Chapter 5: The Depression Years

The Twenties had been the most prosperous period in the history of America.  It was time to get rich.  “Buy that Model T while you are still young.  Take a chance.”  Robert was very conservative financially; he didn’t trust credit and preferred “pay-as-you-go.”  But “a dollar down and a dollar forever” was the philosophy of the era.

Present-day discoveries and inventions are swift and numerous, but none have the impact of some of those early breakthroughs.  Running water in our homes is taken for granted now, but years ago we had to rely on water wells and hand-drawn buckets; then came hand pumps and powerful windmills.

During this prosperous time, indoor bathrooms took the place of outdoor privies; electric refrigerators and automobiles took the place of iceboxes and buggies.  Radios, telephones, washing machines and vacuum cleaners also made living better.

I was particularly glad to have a vacuum cleaner.  The Axminster rug on our parlor floor had to be cleaned by beating or sweeping in a cloud of dust.  After the beating, we washed it with a towel dipped in salt water.  That vacuum cleaner was a great improvement.

Mass production of products made unbelievable things seem possible.  What a beautiful, optimistic time in America.  But suddenly, overnight, it was over.  The economic collapse of the whole country began when the stock market failed in 1929.  People jumped from high buildings, banks failed, and farm prices dropped; people lost their jobs and stood in bread lines to feed their hungry families.  Men, women and children combed the streets searching in garbage cans for food.

Conditions continually got worse.  There was talk of a social revolution in 1932.  Hungry people were expected to revolt against the government.  Being out of work seemed to do great damage to the human spirit.  It was heartbreaking.

1930s Depression

Growing children were the most tragic victims of that time.  Many were physically malnourished, emotionally stressed and, often, it was the end of their academic education.  I remember the story of an eighth grade boy in 1933:  Six months had passed since his father had worked for pay.  The house was mortgaged and the money spent.  They were up against it.  For a week, they had nothing to eat but potatoes.  He explained how his brother went to the grocery store and asked for bones for his dog — only he had no dog.  It was the closest thing to meat that the family had to eat.  He went to school hungry and came home to a house where there was no heat and no light.  The family lost their car then lost their home.

Boys and girls who failed to find jobs near home or felt they were a burden to their parents often took to the road, hopped freight trains, bummed food and lived along the tracks with hoboes.  Those who found jobs worked long and hard for very little.

A 14-year-old girl told about her work in a knitting factory.  She got out of bed at five-thirty in the morning and walked three miles to the factory.  There she seamed men's heavy underwear.  After finishing twelve suits, she tied them in a bundle and carried them to the bin.  She got six cents a pair.

Dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas in 1935

During these years, there were many crop failures due to dust storms and little rain in some states.  Terrible dust storms rolled across North Texas and Oklahoma.  I can still see those black walls of dirt on the horizon moving toward us.  First we would be unable to see the yard fence.  Then it got so dark from the dust that we could not see our hands in front of our faces.  Some thought the world was coming to an end.  Mama and Roberta went to see my sister, Daisy, on the same night that a dust storm filled her big house.  Roberta was brought home the next day with dust pneumonia.

People appealed to the government for help.  One farmer told me the best experience that he could remember in those terrible times was when the government paid him $1100 to plow under sixty acres of cotton.  The government also paid $20 a head for cows to be shot.  The dead cattle could not leave the ranch, but people were permitted to come and cut any meat from the carcasses that they could use and to take it home with them.  Some cows were almost too skinny to eat; there was just no flesh on their bones.

Funds to pay for education came out of local taxes.  As incomes dropped, tax revenues shrank.  Plans for new buildings were shelved; textbooks, equipment and salaries were cut; teachers were fired; and 50 pupils were crowded into rooms designated to hold 30.  The school year was cut short, sometimes down to six or seven months.  Salaries of teachers were cut as much as fifty percent.  Though his salary had been cut, Robert was grateful to be able to keep his job.  Because of this, we never suffered as many others did.

