ARTICLE
[The following is a summary of an oral family history given by Ralph Vogel in the early 1990s to his son-in-law Terence J. Werdel]
RALPH PETER VOGEL
Ralph Peter Vogel was born in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada on June 20, 1914, to Jacob and Anna Vogel. He was the second of six brothers. The other brothers were Alvin, Vernon, James, Bernard and Louis.
Iowa
In 1917, Jacob and Anna, and their two sons, Alvin and Ralph, moved from Wetaskiwin to a farm near Derby, Iowa. In 1920, Jacob moved the family to a farm he purchased south of Chariton, Iowa, which became the Vogel family farm.
The Vogel farm was rather sparse and underdeveloped. Material comforts were rudimentary. All energies were directed toward developing the farm and its crops. They never had running water in the house or indoor plumbing.
The Vogels had to be self-reliant; they raised or made everything they needed to live, except coffee and sugar. Hospitals and doctors were scarce. Illness and child birth could be deadly. Ralph’s life on the family farm ended in 1931, when his father came down with an infected big toe and three days later died of tetanus. In the depths of the Depression, the loss of the head of the family meant the loss of the Vogel farm.
Work on the farm was dictated by the weather and the season of the year. In the Winter, the men butchered livestock, mended fences, repaired equipment and chopped wood. In the Spring, they planted their crops, primarily corn and hay. In the Summer, they were haying and threshing. In the Fall, they harvested the corn. In the Winter, the women spun yarn, sewed and mended clothing. In the Spring they had to hatch and care for the chickens, plant and care for the vegetable garden and did the Spring housecleaning. During the Summer and Fall, the women harvested and canned large amounts of vegetables and fruits. Foods like apples, potatoes and sweet corn were stored for the winter. Throughout the year, the women prepared three meals per day, did all the washing with water heated over a fire, cared for the children, managed the household, fed and watered the chickens, produced most
of the family’s food supply in the vegetable garden and gave birth to numerous children.
Layout of the farm
The center of the farm was the house. Below the kitchen was the “cellar,” where vegetables, fruits, milk, cheese, butter and meats were stored. They also had a “cave” which was similar to a cellar but was dug about 50 feet from the house. Both were cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The cellar was also the place where the family stayed in extremely bad weather. Mrs. Vogel kept ice in the cellar during the summer. Ralph remembered one day hauling in some ice while his mother held the door to the cellar open and Ralph tripped over the door and fell down the cellar stairs.
Behind the house was his mother’s vegetable garden where she grew almost all the food the family ate during the year. Behind the garden were the apple orchard and the grape arbor. Across from the house were the barn, smokehouse, pig pens and chicken coops.
The water well was next to the house and the water was brown in color from all the minerals. The water was pumped by hand. They also had a cistern tank which collected rain water which ran off the roof of the house. In the early years, there were springs out on the surface of the land, but those played out due to the over use of water.
Later, wind-mills enabled water to be piped to different parts of the farm for the animals. The pipes had to be buried nine feet down to keep them from freezing in the winter. The trenches had to be dug by hand.
They used candles for lighting at night, which Mrs. Vogel made from bees wax. In the early 1900s, they started using carbide gas similar to those lanterns used by the miners.
Life on the farm
Ralph maintained that, “Life on the farm was all hard work and little fun.” He was up by 4:00 a.m., and helped his five brothers milk 25 cows. At 7:00 a.m., he would eat a big breakfast of eggs and fried potatoes. By 8:00 a.m., he would cultivate all day with horses until 5:00 p.m., when they would have to milk the cows again. In April of each year, the brothers did the plowing with four horses. Ralph would wear a fur coat with a hood to protect him from the cold wind. At 12:00 noon, the family would sit down
for dinner, which was the main meal of the day.
The Vogel farm had horses and mules, and the mules were much smarter. The mules always knew when it was time for the noon time meal and would stop and refuse to work further.
The horses were quite spirited and had to be placed in a halter whenever they were in the barn. Ralph would put oats in the feed box in each stall, and if the horses were not haltered, they would reach in an adjoining stall to eat the oats. One day Ralph broke his finger when he hit a horse in the head with his fist when the horse reached over the stall for more oats.
