Family History
“Cowboy and Indian Heaven”
How my family survived the Dust Bowl and found hearth and home in the Great Midwest
“You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
It’s around 1937 in Kansas. The worst of the Dust Bowl has already past but the soil has still been damaged, the dust in the air made the days look like nights, people risked driving and getting stuck in the dust and not being able to breathe. Farming also just isn’t the same as it was. The soil is just no longer as rich. There is no wage, salary, or guaranteed money for a farmer, and a farmer needs to be able to make crops to make money. In these scary times, my Great grandfather, Floyd Haldeman, had pretty much no choice but to leave Kansas.
Dust Bowl
In 1936, Dorothea Lange took the most reproduced photograph in the world that exposed the worst of the Dust Bowl. The photo shows two kids holding on to their mom, Florence Thompson, while looking down to the dirt. Florence Thompson is looking off into the horizon into the suffocating dust storms.
One afternoon, my Great grandfather, Floyd Haldeman, got stuck in the dust while driving his car and he thought that he was going to die. These giant formations of dust could also devastate towns. Dorothea Lange also shows pictures of people helping others in the towns that were damaged by the Dust Bowl. However, the people that struggled weren't only the people that got injured from the dust storms — farmers could no longer grow anything to sell and were unable to support their families.
Kansas Calling
My ancestors have pretty much lived in Pennsylvania for the whole time they have been in the United States, until my great-great-grandfather, John P. Haldeman sought a new life in Kansas. There are probably multiple reasons that he would want to leave. The Haldeman family line have pretty much been farmers for the whole time that they were in the United States, and John P. Haldeman might have envisioned more fertile fields in Kansas. He may have been influenced by John O’Sullivan’s idea of Manifest Destiny. Whatever the reason was, it backfired.
The Great Depression and Dust Bowl hit farmers like a truck. According to the 1940 census, it go so bad to the point where my great-great-grandfather had an income of a whopping zero dollars, and his son Floyd, who was the only one in the family making money, was working as a grocery store clerk. I guess you could say that this was rock bottom for the Haldeman family.
Iowa Calling
Even through all the hardships, the Haldemans were survivors. My Great Grandfather, Floyd Haldeman grew up and decided to leave Kansas to continue farming elsewhere, and with his experience in Kansas during the Dust Bowl, who could blame him. Floyd decided that he was going to move to and extremely small town in Dallas County, Iowa, where the soil was better for growing food. In Iowa, Floyd had to start over again. It is hard to get a farm going, but the potential outweighed the risk for Floyd. Floyd bought a large white multi-story farmhouse and a treehouse posted up by the barn. This is when Floyd was able to settle down and start a family of his own and when my Grandpa, Gale Haldeman was finally born.
Gale’s Story
My Grandpa was born on March 22nd, 1947. He lived with his father Floyd on the farm. The farm wasn’t big enough to make a substantial profit. From an early age, my Grandpa would help out on the farm and mow others lawns to make some money. They were living in a town that has less than 2,000 people in it. However, my Grandpa enjoyed working on farms and living in the Midwest.
I have always admired that my Grandpa could be so content with what he has. He absolutely loves the Midwest. Even with all of the new crazy movies that are being made, all of his favorite ones are the westerns. When he grew up, he read Cowboy comic books and loved playing Cowboys and Indians with his friends.
There was a story my Grandpa told me about his childhood once. In Torreón Navaho, New Mexico, he was driving around with his parents when he saw an Indian named Santiago Barbone. Barbone squatted down on the top of a hill as my grandpa stared up at him in awe. Barbone was posted up on the hill like a hero to my grandpa. My grandpa told me that he thought he was in “Cowboy and Indian heaven.” For someone else, this could be something that you glance at and shrug off as no big deal. This is another reason that I really admire my grandpa; he doesn’t take the little things for granted. Even now that my grandpa has the ability to travel more or move somewhere else, he still chooses not to because he has come to love that lifestyle.
It’s always easy to respect someone for breaking the cycle of being in poverty. Everyone loves a good rags to riches story — everyone loves to cheer for the underdog, to look at someone take a big step and finally be on top. However, the step before this is sometimes overlooked. It can be hard to take a small step just to give another person a chance to have a big one. While my grandfather grew up poor, he did just enough to give my dad a chance to go to college and make it big.
