Interview of Streeter Blair

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
APRIL 15, 1965

BLAIR

About 1923, Ray Havens, International Rotary president, also chief potentate of the Shrine (his father before him having been chief potentate — the only time in history a father and son held the same high office), was a printer. He published a leather-bound, one hundred -page book. On the outside of it, in gold, was the title, What I Know About Women. This book could be read in five or six seconds. The pages were all blank, but the message was very vivid. Now, here I am talking into a tape. I didn't know it could hear; I do not believe that it can talk, but they tell me that some girls with earphones can listen in. Now you can't see the words any more than you could the words in Ray Havens's book, but, like the telephone, you cannot see the words go along the wire; but they say there are hearing stations in people's homes where you can plug in and got the words. If this tape can carry the words and you can't either see them or hear them we'll have it on faith that this talk is not for naught, but maybe just as well be. The beginning of the story I am trying to relate starts long before I was on earth. Therefore I cannot vouch for any of the truths until I get to the point where I'm probably four to six years old. Everything up to that point is hearsay. My father and mother were very truthful; they could not tell a lie--the town they lived in was so small you'd get caught at it. But later on a man that they said was my grandfather confirmed a lot of the things they told me. At that time this man was not my grandfather; neither was he my father's father. But the hearsay is that he and a bride moved from somewhere in Ohio and homesteaded eighty acres of land, south of Kansas City, very near the Missouri border. He also was a blacksmith and opened a blacksmith's shop, the first one south of Kansas City for ninety-six miles. They came in a mover wagon. Now, what is a mover wagon? A mover wagon is the precedent in a way of today's house trailer. It was pulled by horses. The tires never went flat, either on the horses or the wagon. The tires on the horses were steel, the tires on the wagon were steel — they never had a flat tire. [tape recorder turned off] My dad said he was born in a log cabin. Later on, I remember that when I visited Grandpa James Blair and Grandma, they lived in a cottage, but behind the cottage was a log cabin connected by a platform. The log cabin had a fireplace and so did the cottage. Now this pioneer farm and blacksmith's shop was six miles from Fort Scott, Kansas. Fort Scott, Kansas, today is just the name of a town; but at this period, before the Civil War and during it, it was a fort. My grandfather was a horseshoer in the Union Army; -and, whether after that or before, I do not know, he told about the fact that when General [Sterling] Price raided eastern Kansas from Missouri, the news came that he was headed for their homestead and was burning all barns and houses. Grandpa put his family in the mover wagon, tied a cow on behind and they fled to Mill Creek for safety, but General Price turned north and their homestead was left intact. I do remember that what was, in my time, a place where they milked the cows, was really a fort by itself, where the family could get in this stone high wall and there were apertures or openings where you could shoot Indians if necessary. [tape recorder turned off] Apparently I had several uncles and one aunt on Dad's side; there was Arie, John, Nixon and Aunt Lizzy. Crossroads on the prairie at that time were just trails and Grandfather's blacksmith shop was at the southwest corner. Dad had a horse and tells about a Fourth of July celebration six miles from there. He rode early in the morning, arrived at eight o'clock and had a dime to spend all day. But they were just making lemonade and before eight o'clock he spent his dime for lemonade and had nothing the rest of the day. It was a custom then, and for a while much later, for a farmer to give a boy a calf, thinking he would take more interest in the farm work. It was also customary that when the calf got big enough to sell, the farmer would sell the calf, keep the money and give the boy another calf. Dad didn't care much for farming; he was a little bit of a poet. As a young fellow he wrote some poetry and would drop the poems in the mailbox, without his signature. It turned out that forty years later a book was published called The Hundred Best Poems of America, and his poem was in that. Anyway, Dad kept his calf long enough to sell it and get enough money to study at the Fort Scott Normal School for about eight weeks. This made him an unusually veil educated man in those days. He got a job teaching school about thirty miles north at a place called Cadmus, Kansas. He got fifteen dollars a month and paid three dollars a month for board and room at a farmhouse. The only thing that made the town was a schoolhouse, a church, a blacksmith's shop, and a cooperative store organized by the Grangers — not because they -thought that private business was charging too much for merchandise, but so they could have a store conveniently located because they did not wish to drive six miles west to a town on a railroad, Parker, Kansas, nor east to La Cygne, Kansas, which was seven miles. A farmer could not drive more than four miles to do his purchasing and take in his produce (eggs, chickens, and butter, which he traded for groceries and even clothing), and get home in time in the evening to do the chores — especially if he had to have his horses shod at the blacksmith's shop. It was slow travel because they never went to town unless it rained and they couldn't plow, and so the roads were muddy. Anyway, these farmers ran their store for a year and lost seven hundred dollars. It seems that they didn't realize that if you bought something in Kansas City wholesale, shipped it down to Parker, Kansas, and had a team and wagon pick it up there and haul it six miles to Cadmus, and then pay a little bit in tax money, and hire a clerk, you couldn't sell that dollar article for a dollar and a quarter and make any money. Now my dad, having been a well-educated man and smart — cause he was a school teacher — was hired in 1886 to manage the store. Dad took over and paid dividends on the stock each year of the fifteen years that we lived there before we moved to Kansas City. [tape recorder turned off] About 1887 it seems that a girl by the name of Lulu Hiatt came to Cadmus. Now I never knew Lulu Hiatt? when I knew her her name was Lulu Blair. Not long after this, when I was probably about five years old, about 189 3, I began to remember things. A family lived a mile west of Cadmus, the crossroads town, and when Dad and Mother went anywhere overnight — which usually was when they went to Kansas City to purchase goods for the store — they would leave me with a family called the Loves. The Love family consisted of Anna, Lulu, Delia, Hattie, and Orin — one of those was a boy.

DIXON

Orin. [laughter]

BLAIR

It seems that Anna and Lulu, from the time I must have been a year and a half or two years old, had me sleep between them. And, for some reason, I made a great discovery which seemed very exciting, and ever after that they had me sleep with Orin. [laughter] That's one of the first four things I remember. Another was that one day our horse and buggy was. hitched up — we were going to visit some farmer, it was a hot July day, I had on a new, blue sailor suit — and Mother said, "Take the little bucket, run down to the spring and get us a cool drink of water before we get out onto the dusty road. Be careful. Do not get your. new suit dirty." Well, I fell into the spring.

DIXON

Naturally.

BLAIR

I remember that, and I remember that when I was going to attend school, my mother took me to the front gate and told some farmer children, who were walking to school, three-quarters of a mile away, to kinda look after me. As I went out the gate, she shed a tear. To me that was something terrible and I said to her, "I'll just go one day and try it, and if I do not like it I'll never go again." The fourth thing I remember is I climbed up a porch post and got on top of the porch of our house. I was in the heavens; I was beyond the universe ; I was up higher than the catalpa tree adjoining the porch. When I slid down this pole it felt good, and I climbed up three times more and slid down again-And then, conscience! A terrible conscience I had; anything you want to do is wrong.

DIXON

It's either illegal, immoral or fattening.

BLAIR

Uncle Love, as we called him, was the Cadmus blacksmith. He walked every day to his blacksmith's shop, down Elm Creek, which surrounded [Cadmus] on three sides, but on the north was the borderline of our acre. He carried a gun, would shoot rabbits, and every now and then drop a rabbit off to us. He was the best friend — I even thought he was my uncle for a long time. Now his blacksmith's shop was at Cadmus — Cadmus was too small to be in. [tape recorder turned off] The life at Cadmus, for the fifteen years, was so varied. Who knows which was first, so let's forget sequence. And let's forget dangling phrases. [Marcel] Proust, Gertrude Stein, [James] Joyce broke through all the rules of rhetoric--and what is rhetoric? What is grammar? It's amazing to think that all the classics were written and all the masterful paintings were painted before there was a grammar or a. rule book for painting. Maybe, if this were being written, it might start a new fad — pay no attention if you use dangling phrases. Grammar, of course, was one of the things my dad taught when he was in the Cadmus school. He tried to get the farmer children to improve their grammar. One day he said, "Do not end a sentence with a preposition. That is incorrect. Do not say, 'Where's it at?' Say, 'Where is it?'" There was a great silence and soon John Hope said, "Where's what at?" Dad also made a rule that boys could not chew tobacco and spit on the floor in the country school. Dad had a spittoon. He chewed tobacco from the time he was -eleven years old. By the way, he lived to be about ninety, and he had perfect teeth till he was seventy. One of the boys, who resented the idea that you couldn't spit on the floor, came in a little late the next day, dragging a cigar box behind him, on which he had four spools as wheels, and the cigar box was filled with wood ashes. That was his spittoon. [tape recorder turned off] It happened that I continued going to school, whether I liked it or not. I became a very famous individual. I was janitor of the schoolhouse. My job was to get there — particularly on cold mornings — build a fire in the coal stove, sweep out the schoolhouse, and have it as warm as possible (which was not warm) for the not "scholars," but "pupils" who attended. I also had another great honor. I was janitor of the church. Now the church had two big coal stoves and hanging lights, thirty-six in number, and each Sunday it was my job to sweep the church, build the fires, get on a ladder, clean the lamp globes, fill the lamps with coal oil, and have everything cozy when the twelve members, or attendants, came to church. I was paid a nickel a week for that. I got twenty cents a week as janitor of the school. The church passed the hat every Sunday, and I was supposed to put the nickel in the collection box; but for the first time in my life I stood pat and didn't do what everyone thought I should do. I stood up for myself and kept the nickel. That was my breakthrough to being an independent individual. One time a missionary came, or rather an evangelist, although Cadmus was so situated you might have thought it would take a missionary to find it. One time he asked each of the congregation to stand up and tell what they were thankful for. The last one was an elderly woman who said she was thankful that she had two teeth. The evangelist said, "Here we are: a sister more thankful, never have any of us. We have told about we were thankful for health, a good horse and buggy, a new washing machine or washboard, or something like that — and she's thankful that she has two teeth. May I ask her why did she select this?" And she -Said she was thankful because they hit. Now the same evangelist said -that he was also a phrenologist, that by feeling a person's head he could tell what they should be or should have been. I was one of the first to respond. He felt my head and said I should be a lawyer. [tape recorder turned off] I did not know what a lawyer was. I didn't know whether I would want to be one if it was something. The evangelist also said that no two people were alike. He said, "If we were all alike, all of you men would have wanted my wife." An old fellow down in front said, "And if they'd all been like me none of them would have had her. " Dad did not want me to work in the store because if he'd let me work there, some farmers would think their boys should work in the store. They did let me count eggs on Saturdays and sell nails. Later on I was promoted to selling thread out of the thread box. Theodore Macintyre, a farmer boy, was Dad's first assistant. He kept the books and was a good writer, but he was new at selling merchandise. There was a sale, so to speak--at least things were marked down for a period, really things that were out of date — and my dad told Theodore that anything in that group or anything that was damaged to sell at half price. A woman came in one day and asked to see some drawers. This store carried everything from groceries, coal oil, tar, cultivators — anything really a farmer could use excepting a threshing machine which involved a big separator and steam engine, but even those could be obtained on special order. Anyway, when Theodore took down -the drawers to show the woman, he noticed that there was, he thought, a rip down the front. When he saw that he said to the woman, "These are damaged. You can have them at half price." I spent most of my summers plowing. When I was ten years old I was supposed to be a man--that is, if I could plow an acre and a half with a walking plow in a day. Everything in the country was based on how much work can you do. It was so impressed on me that I felt guilty if I were going to a picnic and saw a man plowing. I did not know then, of course, the glory there is of running your own farm, plowing your own soil, and while you're doing that, see the seedlings come and bear into grain and fruit. The experiences of plowing for farmers at fifty cents a day at the time had no interest excepting the fifty cents. One farmer I worked for — who prayed louder than anybody else at the church — gave me a job of running a com binder. He also had a team with a second binder and when one of the horses balked, he jumped down, grabbed a whip and whipped one of the horses, and said, "You are the goddamnedest creature God ever stretched a hide over." This fellow was the loudest prayer member in the church. He also told me that women didn't dare monkey with him. I didn't know what that meant, but he said they were laying carpet and the neighbor woman came in to help him lay carpet. Now all carpet was homespun, woven on a hand loom; it had to be stretched and tacked, with tacks around the four walls about every six inches. He was down tacking and stopped, and it seems the neighbor woman pushed him over. And he said, "Women don't monkey with me." He pushed her over and his wife hit him with a broom. With all these things going on in life it disturbed me a little because I didn't know what they meant [then] and maybe don't now. Another farmer I worked for had a stepson, George Soursby. His sister lived in the same farmhouse, too. George had the finest team of horses and finest sleigh and the finest buggy of anyone in eastern Kansas. He was a great penman. He could write beautifully Spencerian style, -which, by the way, when I got into school was the thing until I was about in the fourth grade, and then vertical writing came in. When vertical writing came in and we had to change, I ended up neither. But the training was -good, because it still holds with me to this day — neither. People would drive miles to have George Soursby write calling cards for them, or at least cards. They could see their name in writing, if never in print. One woman drove from La Cygne, about seven miles; George was there, he took the order, went into his den or room and came out after two hours and said (he talked in a very low voice), "I cannot write your cards today. Sister Emma has moved my table and I cannot get my feet in the proper position." The woman left without her cards but she came back and got the cards later. He was a sensation, this genius. With his sleigh, when the snows came, he would hitch up his fine horses and go to certain farms and take the young women a sleigh ride. Particularly he went to the Macintyres, a mile and a half south of Cadmus, where Maud and Mabel lived. He would go to the door and rap. If the girls came, fine; if the mother came to the door, he would say, "I have come to take your daughters a sleigh ride, but I want it strictly understood I have no matrimonial intentions." [tape recorder turned off] Going back to Uncle Love: he really wasn't my uncle, so far as I knew. However, he was a Republican and my dad -was a Democrat. When the Populist movement came along. Dad and that group — particularly since the Populists represented the farmer — all got behind the Populist movement. Uncle Love, being a Republican, did not like this, so he succeeded in getting the post office removed from the t.ore to an old building he constructed next to his black-smith shop. Dad was glad of that; he was tired of having to sell a stamp and charge it on a busy day. In the store everything was charged; nothing was cash. When farmers harvested a crop they would bring all the money in to Dad and put it in the safe. If they brought produce at the time for more than what they traded out, Dad gave them a due bill which was cash — they could bring it in and spend it like cash. Sometimes a farmer's bill would run as high as seven and eight hundred dollars at the end of a season, and if he had a poor crop, no statements were presented. We hoped that the next crop would be good, and if it was, they brought the money in and instead of a bank they'd just come in and say to Dad, "I want ten dollars," or five dollars, and it was charged — no bank. With this credit business, in the fifteen years under Dad's management, the store lost less than one hundred dollars. Farmer boys were gradually leaving the farm and going to Kansas City where they could get a dollar a day in cash working in the stockyards. They were tired of getting up at five o'clock in the morning, milking, doing chores, harnessing the horses, having breakfast, plowing or working until sundown, and then milk and do chores. No entertainment unless someone gave a dance, and once in a while there was a picnic, grange picnic. Of course, the boy who had a horse and buggy of his own would take his girl for a ride and all that, but no cash, nothing to spend. And yet, they lived in good homes, had good barns, good clothing, everything very comfortable from the point of view of just living. It worried the farmers and some of the young women that -these farmer boys were going to Kansas City and getting a little cash in their pockets. They wondered who was going to run the farm. Now, at fifty years old you were supposed to be an old man in those days. Nearly every funny story started out — -and it always got an immediate smile — "One time an old man -.about fifty years old..." I can remember my dad saying lie had always hoped he would live to be forty-five. Roy Payne didn't like farming and so his dad said that he ought to go to the agricultural college at Manhattan, Kansas, and learn something about scientific farming. The biggest joke in eastern Kansas was that a boy would go to college to learn to farm. Anyway, Roy went to college about three months and came back and he had learned something; he knew how to waltz. Prior to that all dances were square dances. Roy taught the Macintyre girls, Maud and Mabel; they taught some others and pretty soon, when there was a grange hall dance, the young people waltzed. The older people, sitting around the edges of the hall (there were no babysitters, all babies and children were brought and would be asleep on the little stage platform or on chairs) thought that this dance was very immoral and almost caused a split in the Grange. The boys almost threatened to go to Kansas City and get a job if they couldn't have the dance. They compromised, with each alternate dance being a square dance or a round dance, as they called them, a waltz. To break up this trend to the city my mother, who managed Cadmus and all the surrounding territory like my dad managed the store, got an idea: make life so good for the young men they would never want to leave the farm. She got the grange women together and they made a banner twelve feet long and three feet high out of felt. They took yellow ears of corn and sliced off inch-thick sections which made a sort of a wheel with a white center and a golden outside with the kernels. They mounted these on the felt, put it up in the grange hall, and it said, "Stay on the farm, boys!" What else did she do? She told Dad, "We need a new grange store and a new grange hall. We've got to make it interesting to keep Cadmus the culture center, or to make it one and to make the young people want to stay on the farm. What do you think?" Dad said, "Well, that's good, hut I have a better idea, or at least another idea. We need more room in the store." The old store building was made up of three sections, one added onto another as business grew; but it was a firetrap. One time, as he recalled to Mother, the store caught on fire, late one night, somewhere in the ceiling where the hot fumes went up in the big stove on the first floor. They had dug a well at Cadmus by that time, and with one pump, men with buckets had put out the fire. So, to have a fireproof building was Dad's main interest, and a large one. Dad got the directors of the store to vote that all stockholders would waive dividends for one year — the six percent on their stock — and that with the cash reserve that he had, they could build a stone store building forty feet by a hundred feet, two stories, and use the old store for machinery and furniture and things that might not be such a fire hazard. Uncle Love owned two shares of stock in the Grange. That was twenty dollars' worth; one share was ten dollars. If you joined the Grange, which you did when you were fourteen, you had to own one share of stock, ten dollars. Uncle Love had two shares and wasn't going to get his dollar-twenty dividend, but that was not the reason. He hated Populists. He caused a lot of trouble, quit coming -to Grange, and the board of directors stood steady — if they gave him the dividends, then others would have the same right. One day Orin came at full speed and rushed into the store and said, "Dad has gone to Parker to get a gun. He. says he's going to kill you," that was my dad and Dory (Theodore) [Macintyre], the bookkeeper. He said, "I wouldn't let him have a horse but he's gone on foot." Well, consternation. Why, Cadmus never had a police, an officer. There was no law whatsoever; everyone was honest. There was only one law that the farmers of Cadmus knew: the United States mail has the right-of-way. Now the United States mail was carried from La Cygne to Cadmus in the morning and on to Parker, a trip one way of thirteen miles; and then returned in the afternoon, thirteen miles. The mail carrier was Hosey, a small colored boy, and he drove a mule. The farmers knew the United States mail had the right-of-way. Many a time in snowdrifts, in mud, here would come Hosey with the mail, meeting a farmer with a heavy load of grain or hay; and when they saw Hosey come, they would pull out to the side of the road and the United States mail. Uncle Sam, went by. [laughter] Orin said he would try to catch the old man if he really was coming back from Parker with a gun. There were two ways he could come from Parker to Cadmus. Orin took the right way, caught Uncle Love and took the gun away from him, but after that. Uncle Love, the greatest friend I had, was my greatest fear. He no longer went to Grange or came in the store, and in his letter he had said, "I will raise hell in your family because you have raised hell in my family." The hell he referred to in his family was the fact that the children and Auntie Love were for the new progress of the store, the grange hall, and that argument in the family is what he called "raised hell in his family." Going back to some of the pleasing things, though, and the wonderful Uncle Love period, when he would take me fishing — I was hoeing popcorn one day (we raised our potatoes, popcorn, garden, everything, on our acre of ground); Uncle Love stopped and said that the Marais des Cygnes River was flooding acres and acres and it would be a good time to catch some big fish. The Marais des Cygnes River flowed within five miles of Cadmus and went on through La Cygne meaning, the swans) and thereon into the Missouri or Mississippi, I do not know yet which. Mother said I could go with Uncle Love. He had his team and wagon loaded with "trout lines and fish traps which he had made. When we were about a mile from the river, there was a fork in the road. One road goes to the right, and we took the left road. After we went about a hundred yards, here is a stream, a roaring torrent; but it was not the river, of course. There was no bridge; it was a ford. We could see where the road came out on the other side, and Uncle Love knew pretty well there was a rock foundation to cross on, over which water flowed in normal times. He picked out the course and started in. It happened that the two right wheels of the wagon missed the rock work, and the jagged edges under the water caught in the spokes and the team stopped. They x:ould not go forward — yes, they could have, but not without breaking spokes — and they couldn't go back. There we are, "the water running through the wagon box; what would we do? Uncle Love had no rope, but he had an ax. He immediately tossed the ax back to the bank; he reached down and pulled out the kingpin that held the doubletrees. Gently he gathered the horses with the doubletrees around to the left of the wagon and back onto the bank. When they went far enough, he made a jump, landed partly in the water, and told me to jump. I jumped and landed more than partly in the water, but got out by grabbing a bush. There we were — -310 rope, but an ax. How would you solve this problem to getting your wagon? Uncle Love selected an elm tree, a hickory tree, a willow tree; these trees all had a section of probably ten feet before there was a major limb. Around the bottom, he cut the bark; and up as high as he could reach, he cut the bark. He stripped this bark off the different trees until he had probably fifty or sixty strands, He had me hold about five of them together, and he braided the five. Every few feet he would install another bark strip. When he got through braiding, we had a rope about -thirty feet long, made out of bark. He cut a pole and placed it, one end on the bank and the other down under the water on the axle of the wagon. He tossed one end of the rope into the wagon, crawled out on the pole, reached down and tied one end of the rope left center on the back axle. Why left? He hitched up the team to the rope and steadily, as though they knew what they were doing, they tightened. And at the first pull, because the rope was tied to the left of center of the axle, the wagon veered a little to the right, and released the spokes from the jagged rocks, and the wagon was pulled out. We hitched up and we went back, took the other road, and in a short distance came to flooded fields. There, living in a little shack, was what I would call a hermit who fished. Uncle Love knew him. He had a rowboat, so we loaded up the trout lines and fish traps and started rowing over cornfields. He tied one end of the trout line to a tree where we started and it probably reached another tree about four hundred feet away. The trout lines were baited, and then on the return rowing trip (the water was not swift; it was backwater over these fields), he put his fish traps. They were handmade, with a hoop for the opening, and then smaller hoops on down to the last, which would let a large fish through, and then came out into a larger space. In there. Uncle Love put corn bread and some liver or other fish bait; and then we went back to the hermit's cottage, and there he made coffee. I was allowed to have one :. demitasse — as we call it now; to me it was a toy cup — full of coffee every other Sunday. But here I had a real cup of coffee and, of course, I would have to tell Mother — I must tell her everything — but I had the coffee. The next day or two, the old hermit-fisherman was to bring some fish to Cadmus. Just as we left, I noticed that the cupboard in this shack had the words on it, "Cadmus Grange Store, Ed Blair, manager," and I wondered then had he paid the nickel for that big pine dry-goods box when he got the box from Dad. Very likely he did. But in a few days came the old fisherman with big fish, and all Cadmus had fish. But no fish was as large as [the one that] Jim Kuntz, the one-legged man, brought in one day from the Marais des Cygnes. He had a ninety-pound catfish, and everybody had fish.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
APRIL 15, 1965

