This is an attempt to record events that I can remember about my sister Nanetah’s life. I have spent many months living with my sister’s family over the years, and there are probably things that only a sister could know about Nanetah’s family. If I don’t write about these remembrances, they will be lost forever. So, I will do the best I can.
I am trying to give our lives starting with North St. Francis Street in Wichita, KS., then living on Grandpa’s farm at 21st and Cleveland, then our move to the oil field, then my moving with Netah, Lloyd, and Gladys to 1st and Poplar in Wichita, and Mother and Daddy later moving to North Ash Street, where I joined them within a month.
I want everyone to know that Netah came from a good stock. Her descendants should be aware of this. Anyone can see by her life she used her talents. I hope I have a few too, for I would like the family to be proud of both girls.
Our paternal grandparents, John Massie (1834-1930) and Sara Hutchison (1833-1928), were born and raised in Scotland. On our recent trip to Scotland in 1996, George, Netah’s son, with much patience, located the St. John’s Episcopal Church in Longside where the couple were married. It was delightful with flowers at the entrance. The inside was very tasteful and immaculately clean. I sat in a pew and could just imagine their getting married -- and what a successful marriage it turned out to be. After the births of seven children, they came to the States. Daddy, George Massey, was born in America, April 24, 1873.
Salaries were not very high in Scotland, so Grandpa decided he would go to the States and make some money to use and for the family to follow him. He was a carpenter in Scotland, and a very good one. He left Scotland for London in 1865. Grandma got caught in London at the time of the Black Plague. She told of seeing wagonloads of corpses go by her front door, one morning after another. She was a firm believer in black molasses and gave each child two tablespoonfuls every day. She vowed that kept them from getting sick.
Grandma and the children left London on a ship which was not first class, and I believe they were packed in with not much room for the children and Grandma to enjoy. They ran into a bad storm at sea which was so bad the captain came to Grandma and asked her to tie the children to their bunks for they might be swept overboard with the high waves. The ship lay on its side for three days and nights. Can you imagine such a time Grandma must have endured -- but knowing her, you would be sure she made the best of a bad situation.
After landing in the States they crossed Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, La., and again ran into a bad storm. She said in some ways it was worse than the first one. She and the children arrived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1887.
Our mother, Minnie Hopper Massey (1873-1961), came from a very sturdy, honest Christian home. Grandpa Shalmanezer Hopper (1845-1899), died from wounds in the Civil War. When I visited Grandma Emily Sims Hopper (1844-1924) in Clarence, MO, I was eight or nine. She and I would walk to the post office in downtown Clarence. She knew many people and many seemed eager to greet her. She wore a long sleeve, full length to the ground black dress with a little white at the neck. I can see a picture in my mind of her. She had a nice house with a yard slightly sloped down on the west side of the house. The grass was green, and I delighted, to no end, to roll from the top to the bottom. Well, I was quite miserable sleeping in her deep feather bed with my hundreds of chigger bites.
Grandpa Massey started his wagon factory in Rolla, MO. The Massey Wagon Co., as the company was called, had a very good wagon. We have no records as to how long it was on the market, but they moved to Salem, MO, on December 2, 1875, from Salem to Springfield, MO, in 1882, and from Springfield to Macon, MO, on February 27, 1884.
After selling the wagon factory, they moved to 21st and Cleveland in Wichita and lived on a plot of land right across the road from the Derby Refinery Co. The Chisholm Creek ran through the 12-acre piece of ground, and the house was probably there when they bought it. It had a large attic which was used for a bedroom and there was a nice sized barn. Sister Netah remembers sleeping up in the attic and shelling popcorn in the barn loft. Grandpa supplied popcorn to everyone in Wichita who sold it, but of course Wichita was not as large as it is now. He sold the yellow kind, as he didn’t like the white kind. He also had several beehives and sold honey. He was widely known for his good honey. He could work with the bees without getting a bite, but when Daddy tried to get the honey, the bees went after him and stung. Oh, that was dreadful, and Daddy never could understand why they didn’t like him, but they didn’t and had their way of letting him know.
