the photo on the right is my mother and her brother, Leroy Settle. I would estimate this photo taken about 1928. My mother, Lucille Merrick wrote the following description of farm life in Byron, Oklahoma during the 1925-1935 era. Their farm was located near Burlington, Oklahoma and was part of the original land of the Schwindt family: " I started to school in September 1922. My Grandpas estate had been settled, so it was decided among the three aunts and one uncle that they would give my parents their share of 160 acres farm if they’d take care of the expenses and help pay for the three years they’d spent taking care of Grandpa. Grandpa had at one time had money saved, but relatives had borrowed it and never paid it back.
So my folks got the farm, a sandy place with perhaps 40 acres pasture. We had some alfalfa, but our main source of living was from the garden and apple orchard. My Dad had the heart of a minstrel and the peddling of the produce was meant for him. That way he could visit everybody and if things didn’t sell very well, he gave it away. At home, Mamma, and Leroy kept the watermelon rows clean, ripe melons, cantaloupes and some of the apples picked for those who came along to buy, but didn’t care to pick their own. Often time, there wasn’t any work in the truck patch for Leroy, so Dad would get some field work started so that Leroy could work at that. I enjoyed this part; because it would be my job to take him a drink in half gallon syrup can full of cold water in the afternoon. We always fought at the house, but these times were special and because he’d want me to stay at the field with him, he’d never tease me at these times.
We lived on a main traveled road and people stopped all the time to buy our produce. One time a man bought the fresh corn on the cobs right out of the pot that Mamma meant to cook it in. We had our own chickens and eggs, milk and butter, so there was not a lot we had to buy. Often people driving through the country by horse and wagon would stop and camp at our house. If they were driving stock, Dad would have them water them out of wash tubs instead of our drinking tub, as he was afraid of diseases in the cattle. One old man traveling alone in a covered wagon played the violin and give us a burner for coal-oil lamp that produced a better flame than the regular one as his pay. The Raleigh man always made it to our house at noon when he was in the area and he always gave us a cam of white unscented talcum powder as pay for his dinner. Mamma made wonderful apple pie,, and one neighbor would manage to stall around long enough to get asked to eat dinner. Somehow hed find out if she were making apple pie.
We were not without the usual run of hobos that stopped by for a handout. Several young men going by one day , stopped at the orchard first, stripped one tree of ripe cherries, then came to the house to ask for water. They didn't bother anything else.
Occasionally a band of Gypsies drove through the country, making a quick visit to all the houses. They were exciting and colorful in dress, but the greatest threat to property, and of course the rumors of young farm children being kidnapped. When they stopped by a farm home, they usually had the story related by the young girl they sent running up to the house, "My mother had a baby last night and I'd like you to give me a chicken so I could make her some soup." (a typical story used) Wiser people went out and caught a chicken and gave it to her. My cousin, a young bachelor farmer told her to go and catch one. Well, she got the chicken..... and gathered all the eggs from the nests too. As they left, he saw a crate with several chickens tied on!" She had summoned her companions and had helped themselves!
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