In order to have enough money, however, I could no longer enjoy the luxury of staying at home with my children.  We both needed to work.   In 1936 we found Wallace Branch, a three-teacher school near Stockdale.  They were in need of two teachers. We made our home in Stockdale, and Mama returned to take care of Roberta during our absence.  Kenneth remained in school at Stockdale.

Roberta provided a bit of excitement for us that year.  Some little red bone buttons I had laid out to use on a dress that I was making for her fascinated her.  The telephone rang, and while I was talking, Roberta took one of the little buttons and pushed it up so high into her nose that it could not be removed.  I immediately took her to the doctor.  There she was held on an examining table while the doctor pushed and probed.  Roberta was terrified.  The pretty little dress she was wearing was bloodstained before the doctor gave up his probing and advised us to rush her to San Antonio for X-rays.  The X-rays showed no button.  A few days later, I noticed that the button had worked its way down far enough that it could be seen, and I removed it.  Roberta had a fear of doctors long after that incident.  She says she still avoids doctors if possible.

It was not an entirely bad year for her.  At the age of four, Roberta went to Beaumont and took first place in the state in “story telling” with the tale of “Little Baby Moses.”  It was also during this year that Robert's father, George, died of a heart attack.  He was 62, a man of few words, and a favorite of many people.

At the close of the Wallace Branch School, Mama went back to the panhandle of Texas.  Before she left our home, she wrote a letter and put it in my Bible.  She wrote,  “I have enjoyed your children as my very own.  They have been so good and respectful that I have never had to lay a hand on them.  Even though it breaks my heart, I must let someone else take the responsibility of watching them for you.”  Childcare had become too much for her; she had been unable to tell us to our faces that she could not come back.

She returned to live near one of her very good friends in Happy, Texas.  It was the same place she lived when our home was only two blocks from her apartment.  Mama had been there when we needed her.  I don't know what we would have done without her.

Doyle Hooten

Summer was never vacation time for us.  We had to supplement our income or study.  In the summer of 1937, we went to live and work on the English Ranch near Happy where my brother, Doyle, was ranch manager.  His wife, Ethel was expecting their first baby.  Robert worked in the wheat fields, while I cooked meals for the twenty men employed for the harvest.  Kenneth was assigned the job of keeping up with Roberta.  He was very dependable, and I was able to make as much money as the men in the field made.

We traveled many miles south for our next teaching job and taught the next five years at the Choate school located near Kenedy, beyond San Antonio.  During the first term, we lived in an old dilapidated teacher's home and taught in an equally old and dilapidated school building.  It was unsafe.  Snakes occasionally crawled onto the enclosed back porch of our home.

There really were too many snakes in that area to suit me.  I remember sitting in front of a window in the house of a nearby friend when my host said, "Willie Lee, come over here."  After I had walked to the other side of the room, he said, "Look above the window."  There I saw a large bull snake lying curled across the curtain rod.

I’ve always been deathly afraid of snakes.  When I was a child, probably about 11 years old, Lillie and Charlie, my sister and brother-in-law, lived only two or three miles from us.  They were a lot of fun and when they came, we could hear them singing:  "Here we come in a hoodlum wagon, one foot up and the other one draggin’; nobody’s business what we do.”  One day when they came it had been raining and the lake near our house was full of water.  Naturally, we wanted to go out and swim in the lake with Charlie and Lillie.  There were little water snakes out there swimming too, their little heads popping up in the water.  Charlie caught the snakes and threw them at us.  I tried to get out of the way of one of the snakes, lost my balance in the water and fell; I thought I was going under over and over again -- drowning.  They saw how frightened I was and came to my rescue; but because of those snakes, I have never been able to learn to swim and, after that, I was also afraid of water.

Walls of former Choate School in 2008 (cafeteria became a church)

I was delighted to learn that we were going to get a new school building and teacher's home in Choate.  In the summer of 1938 Robert supervised their construction.  In September, just before completion of the construction, his mother died.  She'd suffered from diabetes many years.  She was a very intelligent lady and one of the leading midwives in her community, but she must have known little about her own disease.  She had problems with her digestion and, for a very long time before her death, relied heavily on Cream-of-Wheat cereal as a primary source of nourishment.  Cream-of-Wheat would not likely be allowed as the mainstay of a diabetic diet today.