Daddy, at this time, was with the Massey Hardware Co. which he and his older brother, John (1861-1934), organized and started at the corner of 3rd and Rock Island. They both had agreed that Daddy would do the selling by traveling through Oklahoma and Texas and that Uncle John would take charge of the office. I never did know what Uncle John’s salary was agreed upon, but Daddy was to have 10% of his sales for his salary. Daddy traveled by train for the Ford had not arrived in our lives at this time. Daddy was like a natural born salesman -- born and not made. He didn’t use high pressure but was friendly and considerate, putting his customer’s interest at the top. He told me that sometimes he would not open his catalog if he could sense his customer was not in the mood for purchasing but would just pass the time of day, wish him well and leave. His successful salesmanship was apparent and repeat sales assured.
Daddy and Uncle John had a business problem. When Daddy had such success with his selling ability, Uncle John did not want to pay him the salary that they had agreed. Daddy was furious and felt Uncle John was trying to do him a great injustice, for he knew his success in selling was the key to getting a new business started. The result was that he left the Massey Hardware Co. and joined his brother, Uncle Alex, in the oil business at Uncle Alex’s request. So we moved to an area between Eldorado and Eureka where there were two producing oil wells. The astrologers seemed to think there could be a huge pool close by. Uncle Alex had purchased land bordering the producing wells and was wanting to drill, so he had daddy take over this project. Daddy put all of his money in this new adventure. Since Uncle Alex had been so successful, he had confidence in his ability to make good in the oil business.
The well that Uncle Alex and Daddy drilled came in a non-producer, in other words, a dry hole, using the oil field nomenclature. That was a financial blow for my father, for he had used all of his money to bank on its success, thinking Uncle Alex was sure of what he was doing.
I must put this in for it was so very important as to our future living status. The two existing producing wells were used to determine the direction of the flow of the underground oil. The geologists and others chose the west, which was found to be a mistake, but Father had an offer to buy a lease of so many acres lying to the south for a very small cost, $350. He wrote Uncle Alex about this and insisted that would be the way to go for they would have a double shot if they bought it. Uncle Alex said later he had more than a dozen letters asking him to do this, but he thought the first choice was the right one. Our father, being brand new in the oil business, and this being his first experience, didn’t want to go over his head, so they didn’t purchase the lease that turned out to be where the big oil pool was located. It was the biggest field in the whole state of Kansas, known as the "Hughes Pool." That is how close our father came to making a success of his oil ventures.
He was a powerful salesman, and in a few years moved to Wichita. He went down to the Motor Equipment Co. on West Douglas. Every morning he was there to sweep the floors or do anything he could to be of help. There was no territory open for a salesman, but he stuck to his plan, and when one did open they gave him a try. It was just west of Wichita and the most unproductive route the Motor Equipment Co. owned. In a two or three-year time, Daddy had made the route the biggest route the Motor Equipment Co. had. There was no arrangement for unemployment or retirement, but when Daddy could no longer work, they took care of him in appreciation for his success. He was honest, cheerful, efficient and his disposition was always nice for others to be around him.
I want to clarify the situation that existed between Daddy and Uncle Alex. When Daddy left the Massey Hardware Co., he had great expectations for a success in the oil business with his brother Alex. However, when that was a disaster, he was left without money and no prospect, and, along with breaking his arm and ill health, he had a nervous breakdown.
I am going to give you the following, hoping I will not put down my father but I think it must be told for it might be of help to one of you. It took years but Daddy was not well and I knew it. I went to our minister in the College Hill Methodist Church where we all attended regularly. I told him that my father had held a grudge against his brother for many years, and I was sure it was making him ill. Would he help by meeting with us? He said he would be glad if he could help, and we should meet him after the Sunday evening church service. Well, we prayed with Daddy and talked with him until two in the morning when daddy had relief from his distress and forgave his brother. He gained his health back and, as you have heard, started taking the children from the Children’s Home to our Sunday School. When I was in Wichita the last time, I was informed the men of the church are still following Daddy’s plan. This shows what can happen when you hold hatred in your heart and do not forgive and what can happen when you let it go!
