100 Years

 My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the first installment.

Oil and Gas

By Earl Johnson

Another early recollection was oil wells and gas wells and especially the drilling of the wells.

Dad, Don, and I would go to a drill rig almost every evening and sit and watch the drilling operation. We heard many tales from the driller and tool dressers and made many acquaintances including a driller by the name of Herb Long. He would become a partner in a wildcat drilling operation later with Dad and Grandfather, John A. Johnson.

As boys, Don and I had our own play drill rigs with which we drilled our own wells using the pully, rope, and bit method. I remember standing outside North Union School and seeing the Chinburg well blow in, spewing oil and water into the air high above the derrick.

There was a booster station right next to North Union School which was used to pump crude oil to the refineries.

There were two refineries in McPherson, the Globe Refinery which later became the Coop refinery and is still in existence as the CHS Refinery, and another whose name I can’t remember.

Don and Earl with their mother, Ida Johnson.
1937

I remember one incident of an explosion where two oil company workers were killed. They were laid on an A-frame truck, and were brought out past North Union School, a sight that several of us remember. There were no ambulances in those days.

There was an influx of oil company workers into the community at that time. They lived in temporary shacks, or tents, or in their cars. I remember a shack and tent village that was set up in the Roseburg timber. The Skates family, the Reynolds, the Hallenbacks, the Brinkmans, the Boyds, the Byerlys, the Donhains, the Birges, and other oil company families became important citizens of the community.

Alfred Hallenback was in my class and was later killed in an oil field accident. We were up to 44 kids one year at North Union School, all 8 grades and one teacher.

The Reynolds family lived just across the road from our house. They had 8 daughters. I remember Juanita and Rose Marie as being two of them. They were wonderful neighbors. Bill pumped and maintained several of the wells in the area and was a wonderful help to Dad.

The Johnson estate, the 3 eighties of flat land, had several oil wells and at least 2 gas wells. One of the gas-producing wells enabled our grandparents to retire when Grandpa was about 60. They spent their winters in Texas and summers in Kansas for many years. They had purchased an eighty of unbroken land in Texas around World War I.

The wells were nearly all Kansas City line formation wells and drilled to approximately 2300 feet. A few were drilled deeper to other formations but produced a lower grade of crude oil. At that time, they drilled 4 wells to 40 acres, evenly spacing helped. Most oil wells produced some gas, and this produced fuel for the gas engines used in pumping the wells. Access roads to the wells were arranged in north-south or east-west directions and were another hindrance to farming. Also, one engine often pumped 2 wells with a pump rod in between.

Many farmers were able to bring the gas from the wells to their homes and had free heating fuel and gas-lighting.

There was lots of “wildcatting” and many “dry holes.” A typical setup would be a road to the site, a slush pond to handle sludge from the drilling operation, a wood derrick possibly fifty-foot tall to handle the cable, bits, and bailers, and install casing in the wells, an engine house for gas or oil field engines, and a beltway or rod way house between the engine room and the drilling rig to operate the tools.

Drilling is really a misnomer as the early rigs used the drop bit method to produce the hole. They were called cable tools.

Dad, Herb Long, and Grandpa Johnson owned a cable rig and drilled two wells, one near Bushton, Kansas and one near Hoisington. The Bushton site produced a good well, as much as 800 barrels per day if allowed to produce at full capacity. In order not to have an oil surplus, wells were prorated down, big wells sometimes to 1/10 of full production. The Hoisington well appeared to be an even better prospect, maybe up to a 1000 barrels per day, but after developing, acidizing salt water came in and ruined the well. That ended the oil business for Dad and Grandpa. They lost the Bushton lease, the cable rig, and it left them with almost thirty thousand dollars in debt. Dad assumed responsibility for this and offered to give up his share of the land inheritance. His brothers and sisters did not accept this and later made him an equal heir. Needless to say, it caused our family some difficult years along with the depression and drought years of the thirties. Grandpa was financially able to shrug it off because of income from wells on his land.

 

100 Years

 My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the next installment.

High School Education

By Earl Johnson

Earl Johnson, high school

 I started High School in McPherson, Kansas, in August of 1936 and graduated in the spring of 1940. I had my freshman year at Park School on east Euclid Street and my sophomore year at Wickersham on west Kansas street. During my junior year, we moved to a new high school building in east McPherson where we graduated. 

