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Interview with Clark Carter
Fergus Electric Cooperative
By
Anna Zellick
Object Description
| Title | Carter, Clark. Interview |
| Creator | Anna Zellick, F.C.H.S. Graduate, 1935, University of Chicago, A.B. 1941; M.A. 1945. Lecturer, College of Great Falls at Lewistown College Center |
| Description | Clark Carter gives his recollections of working for the Fergus Electric Cooperative starting in 1938 |
| Date created | November 18, 1985 |
| Physical format | |
| Publisher | Anna R. Zellick. |
| Subject | Schools. REA. Fergus Electric Cooperative. |
| Contributed by | Lewistown Public Library, Lewistown, MT. |
| Coverage-date | 1938-1985. |
| Coverage-geography | Fergus County, Montana. Lewistown, Montana. |
| Rights information | No copyright restrictions. |
| Full text of this item | This is Anna Zellick. I’m here at my home, 721 West Spring Street. Today is November 18, 1985. I have the pleasure of having Mr. Clark Carter as my guest. The purpose of his visit here today is that he is going to tell us of his recollections when he first started to work for the Fergus Electric Cooperative back in 1938. Clark, it’s real nice to have you here and I think that it’s especially nice that you were willing to drive from your ranch north of town over to my house in this terrible weather. How much snow would you say there is outside? CARTER: I would say, Anna, about eight inches of snow. ZELLICK: It all fell in about two days. CARTER: Sunday, Sunday night. Today is Monday. ZELLICK: As you know, we are very much interested. By “we” I mean the directors and manager, Dick Peck of the Fergus Electric Cooperative, who are very much interested in having your recollections recorded. They are very much interested in having your recollections of your experiences with their Cooperative because soon, 1988, it will be fifty years old! Can you believe that? In 1988, this Cooperative will be fifty years old! As a memorial or dedication for that great occasion they are interested in having the experiences down in writing of the people who were initially connected with that Cooperative. How did you get connected with that Cooperative to begin with? CARTER: Well, as you already mentioned, Anna, in 1938 the Fergus Electric which at that time we didn’t call it that. We called it the “REA”. I got some work on construction and then following that the superintendent (they call them “managers” now) whose name was Bruce Shavere. He was alone in that office. There was no one there in the office nor was there anyone helping him. Prior to that, I recall there was a man named “Hall”. ZELLICK: Howard Hall? CARTER: Howard Hall. I never knew him, but anyway Bruce Shavere was a lineman. That’s one reason why they hired him because I guess their budget at that time was pretty slim. ZELLICK: What we need to bring out here is that Howard Hall was the first superintendent. Bruce Shavere was originally hired as the lineman and he then succeeded Hall as the superintendent, I believe, in 1939. Hall then was assigned to obtain right-of-way permits. CARTER: In this period of time, there was a job opening. I applied for that job, and got the job. ZELLICK: And the job was that of what? CARTER: Just about everything Shavere asked me to do. I was not a skilled professional person. I was a worker or a helper. ZELLICK: You did all kinds of odd jobs? CARTER: Yes. ZELLICK: That was the year that they were successful with their application for the first loan. They had tried in 1937 to get a loan, but they weren’t successful. Altogether, they had applied three different times, according to Mr. Stucky’s interview, before they were successful. So do you suppose that then after they were successful in getting the loan in 1938, they then proceeded to hire you. Is that how you think it took place? CARTER: Well, I suspect that I was about the only applicant at that particular time. I knew about it right off the bat. ZELLICK: How did you happen to know about it? CARTER: Well, through my father, T. C. Carter. ZELLICK: Since he was a director of this new Cooperative, you were sort of on the “in”, I suppose. Further along in this interview, we will talk more about your father and the contributions that he made. But for the time being, tell us exactly what you did when you were hired in 1938 by Bruce Shavere. What all did you do? CARTER: Well, the major construction was done by private contractors. Cahill-Mooney, who built the main arteries for the Fergus Electric and most of the branch lines as well. However, one of my first jobs was, and it was about this time of the year. That’s lodged in my mind forever. It was over around Straw or Buffalo where we had to build a spur down to that little town of Buffalo. I dug those holes and then helped to put the poles in and string the wire. Of course, Bruce Shavere put the transformer up and brought the power to the people there. That’s just one of the jobs I did. ZELLICK: All right. Before we go to some of your other jobs, you said that you dug the holes. How did you dig them? And how deep were they? CARTER: Well, it varied. Most