| Part III Migrant Farm Workers |
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| In the 1930s many dust bowl farm families lost their homes, bundled up everything they had, loaded it into, and on top of their cars and left for some place to find work. Many made the trek to California. Storytellers wrote of the times. Songwriters told of their hardships. Do you remember, "Dear Arkie if you see Oakie tell him Tex got a job for him out in California, selling used cars or picking up prunes," or words to that effect. However, for the Kennedys, we tried Texas first. My two older sisters were married, as were two of my brothers, Gene and Jesse. There was just my father, Joseph Thomas Kennedy, my mother Ollie Elizabeth (Ballengee) Kennedy, my brothers Robert Nathan and JT, and I to make the journey to Texas. On this cold winter morning in the winter of 1935 everything we could carry we piled into and on top of an old dodge sedan pulling a four-wheel trailer. Remember Will Rogers' comment about the United States being the only country where you could go to the poor house in your own car. By the time we were loaded to leave there was only enough room inside of the dodge for my father, mother and me. Robert and JT had to ride in the trailer. |
| The morning we left for Texas it was cold. Even though I was inside the car I was still cold. Robert and JT back in the wagon were freezing. We traveled south through Altus, across the Red River into Texas. I was excited thinking it was some great adventure. This was the first time I had been in Texas and was surprised that it didn't look any different than Oklahoma. I also thought it was funny that the first town we went through in Texas was named after me, Vernon. In the middle of the afternoon we were about half way between Vernon and Wichita Falls, Texas. By now it had begin to snow. We were going up a long hill and the road was becoming slippery because of the sleet and snow. The wheels of the old dodge begin to lose traction; then we begin to slip backward back down the hill. As the trailer started to jackknife Robert jumped from the trailer, grabbed a large iron pot, that my mother used to make lye soap in, and wedged it under a trailer wheel stopping the slide. However, now the car and trailer are blocking the road just before the top of the hill. Over the hill came a car. Seeing us it tried to stop only to slide into a ditch on the other side of the road. My mother ran to the top of the hill to flag down anyone else that might be coming over. She was wearing striped overalls, a cotton plaid shirt, and a bright red knit pull over cap that was pulled down over her ears to try to keep them warm. When she got to the top she removed the red cap and used it as a flag to stop cars from coming over the top. Once she had a couple of them stopped, the highway was totally blocked in both directions. As far back as I could see down that straight Texas road, were cars. |
| After awhile someone came up with some tire chains and Papa was able to pull the trailer over the hill and into a clearing just off the road to wait out the weather. Eventually we made our way to an old farmhouse a couple of miles east of Ben Wheeler, Texas. There we share farmed for the owner. (In the spring of 1991 Robert and I were returning to our homes after visiting our oldest sister, Euna, in Mangum, Oklahoma. We stopped at a rest stop along that same road before going on our respective ways home. That road between Vernon and Wichita Fall, Texas is where my Brother Robert stopped the trailer from sliding into the ditch in the winter of 1935. That is also the road where I saw my brother Robert for the last time. It was not long after that day that death from congestive heart failure took him from Texas--forever.) |
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| I remember very little of the next couple of years. It just doesn't come to mind. I do remember that each undertaking was for only a short while before we moved on. I recall living in a house behind a store in Edom, Texas. And, I remember spending some time in Tyler, Texas. There my father, mother, and I lived in a room with a gas cook stove. I don't know where Robert and JT were, I have no memory of them being there. That's about all I can remember about it except for the stove that was used to cook up tamales. They were small, only a little larger than your thumb, not the big ones you see today. Mama put a dozen in a bread baking pan and I went around the area knocking on doors trying to sell tamales door to door, ten cents per dozen, or three dozen for a quarter. |
| I remember traveling from farm to farm as migrant farm workers, traveling with the work. Robert and JT were there also. I don't know what town we were at where we would go out to a farm and pick cotton and come back to a house in town. I only remember that one day Robert didn't go with us to the fields and when we came back he was gone. I remember mama crying as she read a note he had left saying he was going to San Antonio and join the army. She kept saying he couldn't join the army because he was only 17 years old. Well, he did join the army and served his country long and honorably. |
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