There were 185 kids in our senior class. Several died during WWII which was going on in Europe, and America became involved on December 7, 1941. 

I did well in High School and made the honor roll by my junior year. I give great credit to friends like Paul Anderson and Carl Casey.  An interesting sidelight is that I met Carl Casey just by chance in Times Square in New York City about 1944. I was in Merchant Marine training in Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay) and he was in the Navy, I believe.  

My favorite subjects were shop courses, woodworking, printing, bookkeeping, biology, civics, and unfortunately, I took only the required math. I regretted this later after I got into college and studied civil engineering. I was taking high school math along with all of the college math that is so important to an engineer. 

Earl pretending to play guitar in late 1930s.

We drove to school each day, 10 and a half miles each way, and shared rides with others, including, the Clarks. We all had Model A Fords to drive until my last year or so, when my Uncle Emil while using the Model A during the summer ran it low on oil and decided to fill it with crude oil from the oil field slush pond. Then we drove the 1934 Hudson, a large car that was worthless on mud roads. 

The Clarks, who were Republicans, and the Johnsons, who were Democrats, used to get into some pretty hot arguments to and from school.

For my freshman year, I rode with Roy Johnson. His father had never driven a car but rode with us one day. Roy took the Rolander corner a little fast that day. His dad told him in his beautiful Swedish accent, “Roy, you should never drive twenty-five miles per hour around the corner.” 

One day we were driven home by the “oil well pumper” father of one of our friends, who was drunk.  He sped down Old 81 Highway in his new 38 Ford at 65 miles per hour in second gear.  We never rode with him again. 

I suppose my favorite teacher would have to be Leonard B. Crumpacker, but I liked them all. He taught woodworking and printing and had me working whenever I could get out of study hall. W.R. Frazier was Principal, and R.W. Potwin was Superintendent of Schools. I really appreciated my English teacher, Edith I. Haight. She was strict, but a quality teacher and still remembered my first name years later after I was out of the service. Edith I. Haight’s name was changed to “I Haight Edith”, mostly as a joke, but she could be a strict teacher if we weren’t doing our best. What great teachers we had and great kids, too. I was particularly good at subjects that required the use of my hands or required memory work. 

I was still shy with girls and although I admired them, I would walk across the street to miss them. The only time they liked me was when I could help them with their studies. I remember one time when we were to pick up a neighbor girl, Phyllis Donham, and take her home. She was one of the most popular girls in our class. Don was driving the Model A. I got out of the car and flipped the seat so she could get into the back. Phyllis flipped the seat upright and sat between us. What a shock that was and with the prettiest girl in the class.  I don’t remember even going to the senior prom. 

It was the Depression along with the Dust Bowl and drought. Our parents were so hard up that we couldn’t take part in extracurricular activities, such as music and sports. Dad told us he could get us to school and back but couldn’t afford driving or to pay for games or music. We had morning chores before school and evening chores when we got home.  Because of this, I have never been much interested in football or basketball.

 

100 Years

My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the second  installment.

Grade School Education  

by Earl Johnson

(written sometime in the 1990s) 

 I started grade school in September of 1926 at North Union School which was about ¾ miles east, one mile south, and a quarter-mile east of the Gustafson place where we lived. Dad and his brothers and sisters, also my brothers and sisters all attended grade

school at that location in a small building which was replaced by a larger approximately 40x40 foot building. The building had only 1 classroom, a library, boys and girls cloakrooms and a full basement. Toilet facilities were outside. 

 My first years in school were very difficult for me because I was a lefthander.  Educators at that time believed that being left-handed was a disability and thought to change it. Viola Engstrom was my teacher and used to whack my left hand with a ruler each time she caught me using it. This caused me not only pain but also fear and most likely set me back in the learning process. I would claim illness and play hookey. I should add at this time that Ms. Engstrom was a lovely and beautiful young woman and was only carrying out her job as a teacher.  She was a local girl and grew up on the next quarter east of the school.

This building was later made into a home and still stands in good condition.

 

 

 

I do feel that it slowed my learning ability and concentration at least during the first few years and hurt my ability to throw a ball, etc. I was able to use either hand for most things except writing which helped me in other ways.  

 Robert Benson, Rachel Clark, and John Dee Holm started first grade with me. John moved after two or three years to North Diamond District and others came into the class, mainly children of oil field workers who moved to the area. Among those were Alfred Hollenback, Mary Byerly, Melvin McCabe, and Edith Birge. 