BLAIR

In the country, the farmer children went to school till they were twenty years old or married. The older they were, the more years they'd gone to school, and the further they got in the same books. Arithmetic, penmanship, geography, and the readers, which ranged from first reader to fifth reader, constituted the whole course of study. It seems it took about eight years for a youngster to get old enough to quit school, but they were not considered grades. Spelling was very important. We would all stand up — that is, each class or each group — and the teacher would give us words. When you misspelled a word, the next one was given it, and then they kept a book on headmarks. Now the headmark meant the one that was the top of the class. Of course, the game was to try to spell him down and the next one get in. Sometimes, if three miss a word, why, the person would move up three or four positions. It was a good deal like a parlor game. I can remember my chum, Clyde Pulhamus, and I were nip and tuck for headmarks the most in the year. The way they had us study, you would repeat it over and over, without thinking, repeating the words as you studied under your breath and spelled every letter. You didn't study it mentally, and you didn't read mentally — you spoke the words in a whisper as you read. Anyway, in the spelling lesson was the word "said." Clyde and I were sitting side by side in the country school's desks, which were a great improvement over the time when my dad had taught in that school, where everyone sat on benches. Clyde was studying the word — I could hear it under his breath — "S-i-a-d, said, s-i-a-d, said, s-i-a-d, said," and I knew he was learning it wrong. Of course, my conscience smote me somewhat, and I thought, "I should tell him, but no, if he happens to get that word, he'll miss it." And that's what happened. He got the word "said,". and spelled it s-i-a-d. And the teacher gave it to me, and I got s-a-i-d, and I went to the head of the class. I got the headmark. Ada Brottrell, a farmer daughter, walked to school from a mile and a half west. Of course I walked east, half a mile to the store and then a quarter-mile north to our acre. She would borrow my penknife to sharpen a pencil oftener than she would borrow the knife of any other boy. We were taught manners by the teacher: if you loan your knife to a girl, open the blade and hand it to her, not blade forward; and when she's through with it, she should close the knife and return it. Ada. received many favors [from me] at times, such as picking up a pencil for her. But the great, great romance did not develop until a little later when it comes time, in the program of progress and culture at Cadmus, to practice Christmas carols for the community Christmas tree. There was no well on the school grounds. They had recess at ten o'clock, an hour at noon, and recess at about two-thirty; and school was out at four. We who had pretty good grades were permitted to take a water bucket, a large tin one, which was carried between two boys on a broomstick. We would go down the dusty road and could get water at the Camptons', about two-thirds of the way to the store. But a rumor came one day that they found a rat in that well, so from that time on, we went on to the store for our water, a half a mile away, where there was a pump. This pump was quite a new thing at that time. Farmers watered their horses as they'd come to town at Elm Creek, which practically surrounded Cadmus, as we've said, on three sides. And then there was a little spring (that always had water in it) on the south, that flowed into Elm Creek. So there was not much need. The spring, in which I had been baptized, was about the same distance from the store as our house. But after this pump was put in, there was a water trough for horses and we would go there for our water. When we got back to school it was an honor for someone else to be able to pass the water bucket to the thirty students of all grades in the school. There was one dipper and the one passing the water would go down one aisle and up the other. There were so many dregs and maybe some bread crumbs in the last few dippers of the water that the fellow who got the last drink might have had part of his lunch at the same time. Now, in games, we played baseball and what we called football. Baseball was just the opposite from today. It was called... well, just baseball. No sides. Every time anybody got out, so to speak, everybody moved up one. So at all times, each one would eventually be a catcher or a pitcher, and then there'd always be somebody at the bat. When he'd batted, then the next one would move up. 1 was pitcher, and a good one, for the reason that I could throw the ball right over the plate nearly every time and make it easy for somebody to hit. When I learned later on that baseball played in the big towns was just the opposite--you were supposed to throw the ball so nobody could hit it-- I never could understand why that wouldn't take all the fun of it. But I was so good that one day I threw a nice, soft ball right over the plate and the biggest boy there, Harry Wishert, knocked a beeliner, and it hit me on the temple, [tape recorder turned off]. As to football — there were two stakes at each end of the playing yard, and two fellows would choose up to see who would be on his side. The idea was for the members on one side to try to kick the ball between the stakes of the other, and that was great sport. We got a football by several of us donating a nickel apiece for about a dollar, or dollar and a half in those days (which would be about -.equal to ten dollars now). The big boys kicked it pretty hard, and, of course, it would puncture by being kicked into the hedge. But we had a way of patching it with some cement and a piece of rubber. Then we would blow it up, through the tube, bend it over and tie it, poke the little nozzle down and lace it up. One time, they kicked it so hard, one of the boys did, that the whole bladder inside burst, and it was about ten percent full of bread crumbs, because they always blowed it up right after lunch and no water. Anyway, the teacher that I remember going to first was a man. He was a farmer, lived across Elm Creek, east of Cadmus, and his son went to school. His son was somewhat mischievous, but because he didn't want to be prejudiced, if any two boys got to arguing or got into a fight, he would come out with a stick and whip his own son first. He told us that he did that so nobody could say he was prejudiced. So his son always got a licking, and most of the times deserved it. His name was Solon Shinkle. He really had no conscience. He could lie if he wanted to, and one of the Pulhamus boys could; but Clyde and I, we always told the truth. But anyway, Solon (not when his father was teacher, because they had brought in a woman teacher, and Solon had a lot more freedom), one evening after school, said he wanted to talk to me. Well, I knew right away that I should go right straight home or be questioned. But he, after all, was a little older, so we sat down under a hedge tree at the edge of the schoolyard, and he said, "Do you know where babies come from?" And I said, "No, not necessarily." "Well," he says, "I know." He says, "You know, I just had a baby sister, and I know -when it all started. I saw my mother and father go into the outhouse at the same time and they came out laughing." And he says, "That's when it started." Now the other thing he says, "What do you think of rugby and American football?" Well, I had never heard of rugby football, and I didn't know the football we played even was American football — which it couldn't have been. Well, I felt very guilty to think I'd never heard of rugby. But anyway, he explained it to me, and he said, "You should be in favor of one of the two." He said, "The rugby football is fairly safe, but American football is murder. It's rough. They kill people. Are you in favor of that?" And I said, "No." So that was settled, and we went home. That night, of course, my mother said, "Why are you late home from school?" And when I told her that Solon said he wanted to talk to me and we talked for a while, she said, ^What did you talk about?" I only told her about the football. The Pulhamus boys, three of 'em — Clarence, Clyde and -Emmett, the oldest one — all went to school at the same time, and as they would go down to the store, before they'd built the new store, they would go in the front door. ^They'd turn to go south and walk the full length of the store, about a hundred and ten feet; and as they went down -the aisle and came to the grocery department, each would -^grab a handful of dried peaches or prunes or whatever was eatable. Well, Theodore, the bookkeeper, lived in the same section of ground (Maud and Mabel were his sisters), and he knew the Pulhamus boys pretty well. So one day he took a bar of soap, cut it up into little cubes that looked like some kind of candy, put tissue paper around them, and put them on top of the prune box. As the Pulhamus boys went through, they each grabbed one. By the time they got to the back door they made a dash for the pump, and they were frothing at the mouth. Mixed in with going to school, of course, was the summer. I really was to work. First job I got — I must have been eight — was pulling kale out of flax, for Uncle Love, on his farm. I got twenty-five cents a day. To pull kale out of flax you have to pull it at a certain time — you go by the bloom. The plant looks the same, but the kale has a purple bloom and the flax more of a yellow. So you would take a swath about twenty feet wide and walk from one end of the forty-acre field, or more, and back to the other, and that was that. I got twenty-five cents a day. Then I got a job plowing for the Davises — that's where George Soursby, the fellow who could write so well, lived — and there I plowed with the walking plow. One day, we were -taking a cultivator out where I was to cultivate corn. The tongue was tied into the wagon box at the back, and George was driving the team. Old man Davis was sitting to the right of the tongue, and I was sitting on the other side. And he goes to turn a corner, and the tongue swings toward Mr. Davis. I jumped up and told George, "Be careful. Don't -turn so short; Mr. Davis is likely to get pinched." And George says, "If he wants to get pinched, let him get -pinched." Well, of course, as the tongue swung toward him, he'd put one hand in the wagon box, raise up; and when we got straightened he sat down again. Little things like that, not important in the history of America, but anything that had to do in Cadmus — anybody criticizing anybody or not caring — impressed me greatly. In fact, in some cases it was the beginning of a fight — of course, a fistfight. The next job I had for plowing was in a field which adjoins Uncle Love's farm. This was after Uncle Love had threatened to raise hell in our family. I'd never seen him really, except at a distance, after that, until this time. I had a sixteen-inch plow and two big powerful horses. Just like in life, we sometimes are glad to pull a sheet off the calendar, for some exciting event anticipated; at the same time we do that, we pull off a sheet that makes us nearer, equally, to something we are not so eager to have maybe, like the day for paying income tax. In this case, when I had plowed toward Uncle Love's farm, when I was about a hundred feet or so from finishing that field, each furrow brought me sixteen inches closer to a large clump of sod. This clump of sod had been there ever since Adam and Eve; no plow had ever gone through it. It had within it whatever wildflower was there hundreds of years before, if any. So I decided with this big team I would turn over this sod, by taking a few inches at a time. Now I knew that it was none of my business. All the other plows had skidded around it, and each time they did, it grew a little. So I, in my great trying to clear my conscience that it ought to be done, would say this: that in time that clump could take the whole field, growing a little every year. If I could just get that out of there, I could reclaim some soil and have better crops and more of them. Well, we get closer and closer, each time, sixteen inches closer to the big hedge fence — and just across the road from there was Uncle Love's home, and he might be there, he might want to kill me. When I take hold of the first eight inches of soil, the team stops. They know; they'd been there for a good many years. "Why," I think, "now's my chance." So I tap the lines, and they pull and they go; but the plow stays, the doubletree breaks in two, and I'm left holding the plow handles. There is the greatest catastrophe known to mind of man or me at that time. What will I do? I've broken, unnecessarily perhaps, this doubletree. Nobody in the world could fix it (I don't know where you could buy one) but Uncle Love across over home, if he happened to be there. I would be afraid to face the farmer. Right away, I cancelled all he owed me for the week's plowing — probably the whole of two dollars and a half. If I could only get away and never let him see me again... but the horses had to be taken in and I had to face him. In the meantime, I would risk my life and go across, for some reason, and tell Uncle Love. I didn't know why. I go through the hedge, go through the white picket gate, walk down to the front door, and with all my courage I rap on the door. It opens, and there is Lulu. "Well, Streeter, where did you come from? Come in. Pa." "Oh, she's going to get Uncle Love," [I thought]. He comes to the living room door. "What is it?" I tell Lulu, not him. He says, ""Come with me." Right then, I know that's it — I shall be murdered. But that's better than going home to the farmer with a broken doubletree. So, he goes out the back door to the woodpile. Gets an ax. "Well," I thought, "that's as quick as any way." Then he goes to the coal house--a shed — and gets his gun. Which is it going to be? Be turns over toward the hedge across the road, crawls through the hedge, and he begins chopping in a hedge tree. It's the hardest wood ever known, harder than olive wood, equal almost to what they call ironwood. It's difficult to find a piece of hedge. Osage orange, great, big, wonderful, green, bitter, sticky oranges. I thought, "Well, he's chopping a limb to put a rope over or something — maybe I'm going to be hung." First thing I know, he has a piece of hedge wood shaped a good deal like a doubletree — all with an ax. Goes to the house, gets a wrench and a brace and bit, comes back, takes the iron off the broken doubletree, drills some holes, puts it back; and again I'm plowing. I didn't say good-bye; he didn't. I didn't say thank you-- I'd escaped with my life; I couldn't have said anything. I plowed, but I still had to face the farmer — I broke his doubletree. I get back that evening, and first thing T tell him, I says, "I wasted at least an hour and a half or two hours without plowing. You don't have to pay me. I broke your doubletree." And he says, "Broke it?" He says, "I hoped that thing would break some day, then we'd get a new one. Why look what you've got there. Where'd you get that?" I said, "Uncle Love made it." He said, "Money could never buy one as good as that." And he paid me for the full day. [tape recorder turned off] The main things that keep going on in life are going on at the same time at Cadmus. For instance, there is a community Christmas tree. There is the box supper where young men bid on decorated boxes--inside is a chicken and cake. Then there is the cow pasture. The cow pasture bordered on each side... in other words. Elm Creek ran through the cow pasture for three-quarters of a mile, but this creek travelled three-quarters to go only half a mile. At the back of our acre was a bluff--limestone rock, ledges like almost laid by a stonemason--and there grew flowers, wild columbine, daisies, and all that sort of thing. It was a sort of decoration to the pool of water below, which at least must have been thirty feet long, two feet deep and ten feet wide. It was an enormous place in Elm Creek. I even had a boat there one time, a mortar box. I wanted a bicycle when I was about eight years old. I had seen a bicycle in pictures only; but one day I'm out in the hot dust in July, and something comes along real fast that makes only one track. It went so fast, and I knew it had to have one wheel — there was only one track. From that time on, whatever it was, I wanted a bicycle. I told my parents, and they said when I was twelve years old I could have a bicycle. If you want to live a long, long time of four years, next time you're eight years old just have somebody promise you a bicycle. You could live a lifetime. All right. This Elm Creek wiggled around and, of course, came by the schoolhouse, where our pasture ended. This schoolhouse was on the main road west to Uncle Love's from Cadmus, but the half-mile road, which was unusual, went down north till it hit Elm Creek and a farm down there. In fact, that's where the man lived that hired me to plow this field that brought me the great catastrophe of the broken doubletree. But in this whole cow pasture, there's never been a plow. It was bordered on the north, full length, with a stone wall, not laid with mortar, but the field beyond was good soil. This stone wall was built by the early farmers "there, with rocks picked up in the cow pasture, but principally from stones, loose stones, in the ground that could be plowed. It was a beautiful, winding affair, not square on top; but the whole top was held down and all the stones below, with one rock leaned against another for the full length. In that pasture, not far from our back gate, our cow and horse were pastured right from our acre, and other farmer horses were pastured in there at times; there was water all the time, at least somewhere. Even in the droughts, some of the pools had water, tadpoles and a few little fish, and always a few frogs and a turtle. Anyway, there were two big black walnut trees not far from our gate entrance to the pasture, and one enormous elm. That elm tree was my fort, if I wanted to live up in the tree. The two walnut trees, each year, bore so many walnuts, I could take my little wagon, go down there, and haul in five or six loads of wonderful black walnuts, more delightful in flavor to me always than any of the so-called English walnuts of California. In fact, I thought a walnut was a walnut. You know, it's a great thing when you learn something to find out there sometimes are two kinds of a thing. When they talked about English walnuts later, I thought, "Well, they ought to have another name, they're so different from walnuts." Anyway, in this pasture were some big boulders, limestone, and up through them grew [tape recorder turned off] four locust trees. There was my real fort. I could get in among those boulders, under the protection of those umbrella-like locust trees, and I was safe, absolutely safe from every danger in the world — the principal one of which would have been a jack rabbit. When I was old enough, I was sent after the cow. You had to bring the cow in and milk her. And if you wanted to -go anywhere and needed the horse, you had to go and get your horse and bring it in. In order to catch the horse, you'd have to hold the halter behind your back and have a. part of an ear of corn in your hand, not because the horse didn't want to be caught, but [because] it didn't want to be caught without getting some corn. Anyway, my dad, who, ^s we've said, didn't particularly like the farm, would ^o out in the pasture--it was a Sunday morning — come back ;and tell Mother, "Our horse Billy was not in the pasture." So she would go out, and the first horse would be Billy. Dad didn't have much of a talent for telling his bay horse from any of the others. In fact, one time later, when we -moved to another town. Dad rented a livery stable team and drove to the county seat, Olathe, Kansas, to pay his taxes or something. On the way home, about three miles from Olathe, the sheriff caught up with Dad and stopped him and -said, "Ed, where'd you get that team?" He said, "I rented it at the livery stable in Spring Hills. So what?" He said, "No, you didn't." "I didn't?" "No," he said. "The -team you're driving home belongs to a farmer in Olathe, and your team is still hitched to the racks." Dad didn't care much for horses excepting he liked horses. And when poor Billy, the family horse, got a nail in his foot, a rusty nail, and there was not such thing as a horse doctor (there was not even near Cadmus a family doctor), poor Billy was given "all the things that they put in a bottle," as a farmer said. "Hold up the horse's head, and turn the bottle, and pour it down his nostril." But it didn't cure Billy; he died, with lockjaw. Dad wrote a poem about Billy — he loved Billy, the same as the rest of us. When I was old enough to read, I thought how great it would be to read Dad's book of poems. He was a poet; he had a book of poems published, and they were all about Kansas days. I stumbled onto the poem "Billy," and being so proud to read, I started reading it out loud to Mother while she was baking bread. What I read had no meaning; it was the words I knew. I was so proud to know the words, so I just went along and pronounced the words. Pretty soon my mother was crying, and then I realized that she was thinking about Billy, which I wasn't — I was just thinking about the words. As to poetry — Dad, in building the business in this country store, advertised in the La Cygne Journal and the Parker News, [both] weeklies. He had always believed in advertising. The local merchants in those towns didn't believe much in advertising, because they said everybody knew where they were. But here comes the thought: they ring a church bell every Sunday; everybody knows it's Sunday; everybody knows there's a church; but there is some psychology there that you're being called, your attention is being gotten to church. But Dad, to build this business, not only wrote a little verse in his ad (farmers and city people would cut out these little poems and paste them on the kitchen wall, like they used to have calendars), he also, to build the business, where in these other towns on the railroad they would give five bars of Lennox soap for a quarter. Dad gave six. You could get fifty pounds of flour for ninety-five cents instead of a dollar. It's true that people would sometimes drive through Parker, Kansas, and come to Dad's store to buy a plow or a cultivator. This grange store, six miles from the railroad, was the most successful store of the whole Granger movement, prior to the time of when the government respected the farmers. The Grange was primarily responsible for good roads in the nation and rural free delivery. Rural free delivery and good roads did not fit in with the capitalists in New York, who loved to loan money on Kansas farms. When they [farmers] had a poor crop and couldn't pay the interest, bingo — closed. Woodrow Wilson stopped that when he put in government control of Wall Street and a few other things. But anyway, good roads and rural free delivery came due to the Granger movement. For the first time, fellows running for governors, for representatives, for senators, and for presidents listened to the farmers and were lucky and glad -to speak. William Jennings Bryan was one. By the way, William Jennings Bryan came to La Cygne to talk when he was running for president. Of course, somebody had to introduce him; so one of the locals got up — he'd never made a speech in his life — to introduce William Jennings Bryan, and he started out, "The next president, and the great farmer of Nebraska who raises wheat and all those different things." And when he got down to the name, he said, "William J. Brennings." [laughter] And the people knew whom he meant. By the way, do you represent whom? Now, that word "whom," it's a bugbear. If you represent somebody, you don't want to say, "Who do you represent?" You should say, "Whom do you represent?" Well, you know it's in just as good sense to say, "Be sure you get it in the accusative," which is Latin, or the objective case, to say, "Do you represent whom?" OK. That's great history. Now we've handled the cow pasture, the walnuts and some of the politics. By the way, do you know what a callithumpian parade is?. DIXON : No.