of them were seven feet deep. ZELLICK: Seven feet deep? CARTER: Yes. We had three tools. There’s the bar, a long bar about ten feet long as I recall. It was a heavy bar. And a spoon and a straight shovel. It had no curve in it. They called it the banjo. ZELLICK: How did you spell that? CARTER: I don’t know. They called it a banjo. ZELLICK: Just like a banjo, the musical instrument? CARTER: Just like a shovel with a long handle, but it had no curve in it. ZELLICK: You also said that there was a spoon. Can you elaborate on that? CARTER: Well, with the spoon you take your dirt out with it. ZELLICK: In other words, a spoon is sort of like an inverted shovel? CARTER: Well, except that it’s got probably or close to a 90 degree bend in it. So you can pull the dirt out. ZELLICK: All right. When you were digging these holes, did you dig them by yourself? Was there anyone working with you on these spurs? CARTER: In most of the jobs, I dug most of the holes by myself. A spur didn’t require too many poles, and they’re spaced quite far apart. But on some of the longer jobs, the extended jobs where there were quite a few poles, Shavere hired an extra man. But they didn’t last long because their hands would blister up the first day and then they couldn’t continue to work. ZELLICK: How come your hands didn’t blister? CARTER: I don’t know other than the fact that I did so much work on the ranch that required manual work so it was never a problem with me at that particular point. ZELLICK: Would you say that your hands or your skin was hardened from hard work? CARTER: They were calloused. I never used gloves when I was a child or a young man. ZELLICK: Did you use gloves when you were helping with the spurs? CARTER: Yes. Yes I did. ZELLICK: Did you wear those gloves out? CARTER: Oh, yes. Quite regularly. If I was going to do that now, I couldn’t last over one day either. I couldn’t even dig one hole a day. At that time I could dig five holes. ZELLICK: You dug as many as five holes a day. CARTER: I had to keep working to keep warm. At noon we would have our lunch box along. There was no one there but myself. I had to crawl down the hole to get out of the wind to eat my lunch. ZELLICK: What was that again please? You had to… CARTER: I crawled down the unfinished hole to get out of the wind, and I felt so foolish. I felt like a rodent a lot of times. ZELLICK: Isn’t that interesting? You would stay in the hole for the duration of your lunch. CARTER: That didn’t take me very long because that wasn’t a very nice environment. ZELLICK: How long would you say it took you to eat your lunch? CARTER: Ten minutes. ZELLICK: Then you would go right back to work. CARTER: Yes, to keep warm. ZELLICK: What were your working hours? CARTER: We worked eight hours a day. ZELLICK: What were you paid? CARTER: Four dollars a day. ZELLICK: Four dollars a day. And when were you paid? CARTER: As I recall, about once every two weeks. But that was big money in those days. That was four times as much as I would have made working on the ranch. And ranch work was just as hard. ZELLICK: How long did you work for the Cooperative? CARTER: You know I don’t have any notes, and I never kept a diary. But I worked most of 1938. In 1939 I went to school in the Fall. I came home in the Spring, and worked for them that summer and into the Fall. Then I went back to school again. ZELLICK: In other words, are you suggesting that the money you earned from working on these spurs enabled you to go back to school? CARTER: That’s the only way it enabled me to go back to school at that time. ZELLICK: You were a college student? CARTER: Yes. ZELLICK: You were through with high school. About how old were you in 1938? CARTER: About twenty. ZELLICK: A young man. Let’s get back to the digging of the holes. You got the hole dug. Then was it a big problem to put the pole in and to make sure that the dirt around the pole was firm and solid? How did you work that, putting the pole into the ground? CARTER: That was a comparatively easy job because the pole itself filled up most of hole. And then you put back the dirt which was piled up outside around the hole. ZELLICK: Is that when you used the bar you mentioned earlier? CARTER: Yes, with the bar you tamped the dirt in. ZELLICK: This was all hand work. CARTER: Yes. ZELLICK: Then you said that the pole was put in and did you also say that Mr. Shavere put the transformers up on the pole? CARTER: Well, he strung the wire. I helped him with that. In those days, they weren’t all that particular. Now I suppose, right today, you couldn’t do a lot of that work. I wouldn’t be qualified unless I was a lineman. But at that particular time, I did everything he asked me to do. ZELLICK: At that particular time, Mr. Shavere was a qualified lineman, wasn’t he? CARTER: Yes, he was. ZELLICK: He was an electrician as well as a lineman. CARTER: He was a capable lineman. He knew what he was doing. ZELLICK: Well, have we done justice to this business of putting in the poles that you had to do? Is there anything else that we should mention about digging the holes and putting in the poles? CARTER: