Speaking to the Future:
Kenneth E. Scott
Oral History Interview with
Kenneth E. Scott
Conducted on March 10, 1992, recorded in Castle Rock, Colorado.
1992.006
Castle Rock Historical Society Oral History Project
[Interview conducted] by Marie Clayton and Starr Oberlin
Transcribed by Shelia R. Stephens
Original transcript on deposit at
Douglas County History Research Center
Douglas County Libraries
Note: The transcript of this oral history is as accurate as possible. All text in brackets is not part of the oral history. It has been added for clarification purposes.
STARR OBERLIN: [testing of microphones and other conversation before interview begins] This interview is under the sponsorship of the Castle Rock Historical Society. My name is Starr Oberlin. I'm accompanied by Marie Clayton. I will be interviewing Ken Scott, at Castle Rock Care Center at 4001 North Home Street in Castle Rock. The date is March 10, 1992, time 6:30 pm. The opinions expessed in this interview are those of Mr. Scott. Copyrights to this recording reside with the Castle Rock Historical Society. So, Mr. Scott, why don't you begin by telling me a little bit about your family background, uh, your grandparents.
KENNETH SCOTT: Well, my family background. I was born in Missouri, 1903, fifteenth of September. I never did see my grandad on my dad's side of the family. I seen my mother's father, but I never seen my grandmother on her side either. My dad's father passed away in 1909. That was the year I started school and in the fall, and he had been a, well, he was in Custer's 7th Cavalry -- at one time, but only for a short time. He got sick, and so they put him out of the Army, and I guess that's what saved him from being with Custer when they all got scalped up there.
OBERLIN: What was his name?
SCOTT: Brice Campbell Scott. And um, he later was a great wagonmaster freightin' across the plains out here. And uh, I remember one story my Dad told. He says there was nine days of making twenty-seven miles, up in here by Denver somewhere, trying to get up in the mountains. Said the cook could run back, when he went to make noon meal, he could run back and get coals of fire from his breakfast fire, and the same way for supper. They made so little progress on the deal. But then when he passed away, he was in the old soldiers home in Leavenworth.
MARIE CLAYTON: And what was the date? Do you know?
SCOTT: Well, I don't know exact. It was kind of in the spring, February or March, probably in 1909, because we were still living in Missouri at that time. But we moved to Baldwin, Kansas, that year, and that's where I started school that fall. Then, the fellows that, well, his wife really owned the place, and she was kinfolks to the Sells that built the cogway railroad up Pikes Peak. There's down here by Florence, you know, there is a Sells orchard down in there.
OBERLIN: Is that, excuse me, is that Sells, S-E-L-L-S?
SCOTT: Yes.
OBERLIN: Okay.
SCOTT: And -- they, her husband, he was the biggest coalmine operator in the state of Missouri, and he had a place south of Kansas City, and so he got after my Dad to go down there and run that. So, we went down there for three years, and then the folks had bought some land in Arkansas, and we went to Arkansas and were there about three years. Then we come from Arkansas out here, thirteenth of May 1915.
OBERLIN: And what brought you to Colorado?
SCOTT: Well, they traded one piece. They'd bought a couple pieces of land in Arkansas, and they traded one piece for a place in Oklahoma that we still have. But uh, and they were planning on moving to Oklahoma when they got on a -- trade with a guy by the name of Garrette [sp?], I think. Don't know what ever become of him. Last I knew of him, he was down here around Monument. But he'd come down and looked at the place down there. Had an uncle up Johnstown, Milliken, that he'd come down and look this deal over here. The folks didn't ever come out to look at it. The uncle thought it looked pretty good. And uh, so they just traded across board, household stuff, from furniture [unclear] for what he had. Well, then he come home and billed a sale, and sold everything off like. So, when we got out here, there wasn't much of anything there that was supposed to be, and also he had a mortgage of twelve hundred dollars on the half section of land, and he hadn't said anything about that in the deal. So, dad didn't figure, I guess he could have got our land back. The bank wasn't supposed to turn over the deeds to the land down there until it was okayed by us, but they'd gone ahead and done that. So that's the reason we went back to Arkansas from here. We just farmed here that one year. Went back to Arkansas, then back to Kansas where he worked another three years for this John Bovard [sp?], and then back out here. So, been here permanently since [19]22.
CLAYTON: What did you farm?
SCOTT: Here? Well, corn and beans and -- We didn't raise any grain, well, I think Dad had in a little strip of oats that year. But corn and beans. That was before there was any bean-hullers in the country. There was some grain machines, but no bean-hullers. But had a neighbor that bought a corn-shredder that year, and it had a bean-huller attachment on it. And he said, well, if we'd come down and help him thrash, why, he'd come up and thrash our beans for us. So, that's the way we got 'em thrashed. Dad, at first, thought we was just going to have to tramp 'em out, throw 'em up in the air and blow the dirt out of them, you know. But, we didn't.
CLAYTON: You named three words. You named “huller” and “thrasher” and something else.
SCOTT: Shredder.
CLAYTON: Shredder.
SCOTT: Well, the thrasher was grain machines mostly at that time. Later, they fixed them so they could thrash beans with them, you know, but a regular grain machine run too fast a speed and it cracked the beans and all of that. We, later years, we had a big machine with a -- jack shaft on it that cut down the speed of the main cylinder so that we could thrash beans with it. But at that time, they hadn't got that far along with this machinery. And this corn-shredder deal he had, that was to throw corn through the sheller, you know, and -- it had a bean-hulling attachment on it. So, it wasn't a very big machine, but it was, beat beatin' 'em out by hand, by quite a bit.
OBERLIN: Did you sell beans? I mean, were beans a marketable -- product?
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. I don't know that they raised so many beans over this away, but the eastern part of the country, you know, raised lots of beans. They don't any more much. There's a few down in the south end of Elbert county, down in the “L”. A few people down in there still raise beans. Mostly, they're rigged up to irrigate 'em now, and there's lots of beans raised up in the northern party of the country here, in the irrigated country that way. But at that time, it was just dryland beans, mostly pinto beans.
OBERLIN: Could we go back a little bit? Where, tell us exactly where you lived, so the people will know.
SCOTT: Here?
