those days were mostly word of mouth, back in 01:02:00the 20's especially. The only time I got the chance to listen to the radio was when Jack Dempsey was fighting, but that's the only time I listened to radio. And the newspapers, well, newspapers were, everybody seemed to be buying newspapers, but we never were, we never bought them and as far as current events went, the only current event about Europe was when my mother received a letter from her sister, or my father received a letter from his mother, what she wanted money, that's the only time that they worried about current events about that.

-MG: What about when Hitler started to make a name for himself?

-SD: No I was in the service when Hitler was starting out, my oldest brother he was in the service three years before, cause he was 18 when he joined the army, he went to Panama. In the army they didn't allow people to go in the foreign service, my brother was 18, he was a complete man, he was, he had not only the ability, he could speak well, he could speak in two languages or three, and he was well versed in a lot of things, he could play the violin, he could draw, he could do a lot of things. I looked up to him, but I had, the talent 01:04:00that man had, I don't believe none of us have the talent he had, he learned when he took the violin that he was four years old, and he could play, he used to take (mumbling) when he was 15 down the turntable, turn it around, by himself, nobody else would, at 15.

-MG: Did you think you would go into another war, by this time you were in the service?

-SD: Well you know, in the service, you'd better realize that we weren't preparing for the service back in '37, '38, '39, and of course Hitler was rattling the sword back in '37, '38, when he went into Poland, and went to 01:05:00France, and of course I think if he would've avoided that clash with Russia, he could've taken them, or if he'd avoided that clash with Britain, he could've taken Russia, one or the other, but he couldn't fight on two fronts, even though he had the best cream soldiers in the world at that time, but, best equipped too, as far as that goes, I don't believe, well, I used to go back when I was in the military service, back, I used to command, my commander used to tell me if I wanted to go to a dance, German dance, I couldn't go, what would they do, and 01:06:00then I found out that this was really a Nazi party dance, and that's not for me, of course I wasn't against what they stood for really, I was against them to try to capture the world, that's what I was against.

-MG: Did you think that pretty soon the United States would go to war, did you think that we'd stay out of it?

-SD: No I thought eventually we would have to go because we were having trouble with Japan as well, Japan was pushing China around pretty badly and not only that but they were pushing us around in China, back in '34, I even started that in high school. So as far as that goes, I knew eventually it was going to come up to a head and either we'd back down Japan, somebody had to back 01:07:00down, and also Germany, just rattling the sword on that front, of course Lindbergh was telling us all the while to re-arm, start thinking of re-arming, we wanna have any say so in the world we better start re-arming because Germany's re-arming, Japan is re-arming. Everybody was.

-MG: Well do you think people, they didn't want to get involved, this is what we read about is that the United States was trying to keep us pretty isolated.

-SD: We had politicians at that time, that thought the people wouldn't know how to think themselves, and they tried to do the thinking for them, they thought all the people in this country, all our big politicians of 01:08:00the day thought that we're all foreigners here, and we couldn't keep to ourself, and that's how come they came up with the idea of being neutral, and we also seem to let the people who are neutral run our government, which is bad, I mean it's alright to have a couple of them, but we should have people that want it right, believe in rights instead of being neutral.

-MG: What kinds of things did you do when you were growing up for amusement?

-SD: Well, there's a lot of things, we played games, we had target practice, rifle target practice, bow and arrow target practice.

-MG: Did you go to the movies at all?

-SD: Yeah I went to the movies occasionally. One year, so, Shirley Temple, and I saw another one about the Navy, I can't remember the name. We went to the movies once a year. I used to go to the movies everyday, every week in the city, that's what I was saying, when we moved on the farm we went to movies once a year.

-MG: How much did it cost to go to the movies?

-SD: Cost me only 10 cents, half the time I'd sneak in, it didn't cost me anything. I'd save my money for popcorn, and of course like on Sundays, I always wanted to go on Sunday, because my father would give me money for the church, put it in the envelope and I'd get halfway to church, take the money out 01:10:00of the envelope, just went and turned in a gold pen. And I'd save that money for the movies that afternoon, I'd say no I wouldn't do that either, I'd sneak in, I'd wait for the guy to go in, I'd let him go in first, he'd buy one ticket, one ticket and for two guys, to go in on one ticket, or you buy yourself a ticket, and then you come out again with the stub and you tell him to meet me in the restroom, and you go to the restroom and you give him, the guy is sleeping, and you say you take this ticket, and then go, you give it to this kid, and you go 01:11:00in too, or you excuse yourself, come into the line, he'd give you a special pass, and you'd excuse yourself and you'd get out and you'd go across the street to make a telephone call and you'd give that half ticket that you got to this kids and he'd get in free. And of course but most of the time everybody you'd come in with a bunch of guys, everybody wouldn't go in to the ticket guy, everybody'd wait, maybe five six guys would go into the ticket guy first, the tall guys first, the little guys would run by, they would never see them.