BLAIR

A callithumpian parade is a parade of no theme except, "Don't vote for one party, vote for the other." Now the boys at school, most of them were Republicans for -McKinley, and they wore a cap with gold letters on it. He was for the gold standard. But the Populists that voted for Bryan, we wore caps with silver letters. I wore a -silver letter. I was for Bryan, but I didn't know why. But the Pulhamus boys, who were my best friends, wore McKinley caps. They said that if Bryan was ever elected, they'd kill him; the Republicans would kill him. Well, that made me know that [even] if I could vote for Bryan, I wouldn't dare vote for him — I didn't want him killed. [tape recorder turned off] The callithumpian parade, so far as I know, didn't go through a town. It went miles and miles in front of the farmhouses, made up of those who were in favor of a certain party. They never had a callithumpian parade where anybody could be in there unless he was for one party or the other. One of the main features, which drew the biggest crowd, ^as this: a fellow had a hayrack, pulled by horses, of course — all of these so-called floats [were]. He turned a crank, and it turned a wheel that ran a belt. He was standing, turning this [crank], and behind him was a boot on some kind of an affair, so that every round the boot kicked him. He was kicking himself because he had voted the Republican party. By the way, a callithumpian parade and a shivaree... I can't find the word "shivaree" in the dictionary. It's probably because I didn't know how to spell it.

DIXON

That's because you didn't look under c-h-a-r-i-v-a-r-i.

BLAIR

I learned, however, the actual meaning of it; it's -too soon to talk about it now, but I did specialize in Latin and taught. [Anyway], I couldn't find how to spell -charivari, but I did find the word "chivy," meaning to follow, almost persecute, disturb. And then I knew of course, of the goddess Eros, meaning the one that confounded and disturbed. By putting the two together I could get out the meaning the word charivari: to follow and disturb. Well, I still don't know how to spell it; but, anyway, I used it in some writing I did. Next door to us, or rather to the house at Cadmus, at the end of our acre towards the store, lived two women--sisters. One of them was the schoolteacher at Cadmus after Solon Shinkle's father went back to farming. Now this very fat one was the teacher. Students would come home from school — I wasn't the only one — and tell their mother that she smelled bad. I would hear the women gossiping a little bit, "She doesn't take a bath often enough, or something." Anyway, I stayed all night there on grange nights sometimes (I wasn't old enough to go to Grange — perhaps I was then about ten). When I did stay, I slept on a bed in the living room of the cottage. Well, one night Floyd Cady came to take the schoolteacher to Grange, or it was a date — I didn't know. (There were no such things as dates. If a young man went with a girl five times and she didn't give him "the mitten" — whatever that was — they continued to go together and were married. When she gave him "the mitten," they didn't go together anymore; meaning, no marriage.) Anyway, it happened I was asleep in this bed in the living room. Before I went to sleep, Floyd had come to visit, or take the schoolteacher to Grange. She had to join the Grange, if she could, when she. came there. Everybody joined the Grange if you were fourteen years old. Now if you didn't join, it means you couldn't. Every new name was presented, and when they got ready to vote on a candidate (which had to be recommended by three members), they would say, "White balls elect, black balls reject. Vote for the good of the order." Well, only one person that I know of in all those years was rejected. So, the schoolteacher was elected. Before I go to sleep, the lights are turned very low, I suppose so I could sleep. And you know, the schoolteacher -and Floyd were trying on each other's shoes, and it was so much fun they laughed — I could hardly go to sleep. [laughter] So, I thought, "Gee, when are they going to Grange?" Well, anyway, after a while the lights go out, and do you know, I was greatly frightened later. I hear some terrible groaning going on, down on the floor somewhere, and I'm frightened. But if I would make myself known that I knew, it would be bad, so, I didn't know it. But the next morning the other sister, who slept in the bedroom adjoining the living room, said to her sister, "You kept me awake nearly all night." Anyway, this teacher was a good teacher, and later on Floyd and this teacher were married. Well, the shivaree was natural, so the neighbors and some of those not so close gathered together in front of the bride's home that night. They beat dishpans, they blew horns, they yelled, and they made all the noise they could carry out the part of chivy--which means disturb and pursue — and not a one came to the door for a treat. You were -supposed to come to the door for a treat. Finally the blacksmith — not Uncle Love but another blacksmith that had :3noved in, who couldn't join the Grange for some reason — got a double-barrel shotgun, and put in two barrels loaded. at. had two triggers, and he pulled both of them at the same time with the shotgun against the weatherboarding of the house. And Floyd came to the front door, and he says, "Goddamn it, Ed" (that's my dad), "take 'em down to the grange store and buy 'em some candy and charge it to me.". He slammed the door. Well, that's what they did. We had candy. [tape recorder turned off] A town like Cadmus (which is not a town) would be a big one, because according to acreage it would be four miles :north, south, east and west. These farmers did not go to Parker to trade; they did not go to La Cygne — they came to Cadmus. They all belonged to the Grange. They had a community Christmas tree in the church, put on by the grange members, but not as grangers and certainly not as church members. The church members were grangers first and church members second. We had no evergreens. There were two farms I can remember had evergreen trees, but they were big trees--nobody's going to cut them down. We didn't know an evergreen Christmas tree. Young men would go out, up the creek, and find a deciduous tree, perhaps it could be oak, but what they thought would be a good shape; and they would install it on the platform of the church. Women would meet, and they would string popcorn on threads, probably a hundred yards of it. This would be draped on the deciduous, leaf-barren tree, and then the Grange would buy candy, all of it at least ten cents a pound, those days, which would be pretty good candy today even, maybe eighty. Then out of cheesecloth, in colors, little bags would be made and candy put in there. Every child got one of those sacks of candy. The popcorn was a decoration. No matter what gift you were giving, it would be brought to the church, put on the floor around the tree; or, if it could be hung, it would be on the tree. This would include combs, brushes, looking glasses, bracelets, anything; even, I think, sometimes an engagement ring would be put on the tree. It included washboards, axes, guns, knives--anything that was needed was first as a Christmas gift. It did not have to be just a treat. When -the songs had been sung, two or three young men would go to the tree and take down a gift, read the name, call it out loud, and hold it up for everybody to see. The expectancy, of course, developed, was great, particularly if your name hadn't been called for a while. Well, getting ready for this particular tree, I remember my mother played organ in the Grange, and had Christmas carol practice at our home. She really taught some of the farmer boys and girls how to sing by note. She asked me if I would go and get Ada for this Christmas carol practice--the one who had borrowed my knife. I'll admit, I'm sure that a note or two [had been passed that] had some three words in it, like, you know, "I kind of like you," or something like that. Well, I hitched up the team (poor Billy was gone; we had a team of small ponies and a surrey with a fringe on top). So, in the cold snowy night, I was very glad for once to hitch up the horses; and in the two-seated surrey, I go after Ada, who [lived] a mile west of the store and about a mile south of Loves'. I brought her to Christmas carol practice, and then I had to take her home. I didn't have a date — this wasn't a date — but on the way home I wondered, "Am I going to get out of the buggy and help her, or should I just let her get out when we get to the farm?" I decided I would get out and help her down. Well, you know, the terrible thing happened. When she stepped on the step, the iron step of the buggy, it was slippery; and she fell right into my arms, and her lips fell right on mine. Well, I want to tell you, I knew then I was married. She goes in the front gate; I go home.

DIXON

How old were you?