 Can you imagine 44 kids, one classroom, one teacher and all 8 grades? This was for much of my grade school years.  The older kids helped the younger ones and the younger ones heard the older ones during their recitations at the front of the room or at the chalkboard.

 The three teachers during my years at North Union were Viola Engstrom, Mary Alice Crist, and Pauline Cooprider.  I don’t believe any of them had much more than a high school education, perhaps summer school but they were excellent teachers.

 Mary Alice Crist was a strict disciplinarian and some of us felt the sting of the rubber hose that was kept in the lower right-hand drawer of her desk.  I remember John Dee Holm getting two whippings in one day, one for the crime committed and another for taking out across the field for home.  

 Mary Alice Crist was much appreciated for her teaching ability and all of us were in debt to her.  She was an “old maid”, drove a Model T Ford Coupe, and always carried a 22-Rifle in the back window of her car. She later married Newt Robinson, a fairly well-to-do-widower.  

 Pauline Cooprider was my teacher for seventh and eighth grade.  She was also a good teacher and we learned much from her.  At that time, however, we were tested in the seventh and eighth grade with exams prepared by the county superintendent of schools and staff. We studied one curriculum which was different from the one we were tested on and only two, Robert Benson and Rachel Clark, passed to eighth grade. They failed in only one subject and the other five of us failed in two and had to take the seventh grade over.  No fault on the teacher or us because other schools in the county had the same problem. It may have been the best thing that ever happened to us because when we started high school (ninth grade) we were well ahead of the town kids and by the end of my sophomore year I was on the honor roll.  Pauline Cooprider later married Leonard Lundberg and spent most of the rest of their lives in McPherson.

 We usually walked to school when it was nice either across the field or around the roads and had many good times with others as we walked. In bad weather, we shared with neighbors driving by car, by horse and wagon, and sometimes by horse and sled. Sometimes in the winter, the township roads might be blocked for a month from snowdrifts. The only way out would be across the field. Joe Clark lived just half a mile west of us and their older children Maurice and Lucille, although in New Gottland District, came to North Union for a few years because it was closer.  We shared rides with them and for a while with the Bill “Steamboat” Johnson family.  Otherwise, we were at the end of the line. Dad came and met us one night and caught Don and me wading in the grader ditch trying to catch tadpoles. It was fairly cold and we were wet. Dad left us as punishment for our sin and took all of the other kids home. 

 I met John Dee Holm in about 1996 at a Memorial Day festivity. It was the first time to see him in over 65 years. He told me he had wanted to apologize to me for all of that time because he had chased me, thrown a small piece of iron, and hit me in the head, causing bleeding out. I don’t remember it but it could be another reason why I was never too bright. 

 Some of the boys used to challenge each other to suck raw eggs and keep it down without vomiting. What a challenge! 

 Our teachers usually gave us craft time and allowed us to make crafts for gifts. Some of the painted wood dogs, cats, and rabbits were made into bookends or doorstops, etc, and are still around. I accidentally dipped my red paintbrush into the can of white paint. Ms. Crist liked me and I respected her but wasn’t real popular with her for a few days. 

Dad, Arthur Johnson 1915

 We played lots of games at recess and during the noon hour. The last day of school each year was very special. People brought a potluck lunch at noon. Children would put on a program for parents and neighbors and it usually became a community gathering. In the afternoon my Dad, a former pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs would organize a ball game and the young men of the community would take part. Dad would pitch until he finally threw “his arm away”. I was always proud of Dad but sure afraid that he was somewhat disappointed in his boys because we didn’t have his playing ability. He certainly tried to teach us. 

 I did not have a girlfriend in grade school or high school for that matter. Don was the lover boy of the family. 

 About 1998, we had a reunion for members of the North Union School and many people were present including Carl Chinburg, who was 100 years old, and my Uncle Reuben, who was almost 95. Many people were present.

 Robert Benson and his father were killed in a car-train accident about 1935 before starting high school and Alfred Hollenback lost his life in an oil field accident the following year. I will never forget Robert’s aunt at the funeral singing “We Shall Meet at the River”. This was a great shock to both Don and me and we appreciated the consoling our parents gave us.

 The school was closed and children were bussed to McPherson for school. 

 School and church were the center of nearly all activities I wish the children of today could experience the same

100 Years

My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the first installment.