OBERLIN: In Elbert County.
SCOTT: Well, we lived just a half mile north of where I live now. I live about ten miles northeast. Go out on [Highway] 86 about five miles to Comanche Creek. Then instead of crossing the creek on [Highway] 86 there, why turn north and go about five miles north. Now, I live on Comanche Creek. It splits my place in two there.
OBERLIN: So, you're still living on your parents' property there?
SCOTT: Yeah. Well, I helped pay for it. When we took it over -- we had rented it a couple of years off my wife's folks, and they'd gone on to California. They came here from Nebraska, well, originally from Ohio to Nebraska, and then out here. And they went on to California, and we rented it a couple of years. And then we bought it. I helped my Dad pay for it then. Well, later, he gave me a deed to his end of it. Then, when he passed away, I -- took out a Federal loan to pay off my brother's interest in the thing. So, I figure I've kind of paid for it twice, that way.[chuckles]
OBERLIN: Was it very expensive then to buy a farm?
SCOTT: Well, it's varied. At that time, they had give about twenty dollars an acre for it. When they bought off those people that they bought it off of, people by the name of Morning [sp?] They were old-timers here. They had come into the country with the Texas cattle drives. And uh, I think they gave about twenty dollars an acre. Well uh, later on, this land dropped down to only three or four dollars an acre during the Depression days there. But now, it's back up. A lot of it has sold for around two hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars an acre, which is higher than it produces stuff. But they don't tax you, only on the productivity of it any more, which helps out quite a bit. If they wanted to tax you on that two hundred dollar valuation, it'd be pretty hard to make a go of things that way. And uh, of course, when we first came here, everybody raised quite a little corn, along with the beans, but I don't know of anybody that had a piece of corn in this year. It's mostly small grain and wheat. That wheat business come on kind of in the latter end of the [19]20s and then spread out. Of course, the farther north you go or the farther east you go, why the bigger wheat fields there is. You had some over here, Ed Seidensticker that used to live down southeast of Castle Rock here, he had land scattered out all up and down the ridge here. I don't know just how much, but he farmed quite a lot of wheat. And uh, there's a fellow by the name of Bradbury, Tom Bradbury, has got quite a little land over by this Meridian Park deal. He sold off a lot of it. I think he's still got quite a little there, but they have quite a bit of land out south of Byers. His son lives out there, south of Byers. And you know, I don't know if Tom Bradbury's a millionaire, but he don't look like it. Of course, selling his land off at the price they got for it up here, why that put him up in the money pretty much that away, but he dresses very common. Has a place north of me out there about five miles. I haven't seen him now for a couple of years, but he usually stopped and visited when he'd go along, you know. Ragged old coveralls and all. I said, he sure didn't look like a millionaire that away.
OBERLIN: Would you give us the names of your mother and father, and where they, when they died, and where they're buried?
SCOTT: Well, they're both buried in Elizabeth Cemetery over there. And my mother, her name was Harris, Flora Harris, and -- her folks come from Illinois to Missouri. And uh, she passed away in 1934. My dad's name was John Michael Scott. And uh, he passed away in -- April 1959. He was eighty-nine. He would have been ninety his next birthday there.
OBERLIN: Why don't you tell us something about your early life, when you were a child?
SCOTT: Well -- I started school in Baldwin, Kansas. People get to telling me how big college graduates they are, and I tell 'em I walked across, I didn't go to college, but I walked across Baker University Campus every day going to school. So I tell them I've been across two college campuses. [laughter] Fact is, -- I've been to a few other colleges. I've been up to CSU (Colorado State University) campus, the CU (University of Colorado) campus -- and around -- some of these smaller schools, you know. But, I just never got around to go to college. I went back. I finished high school before we come back out here, while dad was running that Bovard place a second hitch. I started to high school back there, and so I finished high school back in eastern Kansas, there at Pleasanton, Kansas. And uh, was going to go to Kansas University and take a course in electrical engineering. But come home, the folks were milking lots of cows and all, so I just never got back.
OBERLIN: What year was that?
SCOTT: That was in 1923.
CLAYTON: So you came and worked on the farm then with them?
SCOTT: Yeah, I've been on the farm ever since. I have been, well -- I haven't done any farming now since [19]86, but I did the farming. I lost my wife in [19]83. But we trucked for a long time, too. I put in about forty years of trucking. I put in a million miles or more on a truck, and I was on the Colorado Motor Carriers board for most of that forty years up there. But my son sold the permits I had in [19]76, and so that was the end of our trucking business then. But uh, I used to farm about five hundred acres, had a hundred head of cows to look after, and then I'd put in fifteen hundred mile a week on the truck.
OBERLIN: What were you hauling?
SCOTT: We hauled everything. My permit said “Freight.” And they said that's anything you can put on it. We hauled grain, livestock, machinery, furniture. Anything there was to move.
CLAYTON: Two things. Um, you mentioned, um, going through the Depression. What was that like for the farms, and then comparing that to why you trucked. Was there anything to do with how farming is, that you had to do that?
SCOTT: Well, if I hadn't got in the trucking business, I probably would have branched out and done more farming than we did, but it was the thing that kind of paid the grocery bill, you know. There wasn't big money in trucking like a lot of people, your line haul guys are hauling freight between these towns, they get a higher rate than you do hauling farm produce and cattle, wheat, stuff like that. Quite a little bit higher rate that away, but -- I just, where I was situated, why. Well, as I say, we hauled everything as far as that's concerned. Combines, thrashing machines, all kinds of machinery, horses, and cattle, and hogs that away.
OBERLIN: Why don't you tell us a little bit about your wife. Give us her name, if you have children?
