The Johnsons: Part II

JOSEPH LEWIS JOHNSON

In 1989, when my father was 79 years old, he signed up for a rafting trip down the Colorado River. It went through the Grand Canyon so, as you can imagine, it was quite spectacular. He wanted to take one of his children with him, but Tom and Kate had commitments, so I was the lucky one to go. The rafts were very large, carrying 18 people, however provided no seating. We had to make do by sitting on the edge of the pontoon or bracing ourselves against piles of supplies. It was uncomfortable and passengers were constantly searching for a good spot to sit. Near the end of the trip we were talking about where our favorite places were on the raft, when one woman said, “My favorite place is sitting next to Joe Johnson because Joe has the most interesting stories to tell.” All my life I had heard dad tell stories about his life experiences, and I found them interesting, even fascinating, but assumed, incorrectly, that all fathers had interesting stories to tell. It was at that moment, late in dad’s life, that I began to appreciate his stories, and paying close attention when he told them.

PART I: CHAPPELL, NEBRASKA

My father was born on September 8, 1910, in the family home in Chappell, Nebraska. The closest city was Denver, Colorado, which was about a two-day drive away by car. Chappell is located on the high plains of western Nebraska, about five miles from the Colorado state line, at an elevation of 3,700 feet.  The winters are very cold, dry, and windy; the summers, stifling hot. According the U.S. census of 1910, the population was 329. 

When my father was born his grandfather’s ranch was about 800 acres. As he was growing up his father expanded the family holdings to 10 farms, consisting of 4.000-5,000 acres. The family house was right in the middle of town, with the courthouse next door and the public library across the street. Although the nicest house in town, there was no central heat nor indoor plumbing. There was a coal stove in the living room and another in the kitchen for cooking. Later they got an oil stove for the kitchen.

Following are more of dad’s recollections that are contained in his article in the Deuel County History.

One event occurred during my boyhood that caused the name of Chappell to be carried in newspapers all over the United States and probably most of the world. The engine on the funeral train that was carrying he body of President Harding fro San Francisco to Washington threw a tire at Chappell and the train was stopped there for several hours. A number of famous people got out and walked up and down the tracks, but the only one that I can remember is General Pershing. 

My fondest memories of growing up in Chappell are of swimming and fishing in, and skating and duck hunting on the Lodgepole Creek. When I returned in 1978 for the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation, you can imagine how disappointed I was to find that the creek had dried up and was no more.

I finished law school at the University of Nebraska in 1936. It was the depth of the depression and Chappell was in the middle of the dust bowl. There were no jobs so I went home to Chappell, had some letterheads printed and hung out my shingle at my father’s real estate office. No one seemed to need a lawyer so for a year I divided my time between shucking corn on the ranch and jerking sodas at the Ferris Drug Store. During this period only one client showed up and he wanted a deed prepared. I took down the necessary information and told him to come back the next day. I then consulted my father about the fee and it was thought that one dollar would be about right. The next day I delivered the deed and received a silver dollar from my client and that was the total of my first year’s law practice. 

Following is an assortment of stories that I remember my father telling me, or they were included in the oral history tapes that were recorded in the summer of 1986. 

The Jail

The courthouse and jail were located adjacent to grandfather’s house, on the far side of the large lawn. My father used to go over to the jail and talk to the inmates through the barred windows. They were lonely and needed someone to talk to and dad thought they had interesting stories to tell. One frequent inmate was one of two Jewish brothers who lived in Chappell. He had a drinking problem and when he went on one of his benders he was put in the jail to sober up. He was quite intelligent and also an accomplished violinist. He used to play the violin for my father through the jail bars.

Oranges

Oranges were expensive and not easy to come by. Every year dad received one orange, and that was on Christmas day.

The Sleep-over

Dad had a sweet tooth and was somewhat of a spoiled child. One weekend he spent the night at a friend’s house on a ranch. The boy’s mother made pancakes for breakfast and the ranch hands ate with the family. Because dad was the honored guest he was given the bottle of syrup to start it around the table. Dad poured enough syrup on his pancakes until they were actually floating on the plate. This was the normal amount he put on his pancakes at home. When he passed the bottle to the next person he suddenly realized he had used more than half the syrup. Each person put two drops of syrup on their pancakes. Not a word was spoken by anyone during the entire breakfast. The only sound was of the knives and forks working and people chewing and swallowing. As you can imagine, dad was mortified.