-MG: Was there anybody that you particularly enjoyed? (mumbling)

-SD: Yeah, I think it was Tom Ricks, cowboys, Jack Cox, and funny 01:12:00(mumbling), but those were standbys, Stanley Winslow, Shadow, he played the part of Shadow, he was good. I tried to see all of that stuff of course, once we got off the farm, only 16 miles away, it was difficult, only time to go to the movies was in the winter time, when there's nothing to do. But of course we had, we'd go picking walnuts and butternuts and ashnuts, a lot of people don't realize, or beechnuts, not ashnuts, beech, that's a tricornered nut, very sweet, 01:13:00good. And in the winter time we'd crack nuts, we'd sell nuts for dinner, one of them, best stable, selling items in the country at that time, it's hard selling, it's not people, hard selling, hickory nuts and just you could feel the hands of picking, crack 'em just right, our normal nuts would sell 20 cents a pound or something like that, used to sell it for 60 cents a pound.

-MG: Did your family ever... you talked about listening to the radio, did your family own one?

-SD: Well we didn't get a radio in our family until 1929, I think, or '30.

-MG: What kinds of programs did you listen to?

-SD: I forgot. That one skit that... '39 I guess, between, in the 30's, I don't know exactly, when we got our first telephone, that's when very quickly we were... Even with not having running water, like that, we had the telephone, even without electric lights, we were living. We had telephone before we had electric lights. And of course, we had good lights because I'm 62, I don't wear glasses, of course I used to wear glasses, for 21 years, but anyway, 01:15:00as far as work goes, let's see what else, for amusement on the farm, we used to go, I used to go tracking, for animals, shoot small game, but then of course in that day, Tarzan of the Apes was in the newspapers, Tarzan of the Apes, the newspaper, they ran through that stretch, the next book, Tarzan of the Lord of 01:16:00the Jungle or whatever it was, it got to me, I thought I was Tarzan, I'd go in the woods and try to practice swinging on a grape vine and boy I got so many scratches, I quit that business. I just couldn't have it.

-MG: When you were growing up, what people did you look to, that were kind of heroes in your eyes or heroes in your friend's eyes?

-SD: In my day, Babe Ruth was one of my heroes. Of course you gotta realize Babe Ruth is still my hero because there's no one has surpassed his record, Hank Aaron has but he was up to bat 2500 times more than Babe Ruth, and when you start figurin' the whole picture, Hank Aaron wouldn't even be able to hold Babe Ruth's bat, even to this day, but you can't tell people that cause 01:17:00they don't look at the whole picture, they just look at tiny dots, that's all they worry about and that's our whole system, our whole government is like that too, instead of looking at it from the broad aspect, where the future is two, three, four thousand years from now, they're looking at it, we're lucky to go 20 years. When I was in the service, I drove a car, I got 500 miles out of a gallon of gas. I burned charcoal instead of gas, I only used gas to start it and with that kind of energy today we'd have enough gas to last us 5,000 years. But you see, they don't want to break the oil companies so that's the whole company, tomorrow they could go into a new system entirely, of course all the big stock 01:18:00breakers they'd collapse, but that's the whole problem, they don't tell the picture, they don't try to sell the whole story, they sell you little parts of it, they don't want you to know the rest of the picture.

-MG: Besides Babe Ruth, who did you like?

-SD: Jack (mumbles), he was great, Jane Tillney, (mumbles) he was great.

-MG: Did you go to many sports events when you were young?

-SD: Oh yeah, I used to go, my father used to take me to baseball games, football games, my trouble was I'd never stand still, I always got lost at those things, I'd always get helped, when I was four or five years old, six, 01:19:00I'd still get lost. But I enjoyed it, I really did. I know my mother, we were little, Pennsylvania, my mother brought us down to our (mumbles) funeral, she took my sister and I to the five dime store and she bought my sister a little pocket book and I wanted a sparkler, it was fourth of July and all, and I wanted a (mumblers) and she wouldn't buy it for me, and I said well I'm not leaving this store until I get the (mumblers), my god she left me right there. The cops picked me up, you know crying, I can't find my mother and all, where you from, I said I don't know where I'm from but I know I live right next to a big railroad station, there's a railroad track maybe a half a mile from the house. You know 01:20:00what railroad it is? I said I don't really know. Well I was in that police station, they were giving me some popcorn, all kinds of stuff, and finally my mother shows up at the police station and says I see you've found him.

-MG: Did your family own a car?

-SD: Yeah, my father never did learn to drive, he really should've but he was really nervous.

-MG: When did you get your first car?