SCOTT: Well, I have, her name was Lindle, Lindle Denning, and -- we had three sons and a daughter. And I lost my oldest son in [19]86. He got a cancer on his esophagus, and they thought they had it pretty well whipped. He, when he took his treatments, afterwards, he didn't lose his hair like so many of 'em did. But, all their x-rays didn't show that was growing back up on the outside. He come in -- to Denver, he'd come in there and take a treatment the first of the month, then they'd give him medicine to take it home. When he come in in May in [19]86, they told him that, he kind of had a cold. And they said, “You've got walking pneumonia. We're going to keep you a few days”, more tests. I'd been in to see him that day, and his wife had come in with me, and when about six o'clock that evening, they called and told us they didn't think he was gonna make it through the night. He'd had a hard coughing spell and ruptured that darn thing and ruptured an artery. So that was the end of it. And my -- younger son lives over at Elizabeth now. He's been up around Fort Collins for about thirty-five years except for a little spell at Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. He had the Triple S Testing Laboratory at Johnson's Corner up there. Feed and soil analysis and all that kind of stuff. And uh, he sold out that lab about a year and a half ago, and he bought a place over here about four mile north of Elizabeth. My middle son is a veterinarian out at Great Falls, Montana. The first year he was out of school, he worked up there a year. Then he came back and was on the staff of CSU (Colorado State University) for four years, but he wanted to be on his own -- so he got started up again. So they've been up there in Great Falls since [19]76 now. And I tell him he hasn't been around home enough for us to know what kind of veterinarian he is, but they say up there they don't think there's a better one in the United States. He does lots of work there, and in -- Alberta, Canada. He works clear up to Calgary. Five years ago, I was up there in the spring. They had a big bull sale at Calgary and one down at Big Timber, Montana. They had two thousand head of bulls in that sale up there at Calgary, and he had tested them all for that sale. And then they were having a bull sale once a week for five weeks. So, I put in a week up there with him, and I would like to go back up this spring if I can. They're having -- it won't be quite as big, he said it would be about fifteen hundred head of bulls there. And -- I don't know that they're going to have another down in Montana, but he says they've been selling quite a lot of bulls. It was dry up there for six years. And people kind of cut down on their cattle herds, and they're just getting restarted now. And so, he says, he's sold quite a bunch of bulls, and got orders for more there this spring up there. And uh, the son that's over here with their testing laboratory, he's been a chief witness all over the United States for the last seven or eight years in lawsuits against Harvestore Silo Company. That's these big blue ones, you know. They spoil more feed than they save. And uh --
OBERLIN: Why?
SCOTT: People are suing 'em all over the country, and he's been the chief witness. That's where he is today, Kansas City, and back in that country on some of that stuff.
OBERLIN: Why is it spoiling?
SCOTT: Well, for one thing, they say they get so hot in there, that it changes all the acid and everything in that insulage, and it spoils -- a lot of these old milk cows, why it just ruins them. So that's the reason people are suing them, you know. One guy that he worked for up in Seattle, he'd spent about $850,000 with 'em for silos, and his cow herds just all went to pieces. Feet turned up, their bags were spoiled, like that. He was milking two hundred and fifty head of cows. And uh – it about ruined him. He finally did get a settlement out of 'em for about $750,000. But Harvestore, you know, is a subsidiary of A.O. Smith out of New York. They make refrigerators, and motors, everything like that, and they put in a system up there, and they had thirty-five of those A. O. Smith electric motors in the deal, and they was always broke down. He said he couldn't even feed when he quit on one to going back on his own method of feeding. Said he couldn't even feed until he got all that stuff tore out and changed, you know. I did see one Harvestore silo in use up at Big Timber, Montana, but they wasn't storing stuff. They just dumped grain into it and elevated it out. They had two big conveyors down over the feed lot there and they'd just elevate that grain out on them conveyors running down there, but they wasn't trying to store it and keep it. But he said one guy even tried to store marijuana in there, and that spoiled on him there.
OBERLIN: When you were a teenager when World War I broke out. What do you remember about that time?
SCOTT: Well, we were, when World War I broke out, we were on that place there in eastern Kansas for Bovard. We were pretty busy. We raised a lot of feed and fed cattle there. And, one thing I remember, we had about a hundred and thirty, forty acres in oats in the bottom, on the creek bottom. It come a hard rain one night, out to the west of us, and by nine o'clock, you could see that water coming. Of course, the Mergesine [sp?] River was up and that held the creek up, and that water got about six feet deep all over that field, you know. I think we thrashed bunches of stuff out of the shock that year, and had sixty-five big stacks, and only got about thirteen hundred bushels of grain off of 'em, you know. And, of course -- dad raised quite a few head of cattle there for Bovard and Mother raised a lot of chickens and things like that, and she used to send butter and eggs and stuff to Kansas City to Bovard and to a fellow by the name of Ralph Stout, that was the editor of the 'Kansas City Star' at the time. He lived just down the corner with Bovard up there. And uh -- then I went to high school at Pleasanton, Kansas, there, and I went back, after we moved back out here, I went back to finish up my last year back there. Played a little football, a little basketball, during the time I was going to school.
OBERLIN: For the high school team?
SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah, I was captain of the football team and also the class president there. And, of course, it was all kind of Greek to me when I went in to town, because I was, had gone to a little old country school out there. But -- I did okay. I never did take the final examination. During the four years, I carried a straight “one” grade, so I never had to take a final examination the whole time.
CLAYTON: I take it grade “one” was the best?
SCOTT: Yeah.
CLAYTON: How large were the classes?
SCOTT: Well, our class was rather small. We only had about twenty in it, but they had about a hundred and twenty to thirty in high school there, but our class right at the end of the war there was kind of small that way.
OBERLIN: Did you have friends or family, people who went into the Army and maybe you know some people who didn't return from the war?
SCOTT: Well, yeah, I can't remember names particularly now about, but we had one fellow that worked for us there that he went into the Army. And uh, he said that -- they didn't train him before they shipped him over to France. He said they never give 'em any ammunition, their guns were clubs. They was afraid they'd shoot some Lieutenant in the back or something like that. But uh, he come through over there in pretty good shape. I did, in World War II, had a niece lose her husband over there and all, but I can't remember -- of any kinfolks that were lost in World War I.
OBERLIN: Did you have any friends from high school who entered the service to volunteer for World War I?
SCOTT: Well, not for World War I. I had some friends join the National Guard there after the thing was over like, you know. One of them come out here and worked for us. He was sorry he'd joined up and he couldn't get out unless he got out of the state. So he came out here and worked for us and worked for a neighbor until his six months was up so he could get out again.
CLAYTON: What was it like after World War II around here, when some of the troops started coming home? Do you remember very much about that?