The Vegetable Garden
Mrs. Vogel controlled the house, the vegetable garden and the children. Because the vegetable garden supplied all of the fruits and vegetables for the family’s table, she got first claim on the labors of the boys. They dreaded their mother’s call for help. The work was usually longer and more intense in the garden. In the spring, they would plow the garden with the horses. They would then haul in manure and humus which had to be turned into the soil with a spade or hoe. In addition to the 5 acres of sweet corn, they had an acre each of potatoes, beans, squash and onions.
The apple orchard was huge and they stored many apples in the cave. Mr. Vogel would wrap each apple one “Monkey Ward” catalog page per apple. A certain amount of the apples would spoil which the family would eat. The good apples were only given to guests. Apples were stewed, baked or made into apple butter. Much of the apple production was made into cider by the boys running the apples through a press, and the juice was stored in jars in the cave. Vinegar was made by laying away a barrel of cider to sour. Vinegar was used for flavoring, cleaning and medicinal purposes. Home brew was made by adding malt to the cider.
In the grape arbor, they grew concord grapes. The grapes were eaten fresh or used to make grape jelly, but mostly they were used to make wine. Ralph maintained that his mother made the best wine he ever drank. The grapes were crushed in earthen jars. After adding water, the juice would ferment for about five weeks. The clear wine was then drained into new crocks and left to ripen in the cool cave for about six months.
Spending Money
Mrs. Vogel got her “spending money” by selling eggs, chickens, and apples. She raised about one thousand Polish chickens per year. They were for laying, selling and eating at dinner. The average hen would lay two eggs per day. The boys would collect the eggs each day, which were packed 24 to a tray and 500 to a crate. Each Saturday, she would sell two crates of eggs at the grocery store in Chariton.
Mrs. Vogel also managed the production and sale of the milk, cream and butter. The boys milked the cows first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening. The milk was strained into crocks and stored in the cellar below the Kitchen. At night after the cream had separated, the boys would separate the cream from the milk by spooning the cream into other crocks. Some of the cream would be left to sour and later churned into butter. Buttermilk was a byproduct, then known as clabbermilk, which was used in pancakes. The milk was used for drinking, cooking and for feed for the livestock. The excess milk, cream and butter were sold every Saturday to the grocery store.
The brothers got some of their spending money by “gathering squab” at night from the old barns in the area. Most of the pigeons would roost in the rafters of the old barns. The brothers would hang a bright lantern on the outside of the upper part of the barn and then they banged on the walls. The startled pigeons would fly toward the light and knock themselves out when they hit the walls. The brothers would collect the stunned birds in gunny sacks and sell them to the country store.
Harvest Time
At harvest time, all the neighbors would come to help. When they harvested corn, they would load the corn by hand into a hayrack (wagon with high sides). There were no grain elevators on the farm, consequently, the boys would use scoop shovels to shovel all the corn from the field into the wagons. They would drive the hayracks to the storage bins near the barn and shovel the corn into the bins. They would have to sling the corn over their heads with the scoop shovels. Today the farmers shell the corn
(remove the kernels from the ear), dry the kernels with automatic dryers, and then lift the kernels with a cyclone into the elevators. On the Vogel farm, the ears were stored in a corn shed which had a solid floor but had walls made of slats which let the air in to dry the ears.
Shucking corn was one of the hardest jobs on the farm. “ Shucking” was the removal of the husk from the ear of corn. They would use a mitten and a hook to remove the husk by inserting the hook in the top of the ear and ripping down the husk. They had to use this process for every ear of corn harvested. During harvest time it rained a lot, and the corn stocks would be pounded to the ground or stuck in the snow. Most of the corn was field corn used for pig feed.
The boys would cut the hay with a mower, and then rake it into windrows. They would load the hay by hand into a hayrack, and then haul the hay to the barn. At the barn the hay was hauled up to the second floor by hand with a grapple and pulley. In later years, their father purchased a tractor which they used for all sorts of jobs. They connected a 20-foot long belt to the power take off hub on the tractor for thrashing, chopping corn, and to operate an elevator to move the corn into the silo.
