Elwood K. Whitehead

              Crowder, Dr. David L. Oral History Project
Elwood K. Whitehead- The
Depression
By Elwood K. Whitehead
April 7, 1975
Box 2 Folder 50
Oral Interview conducted by Larry Egely
Transcribed by Victor Ukorebi August 2005
Brigham Young University- Idaho
This is an oral history. I am Tina Whitehead. Today is April 7, 1975. The general topic
will be the 1927 Depression.
Tina Whitehead: Mr. Whitehead, where were you born?
Elwood K. Whitehead: I was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. April 1, 1918.
TW: How long did you live in Twin Falls?
EW: For most of my life, at least until I was twenty, twenty- five years old.
TW: Where were your parents born?
EW: My father was born in Springfield, Utah; and my mother was born in Provo, Utah.
TW: Mr. Whitehead, what was your occupation during the depression?
EW: Well, I was about eight or nine years old when it started, so for the most part, my
occupation was a student.
TW: How serious was it in your family and in your community?
EW: Well, I’d say that our family was affected less by the depression than most of those
around us. But our community was definitely affected, as was the rest of the country.
TW: Mr. Whitehead, could you please tell us some of your memories and just sort of
reminisce in your own words about the depression?
EW: Well, as far as my memories are concerned, they seem to be crowded with things
such as five cents for a loaf of bread, and a bowl of soup and toast for a nickel, and the
fact that everybody seemed to be out of work or a lot of folks were out of work at the
time. I remember that we didn’t feel in our home, we didn’t feel that we were a
disadvantaged family because my father had steady work during the depression, and in
our home was located the only telephone for probably a matter of four or five blocks in
each direction. Consequently whenever any kind of crisis or something like that would
arise, the people would come to our place to use the telephone. My father was the senior
foreman for Amalgamated Sugar Company and consequently was lucky enough to keep
his job during the depression. And although his wages were cut drastically, we still had
money enough to live on considering the fact that we kept a large garden and a cow and
chickens, things like that.
My father was a Republican and consequently was a strong supporter of Mr. Franklin
Delenor Roosevelt’s policies, who was elected president following Mr. Hoover’s
administration. So we had a dim view in our family of the alphabetical bureaus that were
voisted on the communities or the country such as NRA and CCC, and WPA and things
like that. Although I must be honest in admitting that some of these worked very well,
WPA accomplished much in various parts of the country, but in Twin Falls and Southern
Idaho proper, there wasn’t too much to show for this sort of boondoggling as my father
called it. The CCC, Civilian Conservation Corp, was another matter. There were quite a
few Eastern boys that were brought into the Southern Idaho area that worked in the forest
building roads, and bridges, things like this, and I’m sure that it did a great deal of good
for the boys themselves, and no doubt taken on a national scale did a great deal amount of
good for the country too and the economy as a whole.
Our life was made up of such things as listening to President Roosevelt in his fireside
chats telling us that we had nothing feat except but fear itself, which was true, and that
we should all get on the bandwagon and help each other out and that’s a good idea also.
It is a fact that I remember my childhood as being happier and less complicated than
certainly the children who are living today are experiencing, because of the fact that
everybody seemed to have financial problems, we were more understanding of each other
and of each other’s problems and we were more neighborly, we helped our neighbors
constantly. Whenever we had extra game birds in the house of fish from a fishing trip or
something like this, we always shared with our neighbors. And it was not unusual for
someone to bring a pie or a cake, or a chicken or something like this along to our house to
just be neighborly and share their good fortune.
I went to school in Twin Falls. The elementary school was called the Lincoln School an
the thing I remembered most about that is that I had one of the few bicycles that the
children attending that school had, and I was lucky enough, I guess, to be chosen as a
between- school courier or errand boy, or messenger or whatever using by bicycle to carry
messages between our Principal, Mrs. O’Leary, and the other schools around town. But I
must admit that this good fortune came about only after I had experienced Mrs.
O’Leary’s brand of discipline. In her office she had an electric motor with a shaft
containing four large rubber paddles and it was her habit to bring the unruly boys or girls
into her office and back them up against these paddles and they’d get a good spanking.
We all felt that Mrs. O’Leary was a real ogre.
Of course, one good thing about the schools of that time compared to our present day
system is that everybody believed in the three R’s and in phonics and it seemed that
everybody was a good reader and a good speller. And one of the greatest things that
happened in the elementary schools, at least, was the spelling bee that they would hold
and I’m happy to state that I was fairly good at spelling all my life because of the
competition that was engendered in the grades all through school.
I don’t recall that we had a lunch program in the schools, but I do seem to remember that
they had available milk in small pint bottles and chocolate milk. I don’t think that we had
any orange drink or anything else available to us. Consequently every student that didn’t
live close enough to the school to go home at lunch time brought his lunch in a school
box or a paper bag or something and then augmented it with one of these bottled drinks if
their parents could afford it.
It seems to me that money was no particular problem as far as the children was
concerned. If we had a nickel a week we fell mighty fortunate. In most cases we went
without things that seem so important today: candy bars, cola drinks, things like this were
just not part of our lives.
