[In 1993 Rachel Lewis extracted these recollections from ABL, made notes, typed them up, and collated them. Christine Hall Lewis (CHL) was present during some of the sessions, and some comments and additions from her are included.]
The first thing I remember is my grandmother Lewis sitting in a chair in the dining room, and I standing up combing her long, white hair. She was living there. She died when I was about three, I think. I suppose she was called Florence, probably. My father always called her "Mother,", and his father, "Father." I called my parents "Pa" and "Marm." "Pa" was from my great-grandfather (which I just took in through my pores, I guess).
After Grammie Lewis had died, I remember lying on my back, looking up into the sky, and seeing a white cloud disappear into the blue. I thought this must have been my grandmother. [CHL: That's like me, expecting to see my new baby sister float down on pigeon wings. I took (grandaughter) Crick, age 3, to visit the Bucks (qv below); she looked up at a sky full of clouds and said, "If we could be up there, we'd see God."]
[CHL remembers being told that little Ardron disrupted a project of collecting goose feathers for a pillow, by blowing into them.]
I remember being told that I went down to the old house at the foot of the hill to visit Martha Jane Woodard, all by myself.
As I grew older, I became more aware of my brother Ermond, two years younger. Though I was older, he was larger. He had blue eyes, and I had brown.
Sometimes we would catch frogs in the frog pond and put them in the rain barrel. my mother was not pleased.
My first chores were mostly bringing in armfuls of firewood and putting them in the shed, into the woodbox with an opening on the shed side to put it in, and one on the kitchen side to take it out. Sometimes we thought our mother could burn it faster than we could bring it in. Sometimes when Albert Woodard and his little brother came up to play, we would stage a wood-carrying contest, which they could "win."
In winter, the drift west of the sink-room, near the lilac bushes, was always deep, and we could make a tunnel in it.
One thing I had trouble with was wetting the bed. Sometimes I got spanked for that, which I was more subject to than Ermond was. My father, also, had had this problem.
I remember our first day at school. We were supposed to color something; but I could color much better than Ermond could. Our teacher, Miss Doble, was a tall, black-haired woman. Our next, Miss Brown, was much shorter, with goldy hair.
We had some homework, but not very much, and it didn't carry on between terms.
We walked a mile to school, and the two of us always went together. In winter sometimes our father would take us in the sleigh, but not often. Nels and Tony were my father's first horses, and the best ones he ever had, I think. They were brown in color. Nels was somewhat bigger and stronger and more inclined to be independent than Tony. We had those two horses for many years before they finally died. Then we replaced them with June and Gypsy.
Occasionally a blacksmith would come to float the horses' teeth (not a regular blacksmith's job). The blacksmith shop was near Aunt Florrie's place - George McKinney. We would go to his shop with the horses.
We kept three or four cows. One terrible thing happened: we had one splendid cow that died in childbirth. They couldn't get the calf out, so she died. That must have been a terrible blow for my father. There was no veterinarian or anyone to call for such an emergency.
We had a flock of about 25 mixed types of sheep, including some black sheep. I think they may have come from Aunt Nora's place. They were kept in the back of the barn, right beyond the beginning of the barn floor. That area was partly for the sheep and partly for ice storage. They were pastured with the cows down at the Ellis place. They were called by "Knack knackknackknack" and shaking the container of salt, which would be sprinkled on the ground for them.
Gilbert Wiley was very rough shearing the sheep, and would sometimes cut off a piece of skin as big as a dime along with the fleece. Of course the wounds healed very quickly. We sold the fleece to a company that made yarn. I thank we mostly sold the wool ourselves, without depending on an agent.
Mildred and Glen Lombard (who had an older brother Clarence who went crazy and died at age 15 or 16) from across the road were some of our playmates. We played on the bank below the hill, in the ditch of the road. There was a row of round nests letting into the hill, made by kingfishers, too high on the bank for us to reach; so we left them alone and they left us alone. We were hunting for smooth stones, white or usually red.
I don't remember much about Marion's activities; my brother and I had our own interests. Marion and Ruth, when they were old enough, took over from Ermond and me the washing of the dishes after supper. Marion was about four years younger than I, and Ruth about six years. My mother had a special washing machine, a pull-and-push affair with wooden slats at the bottom, and we would run it about 100 times, taking turns. We also had to bring in probably five or six big buckets full of water each wash day. (A notable event at which I was not present: six-year-old Ruth putting her finger in a hole in the wringer and slicing off the tip.)
Once when Joe (ten years younger) was six, we went for a walk. He asked me whether it was true that God made the world, and I said it was. Then Joe asked, "What did he stand on, when he shoveled?
A family specialty was drying apples. The slices were put on screens above the stove to dry, then stored in bags. Later, they were usually used in pies. The reconstituted dried apples tasted a little different from fresh ones.
My brother and I did the afternoon milking. The early morning chores were done by my father before we got up. I was about 12 when my father first got a truck, a Ford. I didn't feel like learning to drive it, but my brother did.
I was not very good at driving horses. I could do it, but I couldn't do it easily. I learned to spray the potatoes. We had a spray rig that was quite wide, drawn by a team. The turning of the wheel furnished the spray pressure. This was used mostly against the Colorado potato beetles. first the old mother would lay eggs on the leaves of the potatoes,then the small slugs would hatch out, and you would spray to kill these slugs-- but it didn't kill them all.
We had about six or eight acres planted to potatoes, giving about 100 bushels per acre. They were packed in barrels holding two bushels and one peck. Pa took them to the railroad, trying to find the most advantageous place to sell them, either Kingman or Winn. It took him all day to make one trip, starting out early in the morning and coming home well after dark. The potatoes probably were shipped mostly to Boston.
My parents always said: We were not supposed to work in the woods. That was the worst thing that could happen to a person: a dog's life, and you were subjected to a lot of lousy people who slept in the bed with you, and you were soon loaded with head lice. It was partly that that encouraged all the kids to go to college, as the alternative was to work in the woods.
