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TI: So after the death of your mother, how, how did things change in the family?

VW: Well, things were so, so difficult, and (...) he didn't like my oldest sister. And my oldest sister was, she was the smartest one of us all, and she was pretty quick to comment if my dad told her to do something, she'd fire right back at him. And we knew that it wasn't a great thing to do, but she did it anyway, and then they used to get into fights, arguments and so on. And finally, he kicked her out, and Virginia went with her. And this was a very tough time. And felt like we were becoming a dysfunctional-type family, and that's hard on kids, really. And so when they left, then that left Elinore and me and my little brother the only ones that were home, the two other girls were gone. And so my dad wanted Virginia to come back, because Virginia was easier to get along with, of course. Virginia was a nice, very nice person, she always had been. And so he sent Elinore and me up to White Pigeon to get her back, and Virginia wouldn't come. She said, "No, he kicked my older sister out." Said, "I'm not gonna go back either." And so Elinore and I went home, and, but my dad said, "Well," he said, "you kids will have to quit school." Now, I was only fourteen at the time, and my sister was fifteen, and so we were both underage to be out of school, and we had to be in school.

TI: Now, why did your father want you to quit school?

VW: Because, and he said we had to work on the farm, and he had too much work to do. And then also he felt that maybe if Elinore and I were gonna have to (...) quit school, then maybe Virginia would come back, too, and, of course, that ploy didn't work at all. Because Elinore and I went back up to get Virginia again, but she wouldn't come. And so we went to -- oh, my oldest sister (already) had a year and a half of college And so, with a year and a half, you could teach at a country school at least one year, and then continue school. And so she was teaching in Marl Lake country school, and she saw us coming down the road and she wondered what happened now. And so when we got to school -- school was out already then -- and it was about four-thirty or something like that. And so Lucile said, well, she said, "We'll have to find a place for Elinore." And so she said, "Virgil, you'll have to go back to the farm because," she says, "I haven't got any place to put you anywhere." And so now, Elinore went back to school, but I'm out of school. A fourteen-year-old kid not being in school. And so I went back home and I knew that things were gonna be tough. So I didn't say anything, I just said that Elinore wouldn't come back. And so I went upstairs and went to sleep, or tried to sleep.

TI: Because at this point you went back, so it was your father, you, and your younger brother?

VW: Yeah, that was it.

TI: So all your three other sisters had left the house.

VW: Yeah. So things were very, very upsetting for everybody really. And Mr. Friesner, who was a 4-H Club member, tried to talk my dad into letting, being more reasonable and so on, but he wouldn't change. And I remember Mr. Friesner coming over twice. And then I was out of school, like, probably two or three weeks, and then he finally said, "Virgil, you can go back to school if you want to." So then I did. I went back, but in those days, you had to go to a bookstore, and if you quit school, you had to go to the bookstore and turn your books in, which we did, and then we got the money and we gave it to my dad. Well, then when I was sent back, I can't remember, I got my books back, but whether they gave 'em to me or whether I had to get some money for my dad for it, I can't remember. That I can't remember. But I know that I went through high school without a physics book, and I should have had a physics book, but we couldn't afford it. We were extremely poor. And when I graduated from high school, we were still without electricity, we had no running water, we were using a pump to pump water. And then two years out of high school, after I was graduated, we got electricity. And I went home, and it's funny, I had been at my grandmother's place and stuff, we had electricity there and so on. But I had to go home and I had to turn that switch on just to see the light light up in the room. It was that important to me. And then later on, it had to be 1957 or so, my dad got running water. And so it was, it wasn't easy on my dad, I know that, but he wasn't easy on us kids, either. [Laughs]

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.