No. ZELLICK: You said that you did some other jobs. What were some of your other tasks that were a part of your job? CARTER: Well, in a lot of the construction some mistakes were made. They might have put in too short a pole in a low lying area such as a valley or a depression. We had to put in a longer pole and dig the hole deeper. Some of those holes I dug were as deep as I could go and then I hit water in quite a few places. ZELLICK: What would you do when you dug a hole for a pole, and found water. How did you handle that problem? CARTER: Well, you just dig it out anyway. You dig the mud out and then still tamp your pole into that hole. That’s all you could do. ZELLICK: Eventually that would mean that the pole would rot, wouldn’t it? CARTER: No, not necessarily. I don’t believe so because the poles were treated. They were butt treated poles. The bottom end of the pole was treated. ZELLICK: I understand. What were some of the other tasks that you had to do? CARTER: As I recall, there were quite a few odd jobs that I was assigned to do. I helped quite a few ranchers get the power into their buildings, and helped them get started. ZELLICK: That would have been private. CARTER: No, I did wire some houses. I don’t know whether I was doing it right or not. But at that particular time it didn’t make any difference, as long as it worked. ZELLICK: When you wired the houses, you were than paid by the farmer, weren’t you? CARTER: No. I wouldn’t go inside the house. Most of the time I told the farmers how to wire because they didn’t know as much as I did. ZELLICK: You just brought the wire to the house. CARTER: Yes, but I would answer their questions about how to go ahead with their wiring. They just didn’t know how. ZELLICK: I see. As near as I can tell from what you’re saying is that most of your activity was in conjunction with Project “A” and possibly Project “B”, the first two projects that the Co-op built. What were some of the other jobs that you had to do? Bringing the wire to the place and then digging the post holes and putting in the posts, I suppose, that was probably a pretty sizeable job, wasn’t it? CARTER: Primarily that was all I did do as I got through mentioning. I would haul material out a lot of times. We would have the trailer. We hauled everything with a pickup truck. We had a trailer that we laid our poles on. ZELLICK: You mentioned a pickup truck. Whose truck was it? CARTER: It was the REA’s (the Co-op’s). ZELLICK: Was that the only truck the Co-op had at that time? CARTER: Yes. ZELLICK: Would Bruce Shavere go out with you sometimes, and if he didn’t, did he stay in the office? CARTER: Most of the time he went with me except when I was digging holes or tamping the dirt. ZELLICK: Then you would be by yourself. CARTER: He would help me straighten them out and get started so that I would get a straight line. There was absolutely no need for him to be there because he didn’t do that type of work. ZELLICK: I see, but when he wasn’t with you, then he was in the office. CARTER: Either that or when he took me out to put me on the job like that, he contacted a lot of his friends and business associates. Some of them lived out in different areas. ZELLICK: He was sort of doing it in behalf of public relations for the new Cooperative. Tell us something about Bruce Shavere. What was he like? CARTER: Well, I didn’t know too much personally about him. He was a good boss. ZELLICK: When you say a “good boss”, what do you mean? CARTER: I learned a lot from him. He told me how to do things. He had a lot of patience. He put up with quite a few of my mistakes which I made. He didn’t berate me too badly. ZELLICK: You probably didn’t make all that many mistakes. CARTER: Well, there weren’t too many that you could make. ZELLICK: What was his personality like? Was he a cheerful man? Was he quiet? I just remember seeing him when we were involved with rural electrification on Project “B”. But I never had any close contact with him. CARTER: Well, Anna, he more or less talked to me as a son. I was quite young. When I was twenty years old, I looked probably like I was about fifteen. But I was interested in electric power: power generation, transmission. As a matter of fact, that was one of the courses I took when I went to school. He told me all he knew. He didn’t hold back on any information that he knew. But he showed me how to do a lot of work that I didn’t know anything about. ZELLICK: Do you have any way of knowing as to where he picked up his knowledge and experience? CARTER: I can’t remember. ZELLICK: What did you take up in school? You said that you were interested in power. What did you major in in school? CARTER: I took a course in industrial engineering. I only got two years in. That was prior to World War II. ZELLICK: And World War II changed the situation for a lot of people, didn’t it? CARTER: And about that same time, my father took sick and died. ZELLICK: Therefore you had to come back and take care of the family property. CARTER: Yes. He died in 1942. ZELLICK: Is that right? Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about your tasks or your jobs that you had to do for the Co-op in 1938 and 1939? CARTER: No, not really. Nothing that’s too interesting. But I would like to add something here, if it is all right. ZELLICK: Sure. CARTER: Every so often in retrospect I think it is good to remind ourselves of where we were then, what happened, and what it is like now. When I stop to think, of the drudgery and all the work that these farm women, like my mother, had to through: cook her meals, wash the clothes. It was complete drudgery. There was never no end to it. ZELLICK: Before we started this interview, you told me how many people did she cook for? CARTER: There were five in our family. There were five of us children, the two parents. My father normally hired about maybe three men throughout the summer months. Then during the harvest time, there would probably be twenty or twenty five men in addiction. ZELLICK: She did all the cooking? CARTER: On a woodstove or a coal cook stove. We had no modern heat, no refrigeration, no running water, no nothing. Getting the REA changed all that. This perhaps elevated our standard of living better than anything that ever happened in my experience. ZELLICK: How did you make improvements on your place as far as the outdoor work was concerned? That is, after you got the electricity? CARTER: Well, initially most of all the improvements were on the dwelling such as getting the water pump, furnace with an electric motor so that we could get automatic heat. We had a coal stoker furnace to begin with. And a refrigerator of all things, that we needed. Nothing was more important than a refrigerator. And an electric stove. Other things were added and then, finally, a deep freeze. Of course, new electric radio. I can recall when we used to have batteries that would run down right in the middle of the Amos ‘n Andy program, for instance. And then you couldn’t get the balance of it. Then we had to take the batteries to town to get them charged. You couldn’t charge a battery except to take it to town, where they had electricity. If it hadn’t been for REA… I recall my father went to the Montana Power Company. The Wiedemans’s and neighbors right across the road from us, the Mosbys. The three of them went to the Montana Power and tried to get them to run a line up there, which, as the crow flies, is only perhaps not even a mile. At that time, I think the Montana Power wanted $3,000 to run that line up. ZELLICK: To the Carter, Wiedeman, and Mosby ranches? CARTER: There would have been three parties served by that proposed line. ZELLICK: What are the initials to the Mosbys? CARTER: At that time it would have been H. D. Mosby. ZELLICK: You mentioned that the Wiedemans were involved. Which Wiedeman, as there were several sons? CARTER: As I recall, I know that the Wiedemans owned the land, but it seems to me at that time, George Wiedeman owned it. He was one of the sons, Art’s brother. He was on the ranch. His son was about my age. His name was Fred. They lived there at that time, but prior to that time, people by the name of Wagoner who lived there at that particular time. ZELLICK: What is important to us here is that three parties wanted electricity, and Montana Power was going to charge you how much? CARTER: $3,000, but that is just from memory. It could have been even more, but that is what I think it was. And $3,000 then was, I just don’t know. That’s probably how much your ranch would have cost. ZELLICK: You mean a ranch would probably have been that much then. CARTER: Yes, it was just prohibitive. ZELLICK: So, is this how your father got started in working for rural electrification? CARTER: Yes, he, Adam Rung, and Ray Le Count. They got themselves together and I think that they were originally the ones in this area who petitioned that Administration (REA) that was started back there in Washington D. C. ZELLICK: I see. You feel that it was those three: T. C. Carter, Adam Rung and Ray Le Count were the instigators? CARTER: Yes. ZELLICK: Is that so. What was your father like? CARTER: Well, he was a hard working industrious man. ZELLICK: Where did he come from? CARTER: From South Dakota. He was a college graduate from the University of South Dakota at Brookings. He majored in steam engineering. He came to Montana because he had hay fever so bad or asthma that the climate down there didn’t agree with him. So that’s why he located here. ZELLICK: What year was that? CARTER: My father came here in 1915. ZELLICK: Was he married then? CARTER: No. ZELLICK: Did he marry after he got here? CARTER: He got married shortly after that because I was born in 1918. I don’t recall exactly but I think that he came out here while he was still a single man. ZELLICK: I see, and who was your mother? CARTER: My mother came from South Dakota from a little town called Bridgewater, which is close to Sioux Falls. ZELLICK: And what was her name? CARTER: Her name was Clara Larson. ZELLICK: They got married here? CARTER: No, they got married down there, and then they moved out here. They came out here before I was born, or my sister, Judith. ZELLICK: Judith is the eldest of the children, isn’t