Kenneth, Roberta and I stayed in Choate, while Robert went to be with his mother during her last days.  He buried her next to his father in a small graveyard at Causey, New Mexico (near Portales).  Meanwhile, the children and I had gone to church services one evening.  Toward the end of the service, five-year-old Roberta needed to go to the restroom so I took her back to our home across the street from the church.  Just after we had entered the house, we heard a noise in the bus garage that was attached to the back of the house.  Roberta could tell by the look on my face that I was alarmed.  She said, “It's nothing, Mother, just a little mouse.”  In spite of her assurances, I was glad when Kenneth returned home from church.  The next day we learned that gas had been stolen from the school buses that Sunday evening.

We were thrilled that our new school building and teacher's home were completed that fall.  At that time, our society compelled racial groups to live and go to school apart from each other.  African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Anglo children were segregated into their own schools.

It took a long time and great difficulty to persuade many of the schools to desegregate, but when the building of our new schoolhouse was completed in Choate in 1938, the Mexican-American students who had been segregated came with their two Anglo teachers to be with us in our new, safe facilities.  We were glad to have them; it seemed the reasonable thing to do, and as far as I know, there was never a problem caused by that integration.  Many years later, in the fifties, when the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools must be abolished, our little school in Choate, Texas was far ahead of the times.

I never worked with an African-American teacher, nor did I teach African-American children.  It just happened that way.  I do know that the segregated school buildings and equipment provided for them were far below that provided for the Anglo children in their schools.  Teachers who taught in segregated schools also had smaller salaries.  That statement was also true for the two Anglo teachers and the Mexican-Americans in the Choate community before desegregation.

It's strange how thoughtlessly we can live with certain traditions.  I remember in my childhood that, while our family ate at our long dining table, the “colored man,” who kept our machinery in good running order during harvest time, ate at a side table in the same room at the same time.  As a child, I was not aware of the prejudice portrayed in this situation.

Economic conditions eventually began to improve.  In 1941, help came from the state in the form of a hot lunch program.  Mothers who belonged to the Parent and Teachers Association (PTA) cooked and served simple meals such as stew or beans with cornbread for the student lunches.  The cost per meal was about ten cents.  The money earned went back into funds for the school.

The PTA has been a more important part of our schools and our society in general than many people know.  It was not called the PTA at first; In Texas, we were a chapter of the National Congress of Mothers in Washington.  The name was changed to the Texas Congress of Parents and Teachers in 1931.  The organization was formed to promote the welfare of the child in every way possible — mostly through the school systems — but it also promoted equal property rights for married women, the birth registration bill, and the vote for women.

The first meeting was held in 1909, which was also about the same time I started school.  I was seven years old.  In the first ten years, we had better health and sanitation laws because of the PTA influence:  abolition of the public drinking cup, compulsory school attendance, establishment of kindergartens, free textbooks for public schools, and the teaching of home economics in public schools.  But I have always felt that the most important function of the PTA was simply to build sound communications between parents, teachers and students.

After five years in Choate, we began to feel a little homesick for our families, and in spite of the old saying that “there’s nothing between the Panhandle of Texas and the North Pole except a barbed wire fence,” we looked forward to our return.  Robert found a position as Superintendent of the Wildorado schools in 1942.

We left in the evening, all of our belongings packed into a truck and our family car. We planned to drive all night to avoid the South Texas summer heat.  Robert drove the truck and I drove the car.  Roberta was riding with her dad, and Kenneth was riding with me.

Somehow, we got separated in San Antonio.  I thought we'd had an understanding that, if we got lost from each other, we would continue on to our destination.  Kenneth and I were speeding on ahead; we didn't stop for anything until our car lights began to dim.  At that point, I backed into a lighted service station where we watched and waited so long that we began to worry.  When Robert finally arrived, I discovered that he had been so concerned as to our whereabouts that he’d had the San Antonio police out looking for us.  We were glad to see each other, but it had been a long night.  The sun was coming up and bringing with it the heat.