My first recollections of being alive were living in our home at 1715 N. St. Francis with my Father, Mother, my sister Netah, and my dog Badger. We bought our groceries, which they delivered, from Bell’s Market at the corner of 13th and St. Francis. The Bells have a grocery on South Rock near Central today. My sister was 12 years older than I, so she always was a second mother to me, very kind and protective.
Daddy was still with the Massey Hardware Co. Since he traveled, he was home every two weeks for a day or two. He was a natural-born salesman, which he proved with his enormous sales from his travels. He could tell stories that had happened with his traveling that he told so well and were so entertaining and true that they were always a delight to hear. Netah and I would listen with our mouths open. Here is one. Daddy was traveling on the train and made an acquaintance with a fellow traveler. The two struck up a conversation that went like this. This new friend said, "I will bet you twenty dollars it is late." Daddy said, "Now if you were talking about the Missouri Pacific I would say you are right but not the Frisco Line, and I am not a betting man, but I know I’m right so I will take your bet." So the train kept traveling for an hour or so. When a cry came from underneath the cars, making a dreadful plea, "Stop the train, it will kill me!" This cry was repeated so the conductor stopped, went out to see what was the matter and saw no one. So he boarded the train and the trip was continued. They arrived in Albuquerque late. They were taken to a restaurant about the same time a paper boy came in. A voice from the balcony called down and said, "Boy, bring a paper up here." The boy runs up the stairs and soon returns to say, "Well, that is funny, there was no one up there." Then Daddy knew he had been taken, for the man was a ventriloquist. He paid the twenty dollars.
When daddy was home for his weekend, all four of us would attend Sunday morning service and Sunday evening service, too. Netah had made many friends as she was attractive and likeable, and she loved the church. She would later be married there. Three pews were always filled on Sunday morning and Sunday evening when Daddy was in town. They were the Coombs, the Masseys, and the family of the Superintendent of the school system.
Our grandparents, John and Sara Massie, had been in Missouri with Aunt Alice, (1871-1941) for a few years, so it was agreed that Netah and I should go to visit them in their West Plains home. That meant a trip on a train. It would be our first experience and I was thrilled. I was not disappointed, for to climb up the ladder to get to our overhead bunks was thrilling. To hear the thump, thump of the train hitting the rails was something else, the club car with all the silver service, and the colored waiter waiting on each of us was like a dream. I do feel a sadness when I think about the train and my experiences and wish every child of today could have the same.
We arrived in West Plains. Grandma Massey was short, spirited, very spiritual, and strong willed. She made a good companion for Grandpa. He was about six feet tall, very erect, very precise, and nothing shoddy in manner or looks. He was well liked and admired for his sturdy character. When we arrived in town, Grandma Massey was bedfast but very alert due to the radio which she followed religiously, keeping up with the times, particularly with politics. She had a good sense of humor, and, of course, she seemed eager to see her namesake again. Aunt Alice had married Lee Catron, but there had been a major misconduct by Uncle Lee that separated him from being treated like one of the family. He was president of the bank in West Plains but spent a lot of time in St. Louis and only spent the nights in Aunt Alice’s home. He had an entrance to his own room and used it, so we saw him very seldom. Martha Ellen was my age. I still remember seeing her closet with 30 pairs of her shoes. She soon let me know that she was very superior to me, and I felt that plainly. Ruth, her daughter, was being courted by Howard Kellitt, the boy she married later on, and I thought it was fun to sit on the front porch with them. Well, Howard didn’t think much of that and paid me a quarter to leave. Netah was visiting with the family who came over to meet us. The afternoon we were to leave, Netah went upstairs to our bedroom and packed all of our clothes to take back home. We were to leave in the late afternoon. I was busy admiring the white rocks that were in front of Aunt Alice’s house and made up my mind I just couldn’t leave them all there, so I found a basket and put some of them in it to take upstairs. When I opened the suitcase, it was full of clothes so I took them out and put in my precious rocks. Later when my dear sister came to take the suitcase and found it full of rocks and the clothes on the floor she was very upset and certainly didn’t want to be late to the train. I heard from that episode many, many times, so you see what she had to put up with.