Hogs
Although the farm was quite self-sufficient, each farmer still needed a cash crop to make land and crop payments and to pay the property taxes. The price of field corn was so low, that the farmers could not make a profit if they sold it on the market. The farmers would raise the corn and feed it to hogs, and then sell the hogs for a profit. The Vogels raised about 250 hogs a year. One of the jobs on the farm was mixing the feed for the hogs. First, they ground the corn into a powder. To this powder, they would add vitamins, tankage meal (ground up dried dead animals), oats, shoats (hulls from the wheat) and brand (used to make the hogs bowels “move”).
After the corn was harvested, the hogs would be turned lose in the fields to graze the stubble to the ground. At the same time, the hogs would fertilize the fields for the next year crop.
Slaughter Time
Another major event on the farm was “slaughter time.” The Vogels butchered hogs, beef and chicken. Mrs. Vogel had six brothers (the Hammes brothers) who each had farms of their own in the area, and who would join the Vogel family for slaughtering. They would butcher six to eight hogs per day. They would kill the hog by cutting its juggler vein and letting all the blood drain out into a vat. They would keep the tendon on each hind hoof to pull the hog up by attaching a single tree to the tendons and
having a horse pull the hog up with a pulley. The hog would be placed over a barrel of water which was sitting over a fire. They would bring the water to a boil and the hog would be dropped in the boiling water. The hog would be left in the boiling water for about three minutes which would make the hair soft and slick. The hog then would be raised and they would take sharp knives and scrape the hair off.
They would then cut out the back straps (filets), sides and hams. This meat would be hung high in the smoke house over a hickory wood fire with lots of ashes. Covering the hot fire with saw dust made the best smoke. They would smoke for a week. The cured hams would last for many months in the cave.
The balance of the hog would be cut up, with much of it going for sausage. The intestines would be removed, scraped clean and boiled; they would hang for five to six hours to cool. The sausage meat would be run through a grinder which would push the ground meat into the cleaned and boiled intestines to make link sausage. The blood was cooked and let stand until it cooled to a solid. The blood and sausage meat would then be mashed together with a flat plate to make “blood worst.”
The sausage would be stored in stone crocks. They would put in a layer of sausage, then a layer of lard, then a layer of sausage, then a layer of lard, all the way to the top of the crock. The sausage would keep all year in the cave.
Ralph said that when they butchered a hog, “they used everything but the squeak.” The steers were butchered at the same time, but, “were harder to work with because they weighed a thousand pounds.”
Whenever they butchered, they also made soap. The fat and meat residue went to the big soap kettle sitting on a fire. They would boil the tallow and then drain off the clear lard in another kettle. They would let the fire die out and then add lye to the clear lard. While it was still warm, they would pour the liquid out into long pools in deep trays and let it cool. After cooling, the long pools would be hard, and they would cut the pools into bars of brown “soap.”
Travel
The trip to town was always very slow. They would take the wagon drawn by two horses. The road always had two deep ruts which made the wagon swing back and forth as it went down the road. If it rained, the mud would cover everyone and everything.
Weather
During the harsh winter storms, the temperature could drop to 40 degrees below zero. The snow would cover all the fences. They would have to shovel out the road from the farm to the county road. The county would clear only one lane of the road which always made for an argument when people had to pass. The brothers would also have to shovel a channel to the barn, the outhouse, the chicken house
and the wash house. They hated it when it snowed. Ralph’s wife, Regina, remembered the snows on her family’s farm in Marengo, Iowa. It was so deep that they would travel to their neighbors by going cross country over the tops of the fence posts in a sleigh drawn by horses. Her father would put hot coals in an iron kettle and place it under the wooden seat in the sleigh. He would then bury the family under blankets. She remembered him standing up in the front driving the sleigh with the snow flying in his face.
The Vogel farm was in the cyclone (tornado) belt of the Midwest, but Ralph didn’t remember any hitting the Vogel farm. He remembered the family going into the cellar in bad weather and “praying that there would be no cyclone.” One cyclone did go through the farm next door, and showing the tornado’s peculiar nature, it lifted all of the water out of the neighbor’s water well and carried the water in a mass for a quarter of a mile and then dropped it all at once in one place.
School
Ralph’s father insisted that all the boys finish high school. The grammar school was a one room school house, one quarter mile from home. High school was five miles away in Chariton. During the school year, the boys would still have to milk the cows before they walked the five miles to school, and milk them again after they walked the five miles home.