Teachers Robert (Age 43) and Willie Lee (Age 41)

My life with Robert was rewarding but I can't say it was easy.  We didn't have much time to waste while teaching nine months of the year and struggling to attend college in the summer.  Robert was always in a hurry and expected everyone around him to keep pace.  I learned through the years to hurry, hurry, hurry too.

God knows I would never have accomplished as much without his push, but there were times when hurrying got me into trouble.  I functioned better at my own speed and, occasionally, felt a little unappreciated.  I recall a particular time when we were taking leave of my sister and her husband after a visit with them.  I had lingered a little, just talking, when my impatient husband said, “Come on; lets go.”  Then he followed with, “It takes her all day to do what I can do in thirty minutes.”

My brother-in-law answered, “Good, you can just leave her with us then; go on home and start teaching half an hour earlier tomorrow so she can have the day off.”  Robert never mentioned my lack of speed again, but he never slowed down either.

He was always ahead of me in academic accomplishments as long as our children were home with us.  More than anything else, we wanted our children to be healthy.  They came first, so it was necessary for me to withdraw from the schoolroom to take care of them occasionally.

That first summer back near the college, I made a final push to acquire my B.S. degree.  Robert and the children lived with Mama in Happy, while I stayed in Canyon on weekdays and commuted to Happy on weekends.  It was not a good situation in Happy.  One week, Roberta came to stay in Canyon and attended all of my college classes with me.  When the children were older, our Masters of Education degrees came much more easily.

During our first term at the Wildorado schools, Robert took a group of students on a field trip to West Texas State University in Canyon.  While visiting with some of his old professors that day, Robert was asked to fill a vacancy in the physics department.  It was an urgent need and they requested his prompt decision.  He wanted very much to go and do college teaching; this was an opportunity that would not come so easily again.  He returned to Wildorado to request that the school board release him from his contract.  They refused.  Feeling that he could not break his word, he turned down the job offer.

It was a big disappointment and there were hard feelings at the time. It caused us to want to move from Wildorado after only one year.  As it turned out, our next jobs were much better for us.  We found greater satisfaction and better opportunities for our children.

Kenneth in high school

The next two years, Robert and I taught in Panhandle, Texas.  During this time we lived in a teacherage (a teacher's home provided by the school) which had been built to serve the principal of Petrolia Ward grade school about twenty miles from Panhandle.  Petrolia Ward School was a branch of the Panhandle school system. 

Robert drove a bus loaded with students, eighth grade through senior high school, the twenty miles into Panhandle each day.  I went in the bus with them and really enjoyed those morning rides.  Eighth grade students often sat by me to work on school projects.  Roberta, a sixth grader, was also permitted to ride with us and attend the Panhandle school.

Before the 1944-45 term started, our Superintendent approached Robert to ask if we might allow our son, Kenneth, to also drive a school bus from Petrolia Ward to Panhandle during his senior year of high school.  He had great confidence in Kenneth and even offered to take responsibility in case he had an accident.  Kenneth drove and, fortunately, had no accidents.

During this year, Robert continued teaching math and science, Roberta completed grade seven, Kenneth finished high school, and I served as principal of Petrolia Ward Grade School.  We had two good years in the Panhandle schools, but White Deer, a wealthy district nearby, offered us positions at an increase in salary.

During the summer of 1945, we bought a three-bedroom home in White Deer.  It cost about $4000.  Its location, one and one-half blocks from high school, was a luxury of convenience.  Time came for

Kenneth in college

Kenneth to leave home to attend college.  We all knew, during our last meal together, that it would never again be quite the same again for our little family.

Kenneth was an all-around good average student during his first year in college, and he adjusted well in his surroundings.  During Kenneth’s second year in college, he met the woman who would eventually become his wife.  She was an excellent student, and we began to see more A’s on Kenneth’s record.