My father may have played baseball as a young man, but I cannot recall that my parents had leisure time for any hobbies. [Deke can't remember their father ever taking time to play.][ClHL: Aunt Ruthie told Manda and me that Grampie had been a crack baseball player when a young man. Once a Springfield team was trouncing a team from a neighboring town, batting around the order at will, with no sign of an end to the game. Grampie made an agreement with a teammate, "I'll fan if you will," so they could finish up and go home.]
I think my father would have been a good mathematician or specialist in economic studies. He had a chance to review some courses his brother Albion had been taking at Bates, and understood them better than Albion did, but his own education had to stop after high school. He felt he should stay on the farm to help his parents.
My grandfather was tubbier than my father was, somewhat a William Howard Taft. He died of Bright's disease at about age 72, around 1913, and I would guess that my father was doing most of the work by 1906.
My mother mostly made our clothes, though some came from Sears, Roebuck, things we wore at a comparatively young age. At a very young age we wore a "belly-band", home-made of flannel, about 4" wide, for additional warmth. The bane of our existence was the knickerbockers. Unless you were at least 13 or 14 you had to wear them. They kept loosening around the knee and sliding down to the ankles.
In summer we mostly went barefoot, and our feet were tough enough to withstand stubble, especially if we glided forward. At the beginning of school, we put on shoes. In winter I had gum rubbers, which were worn instead of shoes, and were very cold. My feet were afflicted with chilblains as a result, even though I had home-made woolen stockings. [CHL: My mother was always warning us about the possibility of chilblains. One apparently dangerous practice was the wearing of rubbers in the house, over our stockings. None of us ever caught a chiblain, and I've never been sure exactly what they are.]
Marm's sewing machine, I think, was handed down to her by her mother-in-law. She knitted mittens and some sweaters. There was one year when we sold the wool and bought the yarn from it - grey, because we had some black sheep - so we each got a grey sweater. Pa took up knitting mittens in later years, for the grandchildren.
We children had gardens of our own, raising radishes and such small crops. They were about ten feet square, out behind the barn, over the fence from the well. Our family raised tomatoes (which Pa thought were good for us children so he ate them, though he hated them. We didn't realize this till much later); peas ("Telephone", with the tall vines); potatoes(as a field crop); cabbage sometimes; beans in a small way (for baked beans we bought them, though we did sometimes thresh out, winnow, and sort dry beans, which was a laborious business); lettuce, which my mother cut off with a knife "by the yard, more or less"; a few carrots (which didn't do very well there); "vegetable oyster" (like carrots but white, and served pretty much like cooked carrots); squash (Hubbard); and cucumbers. We didn't have much corn until later on my father kept the coons away with an electric fence.
There was a field of oats for the horses, and hay harvested each year. When Walter Hanscom took over those fields in later years, he raised more clover, giving him a shorter rotation: potatoes on two acres out of three, whereas we would raise potatoes on one out of three. This enabled him to make more money out of the same land.
We always kept a pig or two. Once a pig got out of the garden, where it was being kept, and all hands had to rush around to try to catch it. my father was finally able to hit it with a hoe handle, upon which the pig turned and immediately ran back into the garden where it belonged. my father cured hams, putting them in brine of salt, sugar, and various other things; then they were hung up and cured inside a barrel with holes drilled in it so you could have the smoke inside the barrel and coming out. This was done in the yard, in front of the piazza more or less. Afterward the hams were kept in a big barrel of brine in the sinkroom.
We had pie at noon, which was our big meal. Our school lunch would be a piece of pie and a sandwich or two. We ate the pie first.
Thanksgiving was held at Aunt Florrie's. She made deep-dish chicken pie, about four inches deep, with the topping quite thick. In it were chicken and gravy. About four of us and three of them would be there. Aunt Florrie's daughter was named Frances, a little older than I. (She married a man named Cowan, and lived down river. Aunt Florrie in later years accused her of not coming to see her, but I imagine she did come but wasn't recognized because of Aunt Florae's stroke.)
Christmases were usually at our place with my grandfather and all his children, maybe twenty people altogether. We had a tree, decorated mostly with handkerchiefs bought as gifts, big ones. Once only, we had candles on the tree, but they were considered too dangerous. The gifts we gave were mostly shaving materials, and we got various toys. Uncle Albion gave us some wind-up automobiles. we didn't put up stockings.
when I was little there was already a toy drawer in the wall, containing mostly spools. Most of the children's books were contemporary with my brother and me, though they seemed somehow older. They went right ahead and used long words whenever they felt like it. My mother read to us regularly, though not at bedtime.
Part of the time Deke and I slept in what is now Ruth's room, and part of the time in the little room behind it (now a bathroom), and part of the time upstairs in the room with the register in the floor. That bed had a straw mattress. We made some use of the register for eavesdropping, as when Uncle Albion and Aunt Lou would play bridge with my father.
Some other relatives we saw often were Aunt Ede, maybe a little younger than Aunt Florrie; Aunt May, maybe a little older; Aunt Aria, sister of Aunt Florrie, sister-in-law of Fred Hanscom; and Uncle Frank. (There had also been Aunt Laura, older than my father. She married Ed Duplicea, and lived so far away that I never knew her.)
My mother's sisters, Aunt Grace and Aunt Jo, and her brothers, Uncle Ben, Uncle Sam, and Uncle Ralph, boarded at our house to go to school. The family lived in a little house (that later burned) in Prentiss, about 13 miles from us, and there was no high school nearby.
One of my mother's stories: Right after my mother was married, she interviewed a girl (from Prentiss?) to be a hired girl. The girl, when asked if she could bake, said she could make "shudda tats, 'lasses tate, and tooties." I think my mother did hire her - but mostly for sweeping.
My father hired Ed Woodard to help with most of the work around the place. Ed had a big Adam's apple and a long, scrawny neck - and he worked very hard. He lived in a little bit of a house across from Martha Jane, very poorly ventilated, stuffy, stinking - terrible. He and about five children lived in that house. The oldest one was Annie, and she wasn't all there mentally. She was a big, fat slob.