she? CARTER: Yes, she is a year older than I am. ZELLICK: Well, tell us more about your dad. College educated, he came out here to ranch. CARTER: That’s by choice. That’s what he wanted. ZELLICK: He bought the place. CARTER: Actually, my grandfather bought it. He came out with my father. They bought that place. ZELLICK: Am I at liberty to ask how big a place it was? CARTER: It’s close to 1,000 acres. ZELLICK: At that time, that was a sizeable unit. CARTER: Well, yes. ZELLICK: It was what, a grazing and cattle ranch. CARTER: Mostly farming, hay and cattle. ZELLICK: Then having moved out to his ranch, he wanted electricity which he could not get from the Montana Power so he decided to seek it from other sources. Is that the way it was, more or less? CARTER: Partly. We lived so close to town. We saw how people lived who had electricity. Only a few miles away, we lived as primitive as you could live. ZELLICK: Yes, that’s very understandable. CARTER: All five of us children attended Lewistown schools. Everyone had electricity. Even a lot of rural people had electricity---these light plants. But we never had any. My father never seemed to do it that way; I don’t know why. I suspect that this was one reason that prompted him to get electricity. He wanted to make it easier for my mother and the convenience that the electricity could afford. ZELLICK: In other words, in those years, there was a tendency, do you think, to think primarily in terms of home application or usage of electricity? Was electricity figured, more or less, as being something that one would use in a home rather than commercially in the outdoors? CARTER: I think primarily that’s what my father was more interested in. He was trying to save my mother all that work. I think that this was his main reason for his interest in electricity. ZELLICK: Do you remember anything as to how hard your father worked until they were able to get the electricity? You mentioned these two other gentlemen who were also interested in having electricity. But somewhere along the way, your father must have come in contact with still other interested farmers and Ralph Stucky. Do you remember anything about Mr. Stucky? CARTER: I was a young man at that time. I was in high school when Mr. Stucky arrived. As children, we knew of dad’s interest because any family affair that went on was discussed around the family. That’s the reason we knew about what was going on. ZELLICK: You discussed around your dinner table. CARTER: Yes, around the dinner table. There were no secrets. I knew Ralph Stucky myself and I do believe that my father went to Ralph Stucky. He went to try to find out the methods that needed to be done to get this area serviced by electricity. A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. I don’t know whether it was my father or the other two gentlemen (Ray LeCount) or Ralph Stucky who instigated the movement in behalf of rural electrification. They all deserve credit. ZELLICK: The reason why I am trying to be specific is that I did have the opportunity to interview Mr. Stucky last summer. You have to remember that he is 82 years old. And we were talking about a major event that occurred fifty years ago so, therefore, he remembered the interested farmers, but not always was he able to remember their names. So for that reason, if your father did a lot of leg work before this thing got off the ground, it should be so recorded. CARTER: My memory isn’t all that accurate either. All I do know is that those three gentlemen (my father, Adam Rung, and Ray Le Count) really got it started. And, of course, Mr. Stucky. He was the county agent at that time. ZELLICK: Tell us something about Adam Rung and Ray Le Count. CARTER: I knew Ray Le Count. I didn’t know Adam Rung too well. My father was very well acquainted in this area. He knew most everyone. I didn’t know that generation too well. ZELLICK: Do you remember anything about the meetings that they had. Apparently, there must have been many, many meetings from what Mr. Stucky told me this past summer. CARTER: Undoubtedly, there were. ZELLICK: In those years, all the meetings were attended on one’s own time and expense. Initially, the directors were not reimbursed for their expenses. Not until after the Cooperative was formally organized and the first loan was obtained which I believe was in the latter part of August 1938, were the directors reimbursed for their travel to and from meetings. It’s interesting to note that for three months following the approval of the loan the directors were allowed expenses for two meetings per month, and thereafter for only one meeting per month. To me this would sort of indicate that there was an awareness of the amount of time that these men were giving to this cause. Also, it’s interesting to note that the allowance for travel to and from meetings was five cents a mile and $3.00 for attendance at the meetings. But up to, say, August 1938, everything was donated. From 1937 to this time there were many, many meetings. CARTER: Yes. It wasn’t until after the Cooperative was organized and was successful in obtaining its loan before