SCOTT: Oh, everybody was pretty glad to see 'em, and -- I can't remember any great demonstrations or anything like that, but everybody was glad to see 'em get back, you know. Of course, as I say, this one niece, her husband was killed in the Battle of the Bulge over there, and she later married his older brother. He passed away. They lived down in Naturita for awhile. He and another brother worked, had a uranium mine they worked in down there. And then he later worked for the town, looked after the water system in Naturita, but he passed away. She now lives at Bayfield. Her older daughter teaches school back at the edge of Chicago back there. The younger daughter lives at Bayfield, drives a school bus, works in a K-Mart down there.
CLAYTON: And that's in Illinois?
SCOTT: No, that's -- Illinois is where the one girl teaches school, but the other one -- Bayfield is down by Durango.
CLAYTON: Where's Anorito? Is that what you said, “Anorito?”
SCOTT: Durango. Bayfield is just east of Durango. And that's where the niece lives now is at Bayfield.
OBERLIN: What do you remember about Prohibition days?
SCOTT: Well, I remember lots of stills, bootleggers like, you know. They – had – quite, I didn't ever patronize them, but I know there was several scattered around. On the north side of my place, they had a grange hall that was built in 1914, and it run along until [19]36 or [19]37 and kind of -- went to pot. The State Grange was going to take over the building. Well, it had been built by volunteer labor, so everybody, they said in order to save it for the community, why everybody should put in a bill for their labor, and then they auctioned the building off. My wife's club bought it, and they kept on there up through World War II. Had dances and all. They kind of finished the building on the inside and put in a hardwood floor and like that in there. Then they gave it to the county, and it was moved over to the fairgrounds there at Kiowa.
OBERLIN: Is that building still standing?
SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah, they use it as a, well, they put displays in the north end of it. Then the south end of it, they use kind of as a first aid station during the fair time and like that there.
CLAYTON: So you knew some people who were making alcohol. Distilling liquor.
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. -- I can't think of his name right now, but there was an old boy lived down northwest of me there in the county, and he used to make liquor and they'd bring it over there to dances to sell it, you know. But he kind of tried to keep his customers lined up in his head. Some of them didn't do that much. Roy Brown, that was the Sheriff for years and years and years over there, he lost out one term to a fellow over at Elizabeth, and this guy he kind of patronized or worked with the bootleggers, too. They had a still out east of Elbert there. Fellow by the name of Charlie Daisy had a place out in there. This still was just over the line off of his place, and he said he seen the Sheriff out there, to the still, watching things and like that. And uh, one time, Slim Woodard, that used to truck from over there at Kiowa, I seen him come along. He had a Buick car, and I thought it looked like a washing machine tied on the front of it. But it was a still. He was moving for some of those guys down on Bijou. I think it's the one that went up there, that the Sheriff was visiting out there then.
CLAYTON: Did the Sheriff take any action against these people?
SCOTT: No. And uh, we had quite a deal there, about [19]37 I guess it was. People that live north of us, by the name of Dezzutti. One of the boys had rented a place on over across Bijou over there. And uh, it had pretty good running water on it. They, [Scott coughs] -- bunch of Italian guys out of Denver, they approached him. They wanted to put in a still over there. They'd give him a thousand dollars to use that running water. So, he let them put in the still. He didn't have anything to do with it, but that was when this Jess Knapp was Sheriff in place of Roy Brown. There was a guy from Byers, -- can't remember his name now, he was kind of a night watchman or something out there. But anyhow, he was down in there one day and he run on to the still. So, he went back and reported it, and they raided the thing. Well, they just found, well they didn't find anybody at it when they got out there, but -- they left a deputy sheriff, watching the thing. It was running, cooking off a bunch of stuff, you know. This deputy sheriff, and then, I don't, while he was watching it, one of the Italian guys come in there, he had a new Chevy truck, and they arrested him.[unidentified person has entered the room, speaks to Oberlin, Scott continues] And uh -- they went into the house where this fellow lived. He wasn't home, but it was kind of built into the bank, kind of two stories, you know. They went into the lower part and they shot holes all up through the floor, thinking he was there. And uh, but he wasn't. And there was a fella that lived over north of Kiowa, pasturing cattle over there. And uh, they -- he'd been over there that day to look at his cattle when they raided this thing. They saw him. He was riding a white horse. He sensed something was wrong, so he took out. They pursued him a little, but they give up on it. When they had the trial then, I can't think of the lawyer's name but he's dead. Just came off a big kidnap case back in eastern Oklahoma there. So, they thought that this guy on the horse, they thought he was a cousin of Elmer Dezzutti's, but it was a fellow by the name of Carl Johnson. And his cousin's name was Roxie Roberts. And they asked the -- Sheriff when he was on the witness stand where he last saw Roxie Roberts. “Well, he was going over the hill on a white horse.” And, he says, “Mr. Sheriff, as far as you know, he's still going!” [Scott chuckles] and that away. But they didn't ever catch up with him. I didn't know Roxie Roberts at the time, but I did know him later on. And these Dezzuttis, they used to thrash for us before we had a machine of our own, like that. So, I knew the family pretty well.
OBERLIN: Do you remember when you got your first automobile?
SCOTT: I bought my first automobile in 1924. It was a Model-T. Then I had a 1923 model Chevy after that. I never did own a new car. I just owned one new truck. But -- we had several trucks over the years. Fact is, I still got an old [19]37 International that my nephews have over at Byers. They want to run it in the Fourth of July parade over there some of these days. It's got something over 400,000 mile on it. We had then -- tractors and semi-trailers and never did buy one of them new because they cost so bloomin' much, and I could do a pretty good job of keeping 'em running. I've done everything but running injectors on a diesel. I've re-ringed, re-bearinged, re-sleeved, and all that kind of stuff on them. Them and old farm tractors, I've had them tore all to pieces. Same way with combines and thrashing machines. Can't afford to pay twenty-five or thirty dollars an hour for some mechanic to work on one, so I did my own. Started learning on a Model T.
CLAYTON: You learned both the trucks and the cars on the Model T?