BLAIR

It really was sort of an early date to be married. I was about thirteen, because I hadn't yet been able to join the Grange. But I was old enough to be in Christmas carol practice. In fact, I sang bass, so-called. Now the Christmas tree comes along. Cadmus grew twenty-five percent in thirty days. To begin with, they had a church, a school, a blacksmith shop, and a store. That was increased twenty-five percent because a cabinet-. maker came to Cadmus and opened a cabinet shop. He made his own jigsaw. He took a bicycle wheel, or a wheel like it; and as it turned, it pulled a belt, which turned something else; and a little fine saw jiggled up and down. He could saw circles; he could saw fancy things like the human mind had never known. He made it all. He made the wheel — that's right — out of hickory when the sap was running, bended it with spokes and all that. After a time, he died. They had an auction. I'd never heard of an auction. He had no relatives apparently, but somebody had reason; they sold everything he had. When this saw came up, I went down there, and I had no money. They started out bidding a nickel, a dime. I had no money, but I bid twenty-five cents and everybody stopped bidding. "Sold!" Oh, there I owned this wonderful saw, but no money. On a dead run I go to the store. Dad was not there, but Theodore (Dory) is there; and I tell him, "I've got to have a quarter. I bought this wonderful saw down there. It's worth a million; I got it for a quarter. I want a quarter." And Dory said, "I can't give you a quarter unless your dad's here." I said, "Well, he won't care." I said, "I've got to have it." Dory says, "Well, I'll give you a quarter, and then we'll tell your dad." I take the quarter and I go back and pay for the saw. I run home and get my wagon; I come back, get the saw; and for fear that something might happen, I run home, pulling the wagon, and the saw is mine. I get it home. I could make things like comb cases with little curlicues, and a little shelf and a bracket. I had this little shop of mine in an empty corn crib, adjoining the barn. In the corn crib I had what now I know was an early flour box, with a sled-open lid. Each year I would husk my popcorn, which I raised on the acre, and would put it in there. I was ,very wealthy when I had that full of popcorn. Now I had this saw. But anyway, I made, in order not to be prejudiced, a comb case for my mother. We hung it in the kitchen dining room, and you could put a comb and brush on the little shelf. There was no mirror. I made one for Ada. Making one for my mother was a cover up; in other words, it was just an ordinary procedure on my part. Well, when this was held up at church, "Ada Brottrell," it was a glorious time for me. Everyone knew she got a comb case, but like every good joy -there's always a counterpart. Who knew who gave it to her? Anyway, we might go ahead with this. There's quite a lapse of time in there because we do move away from Cadmus, but that's something else. No, we'll let that go until we do move away from Cadmus. Eventually, when we did move away from Cadmus, it turned out that I was released, reluctantly, from having to marry Ada. She saw to that. [tape recorder turned off] Box suppers required money; you had to at least have -twenty-five cents to buy one. Well, I went to one at the schoolhouse. I didn't buy anything; I was just there. But south of Cadmus, at the home of the Wilkies, there was a box supper to raise money for the church. The grandmother Wilkie could move around; she was quite well, heavy set, and spent most of her time knitting in a large rocking chair. But I have twenty-five cents to bid for a decorated box. Most of the boxes went for thirty cents and some of them as high as forty-five cents, and my quarter would soon be out of the race. Gets down to almost the last box, and I don't know which one it is, and " I get it — whatever they're holding, whatever they're bidding on — for a quarter. When I get it, it is a Sells shoe box with no decoration, not even a colored string. And am I embarrassed! I was at least thirteen or fourteen. It turns out to be Mrs. Wilkie's box. I never had fried chicken, or anything like that, so unwelcome, as my having to sit by this elderly, heavy-set woman and eat out of the Sells shoe box when all the young men were with girls with beautifully decorated boxes.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
APRIL 15, 1965

BLAIR

Cadmus was eternal — provided eternal went backwards; that is, Cadmus to me had always been there. Every tree had always been there. Everything that existed was there, had been, was, and always would be. The only thing bothered me... towns were different sizes. A tree gets larger by growing; a boy gets larger--certainly towns must. For instance, I had been to Fort Scott; they had streetcars. I had been to Kansas City; they had streetcars. I could not comprehend anything but the small areas: in each town which I contacted. I was always puzzled; which was the larger. Fort Scott or Kansas City? But the only reason Cadmus was not large enough must have been that even though eternal, it wasn't as old as the other towns. But give it time; it would grow. [tape recorder turned off] It's true that now we've gotten rid of the pasture, box suppers, Christmas tree, plowing, we still have some other things that we must do. One is that each summer, when Billy was the horse at least, Dad and Mother, my sister and I would get up at five o'clock in the morning, shaking to get up so early — excitement. We were all going to get into the surrey and drive thirty miles to [the home of] Grandfather James Blair, the pioneer farmer and blacksmith, and stay there a week. We would take our dinner to eat at noon (you had supper at night) ; we would take some apples. It was a picnic. Uphill, downhill, pulled i)y old Billy, muddy sometimes, regular roads, natural, in other words, roads upon earth. By the way, rains had a lot to do with life. They not only supported life to the crops, but handicapped many picnics and trips. In fact, my dad used to get up in the morning, and if there'd been a rain he'd say, "Well, we'll be busy today. It rained." If Saturday came, the principal busy day, and everything was fine outdoors — no rain — Dad would say, "Not much business today." No farmer would come to town if he could plow. When it was muddy, and he couldn't plow, he'd come to town. But things change--automobiles come in. Dad would get up in the morning after a rain, and he'd say, "Well, no business today. The farmers can't get to town." They couldn't travel in an old Ford in the mud. But things changed again. "Proust says everything becomes its opposite eventually. The illegitimate daughter of a Guermantes could never appear in a Guermantes mansion, at a salon, even though her father and mother were married eventually; the father passed on before he ever saw his daughter admitted to the Guermantes mansion. But things change. Eventually a Guermantes marries her, and she becomes Princess Guermantes, the top post for a woman in Paris. So things change again; they had good roads due to ^he farmers getting into politics. My dad would get up in 1:he morning and say, "Well, it rained last night; we'll be busy today." The farmers could come to town on good roads. This particular trip to Grandpa Blair's, about twenty -miles from Cadmus, we would try to make between five-thirty in the morning and maybe two o'clock. [It was to] Mound City, the county seat. We would turn into a livery stable; they would feed oats to Billy; and we would eat our chicken and dinner in the livery stable office. One year, we decided it would be great sport to drive on a mile beyond Mound City, have a picnic lunch, and take oats along for Billy. Just before we got into Mound City, there was a red bridge; and the minute we hit that bridge, Billy, even though he had had trouble pulling the buggy uphill and downhill, the minute he hit that red bridge, he got full of life. You could hardly hold him; -he made, it straight for the livery stable, right through town. That wonderful rhythm of ta ta ta ta ta ta ta — a fast trot, not quite a gallop. This time Billy didn't get to turn into the livery stable, and Dad almost had to use the whip. We went on to this beautiful stream, a mile beyond, unhitched Billy, spread our dinner, gave Billy his oats, and he did not eat one nibble. He would not eat one nibble of oats. We felt sorry for Billy. His heart was broken; he didn't get to go in the livery stable. But my mother got him to eat about a tablespoonful of homemade cake. Well, we put the oats back in the buggy, hitched up Billy, we drove the other ten miles, and Billy could hardly pull the buggy all afternoon. We got him there, however; and he got us there. [We] put Billy in the barn and fed him some grain, but he didn't care to eat — Billy was sick for three days. [tape recorder turned off] One time we went down to see Grandma and Grandpa a little earlier than usual. Grandma Blair was sick. She and Grandpa Blair were great companions. They both smoked. Grandma Blair I didn't really think was a woman. She was wiry, active, and smoked a clay pipe. To me she was Grandma Blair, but not a woman. But she baked wonderful pumpkin pies and everything that goes with it. But Grandma was sick. We arrive, she's sick in bed, and the doctor said, "What you really need, would be some beer once in a while." Well, in Kansas you couldn't buy cigarettes — no man could sell papers with pouch tobacco that could make a cigarette — but somehow or other Grandpa knew where in Fort Scott to get some beer. So Dad and Grandpa and I and my other cousins, who lived nearby, went to Fort Scott, the great city that had streetcars. We came home with beer in bottles. What beer was, I didn't know--it was medicine so far as I was concerned. They hung the beer in the deep well, where it had cold water. The first day, Grandma had a bottle of beer, a little at a time, and a little the second day. The third day, my mother went out to the well to bring up the beer, but the beer was all gone. Grandpa had had it. One time Grandma and Grandpa decided to quit smoking. They quit, but it seems that in a few weeks both of them got the toothache at the same time. They used to enjoy sitting in front of the log fire, smoking a pipe before going to bed. A fireplace was a wonderful thing. Just think of it, a fire built on the floor of your house--I had never seen such a thing. Why, that was going back, as I later learned, earlier than the Franklin stove, the first stove, and it was placed in a fireplace. Of course, the great progress between just a fireplace and the Franklin stove was this: a fireback made by a man they called [Henry] Stiegel. This was the beginning of universal heat, so to speak. You could build a fire in the fireplace, but there would be a bedroom behind this fireplace. The fireback was a decorated, in relief, sheet of iron, with no wall at that point between the fireplace and the bedroom. Therefore, you got some heat in the bedroom. Anyway, this was one of the old fashioned fireplaces; it didn't have a fireback, nor did it have artificial logs, arid neither did it have gas. It had the unusual thing of wood burning in a fireplace. With these terrible toothaches. Grandma and Grandpa decided to smoke. And the toothaches went then, forever. There was always one thing that bothered me, though, about grandmas and grandpas; I had two grandpas and three grandmas — that I could never understand. Now the other grandpa, whose name was Hiatt, had a sawmill. Once in a great while, my mother and I would go to see him when we were on this trip to Fort Scott, but not very often. I couldn't understand, if Grandpa and Grandma Blair were Dad's parents, why Grandpa Hiatt and his grandma (to me), our mother didn't care too much about. Well, after [a while] I'd figured out that the real grandma to my mother lived in Kansas City in a little house by herself down in Armourdale, took in washing, had her front yard full of flowers, sold them for ten cents a bunch, and had a quart jar full of dimes. This grandma, we all visited, and when my parents were buying for the store, I would be left with this grandma in Kansas City. But later on, it seems as though there was some reason why I had three grandmas and two grandpas, and it came about that one of the former hired girls of Grandpa Hiatt became the third grandma, [tape recorder turned off] Grandma in Kansas City was a wonderful person. She had bananas on the table. One time, when the folks had gone over into Kansas City, Missouri, with a streetcar, to do their buying, she let me have all the bananas I wanted--and that was too many. Grandma Hiatt really ran a good deal of territory in Armourdale, Kansas, one block from Central Avenue, where the streetcars take you across the Kansas River and up the bluff to Kansas City, Missouri. West one block were the railroad yards. Engines and freight cars all the time. A train was the greatest thing in the world. The next greatest thing in the world was a steam threshing machine. Here is a steam engine that had no track, that went right down the country roads and pulled the big separator. Sometimes, coming up the hill by our Cadmus house, where there were some rocks on this steep little hill, the wheels would slip. That was the greatest joy of my life. They had to back down; they had to do this, do that; and with great puffs and huffs, it finally took a toehold with the cleats on the drive wheels and pulled the old separator. This small engine, shuddering, shaking, and panting, climbed the hill and pulled that separator like no horse or team of horses could do. They would go somewhere to thresh, and if it didn't rain I would spend hours seeing those wonderful tracks where a steam engine had gone. But of course later, I got old enough to help thresh and had to drop that for a while. But to go back to Grandma Hiatt. I could walk down past the few houses to the railroad yard... I knew what I should do, what I should not do. I always knew that; that was my trouble. I was robbed of so much, it seems, by knowing what I ought to do and ought not to do. But the terrible thing was I couldn't do, as a rule, the things that I should not do. But here they're switching freight cars right along on the track next to me real slow, and I ran out, grabbed ahold of the little iron ladder going up the side, and by the time I had ridden about three feet a policeman saw me. That was exactly my guidance all the way through life. The Pulhamus boys could steal watermelons; I couldn't. One time there was an ice cream social at the Pulhamus boys' home. They had a watermelon patch, and Clarence, the middle one of the Pulhamus boys... (He really lived a great life. He could lie; he could cheat; he was wonderful. Clyde was more like I was: he was honest part of the time. My hellish life was I had to be honest all the time. To my chagrin, anything was all right with the other boys if they could get me to do it. That put a great burden on me because I would refuse.) But in this case, Clarence said to me, "Let's us go out to the watermelon patch and get a watermelon." And I said, "Did your dad say you could?" He says, "He won't care." Well, I said, "Did he say you could?" He says, "He wouldn't care; it's our watermelon patch." So I says, "Why do you want me to go?" "Oh," he says, "you... you go, it'll be all right if you'd go." I said I would go as far as the fence. I would not go in the patch; I would not eat any of the melon unless their dad said we could. I sat on the fence; the boys went in and had watermelon; and the old man caught me sitting on the fence. So, back in Kansas City, true to Hoyle, I could go to a picnic when I would drive the horse and buggy — a Fourth of July celebration somewhere — and there were rows of big trees at a park. A big sign said, "Do not hitch horses here." I would drive up, and every tree had a horse hitched and a buggy hitched to it but one. I would be cautiously tying my horse to this tree, and honest to goodness it never failed: an officer would come and say, "Can't you read the sign?"

DIXON

That's your luck.

BLAIR

It was either my luck or bad luck, I do not know which. But, it's [better] not to have to be good naturally than to be good because you have an unconscientionousable conscience. Now that word is not in the dictionary. There is the word unconscionable, which means to have no mercy, but that means something else. But when you have a conscience that is unmerciful to itself, I have created the word "unconscientionousable conscience." It's hard to spell and harder to say. Anyway, I do not regret such a -conscience, because it was kind of wonderful in life, when you really grow up, to still have a lot of things new in your life, not having had them all, not knowing they were unusual. Anyway, Grandma Hiatt takes me over, as usual, sometime during the day, to Kansas City, Missouri. We are on a streetcar, and there is a sign in the front [which] said, "Do not pull bell cord; call conductor if you want to get off of the streetcar." In front of us sits a man with a derby hat and a black alpaca coat. They wouldn't call it alpaca now — today there's a more high-class name for it — but it was, in those days, an alpaca coat. He had a celluloid collar — boy, they were great inventions; you never had to wash them. In those days, everything was "how long will it wear?" Style had nothing. "How long will it wear?" If it would wear like iron, that would be the best tie there was. Who wanted an iron necktie? A suit would wear like iron. One firm came out with a suit you could punch a pencil through and jerk it, and no hole. That would wear forever. That was the problem about boys' suits, too. No boy ever had a suit that fit him. He was growing, and they wanted to get. a suit that would wear a long time, so they had to buy it three years older, for size, than he was. He hated it while it was new, and when he got big enough to wear it, it was worn out. Clothes, shelter, and food were the necessities of life — never anything for joy. Anyway, the man in front of Grandma and me decided he wanted off of the streetcar. He stood up and reached for the bell rope. Grandma had always carried an umbrella with a hooked handle. She reached up, -hooked the handle over the back of his celluloid collar and jerked down on it, and he sat down quickly. The celluloid collar broke into pieces and the collar buttons flew, and she said, "Do you see the sign?" She was running the streetcar company, the same as my mother ran Cadmus and the surrounding territory. [tape recorder turned off] The trips to Kansas City, of course, and the trips down to Grandpa Blair's were the great events of life before fourteen, when you could join the Grange. Getting up in the morning to catch a 6:30 M.K.&T. [K.&M.T.; Kansas and Missouri Railway and Terminal] train from Parker to Kansas City, I would begin to shake, dressing, just like the engine did as it would come into the station, shaking, breathing, vibrating, Did you ever feel lonesome or sad when they took away steam engines?

DIXON

Yes.