The next thing I can remember of consequence was Netah and Mother teaching me a poem my teacher had given me. They wanted me to have a poem to say for the little Sunday School program. They worked hours with me. The one that starts, "When I’m in my ones," was the favorite. Finally they thought I was ready to go on stage, and when I finished without a mistake, they were overjoyed and showed it. There are many of you who have heard it, but there are young ones who have not.
When I’m in my ones I can frolic all the day,
I can hop, I can jump, I can run around and play.
But when I’m in my teens I must get up with the Lark,
And sew and read and practice from early morn till dark.
When I’m in my twenties, I’ll be like my sister "Jo"
I’ll go to lots of parties, and maybe, have a bow.
I’ll wear the prettiest dresses and fix my hair up high,
And not a girl in all the town will be as sharp as I.
And when I’m in my thirties, I’ll be just like Mama,
I’ll entertain with fancy teas and have a big Papa.
I’ll grow a little fat, but mother is so sweet and nice,
I’ll not object to that.
And when I’m in my forties, oh, mercy. Me oh my,
When I get as old as forty, surely I will die,
But like as not the world won’t last until that day,
For it’s so, very, very far away.
I must tell you about Daddy and his way of having fun. As I have mentioned before, Daddy traveled on the trains so he frequented the Grand Central Station in Wichita. He became acquainted with the waiters so to have some fun, one morning when he was ordering his breakfast, he told the waiter, "I want orange juice, sausage, toast and two eggs fried, one fried on one side and one fried on the other." The waiter left and did not return for quite a while. When he did, he said, "Mr. Massey, I’se understands what you want, but that cook back there don’t." That was so typical of what Daddy would do to make a little fun out of the day.
He seemed to always have things to say that had just come off the top of his head. For instance, one afternoon I was watching him carefully pack his suitcase for he was leaving the following morning. I asked, "Daddy where are you going? He answered, "Off to the Coast of Cain in a flying Ja-boon." Do you believe I can still visualize standing beside that bed, being very worried and asking, "Are you ever coming back?" I was about five for I was not in school. He told this story many times. "You know I was named George, Thomas, Wilson, Fleming Massey, but I didn’t grow, and I was the runt of the family. They decided my name was too long, and they took off the Wilson and Fleming, and after that I grew and look at me now."
Daddy’s train arrived in Wichita about three in the morning and he would stop at a little place across from the Union Station to purchase "Hot Tamales," then call us on the phone to wake us up so we could eat them. What fun that was! We all loved the tamales and they were better than any I’ve ever had since, but to eat them at that hour with the excitement of Daddy being home again was just something out of this world. After we had eaten, we played a game of dominoes. I still love hot tamales and I still love dominoes.
I don’t remember the name of the song that was Daddy’s favorite, but it goes like this. "When you come to the end of a perfect day and you sit alone with your thoughts. . . ." I heard him say so many times, "I just pass this way but once so I must do the best I can." He had a wonderful philosophy and he lived it all his life.
Netah went to the College of Salina in order to become a missionary. She loved that college, and she had a suitor that seemed determined that she would marry him. But she had met Lloyd Oerke who was in the picture. I can remember what a time she had deciding which she should marry. The Salina boy lost out and she married Lloyd.
On our move to Sallyards, Kansas, in 1917, we took the train, the Missouri Pacific. The furniture and all that we owned was loaded into a commercial moving van. I can recall seeing it leave from our front porch. The van caught fire near Eldorado and burned everything. All we had was the clothes on our backs. The tragic thing was all the handmade things my sister had made for her soon-to-be wedding. I felt sorry for her because of all the hours she had spent to make those lovely things.