it was in a position to pay or reimburse its directors. But it should also be pointed out that the first project was not all that long. Later with many more miles of construction, the Cooperative got so big and travel has always remained a big cost item. ZELLICK: In the minutes and in Mr. Stucky’s reports, I read where Project “A” was somewhere between 88 and 90 miles. CARTER: I believe that. The first office girl was hired when I worked there. Her name was Jeanne Carter, no relation to me. She was from Denton. She’s John Carter’s sister. He still lives out there. ZELLICK: Do you have any recollections of the office, your impressions of the office? CARTER: I don’t know anything about it. ZELLICK: The first office was in the old Northwestern Bank Building and then later it was moved to the Stapleton Building. Wasn’t it? CARTER: Yes, it did move to the Stapleton Building right close to the present Northwester Bank Building. Right in there where the Champion Auto Store is now. But coming back to my father, T. C. Carter. I should emphasize what you have already said. I do know that they scheduled a lot of meetings which perhaps was sometimes as often as once a week. I know that Adam Rung lived quite a ways out of town. ZELLICK: Where did he live? CARTER: Buffalo, I believe. Ray Le Count lived east of town, just right next to Lewistown. I think Bill Spoja Jr. has his land there now. Le Count had a little dairy there. I do know that there were a lot of meetings. Oscar Mueller, I believe, was their legal counsel. He was invaluable because his memory never failed him. He could keep everything stored in his head for so long. ZELLICK: In other words, what you are suggesting here is that there were numerous meetings even after they got organized. CARTER: Oh, yes. ZELLICK: The minutes reveal that very strongly. CARTER: I never read the minutes so that I wouldn’t really know. ZELLICK: Sometimes as a board, the directors met every week. It all depended on their agenda that they had to take care of. Anything else you would like to add would certainly be welcome. CARTER: No, I really can’t Anna. I appreciate this opportunity of mentioning this because I do believe that as the 50th year approaches it would be valuable to know who initially started this. ZELLICK: I am interested in the fact that you have said that in 1938 that people thought of electricity in terms of a domestic commodity only. Now it is being used as much in the outdoors as it is in the indoors. Am I not right about this? CARTER: Oh, yes. ZELLICK: When did the trend to outdoor usage take place? Tell us what made it necessary for the farmers to use electricity in the outdoors. CARTER: Well, for example, in haying we used horse drawn mowers. Later on we got power mowers that went on a tractor. But when we hayed in the old fashioned way, we would have to remove those sickles sometimes twice a day and sharpen them. We always had spare sickles. The only way that you could sharpen one of those things was to sit on one of those grindstone deals. You had to pedal it and hang on to that thing until you were through. Sharpening the sickle. It was a chore. We had quite a few sickles to sharpen. That’s one example. ZELLICK: You have an electric grindstone. CARTER: A grindstone that is driven with an electric motor. I think that was perhaps the first tool that we bought. Then these electric welders were one of the first tools we bought. ZELLICK: Explain to me. What is an electric welder? CARTER: It was a transformer that converted 220 volts into DC current, which provided the necessary energy to arc weld with. Prior to that we just had forge welding. We used coal and then we would crank to blow in the air and get the iron hot. Then we would hammer the iron when it was melted. ZELLICK: With the electricity you dispensed with the forge? CARTER: Yes. Just about everything we use all the way down the line today is electrically operated. There is the electric drill. All the hand tools and electric saws. Everything is run by electricity now. ZELLICK: How are the holes dug these days? CARTER: We dig those with the augur that’s on a tractor. It runs off a tractor. ZELLICK: What else is used by the men? Anything in the granaries? CARTER: Oh, yes, the electric augurs, grain augurs. Anything that requires manual work could be adapted to electricity. ZELLICK: But in the days when your father got electricity in 1939, he did not visualize all the applications of electricity to outdoor work, did he? CARTER: No. Of course at that particular time they didn’t have a lot of things either, you know. You had to put them on yourself, adapt them on yourself. You had to change things and put appropriate pulleys on. Where you used to have a flat pulley which was probably driven by a gasoline motor, you put a “V” pulley on that and that would go on an electric motor. We had to put separate individual electric motors on each individual power driven tool. We had to be innovative. ZELLICK: For my information, because I have such a limited understanding of outdoor usage of electricity, being a woman. What is the common denominator in all