SCOTT: Well, that's where I started learning. But, of course, they was all different as they come on, got bigger, more of 'em, you know. Model T didn't have any sleeves or anything in that. I ground valves though,adjusted valves, and timing, put a water pump on, you know. Model T didn't have a water pump on it, you know. And all that kind of stuff with it. Then we had -- International tractors and White tractors and Kenworth tractors in the deal.
OBERLIN: How did you get around before the cars and the trucks?
SCOTT: Well, mostly that was horse and buggy days, you know.
OBERLIN: Did you have your own horse?
SCOTT: Oh, yeah, we had teams. My dad used to raise lots of mules. We farmed with mules, a lot too. I have some pictures at home where we had six and eight head of 'em up there in the field. Broke the sod. First tractor I had was a little old Fordson tractor, and I broke quite a lot of sod with that. Then I bought a Twin City and I have three tractors at home there now, and they're Minneapolis Molines which was the successor of Twin City, and of course, it's out of operation now. White tractor company took them over.
OBERLIN: You had mentioned the Depression once, and I don't want to forget to ask you what you were doing about that time.
SCOTT: About what?
OBERLIN: The Depression.
SCOTT: Oh, well there was farming there. We went through all that farming. Sold wheat for two bits a bushel, sold cattle for two dollars a hundred. Like that. Hogs were two, two and a quarter, two and a half, a hundred, you know. It was pretty rough going.
OBERLIN: What was the worst?
SCOTT: Well, getting hail storms on top of it, you know. From uh, well before 1954, in twenty years of farming there, I had about fifteen crops pretty well hailed out, you know. That didn't put much money in your pocket.
OBERLIN: How did you survive?
SCOTT: Well, -- just kept hanging on. I, of course, had to borrow a little money occasionally. I used to. We didn't do bank, banking business with the Kiowa State Bank. After 1935, I banked in Strasburg ever since then. And I got along with them pretty well. I used to just keep two blank notes at home, and when I needed a little money, I'd sign a note and send it down to 'em. Always got along pretty good with 'em. One time I was getting a truck engine kind of overhauled up at International there, and -- they had a different shop foreman on. I stopped to see how they were coming, and he wanted to know how I was going to pay for it. “Well, when you get done,” I said, “I'll give you a check for it.” Well, he wanted me to go upstairs and see the credit man. I went up and told him where I banked and all. And he called out to Strasburg, and they told him they wasn't even going to bother to go look to see if I had any money there -- or not, because they'd have taken care of it if I'd have been a few bucks overdrawn like. I've had as much as twelve, fifteen thousand dollars borrowed there, just on a plain note. No mortgage or anything like that on things. Got along pretty well with 'em. Used to know the head guy that was in the bank when I started. He come into Denver, headed up that Central Trust and Savings Bank down there on Fifteenth Street for quite a little while. Of course, he's gone out of the picture now. I think Joe Lincoln, from over here at Parker, I think he's the head of it now out there.
OBERLIN: Do you remember when you got your first telephone?
SCOTT: Well, -- there was phone in like when we come to the country there, but it was just kind of run on a barbed wire fence mostly. And uh, it was not always all that successful. In 19 -- well, the IREA come in there in [19]48, [19]49, and then the telephone come in about [19]54 or [19]55. And uh then they sold out or made a trade so that it's part of U.S. West now. It was Mountain Bell at the time. But they had some telephone deals that they wanted to get rid of so they traded around. That's how come we got tied up then with Mountain Bell.
CLAYTON: Can you describe what you meant by operating off of a barbed wire fence?
SCOTT: Well, that's the way some of it was hooked up, you know. Had a neighbor there one time that even though there was a line running along by his place, he didn't like to dig a fence post, so he'd just tie it up to the telephone wire, hold it up that away. We did our own, there was a fellow by the name of Stanley Wood come in and bought out the old telephone office there in Kiowa and operated it, and we worked with him. We went over the deal and kind of rebuilt it and put in poles and things like that, and had it working pretty fairly well before the U.S. West deal come in and took over then.
OBERLIN: Did you have the crank kind of telephones originally?
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've got -- well, I don't either have -- I had three of those at one time. And uh, my son over here took one of them. Son-in-law took one, and somebody stole the other one.
OBERLIN: You remember in 1954 the IREA coming in exactly. Was there something about that that you remember?
SCOTT: Well, the IREA come in about [19]48, and then the telephone come in about [19]54 or [19]55, but we all --
END OF SIDE A TAPE 1.
BEGIN SIDE B TAPE 1.
SCOTT: And uh, it was a party line up till a couple of years ago, and they come through there working the line all over again, and so I've got this private phone now rather than a party line.
OBERLIN: So they had a lot of party lines until just recently?
SCOTT: Oh, well, some of 'em are still party lines. Some people didn't go on to the -- to take a private phone. But I did. I do a lot of calling over the thing. From Texas to Seattle, I've got people to call. And uh, well, I've got my grandson in Anchorage, Alaska. I call up there every now and then. So, I thought it would be better off if I had this private line than still being on that party line. Didn't have anybody interrupting or thinking I was talking too long then.
CLAYTON: Must have been interesting to be on a party line.
SCOTT: Well, it was. Of course, back in the early days before we had the new line come in there, why that was the way a lot of people got to do a little visiting, you know, was over the party line.
OBERLIN: What was the funniest thing or the worst thing that you ever remember on a party line?
SCOTT: Oh, -- I don't know really. Can't think of any particular, incident. Don't recall anything particular.
OBERLIN: Did your family have any special traditions that they carried on at holidays, say Christmas, Thanksgiving?
SCOTT: Well, I don't know. My mother used to have, yeah, my mother and then my wife did too. They had Christmas dinner and all there.
OBERLIN: Is Scott, what nationality is that?
SCOTT: Well, Scotch-Irish we claim to be. And, they say wherever you meet somebody by the name of Scott, they're kinfolks. They – there's a guy come through there, he was running a Raleigh [sp?] wagon or something like that one time, and he was telling my dad that there was three brothers come here from the old country, and I don't remember for sure. Either one settled in the north and two in the south, or vice versa. But that's where they spread out from.
CLAYTON: What's a Raleigh wagon?
SCOTT: Well, he peddled extracts and -- that kind of stuff for kitchen use and all, you know, some cough medicine, things like that. There was two or three different kinds of those -- that run around over the country in the early days.