The First Car

About 1914 grandfather bought the first car in Chappell. I think it was a Model-T Ford. They took the train from Chappell to Denver where they purchased the car at a dealership. Grandfather did not know how to drive the car, so one of the mechanics at the dealership drove the family from Denver to Chappell. There weren’t any real roads on the prairie so they just headed in a northeasterly direction until they saw a sign that said, Nebraska State Line, and they knew they must be near Chappell. Whenever they came to a barbed-wire fence stretched across the prairie, someone in the car jumped out with a long stick and used it to push the wire high enough for the car could drive under. The mechanic stayed in Chappell to teach grandfather how to drive and service the car. Later the mechanic and grandfather went into business together, opening the first garage in Chappell. By then the first transcontinental highway went right down the main street of Chappell. It was called the Lincoln Highway. It started at Times Square in New York City and ended at Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

The Pony

Grandfather created quite a stir whenever he went out in his new car. Horseless carriages were a novelty and you didn’t see them often out on the prairies of Nebraska. On my father’s seventh birthday, grandfather drove him to a farm near Julesburg and gave him a shetland pony. How to get the pony home? The idea was that dad would ride the pony back and grandfather would follow behind in the car. But Julesburg was about 15 miles from Chappell and after a few miles dad got tired. One of the ranch hands was a monster of a man, so they had him crouch down under the pony and then slowly rise to his feet, lifting the pony onto his shoulders. The car was a convertible, and the top was down, so all he had to do was get into the backseat of the car and let the pony down. It had not dawned on grandfather what a ridiculous scene it would make when they drove into Chappell. As you might have guessed, everyone in town doubled over with laughter when they saw the pony riding in the backseat. One of the local businessmen motioned for grandfather to stop the car. When grandfather pulled over the businessman told him he did not have a horseless carriage anymore because of the horse in the backseat. Trying to appear as nonchalant as possible, grandfather told his friend it was the latest thing. The pony was like a spare tire. If the car broke down, he could always ride the pony. 

KKK

It was about the time of the First World War, as my father remembers, that the Ku Klux Klan rage swept the nation. Dad remembers that several cross-burnings were held in Chappell and men were driving around town at night wearing white bed sheets. He did not know if his father was a member, but doubted it. There were no blacks in Chappell and dad thinks the people were afraid of the Catholic Church.

Critical Illness

One winter my father came down with some kind of lung infection. He had a high fever and was in extreme pain. Every time he coughed he screamed in pain. The family doctor was unable to diagnose what it was and the family contacted a local osteopath. The second doctor was unable to diagnose it either, but told grandfather dad was going to die if he didn’t get expert medical help as soon as possible. They immediately took dad on a stretcher out on the prairie to the Union Pacific line and flagged down the first train to come through. Dad, tied to the stretcher, was put on the train through an open window. When they got to the hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska, dad was diagnosed with a critical case of empyema. To save dad’s life, the doctor made an incision in dad’s back, cutting through one of the ribs in order to drain the fluid from his lung. Over several days time they drained out a gallon of pus. It took several years for dad to fully recover from the illness.

Pasadena

For several years after that, for dad’s health, grandfather drove the family out to Pasadena, California, to spend the winter. That would have been about 1920 or so.

One New Year’s Day grandfather took the family for a drive in their Model T Ford. They came to a field with bleachers on either side, and in the middle of the field a football game was being played. Grandfather drove the Model T up over the curb and parked it behind the goal posts. The family got out and began watching the game. On a field goal kick the ball came right for grandfather. He caught the ball and as a referee came running up, he tossed it to him. The referee blew the whistle at grandfather and shouted at him that he must immediately remove his car from the end zone. Grandfather was befuddled. “Excuse me sir,” he said, “football season normally ends after Thanksgiving. What game is this?” The referee’s face turned bright red and he screamed, “the Rose Bowl!”

The Lost Dog

On one of the trips to California they took the family dog, Teddy, with them. On the way they stopped in Williams, Arizona, and took the train up to see the Grand Canyon, leaving Teddy with the porter at the hotel in Williams. Upon their return from the porter told them Teddy had run away. They spent a few more days in Williams looking for Teddy before they left for California, but could not find the dog. A few weeks later the sheriff in Williams called my grandfather in California to tell him the dog had been found about 60 miles east, walking in the direction of their home in Chappell. The sheriff shipped the dog to them in California.