of these electric instruments or outdoor appliances? Is it the electric motor or is the electric motor a separate appliance? CARTER: I don’t know that there is one common denominator except that they are power driven by electricity. Power is available for just about everything. Getting the people out of the dark would probably be the most important one, I would think. ZELLICK: Say that again for me so that I really understand what it is I’ll be transcribing. CARTER: There is the electric light bulb. Then there is the electric water pump, which is automatic, giving you a constant supply of water. It turns itself on and then it turns itself off. And there is water available every time you turn the faucet. Then your furnace, which gives off automatic heat. You set your thermostat, and walk off and leave it. There are numerous other applications. ZELLICK: You know that I have had the pleasure of working with your sister, Judy Carter Machler, this past summer. I too, am interested in rural electrification because I come from the Divide, east of town. We were electrified under Project “B” in 1939. I’m the same age you kids are so, therefore, I appreciate the value of electricity. Why don’t you tell the listener what the availability of electricity in 1939 did for the rural young people? CARTER: Primarily, now there is no wood that has to be brought in or ashes to haul out of the stove. We don’t have to haul the water. Pumping the water and then carrying it into the house or wherever you had to use it was always a chore. ZELLICK: And lamp chimneys had to be washed every week. CARTER: I didn’t do anything like that. ZELLICK: But the girls did. CARTER: Yes, the girls did. Of course, dishwashing. My sisters, like anybody else, don’t like to wash dishes in the sink or in the wash pan. A dishwasher took a lot of conflict out of that job because it was hard to get anyone to wash dishes. I recall how they used to argue as to whose turn it was to wash dishes. It made it better. ZELLICK: Is it too strong to say that provision of rural electrification helped to free the youngsters from drudgery and out and outright child labor? CARTER: Oh, yes. It was a chore that I had to do all the time. Sometimes before I went to bed I would have to go out and pump a bucket of water. Sometimes it would be 40 below zero out there, and you would have to take the teakettle with you to pour hot water down the pump to prime it. There is nothing worse than a frozen pump handle. ZELLICK: I appreciate that. And up there on the Divide where we had coal, the young people like my brother, George, for example, he had to help in hauling the coal from the mine to wherever it was being sold here in town. CARTER: Oh, I recall hauling coal from you father’s mine. We hauled it with an old model T truck. Then later we had a model A and so on. ZELLICK: So all these tasks that had to be done that are now being done by means of electricity had to be done by hand at that time. The children were as much involved as were the parents. CARTER: Oh, yes. We had our chores to do from the time I got home from school. I would milk the cows and separate the milk. Separating the milk was another manual job which I didn’t like very much. ZELLICK: Yes, the electric separator certainly helped, didn’t it? CARTER: Well, yes. ZELLICK: Let’s now talk about the radio. Can you remember the time when you had no radio in your home? CARTER: I can remember when we didn’t have one. I also recall when we first bought our first battery radio. It required a lot of dry batteries and also wet batteries like they have in cars. ZELLICK: Would you happen to remember the make of that radio? Was it a table or a cabinet model? CARTER: Our first battery radio was an Atwater Kent. It had ear phones on it to begin with. There was no loud speaker so that the only one person who listened to it would be the one who wore the ear phones. My father was the one in our family who wore the ear phones. ZELLICK: He came first. CARTER: He came first. Then later on we got a loud speaker. ZELLICK: A loud speaker that was used on the same radio? CARTER: Yes, so that we could all listen. After that, after we got rid of the battery radio we got an electric radio which was a Philco. It was really a nice radio. It was cabinet size. ZELLICK: They were more expensive than the table size. CARTER: That was the nicest piece of furniture, I think, that was in the house at that particular time. The radio was quite a valuable thing. ZELLICK: When did you make the transition from the battery to the electric radio? CARTER: I think it was practically done right away. I think it was about 1940. That was actually one of the first items we bought after we got electricity. ZELLICK: Tell us something about the inconvenience of a batter operated radio. CARTER: Well, the batteries were always running down. You would always save your batteries because every time the batteries ran down you would have to take them to town and get them charged. ZELLICK: Didn’t you once tell me that they would run out in the middle of a program, sometimes? What were some of the popular major programs