OBERLIN: That was a company name, Raleigh.
SCOTT: Yeah.
OBERLIN: I got some old spice jars, Raleigh.
SCOTT: Yeah, well that's what he had was -- linements, flavorings, vanilla, first one thing and the other that away.
CLAYTON: Now, is that the way you got a lot of your medicines or potions, lotions?
SCOTT: Oh, the folks used to buy some cough syrup, stuff like that from him. But mostly we didn't.
CLAYTON: Was there a particular kind of cough medicine everybody used at the time?
SCOTT: I don't remember the name of it any more but --
CLAYTON: Was there a particular cough? Was it like Whooping Cough or something like that?
SCOTT: Well, just a regular cough for colds, like that you know. It's been so long since one of 'em's been around that I've forgot what all they did peddle.
CLAYTON: But there wasn't a particular disease that at the time you all were worried about and prepared for?
SCOTT: No. No.
OBERLIN: Was there a doctor that lived near you? Took care of the community?
SCOTT: Well, there was at one time a doctor there in Kiowa. Well, there's been two different doctors. I forget the one, what his name. Then there was an older doctor by the name of Lusk [sp?]. He run the drug store and practiced there a little while. Up at Elbert, there's Dr. Denny, and of course, he's been gone a good long time. Then -- there was a fellow come in, he was an osteopath, and worked there for awhile, fellow by the name of John Balm [sp?]. World War II come on, they took him to the Army and then they made an electrician out of him instead of keeping on with his medicine. But he said, of course, they always said osteopaths didn't have much medicine but he said he actually had more medicine in school than what Doctor Denny did up there at Elbert at the time. And he was a pretty decent doctor, we thought.
CLAYTON: Was it hard to get doctors out here?
SCOTT: Well, yeah. They don't anymore want to get out in the country much any more. They're more specialized. I've gone to Doctor Heaton down here for about thirty years, like.
CLAYTON: Where did you have to go if you were really sick?
SCOTT: Huh?
CLAYTON: Where did you go if you were really sick?
SCOTT: Well, at one time they had a little hospital for a year or two over at Simla that you could go to, but it's a nursing home deal now over there. And uh, Denver was your closest place for doctors. We had a lady that did a lot of nursing around the community over there, one of the old-time families that used to be there. She had a house in Kiowa, and she did quite a little nursing, you know.
CLAYTON: Was she a mid-wife?
SCOTT: Well, she worked at that, too. I think she had gone to nursing school like. She was an old maid.
OBERLIN: Do you remember her name?
SCOTT: Josephine Elbess [sp?]. And uh, her brother, the Elbesses, they were old-time people here. They come in about, well, Florian Elbess, the younger of the two boys, he come, was about a month younger than my Dad. And uh, they hit the country here about 1872 up between Kiowa and Elbert, and only stayed the year like, and then went up in the mountains, and then they come back from the mountains and settled about two miles north of where I live. And uh, settled on the west side of the creek at that time. They talk about these floods that we have one of them about every hundred years.
OBERLIN: The Bijou?
SCOTT: Well, the Bijou, and Comanche Creek, and Kiowa Creek. Kiowa Creek used to be Running Creek when it gets on down towards -- Watkins, down in that country, you know. But, Florian Elbess said that in 19 er, 1893 was the first flood that hit, and we've had three since then, so we've had four in the hundred years instead of just one in the hundred years. He said he'd just come in from summer roundup, and threw his bedroll on the porch. Didn't see anybody so he walked out around there to see if he could find anybody home. Didn't find anybody, and as he come back around the house, the flood had hit and his bedroll come a-meeting him, he said. [laughter] There was quite a lot of willow growth up towards the head of the creek, and it had come a big rain and a hailstorm up there, and the willows had kind of dammed up that hail and then it broke loose and come on down the creek. That was the first flood. Well, then in [19]33, we had uh, I don't know how much it rained. It was over a pair of four-buckle overshoes wherever you wanted to be. And uh, my wife and I had been in Denver and just got home, and I ate a bite of supper and went over to help milk and it started raining. And uh, I don't know, as I say, how much, but it was just over a pair of four-buckle overshoes. It poured so much water. We had quite a bunch of hogs down at what used to be the old cow barn, we'd turned into a hog shed. My Dad had gone down there. We'd been down there, the pigs and all was kind of piled up in the old manger. The gutter was stopped up. So he went back down and opened that gutter up, and the neighbor lady across the creek, was watching and said she could see his lantern going back up the hill towards the other barn and said she could see that flood water coming on south up across the flat in the bottom there, so he just kind of got out in time. We lost probably sixty-five or seventy head of hogs in that flood that night, and some of them didn't drown. We found some of them down place north there, and they were kind of on a little island. Dad and the hired man went down there to get them. They couldn't, they thought first maybe they could drive them out and drive 'em home. But they wouldn't go into that water, you know. They had to catch 'em and throw 'em in the wagon and bring them home that away.
CLAYTON: How did you know they were yours?
SCOTT: Well, there wasn't anybody else had many. We raised six or seven hundred head a year there, and nobody else was raising more than one or two, and there wasn't anybody above us that had had any washed away that away, so it about had to be ours.
OBERLIN: Did you do any butchering of your, your pigs?
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. We used to butcher four or five every year, and also a bunch of beef.
OBERLIN: Why don't you describe what you went through? What the process is.
SCOTT: Well, mostly with a hog, you know, you had to heat hot water to scald them, and then scrape 'em and go ahead and cut 'em up. Gut 'em and like that. But we used to butcher four or five every year. The beef, you skinned it, and hung it up, and quartered it, and all. And uh, used to do most of that, you know, in cold weather. Well, with your pork then, you went ahead and salted it. Used to be that you just salted it, and then you had a smokehouse you hung it up in and smoked it. But later, they got so they had that salt that was smoked that you used and rubbed into it, and hung it up and cured out that away.
CLAYTON: When you say “hung it up,” where did you hang it up and then where did you put it?