BLAIR

There is a record, the only record anybody ever gave me that I liked. I have my own types of liking. I even like some people better than others. But I do not decide, do I like you or not like you — you don't either on purpose. Not long ago, we had an open house at Christmas, and a dentist friend came with a sack, pulled out a bottle of something that was wrapped, put it under our little tree, looked in the sack and said, "My goodness, where can it be?" And I said, "What?" He says, "I brought you something that you're going to love." He rushed out to the car and came back in with an eight-inch record. I thought, "Oh my, a record. Who picks music for me?" After the party I put it on my Magnavox player. You can turn on the treble; you can cut it down; it has two horns, three speakers — you can almost pick up individual instruments of an orchestra or band. This was the actual record of a railroad engine — I say "actual record"; it was so real that if you could have heard an engine puffing and snorting, and had music at the same time, it would be this record. But this record was made by an orchestra, and in a thousand guesses you would not know what the drummer did that made the engine real. You'd say the rhythm: ta da ta da, ta da ta da, ta da ta. da — I've played drums all my life, so I know. But he did something else. In that exhaust of steam coming into the cylinder in which lies the piston, when the exhaust from that piston comes, and a new group of steam comes in, the old engine boiler breathes, shakes, trembles, and you can hear it along with the puffing and the steam exhaust. The imitation of the shudder of the engine in addition to the rhythm of the steam coming and going was so perfect I was puzzled for a while. But soon, having played trap drums almost all my life, I realized this fellow had loosened the bass drum. I mean by that the heads of the drum. The cowhides, or calfskin hides rather, or maybe kangaroo, were loose enough that when the foot pedal hit it there was a vibration in the drumhead beyond the striking of the drumstick. With my Magnavox, I can tune out most of the treble, and I emphasized the bass. And if you hadn't heard the orchestra at all, you would believe you were listening to an old steam engine, speeding along the best it could, and all of a sudden getting over a grade and going downgrade with increased speed — but the same rhythm, speeded up, and the same tremor of the engine boiler, [tape recorder turned off] If you are not sorry or lonesome for the steam engine, you probably are pretty young. The fireman and the engineer — the little steam engines, after the up- and down-grade puffing, [would] glide like a feather into the yards — they would get out; they would mop the sweat off the engine; they would pet it; and when (even though [just] another steam engine) they were transferred to a newer engine, they were sad. But how sad could they be when they put them on diesels? If you have ever loved the old steam engine, almost like the engineer and fireman, then you have missed knowing what a certain type of love can be. [tape recorder turned off] Everyone at Cadmus was honest and good. They all belonged to the Grange but one, and he was really not of that district. Not all the people in the territory of Cadmus were particularly smart, but I believe they did more good, some of them, being good, than if they'd been smart. Anyway, we had a hired girl by the name of Jenny Fritchie. She had gone to the country school and had taken the examination five times to get a certificate, if possible, to teach in a country school, but she failed each of the five times. She was our hired girl afterwards. (My mother was busy at the store a lot of times.) One of the reasons, perhaps, that Jenny Fritchie didn't pass the examination — there might be a little clue here — is she could not tell time by a clock. Now her brother, Henry Fritchie, was just as bright as she was, and he certainly didn't worry a great deal; he must have been happy. Trimming hedge was a must in eastern Kansas. This osage hedge was planted in the early days by the pioneers for a quick but hard-growth fence. The trees grew so tall that at crossroads, believe it or not, one horse and buggy might run into another, because you could not see around a corner then any more than you can today in a block corner in a city where you have automobiles. Kansas passed a law that every farmer had to keep his hedges trimmed to waist high — well, what did "waist" mean? I know a fellow, he was so short if the hedge was three feet high it would have been all right, and other fellows had a waist so high I don't think you could have seen over that. Right at this moment, I shouldn't throw this in — disturb things — but there was a very short man at Cadmus. He was so short, he married the tallest woman in the district. Well, there was a wisecrack or two. Now, Henry Fritchie was a good hedge trimmer. He got a dollar a day, and he had worked a week, finished his job, went to the farmer and said, "How much is it?" And the farmer says, "Six dollars." Henry said, "You want me to pay you in cash or work it out?" [tape recorder turned off] We can go back to the same Christmas where I gave a homemade, do-it-yourself comb case to Ada. That night I received the greatest gift known to the mind of a boy--a drum. Yes, it was a toy drum, but about the biggest toy drum you could have. It had snares on it. It probably cost two dollars, but it was at least fourteen inches across the head. Clyde got one too — my chum. As soon as we got them, we left the Christmas tree — nothing else counted — we went out in the snow and beat our drums such as we knew how, then back in to see what else we got. On the way home that night (we walked down the hill from the church to the grange store, and then we would go on a quarter-mile further to our house), on the way down the hill, it was slippery. I fell and landed on my drum, and thereafter it was oval shape, not round. [tape recorder turned off] A doctor moved to Cadmus. Dr. Dallas, a wonderful friend, lived on a farm four miles west of Cadmus and two miles east, of course, of Parker. He was the family doctor for that area. He had a beautiful farm; he had a hired man, and a burro and cart. When we would go there for Sunday dinner, it was like going to a new world. I remember they let me ride the burro. I rode down the road, and when we got to a certain point, he lay down on the road, saddle and all. I was frightened, but I got him up, I got on him, and he was all right. We went back to the house. I told Dr. Dallas about it, and he said, "Well, don't give Tip, just go on. You can make him do that." Well, I tried again. We get to the same spot, he lies down in the identical spot again, and we ride home all right. I was beginning to part my hair a little. I had a very bad pompadour, as they called it then, and a cowlick too. With a cowlick you couldn't part your hair, and he [Dr. Dallas] knew that worried me, and he said, "Well, if it ever parts, don't part it in the middle." He said, "No man that ever parts his hair in the middle would marry my daughter." Well, if my hair would have parted in the middle I would have done so. I did not like his daughter. Now Cadmus has a doctor all its own. He came with a wife and two daughters, one about sixteen, one perhaps eighteen. Dad rented him a little space in the old grange store — all this before the new store was constructed. Soon -after, there was a smallpox scare, and the weekly paper said, "Get vaccinated." That was a new word in Cadmus. But this doctor said he would vaccinate people for a dollar, in some cases less — children less. All [in] the surrounding territory were vaccinated. No one had a sore arm from it, and nothing happened except the little blood that squirted when he vaccinated on the arm. Several mentioned this to the doctor and he said, "Well, maybe my vaccine was too old." But that was all right; nobody got the smallpox. Most of them believed they would have had it even so, but they went through [with it] and here is a thought: they had no fear of smallpox because they were vaccinated. We know that fear can bring upon us sometimes the thing we fear. President Roosevelt brought that out. Anyway, [the doctor's] two daughters were very exciting. I was just about fourteen. One of these daughters had a bicycle. The other daughter was too sedate to have a bicycle. She really helped her father a little, such as going to Beagle, Kansas, with horse and buggy to get certain drugs that he needed to have in his doctor's kit. This was the eighteen-year-old one. She used to let me ride with her to Beagle when we would go after medicine supplies for Father. I really loved her, I suppose, and she always told me how good I was. I didn't like that word "good," but coming from her I didn't mind. Now the other daughter was living the present. When Elm Creek was frozen over, and the Pulhamus boys and a bunch of us would skate down there, she would come down and skate with us. One time she stretched out on her back, flat on the ice, and the boys skated all around her. Emmett, the oldest Pulhamus boy, said later he wished he could have fallen on her — by accident. Anyway, she rode this bicycle, and there was a lot of gossip about her in Cadmus. A terrible thing. It shocked all the women, including my mother. And here was the terrible thing. They weren't sure, these women, but they were very sure that when she rode the bicycle she wore nothing but a long, heavy woolen skirt; she did not wear a petticoat under that skirt. I tell you, she couldn't have joined the Grange if she had tried. There wouldn't have been just three black balls, but many.

DIXON

Oh, she was a wicked one.

BLAIR

Oh, yes.

DIXON

Oh, my. [tape recorder turned off]

BLAIR

If you do not remember that I'd been promised a bicycle when I would become twelve years old, I remember it. I am now (at the time the doctor moved to town) at least thirteen. But I had passed, according to the calendar, my twelfth birthday. I was so certain that I was going to receive a bicycle I could hardly dare think of only a few hours ahead. But I saw a new buggy, a brand-new buggy, on the porch in front of the store, for sale. In place of old Billy, we had two small so-called ponies. They were small horses. Bird and^ Bud. Bird was a light sorrel; Bud was a lazy bay. Well, here is this buggy. Could it be for me as a birthday [present], instead of a bicycle? In a few days more I would know. On the morning of my birthday I was told, "We have a wonderful gift for your birthday; it's a boat." Not a bicycle. Elm Creek had the Bluegrass Hole and another hole without a name, but there were probably three what they called "holes" of water at least forty feet long and eight or ten feet wide in normal times. They told me my new boat was down across the pasture, below our cow pasture but after the stream had crossed the road at our boundary, and that it was mine. I went down there, and here was a boat. It was a boat that I had helped a carpenter build. Well, a boat was a boat — I could get right out on the water. I could take people a ride. Solon Shinkle lived right above it, and the only place where there was a tree was on his side where their farm joined this hole. So I put a chain and lock on it, because Solon I didn't think was too trusty. It turned out that I made a deal with him, that if he would watch the boat, I would give him one of the keys. Well, Solon didn't care much for boats, but anyway, I had the boat and a lot of fun. But prior to that, I'd had a boat I liked just as well. When our well was dug at Cadmus, they blasted rock, they struck water, and one of the rocks was lifted out of the well and fell a hundred and fifty feet from the well, directly behind our house, and landed almost in Elm Creek, but up on the bluff. Much of this rock was used later as a sort of gravel, chert, to build a foundation somewhat for a cellar and the floor of a cellar — a cyclone cellar where the canned fruit and potatoes can be kept — and in case of a cyclone we could run down there. Well, these stonemasons left their mortar box; they didn't want it. I got some boys to help me, and we pushed it and pushed it and rolled it on round pieces of wood and got it into the hole of water right directly behind our acre. It leaked, but I patched it with many things and pounded fabric into the cracks and got it where I could row a little and have a boat for at least thirty feet. Well, the new boat was nice, but it was no great [novelty]. However, that didn't bother me long because there was a cloudburst up the way. Elm Creek became so wide and so furious, no man could cross it with a horse and buggy, or wagon, or on horseback. When the water went -down, my boat was gone. I suppose in a few days it was in the Gulf of Mexico. [tape recorder turned off] After Uncle Love made the better-than-usual doubletree, and after I gave up trying to reclaim land, once in a while Uncle Love would appear at the back door of our house with his gun and a rabbit. I still was afraid of the fact that he had a gun, but the rabbit didn't seem to fit in well with going to kill somebody. His blacksmith's shop resumed his attention, but all this was prior to the actual building of the new grange store and grange hall. Building this was quite an undertaking, since rock was quarried half a mile south of Cadmus, out of a pasture, near the little stream that flowed south of Cadmus and then into Elm Creek. There was a new work, very important, that came to me — that was to take the bay pony and carry water in a jug from the grange store pump to the men working in the quarry. There was no electric drill then; no one had heard of electric light (unless it were an Edison, having it as a dream). I carried water for twenty-five cents a day. All the holes for the dynamite were drilled by one man holding the drill with his hands — no pliers or tongs — and another man with all his might striking the top of this drill with a sledgehammer. After each stroke, the man holding the drill would turn it a little to the right — about a quarter of an inch — so that the next smash would chop maybe an eighth of an inch further in the hole. Then the dynamite was placed in there arid tamped down. That was what I couldn't understand — they could tamp down things on top of it and yet they would say that dynamite would go off with a jar. Then a man would light the fuse with a match, and everybody [would] run. After the blast, once in a while some fellow would be too eager to see what a big bite or a little bite the blast made. Sometimes he would be missed, barely, by a small rock falling after he had run thirty or forty feet. Anyway, the farmers got a dollar and a half a day for the teams to haul this rock to where the new store would be, just across the road west from the old grange store. A stonemason was going to get two dollars a day. The men who did the blasting got two dollars a day. In the years that my dad ran the store, there was one fellow who always owed the store ten dollars; he never could get his bill lower than ten dollars. It didn't bother Dad lot, but he said, "If somebody would give that fellow ten dollars, he could pay cash the rest of his life." Every now and then, he'd ask this fellow why he didn't pay up. And he says, "Ed, I make a lot of money when I work. Don't worry." Well, Dad says, "I don't worry, but you ought to be able..." "Well," he says, "You know I make -a lot of money when I work." Trouble was, this fellow would seldom work. Those were the good old days when no one ate at a restaurant. If anyone went into a restaurant, you ordered ham and eggs, the same as you had at home. And who would pay for a sandwich? Why, you could buy the best sandwich in the world, if you wanted to buy one, for a nickel. Those were the days when Fred Harvey was an absolute thief and robber; he charged a dime for his ham sandwiches on a train and in the eating houses. It was really a great treat though, since Cadmus had no restaurant, for a farmer to come in — especially Joe Lawrence, a bachelor — and about noontime he would say, "Ed, I'd like a nickel's worth of cheese. Throw in a few crackers, Ed." Well, my dad would cut a piece of cheese, put out some crackers, and take the nickel. Later on, Joe would say, "A few more crackers, Ed." Anyway, this fellow always had a good cracker and cheese dinner — it was never in the evening — for a nickel. -Dad and Dory sometimes were almost glad when Mother would be gone during the day, and they would have to eat in the -store. There was nothing more wonderful than some crackers, canned salmon with a little vinegar put on it, and cheese. -Sometimes the menu was changed to crackers and sardines and cheese. A wonderful variety from three home-cooked meals a day. I do remember though something about a war. The Kansas City Star came to us in the afternoon. Hosey brought it from La Cygne, where it was delivered in the morning. We'd "get it around a little after noon, before he went on to Parker. One day. Dad said, "Take the paper home to Mother." It was on a Saturday; I happened to be around the store. I glanced at the headline, which said, "WAR WITH SPAIN." I ran for my life. Spaniards would be behind every rock and every tree; could I ever make it home? I got there in safety. Mother told me not to worry, that it was a long way off. I went back to the store. Some farmers were talking, and they said, "We haven't a thing to worry about. Let Spain come on, attack us; we can raise a million men with shotguns overnight." Of course, it never dawned on them that these million men might want something to eat. But we were safe.

DIXON

That's good for a small boy to think about.

BLAIR

Yes. I felt safer. However, the weekly papers came out with the same story a little later, and I was frightened once more, but not so much. By the way, the poetry lines that my dad used in his advertising ran something like this. This particular one was copied in the New York Times, the Kansas City Star,. all over the nation; but this little verse was typical of the way he advertised. Produce was his toehold for business in a way. If you can get a farmer to bring you your produce, he naturally was going to buy his groceries there. This one ran something like this: Cackle, cackle, Plymouth Rocks, Ye can have the smokehouse and the barn. Take 'em, we don't care a darn. For every time you lay an egg, Down the mortgage goes a peg. Dad wrote a song called "Sweet Roses of June." He did not mean roses in a garden; he meant wild roses. Wild roses to me to this day are more beautiful than any cultivated, over-beautiful, tame rose. What is more beautiful than something peeping from behind a rock early in the spring? A violet says, "Here I am again." How wonderful, wild gooseberries! Things that you don't cultivate. Free! Wild grapes. Climb a tree. Wild grapes. Wild gooseberries And now and then, a wild strawberry. No charge. Even shumac [sumac], the bitter red berries of shumac, sour, fuzzy, but free. Eat all you wanted. And persimmons. He had a little persimmon grove behind the blacksmith's shop, and it was wonderful to come home from school after the first frost and make for the persimmon patch, and eat wild persimmons. Such thoughts as this come: one might say, "I was walking amidst the treetops. I looked down and saw a path through the woods, and thought how wonderful it would be to walk down there." Sometimes things are so common to us, we fail to see that they would be unusual to someone else, and should be even to ourselves. A path through the woods needs no signposts. You turn when the path turns; there is no other way to go. So a path through the woods, a log fire in the woods, coffee in the woods, maybe fried potatoes or hot biscuits, whatever it can be, is something, perhaps, that gave people (who today would have to take a vacation for miles), the early do-it-yourself Midwest people, a vacation. One night, camping out, especially if you slept on hard rock, could make you feel you'd had a vacation for several weeks. [tape recorder turned off] We used to have Sunday dinner with the Macintyres, where Maud and Mabel lived, and Dory, who worked in the store. Robert had become a good bookkeeper (he was a great penmanship writer in the Cadmus school), and got a job with the flour mill to keep books. Joseph, he outdid everyone. He moved to Kansas City and got a job as a postman. He wore a uniform; he lived in town; he was the great product of that period of Cadmus. Grammar and arithmetic should never be mixed, as I found out. Joseph and I were walking down through the fields after dinner at the Macintyres one Sunday, and he said, "You've been going to school, haven't you?" "Yes." -He says, "Are you good in arithmetic?" And I said, "Yes, pretty good, I think." Well, he said, "How are you in grammar?" "Oh," I said, "I don't know, I think I'm pretty good in grammar." So he said to me, "Would you say that six and five are twelve or six and five is twelve?" Well, T knew the answer to that one. I said " are. " "Oh," he says, "I don't think you're right." "Oh," I said, "yes." "No," he says, "I always thought six and five were eleven." J. learned then a little not to believe everything you hear, and don't answer too soon. But I really felt for a long time that Joseph felt I was not good in either grammar or arithmetic.

DIXON

We all have to fall for that one sometime.

BLAIR

"Watch" was a word meaning a timepiece; few people had those. But around Cadmus, if you watch me, it means you'll look out for me, you'll help me. "Look out, watch. watch me." I mean, "If you fall, I'll catch you." Well, I believed the girls, and I believed the big boys at the school. There was a big snow, and we were to build a fort. Built a fort out of snow, the boys did. I was quite young; I was on the girls' side. Maud and Mabel were there, and they dared me to run up and throw a snowball over the fort. I'd get pelted maybe. I said, "Well, you watch me." To Maud and Mabel. Why, they were the best friends I had.

