REMINISCING
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CHAPTER 3

McKITTRICK AND THE OIL FIELDS

Mom was that day's equivalent of a "frequent flyer." She was "down home' again at Christmas when I was 14 months old and the following year brother Bert came along Nov. 15, 1915, also "down home" in the old farm house. I barely remember one of those train trips. It started on the local baggage train with single passenger car, from McKittrick to Bakersfield then we got on a through train to "L.A." via Mojave and Lancaster. In hot weather things were miserable. Neither Bakersfield or Lancaster are noted for decent summer weather. About all I can recall about the trip is the red plush seats on the train, that window sills on train care are covered with black soot, Mom had a folding silver cup to get drinking water at the end of the car, and we passed great big loaves of bread in the fields (hay stacks).

But I can remember many things about McKittrick even though we left there when I was just 4 years old. We lived in a tiny 3 room house with a screened porch at the back. Just below us Mr. and Mrs. Martin lived. She liked me and I could always cont on a cookie if I went down to see her. Mr. Martin was less friendly, about like Dennis the Menace and Mt. and Mrs. Wilson. Dad had a pigeon pen out behind the house and also out back was a one hole toilet where the sun made pencils of light through the know holes, intensified by the dust particles which interested me. The wind blew through the porch screens making a swishing sound. One day Dad made some better porch steps and I couldn't see how they would work until he just turned them over into position and thin I could walk right up. My mother used to sit on the front porch after the sun went down and sing song for me and baby Bert. Such high brow stuff as:

Tinkle tonkle, tinkle tonkle in the yard at night,
Tinkle tonkle, tinkle tonkle stars are shining bright.
When bossie moves her head around,
Then is heard that cow bell sound,
Tinkle tonkle, tinkle tonkle hear the cow bell sound.

For sure if there is a tune attached, things really stick in our mind. We should learn more things that way. The McKittrick area is almost without rain and even drinking water was very scarce. Since the price was high, no one used it for gardening, maybe a single vine by the doorway was nursed along. No trees grew n the town and the sun beat down unmercifully all summer What water they did have was tainted with arsenic and the acne Mom had as a girl, miraculously disappeared as a result (so the doctor claimed).

Before we left the oil fields I had developed a pronounced interest in mechanical things and loved to go with Dad in the model T Ford delivery truck. It had a rubber bulb which sounded the "oo-gah" horn when squeezed. I thought that was great. Dad delivered groceries out over the numerous "oil-leases" that dotted the McKittrick area. If I was a "good boy" and took my nap after lunch, he would come by and take me along. We saw oil derricks, gas engines, belts and bull wheels, walking beams, boilers, sucker rods and casings and watched the pumps life the oil out of the wells. I never tired of watching everything.

My grandfather Hand worked in the oil field over at Oil Center. He built oil derricks and under ground storage tanks. He went blind in both eyes, he thought from the strain of heavy lifting, but I would guess from glaucoma. Associated Oil gave him a small pension and he lived for probably 15 years in Bakersfield with a house keeper to take care of him until he was 92. He was a pleasant old man and would say: "Lowell, come over here, I want to 'see' how big you are now." That was in later years when Dad and I frequently went to Bakersfield with the truck to buy grapes and melons. Grandma Hand died about 1923.

Uncle George Rupp (Sadies husband) was a well driller and lived at Maricopa. Uncle Bill Hubbard (Ola's husband) was a fine blacksmith and branched off into repairing automobiles. He became a Maxwell dealer in Bakersfield and when Chrysler Corp. bought Maxwell, Bill became the owner of the Bakersfield Chrysler agency. Also in Dad's family was Uncle Charlie and wife Florence, Uncle Tom a Maxwell dealer in Santa Paula and wife Lula. The youngest was Aunt Alice (Mc Quade at first and later Mrs. Orlie Place.).

Typically the nearest thing to rain in McKittrick were fleecy white clouds sailing along with the wind. The shadows raced along the bare ground and I would run along with them. I also ran other places like following the road grader up the hill toward Taft. Dad came looking for me with the delivery truck and I got spanked. I also wandered over the hill into a sandy back canyon where there was a man-made storage cave. I also went down to the store alone and Dad tried to put a stop to that. Then one day Mom sent me down with a note to get something sh needed. I didn't understand about notes and got paddled before Dad knew why I was there. He often said that didn't even make up for the times I should have been but didn't get spanked.

About 200 feet from our house was a very large black oil storage tank. I'm not sure if ever was used for oil but in the afternoon it made a shade from the hot sun and the town drunks slept in the shade with their hats pulled down over their eyes. Mom found me there one day with one of her stove pads over my eyes and said: "Lowell what are you doing?" And I said: "Playing drunk man." Well, that was the last straw so when Dad came home she said, "We're leaving McKittrick!" No doubt she had been thinking about leaving McKittrick for some time. Dad was the pitcher for the local base ball team. They always played on Sunday and one Sunday he got hit in the eye with the ball. I can still picture how black it was and Mom hoped to cure that problem by getting out of McKittrick.

Grandpa Ahlstrom had one time gone to church just to satisfy his neighbor who was always inviting him. It wound up with him being converted. He gave up his beer, went to church regularly and read his Bible every night before retiring. My mother went with him to church and also received Christ as her Savior and was baptized at the Florence Ave. Baptist Church. But for the most part none of the other children followed in their father's footsteps. However, later aunt Grace became a member at Temple Baptist in downtown Los Angeles. Also aunt Maie and uncle Charles became Methodists and then the whole Webb family (aunt Corrine) joined the Brethren church after listening to Dr. Meyer on the radio.

I've heard it said that great grandfather Johnson sat around home reading his Bible and that great grandmother was the organizer to the small church at Chatsworth. Aunt Nonie and uncle Eastman were also regular at church. My mother got some of the neighbors together to start a Sunday School at McKittrick, which, I can barely remember. The Hand side of our family were nominally Methodists but didn't take church too seriously except for aunt Lula and aunt Florence (Hand). McKittrick's lack of any church was another reason for Mom wanting to leave there.

I those days there was a wholesale grocery in Los Angeles names Haas-Baruch and Co. They had traveling salesmen called "drummers" in the trade, because they went around drumming up business. Dad knew the drummer quite well and asked him to watch for someone needing an experienced grocery clerk. The result was that our family moved to Visalia in the fall of 1917.