“It was a good lifestyle, peaceful”
A conversation with Gale Haldeman
Before I did this interview, I asked my grandpa some questions over text beforehand because I just wanted to know a little more so that I could make a better project proposal. Through these texts, I really felt like the interview had a lot of potential to be really good, because I was originally worried that my grandpa wouldn’t talk a lot or wouldn’t elaborate, but he always gave back longer and more detailed texts than I thought he would. At one point through us texting back and forth, he even thanked me for asking all these questions because he enjoyed all of the memories.
My grandparents were on a vacation in California when it was time to do the interview, so it was hard to find a time to sit down and complete it. I was finally able to do this interview on Thursday night on September 12th, 2019. I started it at around 11:30 PM because the time difference between North Carolina and California made that the most convenient time for my grandpa. I used my dad’s phone to call my grandpa, put the phone on speaker, and then recorded the entire oral history interview on my phone. It took about 37 minutes to complete.
- Could you please state your full name and date of birth?
Gale Dwyane Haldeman, 3/22/47.
2. According to my research, your dad moved from Kansas to Dallas Center, Iowa before you were born, why do you think this is the case?
No doubt due to the fact that it was following the Dust Bowl in the 30s, mainly for work up in Iowa as western Kansas was rendered mostly useless as far as farming was concerned.
3. What was your favorite part of living on a farm in Iowa?
Probably just the fact of freedom, the fact that I could be outdoors, kind of a free spirit. Was a great place to grow up and I like to think I learned a good work ethic. We were fairly self-sufficient on the farm, made meat and vegetables and so on. It was a good lifestyle. Peaceful.
4. What was your least favorite part of living on a farm in Iowa?
Probably long hours. We didn’t go to town a whole lot. Being a farm kid, it seemed like after school projects, this and that, weren’t as easy to be involved in as like the town kids, but it was kinda back to work, more work and not as much play.
5. I know you weren’t alive during the Dust Bowl, but did your dad ever tell you stories of what some of the struggles were?
My grandfather did, he lived to be almost 100. My grandad was farming out in western Kansas and I don’t know how long he had been farming, but to the point where I think he had a relatively new tractor and combine and some things like that, and due to the Dust Bowl, they lost everything because nothing would grow, and the bank of course couldn’t keep the tractor or the combine or the equipment, and that was the case for most everybody back then. I do remember them saying that during the Dust Bowl the dust was blowing so hard and during the day time it was just about as dark as night with the dust blowing, and I remember them telling about trying to unload horses and you couldn’t even see the farm basically it was so bad. It was miserable for them I know.
6. Around how many people lived in your town, Dallas Center, Iowa?
Just under 1000, probably around 900.
7. Around how many people went to your school?
Probably 200 some in the whole school cause all the classes in my high school were around 50 or less. I think there was 52 in my graduating class, and that was fairly typical size for back then, that was in the 60s, and prior to that I know there was less than that per class, so naturally it’s grown since. I’m gunna say in the four classes in high school between 250 and 300 total.
8. What jobs did you do as a kid on the farm?
Bailed a lot of hay, fed a lot of livestock. As a young kid I helped gather eggs believe it or not. Didn’t have to milk cows all the time but did milk cows. Raised a lot of hogs and a lot of sheep over the years. The part I liked the best was running tractors and all that, but you know, operating farm equipment and so on, and of course trucks, tractors and all that stuff, combines.
9. Did you do any other jobs not on the farm as a kid?
As a kid yes, part of the time we did live in town and at that point, I mowed lawns, I scooped snow on sidewalks, sold Christmas cards, had a paper route, just did odd jobs and when I was hardly big enough to pick up a bale of hay I even helped other people bail hay when they needed a hand. My dad’s grocery store, he had a grocery store for a few years, and I bagged grocery and stocked shelfs. A little bit of everything Grant, between the farm and the grocery business. I worked carpenter work with my cousin who to this day is still a carpenter. He’s still active and in his 80s now and probably needs to retire, I worked for him a lot too. So done a lot of things.
10. What jobs did your dad do on the farm?
All of the above, we all followed in our dads footsteps, just everything you do on a farm. Feeding livestock and vaccinating livestock. At an early age we all had to milk a cow or two. Big garden, about every farm family had a big garden, and course when it came time to run tractors and all that. But my dad and my grandad, they picked corn with horses, horse drawn wagons and picked corn by hand, threw it up in the wagon. My dad did too when he first came to Iowa, that was one of his first jobs when he came to Iowa, was picking corn by hand in Iowa once they left western Kansas. That was before combines or corn pickers. For me, I loved running the farm equipment. Still do to this day.