SCOTT: Well, we had a -- kind of a tight building that we could hang it up in, and then you could build a little smudge of a fire underneath of it and smoke it that away. Then you had to have a place that you could hang it and take care of it. Once you got it cured out, why it kept pretty good. I lost one one time, and I put it down in a barrel in salt brine. But I don't think I had let it get thoroughly cool before I cut it up and put it in there, and I lost quite a little bit of that hog that time. I butchered it kind of towards the last end of April. Probably, if it had been colder weather, it would have cooled out a little faster and I wouldn't have lost it. I expect that I lost half of it that way, and it was a fairly big hog, three hundred and fifty, four hundred pounder, that away. We had a neighbor, that lived just north of us, he homesteaded out there and then he'd go in to Denver and work in at packing plants part of the year, you know. He used to help butcher. Main thing you need to do was stay out of his way when he'd scrape a hog or you got scraped pretty well too that away. [laughter] He could go through one pretty fast that away.
OBERLIN: Did you make sausage?
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. My mother made sausage and head cheese and all that kind of stuff.
CLAYTON: So you pretty much used every part of the -- pig or the chicken or the cow?
SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah. We used to raise a lot of chickens there for a long time. We'd raise five or six hundred chickens a year. As I say, we raised six, seven hundred head of hogs for several years there. That's kind of how come we overcome, we were broke when we come out here from eastern Kansas after the end of World War I, you know. I don't know the banker that we banked with. We finally got him paid off, and he said, “Well, we'd done better than anybody back there had.” Nobody else had been able to pay him off. So, I guess we were lucky. He let us get out of the state without getting him all paid off first that away. But, I've put in a lot of 24-hour days over the course of time, you know.
OBERLIN: It does seem that people worked harder years ago.
SCOTT: Well, any more -- most people don't want to work, you know, that much. Then, your labor unions are pretty responsible for that. They want shorter hours and no work is what they want. Anyway, I don't go much on labor unions.
OBERLIN: Were there any churches in your area?
SCOTT: Yes, the Presbyterian church there in Kiowa, and then they have a little country church on over east on the Bijou ridge, about ten-mile, twelve-mile east of me over there. They have a church down at Fonders. Elbert has, well there's two churches in Kiowa. They have the Presbyterian church. Neighbor of mine who is a engineer by trade, he built quite an extension onto it here about four years ago. And, Elbert's got two churches up there.
OBERLIN: Were they all there when you came out?
SCOTT: Yes. Well, this one, the -- church there in Kiowa isn't. Pilgrim Holiness, I believe they call it. It was built after we came there. But the others were there.
CLAYTON: In your earlier years, was the church pretty much a community affair. Was it very busy as far as what people did there?
SCOTT: Yeah, they did quite a little community work. There was at one time a Catholic church there in Kiowa, too, but -- they kind of went out of business when they built this one up here east of town on top of the hill. The people that belonged to that church there in Kiowa said they were practically out of debt on their church. I don't know just when it was built, but they didn't think much of this setup over here then. They thought that the priest over here, he'd come over there and they thought he kind of engineered putting 'em out of business over there. They wasn't very pleased. They finally deeded that church to the County, and it's the County Library now over there.
CLAYTON: Have any of the other churches diminuated since you first came here?
SCOTT: Well, I couldn't tell you much about membership or anything in them. As I tell people I don't go to church very good. I -- never got too stuck on it. A lot of people, you know, get up and make a big to-do on Sunday, and the rest of the week you've got to watch 'em pretty close. I've kind of always believed in trying to treat the other guy the way I want to be treated, and that's about the end of it, far as I'm concerned, anyway.
SCOTT: Well, -- I think Kiowa probably figures about as good as most of 'em. My wife used to work -- well, they started hot lunches over there. It was her club that started them. And then she worked as the secretary for the Superintendent of Schools for quite awhile. I think they probably rate up pretty well. I don't know just how they're doing right now. But I, -- well, other schools used to come and try to hire away the superintendents that they had there for quite awhile, like. They get so many credits for things that don't amount to nothin' much, you know. Still going to need that reading and writing and arithmetic, you know. But, instead kids transfer in there and they have credits for “baton twirling” and things like that. Well, not very darn many of them are going to make a living at that kind of stuff, you know. But I think they'd probably rate up pretty well over the others, anyway.
CLAYTON: Did all your children go to school there?
SCOTT: Yes. And – then my oldest son only went to college a year, then he went to the service. But the other three, they went to CSU (Colorado State University). Daughter-in-law here went through CSU (Colorado State University), too. As I say, the one's that a veterinarian, they tell me up there in Montana they don't think there's a better one in the United States than he is. This younger son that had the testing laboratory up there, why -- he's no dummy by any means. My daughter, she was going to teach school, and they give her practice teaching up at Loveland up there, and -- she kind of soured on it. She had a hundred and sixty kids in four classes, and said they were kind of the rough necks and incorrigibles of the school, so she didn't go ahead and teach. She worked for Woodward and Governor up there for awhile. Then she said, well, she'd stay home and take care of her son. She was the Republican County secretary up there for eight to ten years. In [19]81 she kind of had, kind of a nervous breakdown. But we had her out here with us for about ten months before she felt like she could go home. But uh, she's doing okay now and works in the Jack-In-The-Box restaurant up there in Fort Collins. She wasn't working at anything particular, and they asked her if she wouldn't come in and make their salads for them, and she did that. Then they brought her down to Denver here to their training school, and so she's a shift leader now and also she does quite a lot of their buying and does their banking for 'em. Like that up there.
OBERLIN: From your perspective, how does the world look to you after having lived so long and seen so much?
SCOTT: Well, -- I don't know. I think if people just buckled down to it, that we're still going to get along okay. I don't know. Our congressional setup over the -- well, ever since Roosevelt went in there, has been mostly Democrats, you know. They're noted for tax and spend, tax and spend, you know. When Reagan got in there, we was paying twenty-one percent interest, you know, in borrowed money. Well, he got that cut down to ten or eleven percent which helped a lot. I always figured Jimmy Carter was about the nearest nit-wit that we ever had as a president, back there you know. I get, well, I wasn't altogether pleased with Ford when he was in there because he put an embargo on wheat. We were gettin' kind of a fair price at the time. Wheat went off a buck a bushel when he put that embargo on. Well then Carter put an embargo on the same way there. I get a pamphlet from Atlanta, some charity that Carter works on. I just wrote back and told them they could ask Carter for any donation. I figure he owes me about five thousand bucks, that away. [laughter] I couldn't use him anywhere. I think he was the poorest excuse we ever had for president.