I remember very well that my father would give me a few pennies once or twice a week
and I’d go down to the corner grocery store which was about a block away from home,
and buy penny licorice and limit myself to one of these a day, eating just a portion of it
saving it so that it would last all day long.
I don’t remember until after I was in high school ever having more than twenty- five cents
at one time, that is, to spend foolishly on myself with candy or drinks or something like
that. Since everybody else was in the same boat, so to speak, I didn’t feel that I was
being put upon or disadvantaged in any way.
As far as our clothing is concerned, we were always dressed clean. Mother insisted on
that, but many of the students had extremely poor and shabby clothes that they wore to
school, and patches were certainly not looked down upon at all. I know that I wore hand-me-
downs from my older brothers and didn’t feel badly about it and I’m sure that all the
other children did the same thing.
Of course, we took part in all the school activities, PTA functions and things like this that
folks do nowadays and parents always brought food to these school functions and
everybody shared everyone else’s contribution.
We could go to the shows usually on Saturday morning and stall all day for a dime. This
was the day of the Cowboy Serial and our heroes were such people as Tom Mix and
Duke Gibson and Buck Jones and so forth. There seemed to always be a serial that left
us hanging in suspense so to speak, such as “ The Perils of Pauline” and we would discuss
these between Saturdays amongst ourselves and we defiantly identified with our heroes
or heroines in the film presentations.
This also was the time when the theatres would try to spur their businesses by having
give- aways and during the evening sessions when the adults were there, they gave away
dishes, or china or things like this to help bring a bigger crowd into their theatre. And the
master of ceremonies would stand on the stage of the theatre and usually he had a big
drum and everybody had a ticket, a stub of which was in the drum and they made a big
show of rolling the drum and having a pretty young girl come and pick the winning
number. In fact, this idea became so prevalent that a great many people would never go
to a show unless the prizes given away were particularly attractive to them.
And along about this time in our area, or community, radio was just coming into its own
and there were a great many of us young fellows who built our own crystal sets. But we
found our greatest enjoyment in grouping around the radio at night as a family listening
to shows that are now past history. I remember with fond affections, such shows as the
“ Jello Program” with Jack Benny and Don Wilson and, of course, I think it was every
Monday and Tuesday night or maybe oftener that that each week we would eagerly await
the sketch of Amos and Andy. There were many of us who tried to imitate their way of
talking. Of course, nowadays a lot of folks don’t even remember the fact that Amos and
Andy were white men who were talking in black face, so to speak. Young fellows tried
to imitate Kingfish and some of the other co- words that Andy had.
As we grew older we listened and grew up in the era of the big bands. And radio was
definitely a very, very vital and important part of our lives, I would say that even more
important to us than television is to the people of today. And I believe that radio helped
us in the more constructive manner than television is to the folks of today, because we
had to use our mental capacities to create and understand what was being told to us
orally. The fact that these people were so successful in crating an atmosphere and
making the spoken work and the sounds that we heard so appealing and so believable,
each of us understood perfectly what they were attempting to demonstrate and to put
across. Of course, the fact that radio was helping us keep abreast of the times and the
things that were going on around the country, back East and across the world, also was
extremely important. I can remember my father keeping all of us away from the radio
while he listened to the news. One of his favorite newscasters, I think, was Mr.
Kaltenborn.
Since my father was economically a step or two above his neighbors, they seemed to look
up to him and want his opinions concerning the affairs of our community and our state
and whether he was right or wrong, he didn’t feel too kindly towards some of the things
that were being done on a national scale. For example, he didn’t blame Mr. Hoover for
the depression and he didn’t give Mr. Roosevelt all the credit for our country’s picking
itself up by its boot straps and getting over the depression.
Of course, although we were not personally affected to a great deal, at least in a serious
manner by the depression in our home, we were fully aware of some of the suffering that
was going on by Americans across the country.
We knew that there were a great many people who were full of misery and completely
destitute. We knew that the factories were closing and that there were no jobs to be
found anywhere, and our papers were full of the facts that there were apple sellers on the
corners in the big cities trying to peddle apples and gain a few cents that way. We knew
that there were farmers who were hurt by the drought that seemed to hit along about this
time, it seems to me that I remember that this was the time of the dust bowl where
Oklahoma and Kansas and, I think, Tennessee and some of those states back there were
seriously affected by the extreme dry weather that lasted for three or four years.
Arkansas too, because I remember that there was a class of people called the Okies or the
Arkies, who put their way possessions into old ran shackled cars or trucks and tracked
their way westward to California which they thought was the Promised Land. We seem
to identify with these people because we knew that except for our extreme good fortune
we too could have been in the same dire circumstances.
We saw pictures of people lined up in long bread lines waiting to get a cup of soup and
maybe a piece of bread and our newspaper kept us up- to- date on this sort of thing along
with the path news or newsreel in the shows that we saw. This too seems to have gone by
the board because nowadays you never see a newsreel in the theatre. Since I guess
television has taken over the dissemination of visual news. But back in those days, many
of our ideas and understandings of what is going on around the world were given to us by
the newsreel at the local theatre.
We saw graphic examples of abandoned farms back in the dust bowl area and of people
coming westward trying to find work to buy food just to keep body and soul together.
