Born in a Garage:
It was late nineteen twenty-eight. My parents needed a house and there wasn't time to build a good one. They couldn't just put things off until they had it done. They needed to live somewhere, in Alva, Oklahoma, by a date determined at least partly by the church conference stationing committee. There was also a baby on the way. After some discussion, I'm sure, they came up with the solution of building a garage and finishing it as a living space. This gave them a quick living space to use while the house could be well built. So, that is what they did and that is where I was born, during the first half of the night of 4 March 1929. They tell me the house was built, eventually, but they never moved into it, because of another transfer. Both the house and the garage were still being lived in, when I last checked, in 2004.

Up until the last inauguration before I was born, when Herbert Hoover was inaugurated, 4 March had been the regular inauguration day. Since my birth, that date has never again been used for inaugurations. Later that year, the stock market crashed, starting the great depression. Things got really difficult for a lot of people and the banks shut down, but I was never aware of that. I knew nothing else and my parents were already used to not having much, because their first church assignments were to those churches that couldn't pay an ordained pastor's salary. Unaware of all of this, life was beautiful and wonderful to me, just one big exploration.

One bad winter: (about nineteen thirty)
It was a bitter cold winter, from the start. Most of the men in town went hunting, since they couldn't do any farming. Then it got even worse. The wind howled around the farm buildings, which were the only obstacles in its path across those nearly flat plains. Snow fell steadily and heavily and the wind piled it against the buildings. It just kept on snowing and blowing. Finally, out away from the houses, the snow was four to six feet deep, or even more. The snowplows could no longer clear the roads. The snow on the shoulders had gotten piled so high, from previous efforts, that they couldn't get more snow over the top and out of the roadway. Then it stayed below freezing for five or six weeks. If they hadn't kept the snow shoveled away from one door of each house, the snow would have sealed everyone indoors

Dad did what he could for the blind couple who had the farm across the road. They couldn't get out at all. They couldn't even find the ropes they had set up to lead them to the various parts of the farm that they needed to get to. Even inside, the only warm place was right near the stove.

After a while, everyone began running short of food. Even more urgent, was the dwindling supply of coal, for the pot-bellied stoves. Since very few could get to the church, anyway, Dad canceled church services and therefore didn't need the church's supply of coal. He delivered it to the local families as needed. Finally, the few remaining men in town, except for Dad, who had to stay and take care of the blind couple and such, got a wagon and a team of horses and took off cross country. They figured if they traveled on the higher ground, where the snow was blown thinner by the wind, they could get into town, to get more supplies. They had to cut fences as they went, since there were no gates where they needed to go through. Even so, it took them several days to get back, most of a week. During this time, Dad was the only man left in the community who could get around, so he was kept very busy. Before the thaw came, we were out of food again. All that was left was the chickens at the blind couple's house. Many of them had roosted in the trees and frozen there. Each time the blind couple or we needed more food, Dad would knock a chicken off a limb with a snowball. We lived on chicken for the last week, or so, of that time.

While all this was going on, I was a very small child. Mom made me a bed in a dresser drawer laid on two chairs facing the stove. She still worries about whether I cooked on one side and froze on the other. I think she is worried that I am half-baked or some such thing. I was, of course, too young to remember any of this.

(c) P. Thomas Selfridge. Copyrighted Must not be reproduced or
redistributed for, any purpose, without direct permission.

Tom S.
Hermit on the Hill