11. What jobs did your mom do on the farm?
She did a lot of gardening and a lot of canning, other then that it was all indoors, I remember doing a lot of sowing and quilting. She just wasn’t and outside person, my dad always did that or we did. Other then what time she spent in the garden that was about it as far as I remember. Otherwise it was homeworking, she was an excellent cook.
12. Did other people work on the farm, or just your family?
Well occasionally, it was mostly just our family except we traded wood with the neighbors and good friends when you needed more help like bailing hay and putting up hay and that sort of thing. Or if in harvest you needed extra hands for getting the crop in and either taking it to town at that time or putting in bins on the farms on locations, but other than that most of it was just done by the family but some jobs took more than one pair of hands for getting it done and putting up hay was one of the biggest thing that we needed several people, and it was always very hot and very humid when it came time to put up hay in Iowa.
13. What crops did you grow on the farm?
Mostly corn, but soy beans, hay, and some oats back then. That was about it for Iowa. What we would do when we would start a new hay field is we’d seed it with the oats, and then would take one cutting of oats off of it so the aleph alpha was seeded or planted with the oats in the Spring, like late March, April. So that oats gave the hay a good start so to speak, it was kind of a cover crop for the hay till it kicked in, and then after you harvested the oats one time, eventually then you had a good thick set of aleph alpha hay, or clover and aleph alpha, a mix, but then you had as a by product, a lot of times you could bail the straw or the chaff from the oats when you combine the oats, so you could get like one cutting of straw for that before you started bailing hay, for making hay off of it, but mainly it was corn that was the main stay. Then we rotated between corn, and soy beans each year, and every 5 years to 7 we’d rotate and begin a crop of hay which put some nitrogen back in the soil for the other crops and so on. I guess that’s mainly it for crops, wheat and stuff like that, I guess once in a great while maybe some grain which is kind of a first cousin to corn.
14. How were you able to sell the crops?
We always marketed the crops eventually through the farmers cooperative and it was marketed through them and if you didn’t have enough storage or your own drying methods on the farm in your own bins that we would always move by tractors and then by trucks later into town, and about every little town, every small town around here had a co-op or an elevator storage, rain storage, so you could take it in there and if it needed drying down so it didn’t spoil, then you had to pay for drying in there to get it down to the right percentage where it wouldn’t spoil. Anyways, then you could either sell it at the time of harvest or you could wait and sell it later, so you had that option.
15. Did some of the other kids in your school also live on a farm?
Oh yeah, yeah probably about half and half actually, in our small town.
16. What was one of your favorite moments on the farm as a kid?
I always had horses, I grew up on horseback so riding horses. Dogs and horses and just being outside, I loved horses and I had them from the time I was about ten years old, and so to this day I love horses, so I guess horseback riding when I had the chance.
17. Can you talk about why you chose not to go to college, do you regret this?
No, I don’t think I regret not going, first of all, I don’t know, I guess maybe you don’t end up as technical not going to college, but I certainly got to learn working with my hands doing different things, I can say that, and you learn a good work ethic, not saying you don’t if you end up going to college. No I don’t think I’ve ever regretted it myself.
18. At what age did you start to take over running the farm?
Well, actually it was when I moved back from California, so I would have been in my twenties, late twenties.
19. What changed about the farm once you were grown up?
Newer and larger equipment like for planting and harvesting, tractors and so on, I guess that was probably the biggest change, and then the more use of herbicides and insecticides and that sort of thing. It seemed like it was a little bit more organic, maybe back when I was growing up, most of the fertilizer came from your livestock at that point, so increasingly over the years it became more commercialized for the fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides that you, I guess you thought you needed to add to the crops to make our crops better. Probably that.
20. What changed about your town as you grew up?
Not too much until the last few years, it’s just more population I guess, in the last few years its increased a few hundred and which has then in turn mandated some new schools, that they be built, both grade school and a new high school, and new middle schools, what was our old high school became the new middle school and then a new high school was built, and yeah there was no such thing as convenient stores when I grew up, so when I came back we had our first convenient store in town, which was kinda new, we never had over about one, well at one time maybe two sets of gas pumps in town, well maybe three. There was just two or three sets of gas pumps, no convenient stores, I guess that’s about it.
21. What were some of the jobs your kids did on the farm?
Well your dad, he used to help run tractor, when we where working ground to plant, and started him out in the hay but he had allergies so bad I thought I was gunna kill him so I let him off the hook on that. Mostly tractor work, and he helped with the horses yeah some, the garden a little bit, not as much when they grew up. Not as much as we did, in our generation.