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
APRIL 23, 1965

BLAIR

As far as I remember, since the last [interview] they were building the grange store, the new stone building, forty by a hundred feet; I'm carrying water on a horse to the men, and the farmers, who all of a sudden become quarry men, [are] getting the limestone rock out of the ground. But in the meantime, other things were going on, so we'll go into that while the grange store is being constructed. My mother, of course, and the Grange women had already started to campaign to keep the boys on the farm. They had made the big banner and decorated it with slices of ears of corn, spelling out "Stay on the farm, boys!" The program consisted of several things. I think we've already told about the community Christmas tree; they'd had that some time but it was beginning to be now a major thing. Anything to cause more social life and more activity to keep people interested in the local community, particularly the boys. Next step is the band. [We were] going to have a grange band. The Grange bought the tuba and the bass drum. My dad, at the store, ordered the instruments from Jenkins' Music Company, Kansas City, Missouri. One might be surprised to think in that community they had about eighteen young fellows who wanted to learn to play some kind of an instrument. Some of them were good singers and all that; [they] could follow notes and sing. But to have a band in name is one thing, and to have it in reality is something else. My mother knew there was a good band at Osawatomic, Kansas, twelve miles north. The director of that band, and teacher, was Professor Rex, a real German bandmaster, who, when you came to the end of a piece you went dum ta da dum--every time, no matter what piece it was that the Germans called a march. The Grange hired him to come every Tuesday to teach these boys their different instruments and direct the band. They made a deal with him; he would get two dollars every week. He drove his horse and buggy twelve miles from Osawatomie on Tuesdays, winter and summer, blizzard or not. He stayed for fifty cents a night, including breakfast and, of course, dinner in the evening, at a farm home, Camptons', about a quarter-mile away. Professor Rex was the director of the Cadmus band. The first job he had was to teach some of the boys to be able to march to a bass drum in the grange hall, the old one. Then when it came to teaching them the instruments. there really were some almost natural-born players there, particularly our clarinet player and a cornet. Anyway, the band made great progress, at least everyone there thought. Some of them, when they'd get into a march, instead of beating time for them, he would get behind a chair and move their shoulders from left to right to get them into the rhythm and to stay with the rest of the band; but it worked out pretty good. Right at the beginning, I had a great disappointment. I was not old enough to belong to the Grange, and therefore I wouldn't get to play the snare drum. No one wanted to play snare drum, none of the older boys, and I was under fourteen. But Solon Shinkle, the ex-schoolteacher's son, got the job. He was fourteen. He didn't belong to the Grange, but he joined the Grange, and he became snare drummer. This all happened about the time that I'd gotten my large toy drum — it was a Christmas present, and on the way home I'd fallen down on it, off of the slippery snow from the Christmas tree, and made it an oval-shaped drum. But I took advantage of the fact that for twenty-five cents a week Professor Rex, on the night before band practice, at this farmhouse, would teach me how to read snare drum music and how to make a roll and do whatever they teach in drumming. I used this toy drum for a little while, but my dad realized then that I was going to be serious, and he got a snare drum from Jenkins, more of an orchestra drum, but maybe large enough for a small band. There I was, learning to read music, play a roll, and naturally, in the old-fashioned way of teaching a roll he'd have the left [hand go,] man man and tat tat, with the right, mandatati, mandatati, mandatati. He'd get it fast enough and it'd sound like a roll, and then later on naturally you'd break into a vibration of each hand so that it did make a roll. Anyway, I learned to play music all this time, and believe it or not, after about a year and a half, Solon Shinkle practically quit coming to band practice. He lived just east across the creek. I would go over and listen. I was sorry when they didn't begin right on time or someone player didn't come. If the tuba player didn't come, it threw the whole band. But Solon was the one that missed most of the time, and finally they said to Solon, "Why don't you come to band practice?" He says, "Well, why should I?" And they said, "Why, it's a band. We all need each other. If one instrument's missing, it's bad." Well, he came once and then he didn't come again, and again they said to him, "Why don't you come; we need you." He says, "I don't need to practice; I know my part." He had absolutely no enthusiasm. Well, to me, there was an opportunity. They soon let him go. I had learned to play by note, and I got the job of being snare drummer in the band, even though I wasn't old enough yet to join the Grange. [tape recorder turned off] The Cadmus band then got uniforms; the Grange bought the uniforms. They were red coats trimmed with black braid, grey trousers with black stripes down, and a cap, black, red and grey, with the emblem sort of a wheat shock or something that said "Cadmus Grange Band" on the front. Now, for a crossroads town to have a band [was something special]. It was coming along pretty good, at least all the grangers thought so. They had no band in La Cygne. They had a band part of the time in Parker, but here Cadmus crossroads now has the best band in the area by the fact that it is practically the only band. Now, the big picnic comes up, the annual picnic of the Grange. That had been going on for some time, annual picnic on the twenty-sixth of August. They didn't celebrate the Fourth of July except in just a family picnic. Well, the Prairie Home Band, about twenty miles from Cadmus had always gotten the job to play at the. picnic for thirty dollars. That was a good deal of money. All right. Well it wasn't long until the band boys and some of the grangers said, "Well listen, our band is just as good as the Prairie Home Band." Well, how about that? My mother well knew that they weren't as good. If they had two bands, that was going to cost money; but if they didn't have the Prairie Home Band, it'd hurt the picnic. So, they decided the first year to have both bands. The local band, because they didn't have to come, was to play for twenty dollars, and the Prairie Home Band would get their thirty dollars. The picnic grounds were east, about a mile and a half on Elm Creek, of Cadmus. They would go down there, the farmer boys and some of the men, with their teams and clear out the brush that had grown up, trim up trees, build two outhouses, put up a bandstand and tables for the ice cream, and build a stand for the things that they would sell from the store. The store would run a refreshment stand. They'd even have bananas there--that was unusual; they'd have bananas and things that you ordinarily didn't see in the eastern part of Kansas. Anyway, they hire both bands this time, and people were surprised when it came time for the Cadmus band to play--they played pretty good. And I know Orin Love, who played the alto horn, said that the band played much better than the Prairie Home Band ever could play. Some of the fathers were a little bit concerned about this — their boys playing in the band — and they told the boys they were young men, of course. One embarrassing situation was when the cornetist gave the toot for the band to assemble and play (that's the Cadmus band) and everybody came but the baritone player, Carl Paine. Well, Carl Paine's father was used to telling the son what to do. When they tooted again and he didn't come, the old man was very [perturbed]; he got up on the bandstand and says, "CARL." [very loud, yelling voice] He called him like he was calling some hogs. Well, Carl was right close, but he wouldn't come then; he was so mad at his father, embarrassed, and they almost had a big argument there. But anyway, Carl got there and the band played, and things were fine. After that, why, they did depend on the Cadmus band at the grange picnics. The next spring, the women of the Grange decided to have an ice cream and strawberry social. They were going to sell ice cream for a nickel a dish and, I think, a dime for the combination, to raise a little money maybe for the Christmas tree decorations the next year. Anyway, they asked the Cadmus band to come and play at the ice cream social, and my mother said, "Of course. If you vote to do it, why, you wouldn't have to pay for your ice cream and strawberries." Well, it was all one family; it was just like somebody at home says, "I'll wash the dishes and you let me have dinner free." You know, one of the family. They voted, of course, to play. The band was kind of excited — it'd be the first time that the local people would see the band in their uniforms except at the picnic, and it was getting to be quite a thing now that Cadmus had a band. We all voted to go but one, and that was Orin Love, alto horn player. They asked him why he didn't, he says, "I'll play for nothing, but I will not play for a dish of strawberries." Well, anyway, they did play. Orin, though, being, I think, one of the two alto horn players that went half the time un tat, un tat. Orin wasn't too good a player. If he got lost in the music he always had saliva so that... he could have played, you know — if he wasn't lost — but he had to stop and wipe his lips till he found out where he was again. We now go to the next appearance of the band. The cemetery was a mile and a half north of Cadmus, and every time anyone passed on in that area, farmers or somebody went up and dug a grave, regardless of weather. It didn't happen often in the community, but every time there was a funeral, why, the whole district, you might say, was conscious of the beyond... like one big family. The hearse was a spring wagon. Some of them stopped at the church for a ceremony, and others, being Grange they had a Grange sermon. If [the deceased] was a granger, my dad was the one that wrote the good things about the party, a little history. And even though they had a preacher or somebody at the church, why, if they were a member of the Grange, my dad was the one that said the final things. I can remember that whenever there was a funeral I knew it; they always went by our house, right north of Cadmus. For me, because I didn't know what a funeral was, I didn't even know what a death was, it was something awful. And I can remember that when they'd go by and I'd see this box in a spring wagon, pulled by horses, that I hoped I never would die; because I wouldn't mind dying, I wouldn't mind being buried, but I was so sure that if I did, I would suffocate and wouldn't be able to breathe anymore. I remember one time the wife of I think it was Mr. Cady — an elderly couple for those days — his wife passed on, and my dad had the final words at the grave for her. He would reach over in the grave and pick up a clod of dirt and drop it in on the box, and say, "Dust to dust, return to dust." That's when everybody cried louder than ever. Old Mr. Cady, he had tears in his eyes, and just as they left, my dad went up to him and says, "Well, don't take it too seriously." He says, "It happens to everybody, but you're sure going to miss Jenny." And the old man says, "Yes, Ed, I'll sure miss her. She never missed getting my breakfast in forty years." [tape recorder turned off] J The first real public appearance of the band, aside from sort of playing second fiddle at the grange picnic, was Decoration Day. The whole community met and put flowers on graves. There were many of the old blue uniforms, GAR members. They had never had a band to play for them on Decoration Day, so [here was] the Cadmus band, in its uniforms, and even Professor Rex was coming down from Osawatomie, and the general public would get to see the Cadmus band lead the soldiers through the large cemetery. They mowed the cemetery every year just before Decoration Day; otherwise the grass would be twelve, fifteen inches high. They mowed the wide paths where the band would go and [people] would go to stop to put flowers on graves. Things were about ready, you might say, to begin. The band was in front; there was a piece of music put out for them to play as a march. The old soldiers, as we called them, were behind. It was a hot day, very hot and moist. One of the old soldiers said, "Be sure and play a dirge, a slow march," Well, the Cadmus band didn't know any dirges. I am in the band; I'm the snare drummer at that time. Professor Rex says, "We all know 'Enter Ocean' very well; we'll play it really slow, really slow." He came. over to me and nodded that I was to set the pace. The bass drummer, in those days, generally played one, one, bum, bum, bum, and I just did a little beat and he said, "Fine." He told the band, "We're going to play a dirge and take short steps. But we're going to play 'Enter Ocean,' a march." Well, the snare drum, more than the bass drum really, controls the speed of the band--if the bass drummer follows suit. Today they use the snare drum nearly all alone, instead of any bass drum with it, for a march. Anyway, I started out with the rhythm and they go along pretty good. "Enter Ocean" was a quickstep march, and way up in front they got to speeding up a little. I tried to hold them back and my bass drummer would, too, but we were playing [separately by] then; what more could you do? Each fellow for himself, and some in front began to take long steps and slower, and others took short steps and faster. It wasn't probably about two hundred or three hundred yards until we were almost to the fence on the other side of the cemetery. By then, those in the first three rows were up to the hedge fence; which way should they turn? The rest of the band was partly being held back by the drums and Professor Rex. The old soldiers, some hopping, and a quickstep, and then it was hot in the hot uniforms. They were stepping out of the lines, and the whole thing was one grand commotion — the band scattered all over the cemetery — and a catastrophe. The band trying to play a quickstep — about the best march they knew, and one of the few they did know — and play it as a dirge. Well, they go ahead and put the flowers on the graves, and the band is going to show them they can really play. So Professor Rex assembles them all, out on the country road in front of the cemetery gate, and they are going to play. Well, we do, in a circle, and they play "Enter Ocean," all out, like it should be played. The horses are tied along the hedge fences there; a lot of them had never heard a band. When. the first crash of the cymbals and drums came down, three horses jumped loose with buggies and ran down the road. One fellow who was riding by on horseback was thrown off, but the band went ahead and played. And then here came a load of hay, some farmer, and on top was his son and another one, a youngster, [with] a big load of hay, and the last we saw of that was hay scattered all down the road. The team of horses jerked loose from the wagon finally, dragging the farmer down the road. Because for the first time, not only a lot of the Cadmus people had heard the band play, or maybe any band play, but certainly [it was] the first time any of these horses had ever heard us. Well, that was Decoration Day. [tape recorder turned off] \ 93 The Cadmus Grange picnic had attendance of three or four thousand people, by horse and buggy. It was said that anyone you wanted to see, if they were not there they were sick in bed or dead; they all came. This year after the band was started, my mother decided they should have a little parade. Well, anybody in the parade would be the only ones who could see it. But anyway, they got two hayracks. They put the band on one hayrack and lined up and met at the front of the store. They were going to drive a mile east to the picnic grounds on Elm Creek. Then they had another hayrack. That made a parade. Well, there were people coming and going, and the band would play as they entered the picnic grounds, and the children were decorated with ribbons of some kind — badges. I remember I was very important. My mother gave me a package of pins; and as the youngsters got on the hayrack and they were given the badge, I was the only one who had a pin, so I was very important. I passed out the pins. Another thing made me very important. The outhouses at the picnic had been constructed, and my mother told me to paint two signs: one said "Women" and one said "Men." Well, I worked and worked at home; she got some ordinary paint. I had these wrapped up in a newspaper, and I felt very proud. Now Maud and Mabel Macintyre, that lived south, they were the oldest ones on the hayrack. Maud and Mabel, of course, were my favorites, and we got started on the parade, The band was playing, and I decided I wanted to show Maud and Mabel my great art work, or whatever it was. Well, for the first time in my life, Maud and Mabel didn't just think what I did was wonderful. I unwrapped these two signs, to show them, and some of the youngsters began to laugh and all, and they hushed me down and said, "Why, wrap those up." I didn't understand why. I thought the lettering was pretty good. As we approached the picnic grounds, I saw something I'd never seen before: a big rack of dolls, down in amongst the trees. Dolls--at a picnic! My sister was on the wagon, and I said, "There's something you're going to like." And she looked and said, "Oh, yes." We get into the picnic grounds, and those dolls are not for sale; they're dolls you throw a baseball at, and if you can hit one and it turns around, you get a cigar. That was the first time Cadmus had ever seen anything like that. This was run by the one-legged man who caught the ninety-pound catfish. Dad had given him the right to come in and run a doll rack and give cigars. Roy Payne didn't even smoke. He wasn't as tough and strong as a lot of them, but he could throw the ball and hit a doll and make it turn nearly every time. [tape recorder turned off] Roy Paine, who didn't smoke, got so many cigars that Toots wouldn't let him throw anymore, but then here comes the big man, the strong man that really could knock them over. And the strong man, he was sure he could do it if Roy Paine could. Vain strength ought to solve everything; this fellow had it. He was the strong man. He threw eight balls and didn't hit one. So that caused a little philosophical discussion amongst people. Main strength and awkward, as they said, was not the great capital that one should wish for. Also this year my dad let a snake charmer into the picnic. He had a tent and about a five-foot-high bin, and in there were the snakes. A senator was to speak--the principal speaker. When the people assembled at the speaker's stand and the speaker started (the senator), here came a cry through the woods, "wrahw, wrahw, wrahw, wrahw," [shouting] and everybody ran; they thought somebody'd been bitten by a snake or whatnot, and they left the speaker, most of them. It was the snake charmer, who wanted to get some business. So my mother had to go down and handle that and get him to close shop until afterwards. Of course, she told Dad that he should never let him in there. Anyway, one of the main features of the snake charmer show was that there was a woman i n an orange blouse and a short skirt, and she was the charmer. And the biggest crowd that assembled there (you saw the snakes where you went in the tent for the main show) was when this woman climbed over the fence, with a low-cut blouse and a short skirt. That drew the biggest crowd. My mother saw to it that that show would never come again. Now the fellow with the throwing balls at dolls had a new thing, something in a bottle. Several of us youngsters who didn't have a nickel to spend for that, he gave us sips out of a bottle. He had vanilla, chocolate, lemon, sarsaparilla, orange, why, any flavor you liked, any color you wanted for a nickel, in a bottle. It had a wire sticking up out of the top of the bottle; you hit it with your fist and it would push a rubber cork down into the bottle instead of out of the bottle — whoever thought of that? If you were going to [close] the bottle again, you could pull the wire up, and the rubber cork came from the inside of the bottle to the neck. He called it soda pop. I ran to my mother — I liked it — and said I wanted a nickel to buy some soda pop. She says, "What's that?" She came over to see. Anything out of a bottle was wrong; only whiskey was in bottles. She did not give me a nickel, but she was convinced it was not whiskey. So she went to the stand and told Dad about it, and he said, "Well, let it go this time; we won't let him in anymore with anything." But that was the beginning of soda pop here, at the grange picnic, way ahead of Parker; because later on I tried to get some soda pop at Parker, and they made it out of something [else] — soda water and some flavoring — not out of a bottle. It was not soda pop. Another new event, another new era, you might say, began. A fellow had a machine there, you couldn't hear any noise, but if you put two tubes in your ears and listened, you could hear a voice laugh and say words; you could hear noises; you could hear some music. It was a talking machine--of all things, a talking machine. That was the first time in eastern Kansas anyone ever heard a talking machine, and the last two words were the only words you could really understand: it said, "Edison record." That caused many jokes to go about. The meatpackers were noted for not wasting anything. Whatever was left from hogs, cattle, things slaughtered at the packers, was turned into fertilizer one way or another; nothing was wasted. But when the talking' machine came out, they said, "Now the packers will not have to waste anything. They're going to use the squeal, too, for the talking machine." [tape recorder turned off] One feature developed by my mother that kept young men on the farm to a certain extent, in addition to the band, was a pitchfork and broom brigade: sixteen girls decorated with the grange colors, pink, green and yellow; sixteen young men carrying pitchforks, the prongs of which were decorated in the pink, green and yellow. The girls carried brooms decorated with pink, green and yellow. She drilled them in the grange hall every week in addition to band practice, prior to the picnic. They went through maneuvers; they learned it by marking chalk on the grange hall floor so they could crisscross and one go between another, between two others, and really they had what you call a drill team. I think it was the beginning of the drill teams they use in the big football games now. The boys, the first time this was going to be shown at the picnic grounds, went down a few days ahead and skinned off all the grass (it had been a beautiful big croquet ground, you might say). But that was the same size as the grange hall floor — in fact, larger--and I got to play the snare drum, and Clyde, my chum, the bass drum, for them to march by. They didn't use the band for that. Well, the Cadmus band and this pitchfork and broom brigade caught so much attention that a special car, once in a while, would be sent out on the Frisco railroad, seven miles east of Cadmus in La Cygne. And then hayracks and other horse-drawn vehicles, with the pitchfork and broom brigade and the band, would have this special car, and they would ride north or south to a county seat in one county or another and would be the Fourth of July feature of eastern Kansas. Here, a crossroads town, really taking the lead in which you might call entertainment or culture. My mother made dresses; she sewed them with silk out of the store, wedding dresses. She had a millinery department; she made hats. Cadmus was really a town almost as large as Los Angeles, but not concentrated at any point except at the blacksmith's shop and the store. [tape recorder turned off] In time the grange store was completed. Downstairs was the general merchandise — the dry goods toward the front, the groceries down the left side and in the back, hardware. Upstairs a grange hall with a stage. The store was forty feet wide and a hundred feet long, and the stage ran back about seventy-five feet. There was an outside stairway, and in the back of the upstairs was a clothing department — men's suits placed on tables. You could go up there from the hardware department on the first floor. On the south of the store was a shed for cultivators — farm machinery of all types — and then a flour room. My dad would buy a carload of flour at a time; that was hauled out from Parker. The John Hope family had three wagons, good teams, and they ran a farm; but they went to Parker at least every other day and got the freight from Parker, Kansas, and brought it to Cadmus. Whenever my dad bought a carload of flour, all three teams worked that day and for another day or two. My dad always said that if he had played the grain market he could have been a millionaire. He could have. He would buy flour-- [he] seemed to know when flour was cheap and when it would go higher. If there was a bad crop of wheat in Kansas he knew the price would go up. Believe it or not, he bought flour and witnessed the raise in price to the extent that merchants in Parker, Kansas, on the railroad, would send a wagon and buy flour off my dad, at some kind of a discount or over the retail, and take it back to Parker; and [they] could do that cheaper than to buy flour which would be shipped and unloaded right there on the regular market. In other words, he became a wholesaler six miles from a railroad. [tape recorder turned off] The stage in the new grange hall was put to use. My mother organized a dramatic club — dialogues. Anything to see on the stage was as exciting as a circus, which never came to Cadmus. Once in a while a medicine show would come. I re-remember one of the things they sold was a bar of soap to keep your scalp clean; you could have a shampoo and wash your hair. I didn't have a nickel, but I borrowed a nickel from one of the band boys sitting by me, and I bought a bar of this soap. But before I was sold on the fact, he asked for someone to come up and have their hair washed. Well, I went up, and they lathered my hair and rinsed it; and then he asked somebody to come up and look to see if my scalp wasn't perfectly clean. He called up an old man I know that couldn't see good, and he said it looked clean. That's when I was sold; I bought a bar of soap. Well, I borrowed the nickel and finally paid back the band boy. But when I ran out of that soap, I wondered where I could get some more; it must be wonderful. Before, I had used Lennox soap on my hair to make it stay down--I had a cowlick, a pompadour — and that would hold it down, but it didn't look good. This was really something to clean your hair. I remember going to Parker, Kansas, one time with John Hope, going after freight. I went around the different stores trying to buy the same bar, this kind of soap, and I couldn't find it. The dramatic clubs kept young people busy. Farmer boys can be good actors, too. The oyster supper and dance. or some kind of a dinner in the evening, and the dance every other Saturday night, and the grange meetings kept life very interesting, not only for young people, boys, to stay on the farm, but everyone. Did I tell you about Roy Payne going away to school?