Martha Jane Woodard was Ed's mother. She lived on our side of the road. Her house probably had an upstairs to it. I once stopped in to see Martha Jane about something, and saw, on her table in the back room, a raisin cake. Someone approached it, and the raisins all flew away.
Ed's brothers were Frank and Albert. Ed had more brains than the rest of them put together.
Our doctor was Dr. Jewett. There was also Dr. Jones, who lived in the Jones house; then when you turn the corner to the left you come to Dr. Jewett's house. Dr. Jewett came to our house when we called for him. We had a telephone as long as I remember, and as long, I think, as anyone had one in town. I don't remember any serious illness in our family when I was small.
Our minister was a lady, Miss Sage. When Deke and I first went to church, we came with great hope, but we were gathered up and kissed by this woman, and never returned to church for years and years; we refused to go. Miss Sage was a rather blowsy woman. Her hair was always coming unfixed; and if she had been more tight and less blowsy, we might have liked her better.
My father sang bass in the choir for a number of years. His voice was very fine. Aunt Florrie sang alto and Grace Tolman soprano; some times Torrey Merrill sang tenor.
At a later period, when I attended Christian Endeavor, "Bringing In the Sheaves" was a terrible squawk. There was a woman from Orono who specialized in that song.
I graduated from the Eastern Maine Institute, a high school, in 1923. Then I was one year out, and went to college in l924.
I spent that year teaching in Carroll, boarding with Leo and Oroville Averill. Leo was the oldest son of Uncle Ralph. They had Roger (the oldest), a girl, and a younger boy.
The school was potentially all grades in one room, but some of the grades were not represented. The oldest student was Bettina Judkins, a relative of Edith Lewis, about l2 years old. (After age l6, they were not required to stay in school, but if they wished to continue in high school they would go to the E.M.I.)
I would begin in the morning by building the fire and sweeping out the schoolhouse; then I would call for the pupils to come and recite. It would take about 15 minutes for an older student, down to five minutes for the youngest. This, I suspect, was more advanced at each age than what children are given now. There was a blackboard for mathematics. There were penmanship exercises to be done at the desks.
There were some problems with discipline, with two of the Bamford boys. One was inclined to get up in the rafters of the outhouse and look down on the girls. The girls would come streaming out to complain to the teacher, and I would have to snatch him out and beat him up.
That year the family in Springfield had to be quarantined because of a mastoid condition, or perhaps scarlet fever, affecting Neen and perhaps Dick. I used to walk back to Springfield to check on the family and see if I could help. I couldn't go in the house, but I could go to the window on the piazza. It was a difficult winter.
Did I enjoy the year I spent teaching? Oh, yes.
The year did not actually pay me enough for my coming year at the University; my father had to find money for that. I had turned over most of my earnings to my brothers and sisters in Springfield, because A they had no other cash support. Deke, I think, borrowed money for college from somewhere else, and also took a year to work before entering.
My first semester at Orono I stayed at Mrs. Hodgkin's place for $9 a week; but I couldn't continue this, and moved into the dormitory. I got my board and room by working in the dormitory, waiting on tables. It was a different system then; it seems to me I had to wait on eight people, four at each table: the same people for a whole semester.
I was taking technical courses for the most part, and majored in Animal Husbandry. my biology instructor was the president of the university, Clarence Little.
I remember that I had to take a veterinary medicine class with Dr. Russell, and he would throw a bone to us to catch and name at the same moment. I fainted in his lab because I couldn't stand the sight of blood. Way back, when I was only about 10, I had Stella Lewis as a teacher, and she had me contemplate my (exactly what, I cannot recall). I realized that I couldn't think about blood or anything of that kind without fainting.
I think I remember when for some reason I was in Alumni Hall (at that time the chapel) and I heard my brother Ermond singing "We Three Kings of Orient Are" on the other side from where I was, and singing very beautifully. I hadn't known he was going to sing.
He had sung all along, at home too; he had studied music with Mrs. Scribner's daughter Minnie. She taught piano mainly, but also singing, I think it cost him 50ยข a lesson. Our piano, I think, was bought some time during my early adulthood, for Deke's practice. Before that, we had the organ - which unfortunately Marion and Ruth took to pieces. Deke used to play that even before he had his lessons.
My mother and father went to the University for my graduation. If they were proud, they didn't let on. I think that Colby Hanscom and his wife went down with them to take them.
After graduating, I was the executive secretary to the Director of Extension (at $1800 per year), which I could have stayed another year to continue, but I didn't wish to become a specialist in paper and ink. I decided to go to Cornell to study something more substantial. I think I was able to go using my savings, plus work as an assistant at $100 per month. This involved at first correcting papers for the extension course in agricultural economics, or other extension courses, and writing out the lectures to be mailed to the extension students. I took over the courses as they previously existed, and may have added some material of my own.
Graduate work was more challenging than at the University of Maine. Among my courses were Dr. Warren's course in Production (?), Dr. Pearson's course in Statistical Method, and Dr. Myers' courses in Farm Management and Farm Cooperatives. Drs. Warren and Pearson were interested mainly in prices (their book "Gold and Prices" was later conspicuous on the shelf at 802 Chalfonte Drive).
This was during the great depression, but we failed to pay much attention to it. We were somewhat insulated from it by the assistantship; as long as we each received our $lO0 per month, we didn't care what else happened to us. Our professors were more interested in the scientific causes of the depression than in the depression itself. The universities were very little affected by it.
I heard very little from home, only what my mother wrote, mostly about things that went on at the house. I only gradually became aware of the depression's effect on the economic life of that part of Maine - perhaps only much later.