Taos, New Mexico

On one family vacation grandfather drove the family to Taos, New Mexico. While in Taos the car broke down. There was only one garage in Taos and the mechanic, who was dying of cancer, lived in a room over the garage. He was too ill to get out of bed, so he sent a boy down to the garage with instructions to remove different parts of the engine. While in bed, the mechanic inspected the engine parts one by one until he was able to figure out which part was the problem.

Odd Jobs

Dad did a lot of part-time work when he was growing up, including nights, weekends and during summer vacations. His jobs included harvesting corn, working at the local drugstore, being a counselor at a boys camp and delivering gasoline to the farms near Chappell. He said harvesting corn was very hard, hot work. The corn leaves were sharp and cut up his hands, arms and clothing. To harvest the corn, a horse pulled a wagon slowly through the rows as the boys pulled the ears loose and tossed them in the back of the wagon. Dad was always the slowest one and he would periodically have to stop his horse and make it turn around, go back and start over again.

Hunting and Fishing

My father loved to hunt and fish. They fished either on the Lodgepole Creek or they drove up into the Sandhills and camped and fished there.  They caught perch and bullheads. One summer he went up into the Wyoming Rockies and fished for trout. There were lots of ponds around Chappell in the winter and dad hunted for ducks and pheasants. When he was a small boy grandfather got him a small 410 shotgun. On the first hunting trip a jack rabbit jumped right out in front of dad and the other hunters shouted at him to shoot, but he discovered he was not strong enough to pull the hammer back on the shotgun. On his 16th birthday grandfather got him a 15-gauge Browning automatic shotgun. 

Trains

The Union Pacific line went through Chappell and in the early days the railroad was the lifeblood of the town. Local trains stopped in Chappell, but normally transcontinental passenger trains didn’t stop there. Instead, you had to get off in Julesburg. When grandfather heard that the first Burlington Zephyr coming through Chappell he took the family to the nearby town of Sidney, where they got on, and rode to Julesburg, going through Chappell. Dad remembered Alf Landon’s campaign train coming through Chappell in 1936. Through grandfather’s connections dad was able to get on the train and shake Governor Landon’s hand. One day when dad was about ten, he and some other boys were standing by the tracks, waiting for a freight train to pass. After the last car went by, the boys began to cross the tracks. Dad was the last one and as he was stepping over the rails he just happened to look back and he saw that the train had gone off the tracks. He watched in amazement as about 40 freight cars, one-by-one, slowly summersaulted off the tracks.

High School

My father’s favorite subject in high school was math. He remembers his geometry teacher was not very good at the material. If she got stuck doing a problem, she called on him to come up to the blackboard and finish it for her.

The Basketball Game

I have a clear memory of dad telling me about a basketball game in high school in which he was the hero. I thought dad was a stickler for telling the truth, however a relative who ended up with dad’s school year book for his senior year claims that no such basketball game took place. Who knows what the real story is.

Dad had an interest in sports, but was not a particularly good athlete. The K-12 school was very small and anyone who turned out for the basketball team got to play. There were no practices. The few games they played were against other small schools and the games were shorter than regulation high-school games, maybe ten minutes a half, I’m not sure. Dad was not good at dribbling, passing, shooting, or defending. But behind the house was a pole with a basketball hoop and dad practiced making free throws every day. He did free throws until he got quite good at it. 

In the game against Oshkosh he final score was 3-2: that was three points for Chappell and two points for Oshkosh. Chappell never scored a basket, but they scored on free throws. Dad scored the last free throw and won the game. After the game his teammates carried him off the court on their shoulders.

The Bicycle Trip

When dad was in high school he and a friend named Cecil Stanley rode their bicycles from Chappell to in Lincoln,  a 350-mile trip. The other boy’s family was moving to Havelock (near Lincoln) and the boy thought it would be great fun to ride his bicycle to his new home, and talked dad into going with him. The highway was gravel and dirt for almost the entire distance. It had rained the night before their departure, so the first day out the bikes wouldn’t move because so much mud got stuck between the fenders and the tires. They had to stop frequently and use sticks to scrape the mud out. The bicycles had balloon tires and only one gear, so it was slow going. They only made 35 miles the first day, but the second day they got all the way to North Platte. They had a pup tent and blankets and cooking utensils, which they tied on to their bicycle with rope. Dad mailed a postcard home to grandfather every day to let him know how things were going. Cecil was a year older than dad and bigger and stronger and he rode a half-mile to a mile ahead, until dad complained. Grandfather went down to the gas station in town and asked drivers coming from the east if they had seen two boys on bicycles. Each time he asked they answered that yes, they had seen a bigger boy on the lead bike and a smaller boy about a half mile behind. After arriving on Lincoln, dad came back on the train.