Family by Earl Johnson 

Earl Johnson

(written sometime in the 1990s) 

I was born in Osage City, Kansas, on October 23, 1921, at my grandparents’ home in Osage City, Kansas. My parents were Arthur T. Johnson and Ida (Nelson) Johnson of rural McPherson County in Delmore Township. My grandparents were John A. and Ida Johnson, and James and Jenny Nelson. All four grandparents were born in Sweden and immigrated to America. Two of my great grandfathers also lived in Kansas. They were Jonas Johnson and Håkan Mårtinsson and they are buried in Kansas. 

 New Gottland, in McPherson County, is a Swedish community and was settled by Swedes in the 1800s. Grandpa Johnson came to Red Wing, Minnesota in 1869 from Sweden and then homesteaded in McPherson County, Kansas. We still have the original homestead papers signed by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892. 

 Jonas Johnson settled on the next quarter north of John and had three daughters and two sons.  Grandpa Johnson married the daughter of his neighbor, Ida, when she was 17 and he was 36 years old. John and Ida Johnson raised 5 sons and 2 daughters on the homestead. They were Emil, Arthur (my father), Martin, Albin, Mabel, Edith, and Reuben. 

 They also had another son, Arthur, who was the first born and was killed when he fell off a wagon and broke his neck at the age of five. Emil never married and was buried in New Gottland Cemetery. Albin had two daughters, Faith and Hope, and was an Adventist Preacher in the backwoods of Tennessee. Martin had one daughter and lived in Texas. Mabel married Charles Lindblade and lived on the Johnson homeplace. They had three children: Betty, Roger, and Wendell. Edith never married and worked for years at the Adventist Hospital in Tennessee. Reuben married Marge while living in Chicago and later moved to a farm near Arkadelphia, Arkansas. They lived there until retirement. Marge is buried in a cemetery near Arkadelphia. 

 Grandpa Johnson later bought out another homestead just east of the original land. This was very hilly ground and mostly in pasture. He also purchased another quarter and also an 80 on good flat land. At one time he had a full section. 

 The home they lived in started out as a dugout, then a basement, and later a framed two-story home over the basement. It was an interesting house with a porch around three sides and also had a bathroom with a tub and sink. Water was pumped from a cistern underneath the bathroom. The toilet was outdoors. The house still stands but is uninhabitable and in terrible condition. The barn and all the outbuildings are long gone. The windmill tower and two concrete water tanks are still there.  

 They farmed with horses and oxen and raised hogs and cattle. They were fortunate to have 5 sons to work the farm. We have some interesting papers on what grandpa had to put up in collateral in order to buy the land and other things. 

 When grandpa was nearing 60 he was unable to pay anything on the principal for the flat land. He asked the bank to take the land back but the bank didn’t want it. They agreed to excuse the interest and let him try again. In just a few years Grandpa struck oil on his land and he was able to pay off all his debt and retire. Grandpa and Grandma took a trip to the Rio Grande valley in Texas and they bought land and built a house there. They spent their winters in Texas and their summers in Kansas until Grandpa died at 92 years. Grandma died in 1952 at the age of 93. They are buried in McAllen, Texas. 

 All the Johnsons in the McPherson County area had nicknames because there were so many. Dad had the name “Swearin’ Johnson” and Grandpa Johnson was “By Gosh Johnson”. 

 Grandpa Johnson smoked a pipe most of his life. He quit after being bitten by a black widow spider and he also received his second eyesight and did not use his glasses for the remainder of his life. Grandpa was a strong Democrat among many Republicans in Kansas. Someone once asked him in my presence, “Are you as good a Democrat as you always were?” He said, “When I’m in Kansas I’m a Democrat. When in Texas I’m a Republican.” He loved to argue. 

 Grandpa, in his older years, loved to walk and could walk 10 miles a day. If I tried to pick him up when meeting him on the road he would say, “Go on, go on.” When he did ride with me and I took him to town, he would point to 60mph and say, “Put it up there.” He would usually give me a dollar when I took him to town, a big sum in the 1930s. LaDonna, LeRay, Don and I, and our parents visited Grandma (in Texas) in 1947. 

 My mother's parents, James and Jenny Nelson, came to Kansas and settled around the coal mines of Osage City. Grandpa worked in the coal mines and also farmed. At one time Grandpa along with their only son, Emil, operated their own coal mine. Emil was injured in a fall which left him crippled for the rest of his life. 