And when they arrived in California, they were forced to live in cardboard shacks and
housing conditions that were just simply terrible. It got to the point where the name
Arkie or Orkie seemed to be an epithet concerning people who were extremely down on
their luck or even, I think, second class citizens, something along that nature. It’s only
natural that during such a situation that people would employ almost any means to forget
their hard times and their problems. And so we had heroes in the paper such as “ Dick
Tracy” or even things like “ Orphan Annie” and other comic strips that took our minds off
our situations.
But again I must remind you that I personally didn’t feel that I was disadvantaged
because our lives were so filled with outdoor activities and games and things to do that
we were just busy all of the time. We also had a lot of work to do. We had a big garden
at home and since I was the youngest boy at home, I got more than my share of chores
out in the garden. One of my daily chores was to milk our cow night and morning. And
at one time I was milking six cows for some of the neighbors. This wouldn’t of been so
bad except that I had to walk to the pasture area which was about a half mile from home
each morning and milk our cow and our neighbors cows and bring the milk home and
distribute it to them. And then again in the evening, I picked up their pails and went and
milked their cows and brought the milk back to them. I forget what I was paid for this,
but it wasn’t very much. The one thing I do remember clearly is that one of the
neighbors didn’t pay me and I took one of his pups, seeing that he had a mother dog who
had some young bird dog pups and after telling my father about the fact that this fellow
hadn’t paid me for a long, long time, he interceded to the point that I got my choice of the
litter of these pups. This was about the time that I read the story about The Three
Musketeers, and I romantically named my dog Duke Dartanian after one of the
musketeers. I was awkward and falling over my feet and clumsy this time of life and, of
course, the pup was the same; so it was no stretch of the imagination which prompted my
brothers and sisters to start calling me Duke, making fun of my name for the dog. I’m
happy to state, however, that later on after about three years, my father worked with the
dog and he turned out to be an excellent bird dog and he turned out to be an excellent bird
dog and a joy to behold working in the field. He was an English Pointer and one of the
best bird dogs that we never had or shot over.
It seems that along about this time that my memories may not be in chronological order
but as I just think about them in looking back, it seems that about this time we were
hearing a lot about people who had taken the law into their own hands, so to speak, and
had embarked on a spree of robbery and murder and such things. I remember fully well
such people as Dillenger, and Pretty Boy Floyd, and Ma Barker and her sons, all of which
kept the newspapers and the radio buzzing constantly with their exploits and their doings
around the country. Of course, most of these people were brought to pay by the FBI and
their leader. J. Edger Hoover, who at the time was considered one of the greatest
Americans living. I’m sure that anyone of my generation looks back upon him as being a
good American and as one who did a great deal for his country. In light of the recent
findings and things that are being said about the FBI, I don’t know exactly how much of
this was a true condition, but I do know that in those days Mr. Hoover was considered
one of the top men in the entire country, second perhaps only to the President and some
of the top Cabinet members.
Then to, about this time, was the terrible crime of the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby.
Of course, Charles Lindberg was a hero to everyone because of his solo flight to Paris
and he was the type of individual that most people could identify with in his private life,
was extremely well thought of, and to have his son kidnapped by persons unknown, just
shocked and hurt the conscious of the entire nation. I think it was a matter of six or eight
weeks later that the kidnapper, Bruno Hauptman, was finally caught and, of course, the
baby was dead. It seems to me that the Lindberg family paid a great ransom and
eventually Hauptman was electrocuted.
Another person who was well thought of, and perhaps one of the most popular men in
America at the time, was a fellow called Will Rogers. He’s kind of a cowboy entertainer
who worked pop radio and I think in some night clubs across the country, maybe in
Potterville, I’m not sure about that, but I do know that his home spun philosophies and
some of his cognate sayings were extremely popular, and he seemed to have a firm grasp
of what was going on in the country and to cutting aside all of the thrills, things like this,
and cutting directly to the bone in commenting on these things. I’m not sure if I
remember correctly, but I think that Will Rogers died in a plane crash. And I’ve
forgotten the name of the pilot, it could have been Willy Koats, but I’m not sure about
that.
So in the background somewhere, I remembered about the banks closing. I think this was
early 1930’ s, but the economic situations was such that the President and the governing
people decided that the best way to stop the general panic in the country was to close the
banks temporarily and let the economic structure more or less realign itself and get itself
in order. Most of the people accepted this in good grace and left their money in the banks
rather than causing an extreme rush to withdraw whatever savings they had.
I do remember that in Twin Falls, we had one bank out of all those that closed, that failed
because of the run on the bank and we had another that in its subsequent advertising
bragged about the fact that it never closed and that none of the depositors ever lost a cent.
This bank has since been taken in by a big chain, has merged with a large chain of banks
but it still is doing business in Twin Falls in southern Idaho.
Our home life was full and satisfying since mother and father were both LDS, we had a
strict observance of the Sabbath day at our home. About the only thing that we could
consider entertaining on Sunday, was the fact that mother would always have a big
Sunday dinner and we usually would have home- made ice cream, once a week, on a
Sunday and in the summertime we usually would have a watermelon on Sunday.