After his father died unexpectedly in 1931, Ralph went to work on a neighbor’s farm as a farm hand and was paid $1.00 per day. Although he did not like farming, he worked at this job for two years.
Back to Canada
At 18, Ralph was told that he was going to be laid off. Another farmer in the area was a shirttail cousin who also was looking for employment. This cousin had built a home made airplane, but was so afraid of it that he would only fly it as high as the tops of the fences. This cousin answered an ad for a farm foreman in Canada, got the job, and moved to a farm near Winnipeg, Canada. Shortly after his arrival, he offered a job to Ralph. At age 18, Ralph was on the road alone.
Ralph started north working on farms to get to Winnipeg. He first stopped 50 miles north of home to stack hay. Next he moved to Waterloo, Iowa, where he worked as a farm laborer. During his travel, he developed the“Barber’s itch,” was unable to shave, and began to look like a vagabond.
As Ralph approached the Canadian border, many people were returning south saying that there was no work on the Canadian farms. Ralph continued on because his cousin had promised a job, and he arrived to find a job waiting. The farm was “near” Winnipeg, but was really 50 miles out in the prairie, with no roads, towns, or villages for miles around. The only transportation was the railroad. The
farmland was located on the old Winnipeg Lake bottom, which was mostly peat moss. The peat moss land was only worth about $3.00 per acre, and the farmers were trying to develop the land by growing hay. His employer would go for 10 miles in all directions to gather hay and bring it back to the farm for stacking. The farmer operated 15-20 International trucks.
Winnipeg was one of the coldest areas in Canada; however, Ralph arrived in the summer when is was quite warm. He worked as a water pumper, working a rocking paddle-arm pump. The bunkhouse was four walls to keep out the cold, and was built on wheels. Some of his fellow farm hands were Bohemians, known as ”Bo-hunks,” who were not liked by the locals.
After working for approximately six months, Ralph was injured and had to stop working. He broke several ribs in a fall from the top of a hay stacker when he slipped on the teeth and fell on a hay rake. A doctor in Winnipeg taped the ribs together, after a 50-mile bumpy ride over a road which was nothing more than a dirt track. Unable to work, Ralph looked for other travels.
Ralph decided to travel 1,000 miles to the west to his place of birth, Wetaskiwin, Alberta, and visit his aunt Helen Marie (Hammes) Greiner (Peter L. Greiner). Mrs. Greiner was the older sister of Ralph’s mother, Anna (Hammes) Vogel. Wetaskiwin is located 50 miles south of Edmonton, near the Ermineskin Indian Reserve.
With taped broken ribs, Ralph started traveling the rails in boxcars. It took him two weeks to get to his aunt’s farm. The only stops along the way were at railroad stations which were generally run by the Chinese. In the beginning, Ralph was “scared to death” of the Chinese and refused to go into the stations, and consequently, he went without any food for the first three days.
At night, the train would stop at a station, and Ralph would keep warm by building a fire on the floor of the boxcar. The boxcars were lined on the inside with paper and wooden slats, which he would tear off and use for the fire. At times, while the train was moving, the car would become so cold that he would build a fire in the moving boxcar and kick the fire out the door as the train approached a station. On one occasion, he slept one night in a stockyard.
During his two weeks of travel, Ralph could not take a bath, wash his clothes or shave. Consequently, when he arrived at the Greiner home, he looked like a tramp riding the rails, and his aunt would not let him in. He eventually convinced her that he was her nephew, and he stayed in their home in Wetaskiwin for six months. The house was three stories high and Ralph lived in a room in the basement. Ralph’s uncle, Peter Greiner had died in 1935, before Ralph arrived, and consequently, his aunt lived alone in one of the rooms, and other married family members lived on different floors of the house. While Ralph was there in November 1937, the Greiner daughter, Valburga Anna, married David Cramton.
When Ralph started home, the Canadian officials would not let him leave the country because he had been born in Canada and could not prove that his parents were not Canadian citizens. In order to get Ralph back into the United States, Anna had to go to the Lucas county seat, get proof of Jacob’s citizenship and send it to Ralph in Alberta.