I spent four years at Cornell, three without ever going home. I was very busy. and such a trip would have been expensive. I was sending some money to my sister Marion for her college expenses, and I think some to my father and mother too, but I'm not sure. I sent some to Joe for going to the University, and he was supposed to pass it on to Dick; but Dick failed to do a good job there. Joe was always critical of Dick for this failure. Dick's real interests, I'm afraid, were in having a good time. He dropped out and went to work on a farm.
Marion, I think, concentrated in English; Joe was in electrical engineering; Ruthie was psychology mainly.
Neen was so much younger that I didn't know her very well.
My thesis was "An Economic Study of Land Utilization in Tompkins County, New York, l930". I chose the subject because this was something unique, which I was doing for the first time. first of all, I was working with Dr. Carlton P. Barnes from the U.S.Department of Agriculture, experimenting with ways of telling the difference between good land and poor land, not by chemical analysis of the soil, but more by the appraisal of land use. For land use, we invented a method of putting down ten-acre squares and noting where the squares intersected with the ground. Sometimes I did this by walking a certain number of strides; sometimes other people were doing this. Then we would itemize what was being done within the square. Then I was using also an appraisal of the worth of a farm by its appearance. We could do this very rapidly. We drove the roads in our car and put markers down where the headquarters of farms were situated.
The thesis was a total of 800 pages of double-spaced typing and charts, with tables up to no. 445 (typed on one side of the paper). It took until l933 to get it written up and bound.
The University published two bulletins on the basis of this thesis: "An Economic Study of Land Utilization in Tompkins County, New York" and "Methods Used in an Economic Study of Land Utilization in Tompkins County, New York, and in Other Similar Studies in New York".
At the end of graduate school, I guess I wasn't thinking much about finding work. Dr. Buck [Dr. J. Lossing Buck] had been at Cornell at the time, though not in any of my classes. Dr. Buck had, by coincidence, his oral exam at Cornell the same day as mine [though he was about ten years older than ABL]. He had studied with Warren and Person: his thesis study was on Chinese Farm Economy.
Dr. Buck's initial proposal had been to do a study of land utilization in China, from the U.S. His first visit to China was as an agricultural missionary, with the Presbyterian Board, in an upcountry station. He was afterward affiliated with the University of Nanking. His wife Pearl had found the upcountry life unbearably dull, and she was happy to move to Nanking, where she was able to start writing seriously. Dr. Buck then decided to return to Cornell, where he had done his undergraduate work in agricultural economics, for his doctoral studies.
He was looking for someone to replace Stanley Warren in his work in China. Warren was acting as statistician, and I agreed to take that over. Brian Low joined at about the same time, to work on the maps.
Right out of Cornell, stopping for a brief visit at home, I traveled to Europe on the "Empress of Britain." I went to Quebec to board, then to England, where I met Dr. Buck. I went with Dr. Buck visiting farms around England and Ireland. We were gaining ideas to be used in our study.
[CHL recalls his very chic chocolate-brown jacket and light-colored "ice-cream" trousers. He was traveling light until he could earn some money. This was the period when Pearl Buck was deciding she had married the wrong man. Her writing had had success, especially "The Good Earth. The family met in Paris, and Ad was a passenger in their rather crowded sedan, with Lossing, Pearl, Pearl's secretary, and their ten-year-old adopted daughter Janice. Ard found himself serving as porter.]
In that year (l933) the Association of Agricultural Economists postponed their planned conference in Germany because of Hitler's agitations. The Bucks had planned to attend it, but instead did some touring around Europe. From Venice I took the Italian liner "Connate Ors" - tourist class - to Shanghai. The Bucks were on it too - first class. [CHL - Mrs. Buck had money.]
I arranged to have a Chinese teacher come to me for one hour every day, six days a week. Wang Ren-an was a good teacher for me, because his teeth were large, and I could look right into his mouth and see what was going on. Learning the language was difficult at first, but easier later on. There was no connection between English and Chinese. The lessons were conversational; he made no attempt to teach writing or reading.
My work was done in the office. I did not have to go into the field to gather the statistics, though I made some trips with Dr. Buck, and a summer vacation trip with the Halls to Peitaiho.
A corps of Chinese researchers gathered agricultural data from all over China. They issued a book-size report with two large volumes, one of maps and one of statistics. From the preface of the study itself: The idea was first suggested by Dr. O.E.Baker of the USDA at a conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations in l927. Funds came from the Rockefeller Foundation, from which the Institute appropriated grants for a five-year study.
[CHL: Grampa Hall met Ard before I did, but I don't remember how. I was doing some teaching of English at the University of Nanking, and spending some time reading in its library. I met Ard at a faculty tea party. There was a group of young Americans and Europeans around the university, and on weekends we would often go on outings. The Nanking Women's Club met fairly often for dramatic readings; Ard contributed some humorous sketches and skits.]
A story from Nanking: Little Hong Sing, Dr. Buck's cook, was frequently told to make a lemon pie, so he decided to make the pie shells in advance and put them on the shelf in the pantry. At one dinner, when Mrs. Wayne Stevens, acting as hostess lifted the slice up, the pie all came up whole. She re-scored it, with the same result. Lossing and I went out to the kitchen to see what the reason could be, and found the collection of pie shells hardening on the shelf.
And so I was married on January l, 1936. We resolved, Christine and I, to return to the United States about July l, l936. We didn't know it then, but at that very moment, Change Kai-shek and his advisers were meeting at Kuling in central China to decide whether to resist the Japanese at that moment or not. If they had so decided, we would have been in the middle or the war with Japan when we started our journey - but they decided to wait another twelve months. As it was, we were just about at home when the war began.
To cross Siberia, we joined a party of 20, organized by Ogden and Helen King. It took up one train car, minus one half compartment. In Mukden, we were steered toward a large hotel that had been built by the Japanese to accommodate top military officers and officials. (Mukden was the headquarters of the Japanese military, organizing to control Manchuria and beyond.) When we saw what an expensive room it looked like, we asked the charge, and asked to be moved to a cheaper section of the hotel.