22. How did your dad’s parenting affect how you parented your kids?
I think just work ethic and a sense of respect I like to think, for everything and everybody probably are the biggest things, he was fairly strict and fairly conservative, maybe a little gruff on the outside but he had a good heart, and everybody knew him and everybody liked him I think so just mainly the work ethic and learning how to work with your hands, doing a lot of different things.
23. Did you do any other jobs than working on the farm as an adult?
Yes, I worked for while, I worked for a John Deer implement dealership, for two or three years to come to supplement that farm income, so I did that, and then I guess that was it while I was farming, well then I built a car wash, I did build a car wash with another fellow in town, in the small town, for, I guess I was still working for the implement dealer at that time and still farming at that time, so I guess that’s probably it. Well then I ended up, I guess I was done farming when I went down to Des Moines to work in a warehouse, grocery KCC, it was like a convenient store warehouse. Anyway, then we ended up cash renting out our land at that point, letting other people farm it for us, for a cash rent per acre.
24. Did you ever suffer any significant injuries while raising your kids, and if so did this effect your ability to work and make money?
Not that I’m aware of Grant, not that I’m aware of.
25. What were some of the jobs that your wife did on the farm?
She also did a lot of canning and gardening. She was a really good cook, she was definitely a farm wife cook, she could cook a wale of a meal. Sometimes, she did a lot of canning, and she, sometimes would, when it was really hot, go spray the hogs down in the hog-house when it was so hot, too hot for the animals, and when we weren’t there, my dad died, then she would call and go out, take the hose and spray the hogs down, and we butchered our own meat back then so she helped with that. We butchered most cattle and hogs ourselves. My dad, when he had that grocer business, he cut his own meat, he was a very good butcher, so he knew how to work with everything, the steaks, and the hamburger, and the sausage, and all that. Yeah we did a lot of our butchering, we’d hang them up by the tractor loader.
26. What were some of your favorite memories of your kids on the farm?
Probably like, Ryan (my dad), having him ride horses that he didn’t want to ride. Well let’s see, Wade (my uncle), jumped out of the hay barrel and broke both of his ankles didn’t he, or sprained them, and Tiffany (my aunt), almost fell in the well one time, lost her toys down in the well, that aggravated her, she was mad at her brother Ryan, he made her walk the plank across the well, she lost her toy groceries down in there, down in the well. Wade, crazy guy, he jumped clear out of the hay bale and sprained both ankles at once. Let’s see, I had a really big old Billy goat, I even have pictures of that one when the kids where little, and he was about big enough I could hardly straddle him, just to stand over him, but that’s when I had a lot of sheep too so, and dogs, dogs were always my favorite, always my favorite, but of the livestock probably cattle are my favorite, and sheep and hogs, hogs, their kinda down the line a ways for me, and chickens, their good to eat but don’t really like raising chickens otherwise. I don’t know, cattle and sheep probably mainly, and hogs we raised a lot of hogs.
27. What were some of the main life lessons that you learned through your life that you wanted to teach your kids?
Mainly how to work, and be responsible, and how to work with their hands. Learn by doing Grant, if you experience things and it’s a hands on thing and if your dad or your grandad show you things, guide you through it, there things you’ll never forget and respect for everything and everybody, even respect for your tools, you know, how to care for them and not leave them out in the rain, so on. Just to be responsible about everything, probably the big thing.
28. How strict of a budget did you have to keep to allow your kids to go to college?
Well, pretty strict because when your dad and your aunt Tiffany ended up, they were only two years apart, and we ended up with two in college and it was pretty tough for us after a while, and that’s in-fact while when I was still farming I was working at the implement dealer to kinds supplement our income, because we had kids going to college, and kids needed to drive to school, and your grandma had gone to work at an insurance office at that time too, to help supplement the income, so it got pretty tight.
29. What kind of work do you continue to do now that your kids are adults?
A little bit of everything but mostly just, well, a little bit of mechanical work, a little bit of yard work, spray weeds, mow weeds, work in the shop a little bit, I like to work with wood and I like to work with metal both, and play music, but that’s about it.
30. What are your favorite parts about living in a small town in Iowa?
It used to be, a lot has changed, but it used to be back when I was a kid and living in a small town, and I paper out, I knew almost where everyone lived, the name of the people who lived in almost every house in town, and that’s no longer true, a lot of new faces and of course, a lot of the older family names have disappeared over time, so there are a lot of new faces in town, which is just evolutionary, so I don’t know as many people as I used to admittedly, but that’s the way things go, things just change over time, so some of the old buildings and most of the old houses are still there but there not occupied necessarily by all the same people that I remember.