CLAYTON: Did you ever see any presidents come through Colorado?
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. I met (George W.) Bush, and I met Reagan, and I met, seen Teddy Roosevelt years ago. But I knew Reagan and (George W.) Bush both before they ever run for office. Know Neil Bush pretty well. I know quite a few people. I don't know everybody up here in the State Legislature, but I've been going up there and watching them since about [19]33 like. I think that's what more people ought to do.
CLAYTON: Not many people do that. What inspired you to do that?
SCOTT: Well, I kind of wanted to know what was going on. And uh, they was sticking in a lot of this truck legislation up to about the last end of the [19]20s. Why they didn't have all this stuff on trucks, you know. After I had my first truck, why everybody they'd want you to haul a lot of stuff for 'em, you know. So, that, the first, an old boy by the name of Anderson from over at Deertrail was the representative for our district at the time, and I went in there and talked to him about that. Then Ed Seidensticker that used to live out south of town here and he farmed all up and down this ridge. He put in a term up there and I used to go up and see him. So I have just kind of continued since then. I have worked with them guys quite a little bit. [unclear] getting shifted this time. And this reapportionment, Dick Mutzenbach will be our senator from now on. Dick says he isn't going to run again, but Mike Bird out of Colorado Springs, has been our senator for the last several years, and Joel Hefley, and Bill Armstrong. I've known them guys for ever about, you know. I think Bill Armstrong said when he quit, it was twenty-eight years for him, and I knew him before he was in the legislature. He served up here a term in the house, then he served in the senate, and then he went to Congress, the House of Representatives, then he ran for Senate back there. I've known him now and all these years. I know Joel and Lynn pretty darn well.
CLAYTON: Well, you know, we've asked most of the questions, and we haven't given you much of an opportunity to just tell us in these final few minutes, that you know, we've taken up a lot of your time. But if you could just tell us some of the really interesting things that have been part a of your life that we haven't asked.
SCOTT: Well, I don't know that I can cover it any better than I have, really. As I say, I got into this trucking business. It was kind of what made the living, get bread on the table, you know. If I hadn't done that, I probably would have branched out and farmed more country than I did. And I served on the Colorado Motor Carriers Board for almost forty years, somewhere another down the line. I was County Farm Bureau President for four years. So, I've had my neck stuck out somewhere along the line most all the time. And I put in twenty years as the Republican County Chairman for Elbert County, which is longer they say than anybody else in the state ever held the job that away. And I still could have been if I wanted to, I guess I could still have been County Chairman over there, but I don't hear too bad in ordinary conversation this way, but when you get in a crowd and everything is humming, I thought I was maybe missing some things and that's the reason I thought I ought to kind of quit. We've had some hassles over there since then. Like the fellow that succeeded me, he really wasn't interested in what he could do for the county. He wanted power. And also, he's got a few dollars and he wanted you to know he had a little money. That don't cut any ice with me. I say that's the difference with Bill Armstrong, worth six or seven million bucks, and -- he's just plain Bill Armstrong. A guy wanting you to know he's got a dollar, don't cut that much ice with me, you know. I don't know what else I can --
CLAYTON: Well, we've been interviewing you here at the Castle Rock Care Center, and you're here for a short time is that right, before you go home?
SCOTT: Yeah, I'm hoping. I've got to go up Thursday and see the doctors again, and I'm hoping they'll tell me that I can go home. I'll just go over to my son's. I won't go on out to the ranch for awhile yet.
CLAYTON: Is this about the closest place in the county for people to come?
SCOTT: Well, they've tried to find a place closer up there to Swedish Hospital, but they didn't find any room anywhere. So then they wanted to know if I had any suggestions. Well, I said the only thing I knew was the deal down here. My brother was in here his last couple of years, my older brother. I hadn't been up around here for twenty years until I come down here. So, they called down and they had room for me. These I-V treatments they're giving me. If I went home they said the insurance wouldn't pay for them, so I either had to be in a hospital or in a nursing home. So that's how come I got sent down here then. They tried two or three up there around Swedish (Swedish Hospital) and they was all full. That's when they tried this one.
OBERLIN: Well, we've enjoyed talking to you and want to thank you for sharing, sharing your experiences with us.
SCOTT: Well, I hope it does you a little good. I can't think of anything else much to tell you right now.
OBERLIN: All right. Thank you, Mr. Scott.
CLAYTON: Thank you very much. If we have other questions, maybe we can get back with you.
SCOTT: Well, maybe so. I do know quite a lot of people.
OBERLIN: Well, you are sharp. You just really, your mind is very sharp.
CLAYTON: Do you know of other people who are either about your age or older who would be interested in making sure that we have their history?
SCOTT: Well, of course, the old-timers are getting kind of thin and far-between. There is Gus, Allahan's Buick. They're south of Agate. They're old-timers, they've been here forever like.
[Scott, Oberlin and Clayton continue to talk. The tape is distorted for a while.]
SCOTT: The east side, er the west side of the creek in there and the brothers, the house and all out and they just had sheared the sheep and they lost most of them except two that had climbed up the stairs into the hayloft. There were steps and those two of them climbed up there. So then [unclear] so on the east side of the creek. But, then later on when my son got married why he went back down there and cleaned out that old house and he's living down there now. But I don't know that I would want to live out there because to go out to the west, it's half mile to get out to high ground and to get out the east you got to cross that creek you know. So I didn't think it was the brightest thing to do but he hasn't had any problems now. He's been, six or seven years living down in there. And uh, they [unclear] horses. They own the sheep. I think they run about four hundred to five hundred head of cattle over there now. But uh -- I think they've got something around four thousand acres somewhere in there.
OBERLIN: Sounds like a lot doesn't it?
CLAYTON: Yes it does. Four thousand acres. I hope we haven't tired you out.
SCOTT: No.
CLAYTON: We've been fascinated.
OBERLIN: One thing we need is a signature just to say that it's all right that we've done this and we have your approval and we can use this --
[Music begins to play once interview ends and continues to play to end of tape]
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE B.