-SD: Well he bought the car, he bought a car in 1929 I guess, 1922, Grand, Turi car, and that was a good car, we always had trouble with the rear 01:21:00end, (mumbles) , so finally the next car, my brother bought when he went to the service he bought a car, and when he went back into the service, nobody could drive it, so I said well I drove a lot with my brother, so I jumped in the car and I drove, and didn't have no license or anything, farmers really don't need a license, I didn't know that, I thought everybody had to have a license. So I refused to go to the city, I'd just go to the local store which was four miles 01:22:00away and that's where I'd go.

-MG: Were cars, were they still a status item, did a lot of people have them?

-SD: Well now you could say that, just imagine, my father was working at Kennedy Bell and I was 16, and he had to come home, every night he'd be there, or he'd be there a whole week and then come home for the weekend, or else he had to have transportation back and forth, they were hydraulic quit running the railroad, the railroad used to run all the way, to the bridge support, which was four miles, from the farm, so when they closed that railroad down, 12 miles 01:23:00of transportation was gone, so horse and buggy was no longer suited. You couldn't get to there, but it would take you a heck of a long time to get to the city, even with a good horse, you couldn't expect him to go at a trot all the way, you had to walk a lot, it would take you a couple of hours at least. And with a car you'd have (mumbles) less, the hardest part was going from the farm to the town cause it was all muddy roads, we didn't have hardtop. '42 I'd say we 01:24:00had hardtop, they did a lot of good during the war years, they brought in electricity, they brought in a lot of things, of course I wasn't there, like I said I was in the service, '37, I got out for a little short while and went back in. Like I said, that schooling, the schooling, I would say I owe it to the country school for all the abilities that I am capable of without further education, I didn't go to college until after I came back from the service and I 01:25:00retired from the service, then I went back to college. Of course I had college while I was in the service but I didn't go the whole time until I got out of the service.

-MG: What made you decide to go into the service?

-SD: Cause I was crazy about aviation, I didn't care what it was, if I had to just be a grease monkey it would've been alright with me. When I was in the service, it was a prestige organization in the first place, the air corps was considered the diplomatic service, that's the equivalent of it today. Now intelligence, security, those are like the engineers of the day because the air corps of it's day, like I said, what was I thinking, more of, the others were 01:26:00doers, they, if you were a high ranking officer you'd be alright in the other services but as far as I was concerned there was only one service and that was the air force. Job for everybody, not just for the officer but for everybody, everybody had to do things because each one had responsibility and it could depend on the other, as an airplane team, you had responsibility to make sure the airplane was in good condition, so that the pilot, he knew nothing about the condition of the airplane, if you told him it was good and it was bad, he didn't know the difference, that's how they trusted the enlisted, of course they'd done 01:27:00the same thing during World War two, of course after the latter part of World War two, they decided that they better to start teaching the pilots to know something about the engine and it's working conditions, but prior to that I used to go out with a pilot and say okay you take over the controls, now today they don't do that, they got worried about their position. That was one thing I liked about the service, I could do things, I could do (mumbles) and I was a pilot, send me out and they'd tell me to get, buy enough gas and coal and so forth, to run a camp, run an organization two weeks, and they'd tell me, they'd give 01:28:00engine data, all the gas and so forth for the airplane, how much gas it uses in an hour and so forth and how many hours does it run, I was a purchasing agent, I only had about a year and a half in the service, like I said I was a first class pilot, but even then. Now today you have to be a colonel to be a purchasing agent. It's the times. I know myself, I went into the service, the world war started, there was about 150 tracks on the cars, but there was one person who knew how to run, I was the only one, so I started writing these tracks in my 01:29:00head, the officer said you can't do that, I said what do you mean sir? Now for some time I was gonna, you can't go across that opening there I said oh yes you can. (mumbles) One time I was the only guy that was allowed to taxi in my outfit, 25 airplanes.

-MG: I have one last question for you and then we'll wrap it up. Of all the things we talked about in the last hour and a half, what one thing has had the most impact on you, had the most influence on you, ultimately that we talked about? As far as your...

-SD: The whole sphere, I would have to say my first term in the 01:30:00military service was my most satisfying, I probably learned more, and I met finer people than I ever had, I received more than I gave, I know that but I gave a lot but I received a lot too, in other words the philosophy was a lot different, in the military.

-MG: In what way?

-SD: The military in those ways, they were, those people that I served with, the officers, they weren't coming up from hard times, they already had it made, their parents had it made, they had it made, they were the black sheep in the family, I used to know Tiffany's son, we used to go out together, 01:31:00things like this, you don't see that today. Of course you'd have other troubles today, you have the seniority problem today, clash of personalities, harder opportunity to get a job in Kansas city, as a wage inspector, when they found out I was white, they told me it's the opportunity for a colored, or a black man that was a college graduate. But I could've had that job if there wasn't restrictions for being a minority, but that was in 8500 in those days that was good money. So I have to say my first enlisted was my best, of all the periods, 01:32:00of course I liked the war, I really liked that too because you had to rely on your own ability, what you did or what you didn't do. I met a lot of good people.