Crossing Russia at that time we felt very oppressed, as when we entered the country they deprived us of our passports. While we were in Moscow we were required to have photographs taken for "official purposes." The charge was one (or three) rubles per photo, so Christine sat on my knee and we had just one photo taken.
We saw in Moscow a long queue of tattered Muscovites in three piece suits, waiting to board a train. afterwards we learned that Moscow was the center of Russian government oppression, so we assumed these people were destined for Siberia ~ and oblivion.
While we were in Moscow I carried on the only Russian conversation I ever held. me were standing in Line No. 2 to buy tickets for a show that evening. But the window shut down just before the nan before us received his tickets. he turned to us and said, "Nyet billet," and I said, "Nyet?" and he said, "Nyet".
Later we spent two days in Leningrad, and finally crossed the border near there, and I heaved a sigh of relief from oppression. For the first time during our journey, we saw women dressed in bright costumes; everything in Russia was drab.
After reaching finland, we arranged to take the train for Stockholm. Len Helsinki, a British woman asked, "Is this an island, or is it part of the mainland?" She was relieved to hear that it was part of the mainland. The evening before our departure for Stockholm, we had a lobster dinner. Not knowing any finnish or Swedish, we pointed to a lobster in a picture attached to a tree. I expected that we would each receive one full-sized lobster; but the meal consisted of a whole platter of lobsters, about three inches long. So eating lobsters in finland was something like eating peanuts.
In Stockholm, we began staying at comparatively expensive hotel,
and I went on foot to see if I could find the Belfrages Pensionnat,
where I had stayed with Prof. While we stayed there, I worked on a publication for the University of Nanking, "Economic Facts," to be mailed back. Christine
was shocked by the cost of laundry in Stockholm. we had saved up
about ten days' worth from the trip, and found found prices nothing
like those in China - more like U.S. prices.
Christine recalls side trips from Stockholm to Uppsala, where we saw
fields of bright yellow grain among other fields of emerald green; and
to Drottningholm, where we saw a small theatre (18th cent.?) where the queen could enjoy performances.
We went by train via Finse, where we had an evening of Grieg, to Oslo, Norway, and made our way by train to Bergen. En route we crossed the mountains of Norway, and I recall an American Negro group at the hotel in finse. We saw farmers harvesting grass, which they hung on racks to make hay. I remember that there was snow in the back yard of the hotel, under some boards (this was August).
I remember asking a policeman the way to the docks for shipping, as we planned to_take a boat from there to Newcastle, en route to England. I had written the directions on a slip of paper, which I showed to the policeman. Scarcely glancing at the paper, he said, "You go down the street to the right, then make one turn to the left..." in fluent English.
Christine counts the origin of Rachel Marion Lewis from our
stop in Bergen.
Once aboard the small ship for Newcastle, we noticed a waitress
serving meals; she veered around the able with one eye fixed on the
ceiling.
We spent the time waiting for the conference (the triennial
conference of the International Association of Agricultural economists)
by taking a trip to Stratford on Avon. We heard small boys playing
outside where we stayed, and could not understand one word they were
saying. In Stratford the bathroom was very distant, down a long
corridor. When you yanked the chain, nothing happened immediately,
but after an interval it would flush over and over, until the hotel
nearly shook to pieces. [CHL recalls her spouse's relations with
pull~chain tanks to have been uniformly difficult.]
From Stratford on Avon we joined two busloads of agricultural
economists for a brief tour of Scotland before the conference. There
was a Scottish ag. economist as guide; the tour was to show agriculture.
first we went from St. Andrews to Stirling. En route we stopped at
a farm which had cattle. Then we proceeded northward along the lakes
to Inverness, then south again to St. Andrews. As we came westward from
St. Andrews it was beautiful country. we visited Stranraer, Wigtown,
Kirkcudbright, Dumfries; Sir Walter Scott's place Abbotsford; the
Cheviot Hills, then back to Edinburgh. Accompanying us on this trip
were Germans and Americans, mostly.
Later on we attended the sessions of the international Conference
at St. Andrews. At that time one of the most prominent members of the
agricultural economists was the head of the ag. economics department
of the Department of Agriculture, and he was at that time advocating
an agricultural policy recommending that productivity be lowered in
order to improve agricultural products' prices. He presented a talk,
and I remember that when he was talking Christine turned to me and
said, "I had assumed that when ag. economists spoke, they talked sense,'
and I answered, "Not necessarily." This reaction was mainly confined
to the Cornell party. Their opinion in the debate was advocated by
Dr. Warren.
Following the conference Christine and I went by train from
Edinburgh past Newcastle and York, down to Liverpool for the purpose
of boarding the "Drunken Duchess" (the "Duchess of Atoll") for returning
across the Atlantic.
We disembarked finally in Montreal. My only recollection from
the journey was that Christine came as close as she ever has to being
seasick. I think we took about five days to cross the Atlantic and
go up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal.
I remember that we stayed in Montreal only long enough to make
arrangements to meet my father and mother at Mattawamkeag. We went
there on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The taxi charged 50 cents extra
to carry Christine's luggage. Asked why a suitcase was extra, they
said it was a trunk, because it had two handles. We got to Mattawamkeag, having paid all train expenses, with 75 cents between us. My
parents met us with a car and drove us to Springfield. I had to
borrow money to get to Washington, D.C. to begin my job.
I had a job at the Farm Credit Administration; it was only
necessary to make connections with that job. The governor of the
Farm Credit Administration at that time, Bill Myers, was formerly
head of the department of Ag. Economics at Cornell, while I was there
doing graduate work.
We took the train to Washington. Christine engaged an apartment
in the northern part of the District, and I think we were there for
a year. Rachel was born in l937. When she was a year old, we moved
to an apartment perhaps a little larger, opposite Meridian Park on 16th
Street. Then before John was born, we had our house in Alexandria,
Virginia. John was born in l939.
My job consisted of making studies of the loan experience and
land classification. Each federal land bank had an agricultural
economist as a director of research, and I worked with these directors.