DIXON

No.

BLAIR

OK. Roy Payne — the one that could throw a baseball and hit a doll nearly every time for a cigar, but didn't smoke — didn't like the farm; so they decided that Roy should go to the agriculture college in Manhattan, Kansas, and study scientific farming. If anything seemed silly to the farmers: a boy should go to college to learn to farm--that was beyond anything they could think. But Roy went. He stayed about eight weeks, came back home; and what else he learned we do not know, but he had learned to waltz. Now the only dances at Cadmus, prior to that time, had been square dances. The John Hope family was the orchestra. Lucy played the organ; Arthur played the big bass; and Thad, the brother, played fiddle. And that was the music. Well, they knew how to play a waltz. Roy taught the Macintyre girls how to waltz; they taught somebody else; and first thing you know, the young people were beginning to waltz instead of joining the quadrille. The old folks sitting around the side didn't like that. Remember there were no babysitters; they brought babies, children, who would sleep on chairs, around, or up on the stage. Well, this threatened to break up the Grange almost. The young people wanted to waltz, and the old people said, "It's immoral, and they can't learn it." They compromised, though, to keep the boys on the farm. One quadrille / one waltz, [tape recorder turned off] How do children grow? They say, "How tall are you? What do you weigh?" But you grow also in your mind, maybe somewhat. One incident: a cow was a cow. I knew the shape of a cow; I could tell a horse from a cow. I knew a man; I knew a woman. Everything was judged by shape or appearance. My mother made dresses, as I've said. And to me, a man had legs and walked; a woman had shoes and walked. I was hoeing my popcorn in the garden; and I happened to notice that the watermelon vine had a little watermelon on it. I ran in the house to tell my mother when she was fitting a dress on a farmer woman — I was always sent out to play or to work when she was fitting a dress — and behold! For the first time in my life, women had legs. Before, they walked with feet. So we live and learn. We did not stay at Cadmus forever. I had joined the church and would play... I beg your pardon, I mean the Grange. I was playing in the band and [John W.] Breidenthal, who had run for governor in Kansas, but did not win, on the Populist ticket (the Populists are the ones that brought it about, through national organizations, through the grangers in a way, that we had rural free delivery and help from the government on good roads), wanted Dad to leave Cadmus and come to Kansas City, Kansas, and open, as cashier, the Riverview State Bank in Kansas City. He offered Dad $100 a month. Dad's top salary had been $32.50 a month at Cadmus. There was one other man, though, they said made $10 a month. He drove from Osawatomie, twelve miles, in an hour and thirty minutes to attend the tenth anniversary of my mother and father. He was a travelling man who sold Dad goods. He brought a cut-glass pitcher and goblets, more brilliant, and probably worth more, than diamonds. No one had ever seen any real cut glass. That fellow made $100 a month. That was a good exciting evening. They had. lanterns from China, with candles in them, and a bunch of bananas — and it was not the grange picnic. That was the biggest event in Cadmus up to that time. Mother says, "Let's take the job and move to Kansas City." My dad said, "How can we leave these people?" She said, "Sometime we must make some money." And Dad says, "Well, we haven't got it yet, but if we ever had $1,000, we could retire." And Mother said, "No, five thousand." Dad agreed to go to Kansas City as cashier of the Riverview State Bank. It was a shock to all Cadmus, a real shock. Theodore, Dad's assistant — Dory — was the only man, of course, to take his place. So Dory was hired. But it took a while to get going. They had a final grange meeting; my dad read poems; my mother played the organ and sang; I learned to play the imitation of a railroad train leaving a station and an imitation of a battle on my snare drum; and my sister recited a piece. This joyous farewell grange meeting was a solemn, tearful event. Ada I would probably not see again, the girl who had slipped off of the icy step and whose lips fell on mine. During that evening we, for somehow or other, went down the outside staircase, around behind the building--I don't know why--it was dark back there; we might even hold hands. And can you believe this, some big farmer — it was dark back there--came back, and as the men used to say, let off some steam. Were we embarrassed! Oh, not to see the farmer, but would he see us? A young girl and a boy in the dark alone. That could be a catastrophe--to be seen. He went upstairs, didn't see us. I said to her, "You go first. We can't go back together; we don't want anybody to know we left the grange hall to be alone." She ran upstairs and I walked around and whistled. and finally I'd go up--we hadn't been down there; everything was just dandy. Anyway, the Macintyre girls said, when I played my drum solo (I was at that time at least fifteen), they said, "Now you're just getting old enough, we can all have fun, and then you're going to move away." Dad, Mother, and my sister moved, after an auction. We sold everything cause Dad could replace furniture at wholesale in Kansas City. But the farmers didn't bid; they didn't need it. But they didn't bid, hardly anything. But they sold it. And one farmer came around and says, "Ed, you know why they don't bid? They don't want to see you go." "Well, thanks for the compliment." My ponies, the team, came up. They sold Bird, the sorrel, right away; she brought twenty-five dollars. But the bay — it merely held up the tongue and didn't pull much, on the buggy — had a hard time getting a bid; he brought ten dollars. But a young boy was bidding on that, and when it got up to nine, a farmer came over to the boy and said, "Whose money are you bidding with?" The boy says, "My money that you got for the calf you sold last year and gave me a new calf." This boy got the bay." My parents moved to Kansas City and rented a place, of course. It was on Central Avenue, near the 1200 block, Kansas City, Kansas, But I do not go with them because I am to play with the Cadmus band on the Fourth of July in Parker, Kansas, so I stay at the Macintyres. My folks had moved to Kansas City a little before June 1. There was a flood in Kansas City; Armourdale is flooded, bridges washed out — I couldn't've gotten there. Grandma's house, I knew, was in Armourdale, but I know nothing of the details at that time. No mail came from Kansas City. But I stick it out, naturally, and go with the band to Parker, I had a wonderful time living at the Macintyres' home for almost a month or more. And then the time comes when my dog. Funny, who was with me, and I, whenever trains would again run into Kansas City, I was going to leave from Parker. Finally, the Kansas City Star said that trains now — a few — were running into the Union Station. From here on will be life as it changed when the Blairs move from Cadmus and begin life in a big city where they have streetcars, trains, and have had a flood that demolished every bridge except a few railroad bridges across the Kansas River. The Missouri and the Kansas joined. It didn't rain enough to make a flood there, but it rained north, it rained west, and the Missouri River and the Kansas River flooded from rains elsewhere. That was the big flood, I think, of about 1903. [tape recorder turned off] About the time the Kansas City Star published that trains were again running into the old Union Station (we called it the old — it was the only one then ), a letter came from Mother saying that in the flood Grandma's house had been washed away. She had escaped with an umbrella, a small handmade rug, and a setting hen with ten chickens. They had all rented — not far from where Dad's bank would be on Central Avenue; in fact, this was 1200 Central Avenue — two flats. One flat [was] partly furnished (when the folks had moved, of course, they had taken some things) and they were living in the same building [with Grandma Hiatt]. It was a three-story flat, except the top story was a store run by the man who owned the flat. The floor below, the roof of which would be the top level of Central Avenue where they'd graded in a fill, was where we would live; and below would be Grandma Hiatt on the first floor. But Grandma's house had been washed away--that I couldn't believe. However, I must get to Kansas City myself for the story. Funny, my dog, and I were taken to Parker by the Macintyre girls; I was leaving forever, supposedly. Funny, in a little crate, was going to ride in the express car, and people said, "Do not let him out of that crate when you get off the train in Kansas City — he'll run for his life." Well, we go, get off of the train. The only baggage I have was my snare drums and a small suitcase — or a bag, I do not know which. Who heard of a suitcase in those days? I go to the express car at the Union Station, of course. Funny can hardly wait to get out of the crate. I hang on to him, but he hangs on to me; he doesn't run. I know enough to take the proper streetcar to go to Kansas City, Kansas, and I have to cross the Kansas River. But the streetcar stops at the river; there was no bridge. We are told to wait, that a ferryboat will pick us up. The ferryboat doesn't come. I know my mother will be waiting on the other side of the river. People are waiting and waiting; so I get out my snare drum and I play the imitation of a battle and an imitation of a railroad engine and cars leaving a station, and the ferry comes. Funny and I and. my drum get on with the others. Mother meets us at the other side; there are streetcars. Wonderful to ride on the streetcar and know you're going to live there, you could ride on them maybe every day. At 1200 Central Avenue. There we are,, the flat across the street from where we get off. There's Grandma below; there's my sister; Dad isn't home from the bank yet. There we're going to live in town, but where can I practice my drum in a flat? That becomes my biggest concern. There is a garden, or a little forest, below, but that's no place. But there is a little triangular plot of ground where we go out of our second floor, up some steps to the street, so I can practice my drum outside, not in the flat. And as I practice, crowds gather, so to speak, and I feel very important. [tape recorder turned off] My mother and I decided to go down to Armourdale to see if we can find Grandma's house. There are no streets really; you can tell where they had been, but there were as many houses in the street as on the lots on each side. We figure out the direction of the current and walk north on Fourth Street, and we find the house, three blocks from where it had been, but turned around--everything perfect. You could look in the muddy windows, and there was a sideboard with some rotten bananas. We break open a window, get in, and our next job for several days is to shovel six inches of mud out of the house. And how it happens, one never knows, but the water system worked; with the hose, [we] washed, cleaned, and scrubbed. Furniture, some unglued, we left; and later on some house movers come, put the house on wheels, take it back, put it on Grandma's lot. She rents it and says she'll never live down there again, but rents it to somebody. Jumping ahead a little, after a year she was sued for having maintained a whiskey still. The renters were bootleggers, and she was stuck for a payment, so she gave them the house and that ended [the matter]. There was a law in Kansas against renting any property to anybody that could make liquor. Kansas was strictly prohibition--you couldn't even buy a cigarette. Grandma Hiatt, being very brave, lived happily in her flat, particularly because Mr. Johnston, the widower that owned the building and owned the store above, liked the way she cooks. He had lived alone with a mangy dog. I remember he had a machine that would grind bones for dogs. He and old Schnick lived alone, but Grandma cooked meals for Mr. Johnston; he paid some board. And they were living very happily. We were living happily. I was in a town; school hadn't begun yet. It wouldn't be long, but I was going to go to a high school in Kansas City, Kansas. My dad was getting along well in the bank, and yet, as we will explain later, he did not like the bank, due to one thing particularly that was the difference between deciding do you want to be in a bank or not be in a bank. We'll hold that up later. In the meantime I had to get a job during the summer, and get ready to go to school. Well, I do get a job, right across the street. Johnson, another Johnson--no "t" in it, just Johnson — had a grocery store. I get a job riding a bicycle, which he furnishes, around Kansas City, Kansas, over hills; and taking orders for groceries, filling the orders; and then, driving a light spring wagon on a big grey horse, deliver all the groceries in the afternoon. I'm to get a dollar a day. At the first payday they have watermelons, and they are a dollar apiece. He sells me one. I take it home; we cut it; it is green, but there is no refund--he did not guarantee it was ripe, [tape recorder turned off] I learned a lot though. I quit that job because school was going to start, but I wanted a job on Saturdays. I get a job over at the Jones Dry Goods Company, Kansas City, Missouri. I'm going to get a dollar a day there selling in the furnishing department. I ride a streetcar over--by that time they'd put in a bridge, just a trestle bridge, so the streetcars go slowly. The first Saturday I work, he said my sales in the furniture department equaled their top salesman. And the next time, when he paid me, he said, "You took in a lead dollar." And I said, "How would I know?" He said, "It turned out to be." Well, I said, "It went through the cashier downstairs and back." "Yes," but he says, "I'll show you how nobody'll lose." I said, "Oh, all right, what do you mean?" I'd already spent twenty-five cents to get a steak dinner on a Saturday night cause we kept open until midnight at the Jones Dry Goods Company. I had to ride home, and I never went with enough money except to get home and have a steak dinner. That particular time I had nothing left, but I was going to get my dollar. He says, "I'll pay you in the lead dollar. But I'll tell you how you won't lose." I had been honest, too honest in my life. I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Give it to the streetcar conductor, he will give you ninety-five cents." Well, there I suffer; there I am. I have to get home, back to Kansas City, Kansas. I feel like a thief; I'm afraid of policemen. I get on the streetcar; I give him the lead dollar; he gives me ninety-five cents. Thank God I got to 1200 Central Avenue that night and didn't get arrested. But I'm through working for the Jones Dry Goods Company. I had learned this, though — that the more apparent diamonds that a woman wore, when she came in (we had women's underwear), the cheaper she bought. The more diamonds she wore, the cheaper the underwear.