Model-T Ford

At some point grandfather bought dad a car. It was probably when he was in college,  and I assume it was a Model-T Ford, but I am not certain. One time dad was hotdogging with some other kids and flipped the car. No one was hurt and the car was not seriously damaged, but he was very ashamed. I remember dad telling me that the head on the engine had to be pulled every year so the valves court be ground at a machine shop. Dad told me the only tools needed to work on the car were a screwdriver, a wrench, and a pair of pliers. 

Crosses on the Hills

One time grandfather drove the family back to his father’s home in Bethany, Missouri, to find the old family home and look up relatives and old acquaintances. Dad didn’t tell me anything about the time spent in Bethany, but he did share an odd phenomenon they experienced while driving there. At the time state governments were racing to pave the highways for the new influx of automobiles. Missouri came up with a clever, but fatal method of building highways faster than the other states — they built one lane highways. Once grandfather crossed the state line into Missouri they began to notice groups of small white crosses at the top of each hill. Drivers could not see cars approaching from the other side of the hill and were being killed by head-on collisions.

Nebraska Wesleyan

Dad attended Nebraska Wesleyan College in Lincoln for his undergraduate studies. His parents, strict Methodists, had forbidden him from smoking and drinking, although they disobeyed the church’s tenets by allowing him to play cards and dance. While in Lincoln dad took up all of these vices, and particularly liked to dance. He told me once that he was one of the most dapper dressers on campus.

Hobos on the Trains

Over the years I heard rumors that there had been a falling out between my father and grandfather, which led, ultimately, to my father’s departure from Nebraska. At some point when I was an adult dad told me a story about the Great Depression and how his father’s and his own views on the suffering caused therein came into conflict. At the time I was unable to put two and two together, but now realize he was giving me his side of the story of the rift between him and his father. From what I understand, there was no blow-up between the two, but a slow but strong religious and moral schism. Still, more than 50 years after the incident, I could tell dad still had very strong feelings.

The Johnson family belonged to a very conservative branch of the Methodist Church. Drinking, dancing, and gambling were forbidden. Grandfather took the teachings with a grain salt. Frequently on Saturday nights he pulled the living room curtains closed so prying eyes could not see in. He played records on his Victrola while the family played cards and sometimes dad danced with his sisters.

Not long after the Great Depression hit in 1929 hobos (or more properly today, homeless people) began appearing riding the freight trains that went through Chappell. With each passing year the numbers of hobos increased. Eventually the national unemployment rate reached 25%. The hobos were desperate for work and many of them had left their families in order to ride the trains in search of work. 

As dad got older he finished Sunday school and joined his parents and other adults attending the Sunday church service. In Sunday school dad had been taught the Christian God was a God of love and Jesus had cared for the less fortunate. Then one Sunday when he was with his parents, in his sermon the minister addressed the situation of the unemployed. He said that they were irresponsible people because they had not planned their finances wisely, and now, unemployed, were suffering the consequences of their own actions. He said that unemployment was a lesson God was teaching them, and they would have to learn the hard way, and, finally, that it would be a sin against God to help the unemployed. 

The sermon shocked my dad. Not only did it go against what he had been taught in Sunday school, he felt it was heartless and cruel. Later he asked his father what he thought about the sermon, and his father answered that he thought it was a fine sermon and he agreed with the minister. His father felt like these were shiftless, lazy people who could find jobs if they really tried hard enough. This shocked dad even more. It seemed obvious to him that the hobos on the trains were desperate for work and were suffering great hardships in order to find it. To him, the bottom line was the haves were not willing to share with the have-nots, and were using religion to justify their selfishness.

So the sermon set things in motion, but I have no idea how long it took for the break to occur, or if any words were exchanged between dad and my grandfather. Grandfather was the head of the Republican Party in Deuel County and had made dad head of the Young Republicans. During the presidential campaign of 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt was heading the Democratic ticket, dad resigned as head of the Young Republicans and went across the street to the courthouse and registered as a Democrat. I remember him telling me, it must have been quite a shock to the family because he was one of the only registered Democrats in Deuel County. He laughed and said, back then everyone in Deuel County was either a Republican or a Socialist. I don’t know if dad stopped attending the Methodist Church. I remember talking with him once about religion after I had read Inherit the Wind, which was about the Scopes Monkey Trials. During the discussion he told me he was an atheist, and that he thought church ministers were frequently the most ignorant and prejudiced people in their communities.