I used to make land classification studies, and classified the farms
on which remained loans. The question was how much money had we lent
on a certain farm in Land Class 2, and what the experience was. The
information had been collected by the Farm Credit Administration.
I processed it into statistical tables or charts. Purpose: to improve
targeting of loans to farms that would repay them.
If a farm was worth $5,000, and it were a poor farm, the chances
of foreclosure, and loss from foreclosure, were very high. In general
it paid better to lend more money on bigger and better farms. In those
days a Land Class 4 farm would ordinarily be worth about $10,000, and
our figures indicated you could lend $6,000 on such a farm. The Farm
Credit Administration would not lend more than 50% of the value, but
we showed them that if they lent 60 or 70% ona farm of $l0,000 value,
it would be perfectly safe. But if you loaned $2,000 on a farm worth
only $4,000, and your constraint was for $2,000, the chance of foreclosure, and loss in that case, would be very high.
To do this figuring we had land classifications, or could make
them using soil maps, land use maps, capital accumulation charts.
One of the criteria we used was to mark each farm Poor, Fair, Good,
or Excellent, judging on appearance of the farm, and spot these on
a map. These boundaries would be revised and refined by the soil map
and land use maps - whatever maps were available.
I think that in the summer of 1938 I took Rachel and Christine
up to the Williamsons' home in Ithaca while I taught a summer school
course in prices at Cornell. The fall term may have been devoted to
research; then in spring l939 I was at Cornell teaching a course in
land classification. The students said they should have the day off,
because the teacher had received a telegram announcing the birth of
a little boy. I said no, because I was the one having the child, not
they.
I hardly remember going to 802 Chalfonte Drive at that time, but
I presume I did. I remember going down by way of the Susquehanna
River, and I remember taking Rachel to stay with the Russell's.
Rachel had gone to stay with the Engquists during the actual birth,
and Christine remembers that for months afterward she refused to go
up the hill toward their house.
Then I think I had to return to Cornell to finish the semester,
and my mother came down to help Christine. She stayed until John was
about a month old. Christine was in the hospital about two weeks,
having had a bad hemorrhage, and was still feeling feeble after a
month. (Attending a luncheon given by Mrs. Walter Bauer for a few
Farm Credit wives left her "just pooped.")
Ruthie stayed with us that summer, taking one or two courses at
George washington University, because she was having a hard time
where she had been staying. After graduating from the University of
Maine, she had gone to a Worcester mental health hospital as a guinea
pig for certain chemical tests. Her health was beginning to fail,
but no one knew whether this was connected to these tests. Symptoms;
with her eyes had appeared to be related to impacted teeth, so she
had had several removed.
She was very difficult to live with. She insisted on smoking,
for example, and she would stay up all night with a friend from G.W.U.
I remember concluding that Ruthie was a psychiatric case, and that,
like most people interested in abnormal psychology, she was herself
a victim of abnormal psychology.
At the Group Health Association, she finally was diagnosed with
myasthenia gravis. As soon as the Group Health man diagnosed the
situation correctly, he took over and arranged for her to go to the
Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she had an operation to
remove her thymus gland. Then they gave her prostigmin to take, and
she went hack to Springfield to live.
Newlyweds Chuck and Mary Hall stayed with us for a while during
World War II, probably around l941, just before Chuck had to go to the Pacific.
Before Pearl Harbor, a strict blackout was in force, and the
hospital and our homes had to be kept dark for fear of air raids.
The war in North Africa was beginning, and German submarines were
a threat - more so than we civilians were told. I had taken Rachel
and John to Springfield on the train, at least two weeks before the
baby was expected. I was sitting of the edge of the bed chatting,
when Christine's water broke, and I knew we had to skedaddle.
Christine had her suitcase all packed in case of going to the hospital,
and the car was parked on Elmore Drive to start easily in neutral
and glide down the hill without drawing attention to ourselves.
[Christine: "In his haste, Dad turned on every light in the house
and left them on - so the whole neighborhood knew what must be up.]
Amanda Louise was born July 13, 1942.
The U.S. and Britain were fighting Rome back and forth across
Idly, and the British General Montgomery was assembling the biggest
collection of tanks at El Alamein, western Egypt. We were hearing
about terrible battles. On maybe the second or third night Christine
was in the hospital, the nurses drew the blackout curtains across
all the windows. "The next day, when Dad came to see me, I said we
had been half suffocated during the night. He made a complaint to
the nurses, that they hadn't opened up again at the end of the air
drill. Then the head nurse asked me why I hadn't asked to have the
curtains opened! I replied that I had simply assumed someone would
come and open up as soon as the drill was over."
During the war I left the Farm Credit administration, which
was moving to Kansas City, and joined the Board of Economic warfare.
This had to do with gathering intelligence on the Far East. There
was a change in the top echelon (the Foreign Economic Administration),
and I was sent to India to continue gathering information on the Far
East. I Found myself in charge of an interrogation unit, partly American and partly British. One American was Mr. Reifsnider, who was
the son of the American bishop in Japan - the head of the Japanese
Episcopal church. Reifsnider would interview the Japanese who had
been recently captured in Burma, to see if they had information
valuable to us. If he found anyone interesting he would assign him
to he interviewed by me or one of the others. I had to use an interpreter, an American~Japanese, and so did the other American man, but Reifsnider's
Japanese was perfect, and so was that of a Britisher. The interview sheet would be passed on to me, and I would classify it according to the intelligence agency in the U.S. or Europe where it was particularly needed, and I would pass it on to the British colonel in charge.
The questions were focused on agriculture, and the prisoners
were farmers recently pressed into military service. One of them, as
he was being led back to the pen, said he had enjoyed the interview,
as I was the first person he had met who was interested in agriculture.
If the Japanese farmers said they were short of nitrogen, this meant
a great deal for the food supply of Japan; or course, this boy
din't realize that. On the other hand. the officere were very hard
to crack: wouldn't give us anything, and tried to indoctrinate the Japanese American in their favor, saying they would take him back
to Japan. "Remember,""they told him, "the Emperor is your grandfather
too."