at that time? CARTER: To begin with, of course, I recall when I was a child, my father would listen to Amos ‘n Andy. He would be laughing and all of us children would sit around and watch him laugh. So we would laugh too, even though we didn’t hear anything. ZELLICK: Were there any other programs that we should mention besides Amos ‘n Andy? It just seems to me that Amos ‘n Andy lasted throughout my whole childhood years. It was the most popular program as far as I can remember. Were there others? CARTER: Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy. Then there was this Gurney Seed Company down in South Dakota. He would turn that radio early in the morning and get that Gurney Co. They still have a seed house, I recall. They send a catalog, but they had a radio station there. It was a powerful station because they could reach a big area. It was located in Yankton, South Dakota. ZELLICK: Now that we are about to wind up our interview, Clark, you were thinking of some of the other items that really should be recorded. Why don’t you start just as you were about to a few seconds ago? CARTER: I recall one of the things that really was a chore. When you stop to think of it, it was probably one of the bigger ones. And that was taking a bath. We had to heat all of the water. This was done on a coal stove. We did have a reservoir on the stove, too, but that didn’t hold very much water. I mean for seven people. We only took a bath once a week at that time. ZELLICK: That was customary, yes. CARTER: Then you had to throw the water out and heat more water, until everyone had a bath. ZELLICK: In our household, everybody took a bath in the same water. CARTER: I think we did, too, when we were smaller, but just think of the convenience of having a bathtub, where you can run water in and drain it. And also the toilet, where you can flush the toilet and not have to run a hundred yards outside when it’s twenty below zero. All those things are so meaningful. ZELLICK: We take them for granted, now. CARTER: We take them for granted. That’s why I mentioned awhile ago, we have to remind ourselves what progress we actually made in our short life span. ZELLICK: Do you have any pearls of wisdom on how do you encourage young members of an REA Cooperative to be very interested in the ongoings of their cooperative so that they are participating members in the truest sense of the word? Do you have any ideas that you might want to share with us? CARTER: All I do, I’m just a rate payer like everyone else, which I think is too excessive. Right now most people can hardly afford to pay their light bill. ZELLICK: You think the times are economically bad now? CARTER: Terribly bad right now for everyone. When we can least afford it, then the rates go up. That Federal Regulatory Commission or whatever you call it, FERC, you know. It sets the rates without giving much thought to how people can afford to pay for them. Everything is happening that way right now when we can least afford it. ZELLICK: But don’t you think that a member of such a Cooperative such as the one we have right here requires participation and attendance at least at the annual meeting? CARTER: Yes, but the sad part of it is that these annual meetings, I’ve been there, the people are afraid to say anything, actually they are afraid to say anything that might be controversial. I know that privately that they’ll say a lot of things. I really do believe that there’s a lot of members there that would like to express themselves, but they’re afraid that they might make enemies by doing it. They don’t want to make any waves, but afterwards, you know, they talk about what the board of directors did and the mistakes they made and how they submit to the leadership there. They’re too passive. They just go along with what they’re told to do. It isn’t run as a cooperative when people don’t participate. I suppose if I was going to give any information out to a younger member, I would say participate, and don’t be a bit bashful about bringing up your questions at the annual meeting. I know that even a lot of times I hesitated to say things I should have. Afterwards I wished that I would have said some tings because I do believe that they could exercise a little restraint over there and do things differently. I would certainly like to encourage the younger members to participate in these annual meetings especially because that’s where the action is. Any time that anything might be controversial, you might find a lot of people who don’t like what you say, but I don’t think that they would ever “boo” you down or anything like that in that organization, but I do feel that’s the time to bring up a lot of our problems and any questions one might have. Not only that, but in all areas of it – administration and the whole thing. ZELLICK: Well, we certainly want to thank you very much for this nice interview. When the transcript is typed and finished, we will let you review it. |
Description
| Title | Interview -- Carter, Clark MMP 1 |
| Full text of this item | Interview with Clark Carter Fergus Electric Cooperative By Anna Zellick |