Harper Community
Upon his return home to the Harper Community, Ralph again went to work on the farms for wages of $1.00. At night he would sell a new type of bow tie which fastened on the side, and didn’t require the tying of the bow, which most farmers disliked. Most of his sales were to his uncles. Another shirttail cousin, Cooney Conrad, was at that time selling for the Fuller Brush Company, and suggested to Ralph that they travel together while selling their wares. After one hour with Cooney, Ralph decided that he could make a killing selling for Fuller Brush.
Ralph asked Cooney to help him get a job with Fuller Brush, and Cooney offered to take him to the Fuller Brush field manager 20 miles away. As they left town in Cooney’s car, a black cat crossed the road ahead of the car and Cooney immediately turned around and refused to go that day. Ralph was so mad, he went on his own, unannounced, and convinced the manager to hire him. In 1938, at the age of 24, Ralph embarked on a 56-year relationship with Fuller Brush Co., which was interrupted only by WWII.
The manager gave Ralph the territory, which included Marengo, Iowa, and the Amana Colonies. The colonies had been closed to outsiders for decades, but immediately prior to Ralph’s hiring, the colonies broke-up, and strangers were permitted in. The closed society was craving the wares of the outside world, and Ralph arrived at just the right time. In his travels, he came across an Amana member who suggested that Ralph break the ice in the colonies by staying in one of their hotels and “working the streets.” The colonials loved Ralph and his wares; that year,“rookie” Ralph, at age 24, was the number one salesman in the Minneapolis District.
During the depression, the only work for young men was as a laborer on the farms where they were paid only a dollar a day. This was too little for the young men to marry. After one year of employment, Ralph was made a field manager, and for salesmen, he turned to the young farm workers and offered them $2.00 per day. This was a fortune to the young men and enabled them to marry. Ralph’s territory exploded. Ralph hired his two brothers, Vern and Jim, as his assistant managers.
Part of Ralph’s territory included, Fairfield, Iowa, where the Harper Brush Company Office was located. Harper manufactured an industrial line of brushes and brooms. Ralph sold Fuller products at the Harper Factory, and developed a relationship which continued until his death.
While selling in the Marengo, Iowa, area, Ralph would stay in a local boarding house. One of his customers suggested that he “take his meals” at the Steele boarding house which served the best food in town. Ralph did so, and was smitten with Mrs. Steele’s daughter, Regina. They were married in Marengo, on June 20, 1941.
California
Six months after their marriage, the USA entered WWII. Regina was violently opposed to Ralph joining the army; consequently, they decided to move to California where he could obtain a military exemption while building ships for the navy.
Ralph did not discuss the matter with his mother, but merely walked in one day and told her that he was moving to California, and then he and Regina, pregnant with Vicky, climbed into his new De Soto and left. The De Soto was his first “new” car for which he paid $900.00. Upon arrival in California, they stayed in Los Angeles with Regina’s brother and sister-in-law, Leo and Mary Steele.
Ralph was employed by the Consolidated Steel Corporation to build Liberty ships and L.S.T.’s (Landing Ship Transports, which would land on the beach bow first). He worked as a welder in Wilmington. He had gone to school in Newton, Iowa, to learn how to weld, and got his degree just before they left for California. The job started out as a Steam fitter’s helper. Most of the steam lines were in the bottom of the hull, and that was where he did most of his work. The steam fitter and Ralph would work on opposite sides of a bulkhead, and snake a pipe through a hole in the bulkhead. Once it was aligned and tack welded, Ralph would weld the pipe in place.
It was extremely difficult for the welders to work in the bottom the hull, due to the concentration of smoke from the welding and the gases from the galvanization. Each welder carried his own blower to suck the smoke out of the compartment, but many didn’t use it properly and were overcome by the smoke.
In the beginning, there were too many welders, and when the inspectors came around, the steam fitters would tell the welders who weren’t working to hide under the stacks of steel. Ralph didn’t believe in the practice, which caused problems between Ralph, the steam fitter and the foreman. Because of his “inability to get along,” on several occasions, he came close to being fired; which meant that he would lose his exemption and be drafted in the army.
Ralph worked his way up as a welder, and eventually worked as a “tack-welder” welding steel plate on the sides, decks and bulkheads. On the bottom of the ships, much of the plate was one and one-half inches thick and cut on the edges in a bevel, which created a “V” when two plates were joined together side by side. The welder had to fill the “V” with a bead without any slag, or the seam would leak or
break.