To begin to purchase the things we needed to exist was traumatic. We bought pins, needles, thread, dishes, spoons, cooking pans, a change of underwear, and a dress to wear the next day. We had to carry water for cooking, bathing, etc. from a water well three miles from our home. We had no entertainment but the radio. Netah would read the Zane Grey novels. I will never forget "The Riders of the Purple Sage." Before retiring, we would take turns reading from the Bible, each kneeling down by their chair for prayer. I think of that often and am so proud our parents had chosen this way for our worship.
Netah had picked Lloyd to be her mate, and the wedding was at eight o’clock on September 21, 1919 in the parsonage of our beloved St. Paul’s Methodist Church on North Broadway in Wichita. They lived with us for a short time, but Lloyd and daddy did not see many things the same way, and Netah and Lloyd decided to move to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, to try farming. They didn’t stay long before moving into Grandpa Will Oerke’s (1869-1943) big home on the corner of 1st and Poplar in Wichita.
We moved from Wichita to the oil field in the spring when I was in the fourth grade. At the school there was a family of seven children living not far from us. Their father was a drunkard and their home was very skimpy, but I loved the children. That summer before I was in the fourth grade, I would go to their house, wash the dried applesauce off their faces, comb their hair, and take them for a walk over the Flint Hills. There were no trees or grass, only ditches that filled with water when it rained. It was quite lovely to see the low hills as we walked over them.
I told them about Jesus and his love, and the children’s eyes were so bright and shiny. They seemed eager to hear stories. When fall was near, I said to my mother, "These children need to know more about the Bible, let’s start a Sunday School." And Mother, who played the piano, said, "We’ll sing a song and see if they like it." We tried it, and there were more children coming all the time to the school house where we met. Soon the parents didn’t leave the children and go home, but they would stay to listen to the Bible stories we told there. I told my mother to take the children’s classes and I would take the adults. Our school house was filled. The teacher who taught all eight grades there roomed with us in our home.
Then, in a town not too far away, someone said they heard there was a little girl who was teaching the adults and they came over to say they were furnishing a new teacher, but I still think that the children would be better off if I had my way. I don’t know if the Sunday School ended after I moved away.
When it came time for me to enter the seventh grade, both Mother and Daddy wanted me to go to a better school than the one-room school house where eight grades were taught by one teacher. Netah lived close to the Roosevelt Intermediate School at 1st and Grover in Wichita, so I moved there to live with them and dear little Gladys, who was just one year old. How I loved her, she was so cute. While I was living there, I had fun with my sister. There is one thing I remember so vividly. We were at the park with Gladys and sister had her on her lap when something went wrong with the swing. Netah hit the ground hard but she held Gladys above so she was not hurt. My thoughts were that she hadn’t had time to think, but that is a mother’s instinct to protect her little one. The next year, our folks returned to Wichita, living at 1st and North Ash. Netah and I loved to play jacks together.
Netah and Lloyd moved several times through the years before moving to Caldwell, Kansas, in 1925. They lived on the highway going east from Caldwell. They now had a family of four--Gladys, George, and Rowena.
Before the registration of my 1927 classes, Mother told me that Netah was not doing well health-wise, and she needed me to help out with the children. That was my senior year with the graduation at the end of it. I didn’t want to graduate from Caldwell for I had many friends at East High and had been president of several school functions in the previous year, but I would go down to Caldwell for one semester and return to East High for my graduation.
That sounded plausible at the time, but it didn’t turn out that way, and I graduated from Caldwell. I did enjoy being with my sister and I do think I was of help, even if I was not a good cook nor a good housekeeper. This was the year of the terrible dust storms. I can remember cleaning a window sill that had a 2-inch high dust accumulation. That dust was so fine, it came into the house in unexpected places. When we would clean, it was the next day to do it all over. But sister was such fun, she would trick me and say, "Now you do this much cleaning and we shall play a game of jacks." We played a lot of jacks.
There was a lot of living to do with my sister’s family. I recall how interested Netah was in the church and in putting on the programs. The house just east of town was pretty new. It was nice. I remember taking piano lessons from Mrs. Shoemaker. I played the first part of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in a recital. Netah was proud of me.