The "pen" was the stables where the Shah Jehan had stabled his
horses at one time. The Shah had built the Red Fort in about 1620.
The interview center was in the old house - walls about 60 feet
high, built of sandstone.
It was some distance from the Kapurthala House, which was in New Delhi near the Secretariat. The Red Fort was in Old Delhi. Of our group, only Reifsnider and I lived in the Kapurthala House.
About a dozen people lived there. There was a British major, who knew about our work. He was delayed in getting to work one morning, saying he had to beat the sweeper for insubordination. It was significant to me that the major would stay home to beat the sweeper, who was an Indian. I could
understand why the Indians did not like the British! The older of
two little boys of the major said he would like to shoot his amah.
The other said, "Better not shoot her - we might get a worse.'
I taught the Indian cook how to make American pie out of pumpkins.
He first served it cut up into pentagons, hexagons and various angles,
and the filling was not strained, but full of fiber; but gradually
I got this man to make perfectly acceptable pie.
I had just a cot bed in a two-room suite. There were a desk
and chair outside, and a desk and chair also for Holland Hunter.
Inside the inner room was a bathroom with a tub, with a very slick
floor underneath it. You could also go into that room from the
courtyard outside. I remember a line of ants came across the interior
courtyard and up the steps and between the columns to where my desk
was, and out the other side and into the garden. A side stream went
up the wall and through a knothole, out to the garden. Occasionally
I would interrupt the flow with some Flit, but it would shortly
resume as if nothing had happened. Once I went out to follow this
stream of ants to see where it went, but I was unable to discover
its destination. There were many different kinds of ants in the
stream: little ones, big ones. Ones with big mandibles were the
policemen of the group.
When I first went to the Kapurthala House, the menus were lousy and
the food was very bad. I took over the cook and butler. I wrote to
Christine and asked her to send an American cookbook.
There was a particular bland Indian vegetable frequently served.
It consisted of green round squash-like items with seeds inside.
This required pepper to taste good, and was not worth bothering with,
without it, but Holland Hunter didn't want much pepper in his food.
I told the cook to use white pepper instead. Since Hunter couldn't
tell there was pepper on it, he thought it was perfectly O.K.
I tried to learn to ride a bicycle, because the people at the
Kapurthala House were going out to the Ktub Minar, a minaret or tower
out in the middle of nowhere, where there were ruins so old that they
were not recognized any more for what they were. Around Delhi it was
semi-desert country, partly occupied by wild peacocks. They would
come and roost at night on the walls of the village. Our people used
to shoot these peacocks and eat them as turkey, though the villagers
did not approve of killing them. There were two kinds of antelope,
blackbuck and blue bull, that they would shoot at the same time.
These were brought back to the kitchen to be prepared and served.
These outings were made on bicycles, and I had never tried one.
I chose to ride around the circles of the walks in front of the
Kapurthala House, so I would end up next to the marble steps. Unfortunately, my long white cuff caught on the pedal of the bicycle,
and instead of my foot landing on the step, my ankle bone hit the
step and cut through the flesh. Just before the steps there was a
rose bush, and I found myself heading for that rose bush every time.
Before I could resume trying to learn to ride a bicycle, I was sent
home. So I never did learn how to ride a bicycle. I haven't yet, to
this day.
On the other hand, I learned to drive our jeep, and go on the
left even on a double track. When I got back to the States, I started
driving on the left. It happened twice, before I got adjusted again.
Lord Mountbatten, British Chief Military Officer in India, Naval,
was scheduled to pass through our building on a certain occasion.
The British BOR's ("British Other Ranks" - sergeants and corporals
supervising the prisoners) shouted back and forth freely about this
unusual event in earshot of the prisoners, thinking none of them
would understand them. Reifsnider was due to interview a certain
Japanese, who was all prepared to attack Lord Mountbatten, but by
coincidence - we don't know why - that man was not called up, and
another was interviewed instead.
Only after the man was sent to Bicaneer (a British Indian estate used as a POW camp, where Japanese prisoners were sent after they
had finished being interviewed for anything of value), and was given
a truth serum to loosen his tongue, did it come out that he was
prepared to stab Mounthatten that day. It is believed that it could
have been done all right, because the prisoner could easily conceal
a weapon, and the only guard we had was someone whose dialect was`
understood only by the girlfriend of Holland Hunter.
As soon as the plan was known, we gathered up a double handful
of stickers and stabbers made by the inhabitants of the pen - mostly
pieces of the fence, sharpened. After that we observed much stricter
security, referring to each other not by name but by number.
While I was in Delhi, Grampa Hall passed through on his way out of northwest China-- about the end of 1944 or early 1945. We met, but I don't remember any details of it.
I was in India just about a year. I came back home by plane. Mr. Black, whom I knew, saw that I was in very poor condition, and arranged for me to get a seat on a plane at Casablanca, to get out of there as soon as possible. I was thin; the food supply had been poor. We were situated at the Officers' Mess; an American general had booted the economists out of
the Kapurthala House, and spent a lot of money redecorating it.
Our meals now consisted mainly of cabbage, cooked and jammed down
to a thick consistency. I didn't like it, and nobody else liked it!
As I recall, the cabbage was cooked and scored into blocks, two by
two and a half inches. You would pick up one of these blocks in your
fingers and eat it - and it wasn't fit to eat.
[Christine recalls the scene of homecoming, in the upstairs bedroom with Rachel: "Dad walked in, and Rachel at first paid no attention. A second look, and she recognized 'Daddy', I asked her afterwards who she thought it was at first, and she said, 'I don't know. Some man.'" ]
After returning home, first I produced the report. I put together a summary of the food situation in Japan, with the help of Mr. Ban, a Chinese
assistant of mine in Washington. This indicated that the Japanese
were in a very bad way. They hardly had food enough to support more
than their soldiers, and professors and people like that went to the
country to be nearer the food supply. Sometimes they spent the day
in bed, to save food.