In the fall of 1945, Robert taught science in high school, Roberta entered grade eight, and I taught subjects in grade school from grade five through grade eight including public school music.  And, as usual, we immersed ourselves in church activities.

Robert, who served as a deacon of the church at that time, saw the beginning of our daughter’s alienation from the church.  Roberta was in high school; she and her friends were learning to dance.  The pastor of our church was certain that high-school dances were paving the way to Hell for the teenagers of our church.  For months, his single-focused campaign against dancing had become something akin to an insane obsession.

Roberta performing at White Deer High

One morning, Roberta received an early-morning phone call from the pastor requesting a conference in his church office that day after school.  She dutifully obeyed and, according to her account, sat under his condemnation until she was in tears.  At one point in the condemnation, our daughter asked the man if he disapproved of all dancing, even folk dancing.  When he answered “yes,” she mentioned her understanding that his own wife had done some folk dancing at one time and asked if his wife agreed with his position.  (I had mentioned to Roberta that the pastor’s wife had been a fellow student in my folk dance class at college.)  In response to her suggestion, the pastor became quite passionate in his declaration that his wife had never danced and that her “purity” was a very important to him and to their marriage — that, indeed, it was his attraction to her.

Roberta, 1948

Roberta suddenly realized that her own defense could only be achieved at the cost of a great deal of misery for his wife.  She chose to sit and listen to his tirades.  But there was a feeling within her forever changed — a sad understanding of humanity, the beginning of the end of naiveté.

One Sunday evening, my husband’s long-standing private conflict with the emphasis placed by many Baptist ministers on the "wages of sin" and the encouragement of guilt and judgment rather than on a loving God became public.  After a long and particularly fervent plea from the pastor for all church members to leave their seats and come forward to the front of the church to “join me and God in a commitment to fight this evil of dancing in our community.”  Robert refused to join the group gathering around the pulpit.  The pastor began calling the names of those lagging behind and made accusations.  Finally he said, “Robert Corder, you’re not fit to be a deacon.”

First Baptist Church of White Deer in 2012

I shall never forget my husband’s reply as he stood, almost alone, in the center of the church:  “I don’t think you’re fit to be a minister either; I’ll quit being a deacon when you quit being a minister.”  Although a tolerant man, Robert had a quick temper.  He didn't hesitate to make his impressions known if he thought things were going wrong.  We, as a family, knew where he stood on issues.  And quick apologies came with sincerity if he realized he had made a mistake.

Robert often said he believed that most difficult person and the most important person to forgive is yourself:  “Rather than acknowledge our mistakes, we spend our time and energy in justifying them.  We refuse to allow ourselves to see our wrongdoing because it is so difficult to forgive ourselves.  The feeling of relief that comes with this forgiveness is the true gift we seek from an all-knowing God, the true gift that we call ‘salvation’.”

“Soon you will be starting to school,” Robert wrote to our oldest grandson, “You will meet many new people.  You will not understand them at all times and they will not understand you; so if you want all these good friends, you must remember to forgive everyone their mistakes… their mistakes will be hard to forgive; but doing hard things makes one big and strong.  Many times when you think you are right, you will be wrong.  When you are wrong, admit it and ask your friends to pardon you… anybody can fight his way through, but very few of us are able to love our way through problems.”

Roberta in college

These thoughts seemed far removed from the rigid attitudes that surrounded him in his childhood.  He was a man of vision, a man who loved devotedly, a man who had faith in people, particularly young people, and a man who had faith in the ultimate outcome of all things.

Roberta completed high school in 1950.  Her major interests were in art and drama.  The small school had won the state one act play contest four years in a row.  She had outstanding teachers in White Deer.  Again, as she went away to college, we had mixed feelings of sadness and gladness.

Our children both earned degrees and found rewarding careers.  Kenneth eventually became the Plant Operations Department Superintendent in the Permian Division of the El Paso Natural Gas Company, and Roberta ultimately became a painter.  They both also blessed their parents with grandchildren:  Ken and Steve Corder were born to Kenneth, and Bob and Jim Speir were born to Roberta.

Grandsons Ken, Steve, Jim and Bob