Lloyd was very nice to me, and let me take the family car one night a week to pick up friends or go to a show. But he instructed me I was not to take the car out of town. One night we did drive around town, up and down Main Street and around and around. The next day Lloyd had checked the mileage and we had driven 30 miles. Lloyd was furious and told me I was not to drive out of town. I told him I hadn’t and he said you could not have driven 30 miles in town. But I told him again I had not gone outside of town. I was afraid he would never believe me and that would be the end of our friendship, but he finally accepted my plea and boy was I glad.
Lloyd’s paternal grandma, Mary Clara Krouse Oerke (1846-1930) lived in town. She was very old, 81 years, ha-ha not as old as I am now, but she did seem very old to me. She could make the best bread and butter pickles. She seemed to like me and invited me to eat my lunch with her many times. That was very enjoyable. One time Lloyd’s father asked Netah and I to clean up a house he owned not far from our house. Well, there was a five-gallon container of pickles in water in the front room and oh, did they smell, so we threw them away. They were not spoiled but were ripening, and they must have been very valuable for Mr. Oerke had a fit. He just couldn’t imagine anyone so dumb. I remember the huge washings and the many dishes. But Netah and I had a good time playing jacks to ease the pain of house cleaning.
I missed graduating in Wichita and when I returned, I had put on quite a few pounds and had lost out in the swim of things with my friends. I’m sure Netah appreciated me being with her and I learned a lot being with her wonderful family.
In 1929 I married Joe (1907-1987) and had a beautiful little baby girl. We named her Anne. Mother Welch lived with us so she was always ready to babysit and I never once hired a baby sitter. In 1940 with the addition of Netah’s three boys, Edward, Kenneth and Marvin, my sister had a very difficult time so I left Anne with Mother Welch and went to her to help.
I thought you might remember Grandpa Massey for the kites he used to make, usually from yardsticks, but Netah would always have a supply of rags and strings to put on the tail. They would holler, "more tail, more tail," and sister would have to run into the house and tear up sheets or rags or anything she could find to make more tail.
Another thing, Grandpa Massey was so impressed with the meat that he saw somewhere and he went to the Holly Restaurant and had a whole pig roasted. He brought it to the house to serve, and it was put in the center of the table with an apple in its mouth. When the children came to the house, they would walk round and round that table looking at that pig. George said that he went around the table five times. There was a lot of pork, I can tell you.
He was one of the few people in Wichita that helped start the Gideon Bible for hotel rooms, and at his funeral the Gideons gave 100 white Bibles to be placed in hotels. These were at the front of the casket at the church. Netah had one that she used. He was jolly and a good mixer and came up with lots of funny stories. His laugh was big and hearty and his stories were fabulous. This made him a good mixer and people loved him.
Our mother, Minnie Hopper Massey (1873-1961), was always doing something to help. Mother Hughes was a close friend, and the two gathered enough money to supply the Wesley Hospital with a light to be used above the birthing table. She had a plan that the churches in Wichita would have their existing women’s circles make baby clothes for mothers who had no clothes for their babies when leaving for home. She was quite instrumental with the needs in Africa in the Rhodesia area. I recall a nurse working in Africa visiting our home in Wichita and telling how they would kill one if twins were born and other stories we just couldn’t believe, but was so. I have a lot of papers telling about the conditions in Africa when Mother was interested in it.
I close this family story with this poem:
Approaching forty, Joe and I had enough,
That I thought I could send my Mother a
Dozen red roses on my birthday to
Thank her for borning me.
So on my fortieth birthday I had her roses
In my hand and knocked on her front door.
I’ll never forget that morning,
The sun was shining, her front lawn was green,
Her flowers in the yard were blooming,
And she looked grand.
I was wearing my golf shorts,
For I had an important tee-off time at the
Country Club, that I was eager to get to.
So you see, that little poem I learned was not right,
And each one of you, "Have a lot of living to do,"
May you have a little fun as you go along each day,
I’m sure God intended it to be that way.