 They had 6 daughters and one son. They were Anna, Ida (my mother), Emma, Edna, Hilda, Helen, and Emil. Grandpa and Grandma were married in Osage City, Kansas in 1889. They owned a home northeast of Osage City in an area called Dogtown. They also had an 80 which they farmed south and east of the home place. Grandpa had at least one brother and one sister that came to America. John Nelson, and sister Elna Nelson, who married Hans Christianson. Elna was the mother of Melia Johnson who married Edwin Johnson of Osage City. Elna had one grandson, Wilbur, who moved with his family to Topeka. 

 Grandma Nelson had her father and at least one brother and one sister who came to America. Håkan Mårtinsson was her father and had been a tailor in Sweden. Nils Hawkinson, her brother, farmed near Lindsborg, Kansas, and had 6 sons and one daughter. They had a nice bottomland farm on the Smoky Hill River. We visited them often and knew them all. Grandma’s sister Betty went to California, and I know very little about her and her family except that she enjoyed dogs and fed them at her table and mourned them after they went to the dog cemetery. 

 Grandma Jenny and her sister were maids in a castle in southern Sweden. Family stories lend that it was a summer palace. Their father, Håkan Mårtinsson was a tailor and his wife Ingar Nilsdotter assisted him. She was an excellent tailor herself. 

 Grandpa Nelson lived to be 92 and died in Kansas City. He is buried in Osage City. Grandma died at age 66 from diabetes and is also buried in Osage City. Their daughter Hilda died in her early 20s from an illness. 

 Grandma kept a beautiful yard and many flowers and was an excellent seamstress. I attended her funeral. Mother’s sister, Helen, was married to a man who was a spiritualist. As Grandma lay in the living room, he warned everyone to keep the doors and windows closed and to keep the cats out of the house. 

 Grandpa Nelson spent his later years between my parents’ home in Kansas and daughter Edna’s home in Kansas City. He was a handsome old man with heavy white hair. Grandpa always had a heavy Swedish brogue and often got his words turned around. Someone asked him to paint his house and he said, “Alright, I come yesterday.” He liked to drink a bit in his younger life, and we heard some funny stories from Mother about that. 

 We would go to Osage City once or twice a year and always enjoyed going to Uncle Emil’s candy store which was next to the movie theater. Uncle Emil later became Clerk of the City of Osage.

A Tale of Two Traveling Books

Two books. One is off traveling and the other is safe in my genealogy office.

Dad’s book:

Earl Johnson, about 1944

Sometime in the early 90’s, I was digging through a box of old books that had just been purged from the library of the school in which I taught. As a book lover I was distressed by the quantity of books that had been slated for removal and destruction, in order to make room for more current reading material. I understand the need for updating school libraries but still felt the need to rummage through the outcasts. 

Among my finds was an old gray book about the US Merchant Marines. It was in my stack because my dad had been in the Merchant Marines during WWII. My thought was that it might make a nice gift for him as it had some nice old pictures of ships and men doing their jobs aboard them.

Around Father’s Day that year, I visited my parents in Missouri and casually presented the book to Dad. What I thought might be something interesting for him to look through on a rainy day got a greater response from him than I had expected. 

Inside, were pictures of the actual ship, off the coast of New York City, that he had trained on as a young man. He held on to that book for the rest of his life and once in a while, I overheard him showing it to someone or telling about that book and how I had found it.

About 2014, the book was lost during the clean out and selling of Dad’s condo a few months before he died. Likely, it was donated along with many of his other books.

I like to think someone has since picked it up at a used book store and it has continued its life somewhere else. Who knows? Maybe someday it will come back to me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mom’s book:

A few months ago, my dad’s sister, Helen, left a message asking me to call her when I had a minute. She sounded excited and said she had something interesting to share.

Vera Johnson, about 1951

When I returned her call, she told me about a Wichita neighbor who was moving and had given her some old books she couldn’t take with her. As Aunt Helen looked through them, she noticed something remarkable.

Opening the cover of author Helen MacInnes’ book, Rest and Be Thankful, she found the name of a previous owner, Miss Vera Dibbens, dated August 27, 1949. The name had been crossed out and updated with Mrs. Vera Johnson. This book had belonged to my mother when she was living in Kansas and before she married my dad!

I have no way of knowing how long ago the book left my mother’s possession. My parents moved away from Kansas for good in 1989 and she died in Branson, Missouri in 2004. 

Needless to say, the book is in my custody for now.