31. What are your favorite parts about Iowa?
Well being in the Midwest, my general feeling is, Iowa included, in the so-called breadbasket of the country, north to south through the middle section of the country, it’s more farm and rural, definitely more rural oriented obviously, so the rural lifestyle appeals to, like me more than, well lets face it, less people. A little more elbow room a little more breathing room so to speak, you know what I mean, just, the population is less, so to me it feels like things are less congested, generally speaking, getting more so all the time in the bigger cities, but probably the freedom and the feeling of that there’s probably more self-employed people in the Midwest, which is kinda neat too, everybody helps each other, everybody seems like their more friendly, and their very helpful, your neighbors, if you needed help, there have been times when all the neighbors came in and helped somebody if they had a catastrophe, in harvest time, like all the neighbors might come in and bring their tractors and combines, without being asked and all get together and come in and totally harvest the guys crops for him, it’s kinda of a comradery thing seems like, maybe more than a big city, I’m guessing. First of all, being less population you know more people individually then you do in a big Metropolis.
32. What were you most eager to show your grandkids about your farm and town when they visited?
You’d have to admit the tractors and stuff, the tractors and the trucks, and the jeeps and that sort of thing, for my grandkids yeah, the equipment.
33. What are some of your favorite moments with your grandkids?
Oh gee, every moment. Watching them grow up, watching them play their sports you know, everything, baseball, started out with tee ball, and basketball, and soccer, dance for Ella, just watching them grow up and turn into neat people.
Oral History Interview Reflection
How does your tradition-bearer’s story relate to you?
I think that the story that my grandpa relates to me in multiple ways. First, my grandpa had three kids making it a family of five, while I also live in a family of five. I also feel that, even though I have grown up in a much bigger city than my grandpa, I still feel like I have had a smaller community lifestyle. I go to a very small church just like my grandpa did, and I mainly grew up with one other family along with mine because we shared a house on the lake and that was where I spent most of my summers.
How did your perception of community history change, from before the interview to now?
I think the biggest thing that I didn't realize before this interview was all of the struggles that my ancestors went through. Before this project, I had no idea that my ancestors lived in Kansas were involved with the Dust Bowl. I also wasn’t aware of how hard my grandpa had to work. Multiple times throughout the interview my grandpa talked about how either him or his wife had to take up an extra job to supplement their income so that they could allow their kids to go to college. I gained a lot of respect for my grandpa and grandma through this.
How did this project inspire you to learn more about your family and community?
Before this project, I barely knew anything about my family history, so when I started using ancestry.com, it was super cool to see. I think that using ancestry.com inspired me the most because there was so many things that I wanted to look into, I wanted to look at all of the pictures and see all of the documents. This project really opened me up to my family history which I think is very intriguing.
What were some of the challenges you faced during this project? What could you do differently in your next oral history interview?
I think that the biggest challenge that I faced was trying to find a time to do the interview. My grandpa is still getting used to using his phone so when I texted him it would sometimes take a while to get back and my grandpa had to send the texts for him. They were also on vacation in California while I needed to do the interview so it was really hard to get the timing right considering what they were doing and the time zone difference. I also had to do the interview on the phone which went well most of the time, but there were some parts that it cut out and it was difficult to hear what my grandpa had to say. If I were to do another oral history interview, I would really like to do it in person next time. This would eliminate the cutting out during the interview and I think that I could potentially get even more specific answers.
If the roles were reversed and you became the tradition-bearer, what stories would you like to tell?
I think that most of my stories are yet to come, but I would definitely talk a lot about my family. I think that I would talk a lot about my dad because he had been a role model for me along with my mom. I got very lucky having my parents and them not getting divorced or anything like that, so I would definitely go into that. I think I would go into parts about my high school career, I have always been pretty serious about school and my parents have also been very strict about my grades, so I would go into things about my high school.
My Sources
Book on Dallas County:
Dallas County, Darcy Dougherty-Maulsby, Arcadia Publishing, September 4th, 2017
Western Movie:
The Magnificent Seven, Antione Fuqua (Director), Roger Birnbaum (Producer). September 23rd, 2016
Site on the Dust Bowl:
Dust Bowl, History,com Editors, A&E Television Networks, October 27th, 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl
Site on Farming:
Corn Growing 101, Anna McConnel, Successful Farming, March 22nd, 2018, https://www.agriculture.com/crops/corn/corn-growing-101