At the same time I produced this report, short and to the point,
two O.S.S. ladies, working in New York or Washington, produced a
report' much thicker than mine, saying that the Japanese had as
great a food supply as before. Their reaction to our report was to
say, "We'd better get our report published right away, if we want
anyone to pay attention to it.'
I have always felt that if the powers that be in the Foreign
Economic Administration had paid proper attention to our report,
they might not have dropped the atomic bomb, because Japan was in
effect already licked, for lack of food.
In 1945 Chiang Kai-shek's government, which after the Japanese
defeat was in power in mainland China, sent a large number of students
to the U.S. About 200 were in agriculture. I was employed as consultant
to the International Training Administration to look after these
Chinese students. The idea was that each one of them would be advised
by Dean Hsieh of the University of Nanking (he was over here).
If any conflict arose between me and the Chinese students, Dean
Hsieh would be referred to, to settle it. I steered them to the
various institutions to pursue their training.
Some of the Chinese students, who were scheduled to go back to
China, didn't want to go when the time came. They preferred to stay
and complete their degrees in the U.S. Sometimes I could persuade
them to change, and sometimes not.
Their programs were funded by the Lend-Lease, so it was a form of
loan to China by the United States. The funds for supporting this
operation came from the Lend-Lease Administration (whatever it was
called).
It seems to me that one of the people I wanted to go home was
a Mr. Ma. He finally remained in the U.S. Presumably, he did not
continue to get funds from China, but was able to get them from
the American university where he was studying. One of the students
who refused to return was a Mr. Charles Fan. He married a Canadian
woman; they have one daughter. He is still employed by the Canadian
Department of Agriculture, and has lived near Ottawa ever since.
Our program provided an opportunity for Chinese faculty members
to spend a short time in this country and return home. One of these
faculty members said to me, "You know how we Chinese are," when
he explained that other Chinese faculty members would be jealous
of him and give him a hard time. I replied that I did know "how
the Chinese are," but that I wasn't a Chinese. Sure enough, when
he returned, the head of his department made him so hot under the
collar that he had to leave. He went back to northeastern Canada
I forget whether it was somewhere in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.
That's where he still is, the last I knew; still professor of ag.
economics. The technique of ousting a professor like that is to
deny him all promotions - not allow him to function as a professor.
The Chinese are very good at that.
I think I spent about a year with the I.T.A., then in 1946-47 shifted to become a specialist in China, Japan and Korea for the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In March 1951, the FAO held a conference in a hotel in Ceylon.
It as something having to do with tropical land use problems of
the Far East and islands of the Paclflc. We were also concerned with
the use of land for the production of tea. The tea plantations were
at a high elevation, which was why we chose the hotel we chose.
I stayed in the hotel, fairly high up, and didn't go outdoors once
during about a week. I had to line up the conference participants
and arrange for the accommodations, but I don't remember the details.
This was the last thing I did for the FAO.
Then the conference was moved to the northern part of the island,
and I followed in a separate car. I remember catching up with these
people in a part of Ceylon where they were reclaiming the irrigation
and drainage system at that time. I remember seeing an immense lake
in the center of the island, which was part of this system. The system
was built in about 1200, and the current work may have been the first
[repairs] ever attempted. The system had fallen into disuse to a large extent, and farms were being re-established where farms had once been.
One thing we discovered in the midst of the cleared-away jungles
was a dome-shaped plaster "wat", covered entirely with jungle vines.
Someone had cleaned it all off and replastered it so that it was white
again. This was a solid structure. It may have had a duplicate of some
Buddhist relic inside. I remember we saw a statue of the person who
had had a library at this site. He wee standing, all alone, in front
of nothing - the building was gone. I think this was ParaKramaBahu
the Great.
I had been in Ceylon before; during wartime I had served as liaison
between American forces there and our interview group, so I was somewhat familiar with the people in Ceylon.
I remember that the Singhalese were inclined to look down on
the black folks, the Tamils. You see, the Tamils were actually smarter
than the Singhalese, but the Singhalese were more handsome, and bigger, and they said, "We have to keep those black folks down." This conflict
became worse after we left. They were proposing, at least, that the
Singhalese be given the civil service examination, but not the Tamils,
and the exam be given in English, which was known to theca Singhalese
but not to the Tamils. As I remember, this conflict was only beginning
when we were there.
I remember when I drove north to catch up with our conference,
I rode in a car driven by a Dutchman, who considered that he was a
Ceylon native, but not as good as I. He wouldn't sleep In the same
room as I, for example. (The Dutch, you see, had been in charge in
Ceylon before the British were.)
I discovered, when I was teaching graduate students in Taiwan,
that they could think less well than the juniors and seniors in the
College of Agriculture in Nanking in 1933-1936, because the American
high schools the latter went to had been taught by Americans, Canadians
or Britishers who had taught them to think, as they would American,
Canadian, or British students. The graduate students at Taichung
were taught by Chinese or Japanese high school teachers, and had
never learned to think.
I tried to teach them the difference between a principle and
a fact, and they didn't know the difference - which meant really
that the undergraduate students in China previously were better
equipped than graduate students in Taiwan.
I would not think that Chinese who were students in China during
Communist days would ever have learned to think, because their high
school instructors would have been only Chinese.
[RML: "Does this imply that Chinese culture historically does not
employ what we call thinking? ] Thats right. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans, though, have the advantage of being Confucians, which doesn't help them to think but it helps them to work harder.
In Taiwan, I was able to teach certain things that could be
learned by rote, but if they had to stop to think how to apply principles to facts, they couldn't do it.
The faculty were interested in improving the country - I know
that - but I had too little contact with them to observe whether
they were concerned with developing the power of thinking in their
students. There were any number of American and other foreign teachers
there, but I may have been the only one who really bore down on this
point.