Not only were the ships used for carrying cargo, but many were designed for command ships which dropped anchor near a target island and directed the battle; other ships were designed as living quarters and office space to be used after the islands were captured. During the battle it was usual for everything above ground to be totally destroyed, and consequently, there would be nothing left standing for the victors to use as office or management space or officer’s living quarters. These ships were designed to fill those needs by anchoring off the island and providing those facilities. Building these types of ships were assigned the number one priority in the Wilmington shipyard.
Ralph sold his De Soto, and bought a used Chevrolet which had been stored on blocks in a garage. The only thing he had to do to it was to put on four tires. He drove it throughout the war, and it was still running perfectly when the war ended and he sold it. He normally rode to work with three or four other workers. Many of the workers were druggies or drinkers, and Regina did not like Ralph going out with them after work. The welders were men and women, and some of them would become friendly and would want to “play” in any one of the many hiding spots in the bottom of a ship. Ralph’s work shift was from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with one hour off for lunch. He arrived in Los Angeles over weight, consequently, he would normally eat only a cantaloupe for lunch.
When the war ended, Ralph again turned to Fuller Brush for employment. Before the war, Ralph had met Pete Peterson, the Western District Manager for Fuller, and Pete had treated Ralph royally. After the war, Pete introduced him to Harold Wright who was the field manager in the Los Angeles area. Ralph was hired and assigned to the Compton, California territory, where blue collar workers lived. Compton also had many dairies, which later relocated to Kern County when the dairy farms were subdivided for new homes. At this time, Ralph and Regina lived on 43rd Street near Broadway. On the first day, Ralph out sold his manager. After he worked for about three months, his manager told him that the district manager wanted to talk to him. The district manager told him that the manager in Fresno was retiring, and offered that territory to Ralph. The Fresno manager was Norman LaDell, who was leaving the
company to manage his father’s fig ranch.
At the time of the new job offer, Ralph and Regina were planning a trip to Iowa. They drove to Fresno, got the job, and then continued on to Iowa. While in Iowa, Ralph ran into his cousin, Homer Dumont, who had just been discharged from the military and was looking for a job. Once again, Ralph hired a relative to work for him as a dealer for Fuller Brush. Homer came to Fresno where he worked for about three years, before he was offered his own territory in Chico, California.
Ralph worked in Fresno from the end of 1945, through 1949. Historically, the Western District of Fuller was the most productive sales district in the company. Although the company believed that this was due to the quality of sales personnel in the west, the real reason was because the weather in the west permitted the salesmen to work every day of the year. The company started a campaign to move sales managers from the west to other parts of the country in hopes of spreading the “western magic.”
Cleveland, Ohio
In 1949, Ralph’s area manager, Al Hurley, offered Ralph a territory in Cleveland, Ohio, and offered to move the family at the company’s expense. Ralph accepted the new territory believing that the move would enhance his career. Once again, the family was moving across the country. Ralph and Regina found this move to be a great mistake. In the winter, the wind blew and the snow fell, and no one answered the door. In the summer, the humid heat also kept the doors closed. The stay in Cleveland lasted less than three years.
Back to California
In 1952, Ralph asked to be relocated to California, and he was given the Bakersfield, California, territory. When Ralph and Regina arrived in Bakersfield, Regina’s parents had just died, and Regina inherited $1,500.00, which they used as a down payment for the construction of their home on Sara Way. They lived in this home for the rest of their lives.
Ralph and Regina have two children, Victoria Regina Vogel born in Los Angeles on September 30, 1942, and James Ambrose Vogel, born in Fresno, California on January 8, 1947. Vicky married Terence J. Werdel on August 19, 1967, and Jim married Kathryn L. Conner on June 19, 1976.
Ralph continued to sell for Fuller Brush Company and Harper Brush Company for another 42 years. Regina died in Bakersfield on November 3, 1993 and Ralph died in Jim’s home in Port Angeles, Washington on December 6, 1994. They are both buried in Hillcrest Memorial Park in Bakersfield.
SOURCE: E-mailed to me by Terry June 14, 2005
1914 - 1994 (80 years)