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
APRIL 30, 1965

BLAIR

At this time in Kansas City, Kansas, high school was approaching. I did not know what was a high school. Prior to coming to Kansas City, I had ridden one of our ponies six miles each morning to what they called a ninth-grade school in Parker, Kansas. It happened that there was a tuition fee to go to that school; we were not in District 26 — just a country school of Cadmus. But the principal, when I told him I played snare drum and could beat time for the students to march out at recess and noon, which he told me they did, gave me free tuition to play my snare drum. Now, I am in Kansas City thinking of high school, and that's something else. I did not know what a high school was. Before I begin my enrollment in the high school, we might add this: I was too good, at least up to that time, to ever be happy. I was miserable because I was too good. But amongst the experiences I had working for Johnson (the grocer across from where we lived), and with the experience I had about the lead dollar at the Jones Dry Goods Company, I really felt more ill at ease being good. One incident [happened] when I rode my bicycle for Mr. Johnson 'round over the hills of Kansas City, Kansas, to get orders for groceries. I was glad when I got some big orders, and I came back with one unusually large. I filled all the orders, put them in boxes on the floor in the grocery store as usual, and Mr. Johnson, of course, checked over the orders. He said, "You sold too much to a certain woman. I've taken out some of the things which were on order." I said, "What'll I tell her?" Well, he says, "You tell her that little Oscar, my two-year-old son, plays around on the floor of the store, and he probably took them out." In other words, Mr. Johnson again told me to lie. After filling these orders I had to hitch up a horse as usual in the back to a spring wagon. Here's one thing that might be mentioned. After I arrived at Kansas City, I got a letter from a little country schoolgirl, Ada, saying, "We have made a terrible mistake. What would my father think if he knew your declarations to me?" I didn't know what "declarations" meant, but the most could have been was that maybe on one of the notes she wrote me I might have ended up, "I love ya." But I felt, "Well, maybe I'll go to jail for that." Anyway, as life is perhaps, next door to this grocery store was a residence. It seemed that every time I went out to hitch up the horse to the spring wagon to deliver, there was a blond girl came out on the back porch. I didn't mind that, but I felt kinda guilty to think she wasn't Ada. I don't think we had a word, maybe two or three, but one day her brother came to me and said, "Why don't you ever come over to our house?" [laughter] Anyway, I loaded up my wagon, and when... I'm not going to lie, I just know I can't. But when I get to the woman, I gave her the extra big order and I told her, I said, "The order is not filled completely." She said, "Why?" I couldn't lie; I had to tell her the truth. I said, "Mr. Johnson said that until you paid something on your bill, this order was too large." She gave me three dollars, and when I got back with that, Mr. Johnson was happy; and the next time he filled the larger order. Another experience: I took an order each day or two from a woman living in the opposite direction, you might say, of the town (which makes no difference). And she said, "Come in and have a drink. Aren't you thirsty?" And I said, "Yes, I would like a drink of water," I'd been riding a bicycle up and down the August hills of Kansas City, Kansas. And the drink she poured was beer! Now that was in Kansas. I didn't really know what beer was; I found out a little later. And yet, I knew it was something that they would call, back in Cadmus, "drinking." I gave her a lecture on how she would be a drunkard and everything else! [laughter] And I'm very sorry in a way, I think maybe (I've heard of such cases, one a schoolteacher) if anyone would ever know what being raped was, maybe I had that opportunity. Anyway, after this lecture, I go around the next day for an order or two, and she apologized. Then I knew I had probably converted some soul to heaven. Now getting back to entering high school. Before I entered high school, we might record two things. After the flood, I wanted a job to earn money, and I thought maybe I could go down and get a job washing out passenger cars in the freight yards below where we lived. It seemed that you needed a little training to do that, but I got a job at a dollar and a half a day, which was big pay then — that was as much as a man and a team at Cadmus, all day long. I got a job of shoveling out silt from cottages that had not been washed away; and then (they still had water pressure) hosing down the walls and the floors; and then going to another one and do the same thing. When one was dry, [I would] put on a coat of varnish on the woodwork and on the floors, and then take a comb and make zigzag designs down through the wet varnish before it set. At the end of a week, I had nine dollars. Now there was no such thing as a five-day week; I think I worked from about seven to six, so that would be about eleven [hours a day]. So at the end of the first week, it was getting pretty close to school time. This was down in Armourdale. The contractor took me and another worker or two in a spring wagon with the team clear up over the hills, over into Minnesota Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas, to a bank to get the pay. I came home with nine dollars, feeling very rich. Another job I had was taking brass coal-oil lamps out of cartons by the hundreds in a wholesale house down in Armourdale. The lamps were not really damaged, but all the cartons had been wet and were muddy. So I worked at that for a week. Then it came time to go to high school. I take a diploma, that I had from Linn County, Kansas, which showed I had been valedictorian of the county, as to grades. So I feel that whatever high school is, I won't have any trouble getting in. I go to the principal's office, and he says, "Well, take this up with a certain teacher, at a certain desk." I did, and with great glory laid down my diploma. She looked at it and says, "We don't recognize any diplomas from grade schools in Kansas; you will have to take an examination." And I said, "Well, all right." They gave me an examination in arithmetic only. The problem was to figure out how many rolls of wallpaper it would take to do a room sixteen by twenty, including the ceiling and the walls, but make allowances for so many windows and doors of a certain size. They gave me how many square feet and inches there was in one roll of wallpaper. Well, I worked, and I got a 100 percent. So I was in. Then they said, "Are you going to college?" I said, "No, of course not." "Well," they said, "then you don't have to take Latin; you'll take word analysis." I didn't know what Latin was; I didn't know what word analysis was, but whatever it was, I decided I had to take it. Word analysis, I didn't like. They had a lot of words with endings on the words, and [they] changed a lot of things. But I got a pretty good grade. And then they said, "You have time to take charcoal drawing." That, I thought, would be fun, because if you were caught drawing in the country school at Cadmus, you'd be punished for wasting time. First thing they had me do was some kind of a plaster of paris shaped like a cantaloupe, and we worked with charcoal every day on that for a while. Then they had a thing we squirted on it (it was fixative, I know now), so that the charcoal wouldn't run. Well, along about six weeks before Christmas they told us there would be a show of the drawings from this high school and other schools at the library in Kansas City, Kansas. Mine was selected to be in the show during Christmas. I really was kind of sorry because I wanted to take that home; I didn't know what a show was. Now, in the meantime, I wanted to play my drum somewhere, and I found out there was a YMCA orchestra over in Kansas City, Missouri. I go over there; they need a drummer; and they ask me, "Do you play both drums?" And I say, "Yes!" "Well, fine. Come next Tuesday night to orchestra practice. We're going to have a Christmas concert." I'm delighted and take my snare drum and go over there, and I wonder which they're going to have me play — a snare drum or the bass drum? They said I'm to play both drums — at the same time! Well, that was a mystery to me. They showed me a plank about four feet long and about eighteen inches wide, and on the end of the plank was a bass drum; and then there were two sets of pedals — a pair. One pedal, if you pushed, hit another pedal, and that made the drumstick hit the bass drum. If you touched the other pedal, the cymbal screwed on the side of the drum [played] ; and if you put your foot on both pedals, you played both at once. Well, I thought that was a great invention. They let me try it out a little bit. I rehearsed the first night, and they told me to come back — I'd make it all right by Christmas. One piece particularly they were going to play called "Laces and Graces" had some retards in it and some speed-up allegros. I was really being a trap drummer, unknowingly. We'll stop here a moment to see why we didn't stay in Kansas City, Kansas. My dad was getting along fine in the bank. He got home about four or four-thirty, but for three or four nights, he didn't get home till about seven-thirty. Mother said, "Well, how long is this going to last?" Well, he says, "I don't know." He says, "They put a damned adding machine in there, and it makes mistakes." Now, my dad was a good mathematician. He could add cross-wise these long pages in the old hand-entered ledgers [used] then. He didn't like it. More than that, there wasn't any place to fish, no place in a big river, no woods. He was a poet; he was writing poems too. One day, three men came up from a town thirty miles south of Kansas City called Spring Hill. It ended up they told my dad that they knew he was a great success managing one of these cooperative grain stores at Cadmus. They had a store and a good Grange in Spring Hill; the store was losing money; the manager had committed suicide; his son was running it; and the son knew nothing about the business. They asked Dad how much he was getting at the bank, and he said $100 a month, which was a lot of money then. They said, "We will pay you $100 a month; come down to Spring Hill. " Dad talked it with Mother and that's where they went, a town of about seven hundred. It had natural gas in the town, a gas well in the park. (They were using artificial gas in Kansas City, I think, manufactured gas.) And we decided to move down there. They have a high school, they say. Everything looks fine. It's on the railroad to Frisco. Dad resigned from the bank. The committee said, "We will send up for all of your household goods, and we will have a house that you can rent, at least temporarily. How soon can you come?" Dad said, "A week from today." Three o'clock in the morning that day, somebody pounded on the doors of our flat. There was great fear, almost, and here was a big hayrack with a team of horses and a man after all of our household goods. You can imagine my mother, she wanted to get ready! The man said he came early in the morning with another helper because he delivered all the freight from the depot down there to the grain store in the afternoon at four o'clock, and he had to get us during the night and get it back to Spring Hill, thirty miles — thirty miles is almost a day's drive with a team.. But he was there. They started carrying things out of the kitchen and out of the dining room and putting them on the hayrack. My mother going frantic — the dishes weren't washed. Anyway, by sometime that morning, away went the team and wagon with our household goods. We got on the train. We stayed with Grandmother; we wondered what to do with her. She was supposed to go down there with us, maybe, but Grandmother Hiatt told Mother that Mr. Johnston, who owned the flat we were in and the little notion store above, said he couldn't get along without her. I guess what he liked was three meals a day, or something anyway. So they were to get married, and we go on our way to Spring Hill. So then I do have the extra grandfather that was missing. [laughter] Now it's three and three — three grandmothers and three grandfathers. It's getting near Christmastime. I was really almost heartbroken to leave right then, because I would not get to play trap drums in the. Kansas City, Missouri, YMCA Christmas concert. I would not get to go to the show that had the charcoal drawing of the cantaloupe. We get down to Spring Hill; there is a big two-story brick building forty by a hundred: grange hall above, store below, just the same as it'd been at Cadmus, in a way. The house [that] has been rented for us temporarily has four rooms, but they do have gaslight and gas heat. Away from downtown — which was one block of business buildings and two streets running east and west on each side of that block — was Old Town, [with] a beautiful park with the gas well and a bandstand. The reason it was called Old Town was, that was the original town when the Frisco railroad came through. They wanted Spring Hill to put up so many thousand dollars worth of bonds to get the railroad to come there, and Spring Hill wouldn't do it. So they ran the railroad just a half a mile east of Spring Hill, and then all the businesses moved down there. That left the park up in Old Town, where people who were not farmers worked [and lived]. [tape recorder turned off] The first thing I was interested in, of course, was to get into the high school. The school building is the total school. The top floor has eighth grade and a high school of about thirty students, and below are the other grades. I go in there to enroll (and the second term doesn't start, of course, till about the middle of January there), and I find out that they don't teach word analysis. Professor Brooks, who was not only the principal of the high school but the only teacher in the high school — taught all four grades — told me they didn't have anything but Latin to take at that place, and that I should go to college and take Latin. Well, word analysis, as I learned then — the endings of words and all — turned out to be Latin, of course. And he said the freshman Latin class had not done very good work, and if I would study extra hard, he would have the class begin all over in Latin. Other [classes] — arithmetic, higher arithmetic, algebra, and those things — didn't bother me. Well, I asked one of the freshmen if all of those different endings in the Latin book — they had page after page of different endings for words — I asked him if I ought to learn those; and he said, "It would be better if you did." I don't think he had learned them. But anyway, to make a long story short, I was so eager to make my grades that at church, Sunday school, wherever I was, instead of listening to what was going on, I'd keep going over the conjugations and the declensions. It ended up that I was valedictorian at the end of high school — again! I liked Latin, because I had learned it thoroughly, and it was easy for me compared to what it was for those who didn't take it seriously. I had to learn to keep up at all. The first morning I went to that high school — that is, in the beginning of the second term — according to the custom, the eighth grade of the year before, which had the north half of the high-school floor, was assembled there. Then they would ring a bell, and the eighth graders would move into the high school as freshmen. The other classes, juniors and seniors, are already assembled in the high school, and then the seventh grade from downstairs would come up to the eighth grade. So, being considered as eighth graders, the would-be freshmen, all in a new class (although it had been going on for a half a year) assembled again in the north half of the high-school floor. On the way marching into the high-school room, I bumped into a blond girl. We looked at each other, and somebody bumped into me, and we went on. She was just coming in upstairs from the seventh grade into the eighth grade. It turned out her name was Vera. Her father had a little jewelry store in Spring Hill. They lived on a farm; they leased the farm right near town. That thread will be picked up a little later. But Spring Hill — what about a band? I make inquiries if they have a band, [and they do], led by a fellow named Reuben, who played alto horn. So I thought the great Reuben, if I meet him, maybe I'll get to play snare drum. I met him, and he said that he could use a snare drummer. And I said, "Well, maybe I can't play good enough." Well, he says, "You come in the first band practice and we'll find out." Now Reuben was the type, a single fellow, [who was] always embarrassed. He would put on a carnation and stand in front of the church. When church was over, he'd watch the people come out. He was kind of a town character. Well, we're all characters, but he was Reuben, distinctly. First band practice, I find out that they're playing what they call a "Beginner's Band Book" — not marches, but practice strains for the band. Some of them only sixteen measures long, and then a quickstep, and then something else. Well, anyway, I make good as a snare drummer, but I think it's too bad that they don't have a real band in that town. And Reuben sat down — he didn't direct, there was nothing to direct; there were about ten or twelve players. He played alto horn; and he would just count two and then start tooting; and that's all the direction there was. [tape recorder turned off] Here I am in a town of seven hundred on a railroad; it's almost an enlarged Cadmus. Farms around, farm jobs; there is an elevator for grain, and believe it or not, the man that owned that grain elevator made $100 a month — he was rich. My dad was going to get $100 a month and didn't. All these things going on, bands, working on the farms, the big repeat of Cadmus, but I think we better first go into the grange store. Dad soon found out why they were losing money in the grange store. He'd found toothpick-toed men's shoes that had been invoiced for six years. None of them sold, but they'd never marked down the price. He put them out on a table at fifty cents a pair. One of the directors of the store said, "Ed, I'd like to speak to you." He was a farmer, probably had helped run the store before. He says, "Ed, you're losing money on those shoes. You know they cost two dollars a pair, and you're trying to sell them for fifty cents." Dad says, "Well, you've had about seven years to sell those for three dollars a pair and maybe make a dollar; they're still there." He says, "If you sell them for fifty cents you're going to lose..." "All right, I'll give you an idea — if those sell at fifty cents a pair, fine; if they don't, I'll sell them at twenty-five cents a pair." And the farmer says, "That'll be worse, Ed!" "Yep, but not as bad as you think." And he says, "Why?" "Because I think they'll sell for fifty cents a pair. Because they're out of date doesn't make any difference. They're good shoes; you can wear them for work shoes. We have about sixty pairs, and if we get thirty dollars out of the whole group, you know what I can do? I can take that thirty dollars and put it in good work shirts, maybe get fifteen dozen or so, sell them at a profit, and we'll get back that loss some day." The farmer says, "That's a good idea, Ed." Now, there's an old soldier...

DIXON

What's a toothpick-toed shoe?

BLAIR

In those days, nothing was in style bat broad-toed shoes. They were just real long, pointed shoes, dress shoes...

DIXON

Like they're wearing now?

BLAIR

They're coming to those again. They were much more pointed even than that; this [would be] extreme for right now.

DIXON

Back to the old soldier...

BLAIR

The old soldier was a wonderful fellow; he used a crutch. He was one of the top directors in the store, lived in town — retired, of course. He would sit in the office, looking at Dad at first a great deal--more to loaf, not to spy on Dad. [tape recorder turned off] He really had been a businessman, in a way, and was Dad's main support, although there was no real conflict as far as running the store [went]. The Spring Hill Grange had a deliveryman. He was a nervous little fellow who lived in a shack up in Old Town. He drove and harnessed the horse every day. He didn't take orders like I did, because there was a telephone there. Which reminds me that at Cadmus, when the first telephone came in... did I tell you about this?

DIXON

No.

BLAIR

They put the telephone in. The phone had only been in about a day, and somebody called over the phone. The phone was hanging on the wall. It had to be from Parker, six miles away; it couldn't be from anywhere else. Now Dory is the one that happens to answer the first ring; he has it. Well here it rings; he's nervous--my God, how can he talk six miles? I can remember as a youngster I was there; and he went up, he took the receiver off the hook, his hand was shaking, he put it up to his ear and he says, "HELLO!" [yells] He had to yell to Parker. Well, the phone is ringing now, in a few homes, so orders were phoned in. Little Hookie delivered the groceries, and about the fourth week we were there, Hookie (I suppose he got about five dollars a week) came to my dad and said he was going to quit. Dad asked him why. He says, "Because I can't make anything." Dad says, "What do you mean, you can't make anything?" "Why," he says, "at the end of every week all my money's gone." In other words, he had bought stuff and charged it during the week, so he said he was going to quit work because he couldn't make nothing. He [had] to work for a living, but he didn't realize that he was still living. Anyway, that was one little experience. [tape recorder turned off] I find out that the Grange meets every other Saturday night like in Cadmus, and they do have a dance going every other Saturday night. They have an orchestra, so-called. that plays. They had someone who plays an. organ, again;, and the grocery man (the competing grocery across from the grange store) plays violin; and the druggist plays the cornet; but they don't have drums. Well, I'm playing in the band, such as it is, and they're improving, getting along; but if I only had a contraption, I could play both drums — I could play in the orchestra. They would never have an orchestra with just a snare drum. So with this great invention I saw in Kansas City [in mind], I go down to the little cabinetmaker's shop in Spring Hill. I tell him what I want to do; would he loan me his tools? I could get what lumber I wanted [from the lumber man], and I was going to make something so I could play both drums at once. He said, "Fine." Here's a thought: this cabinet shop is underneath a second story, what had been, at one time, a photographer's shop, maybe, and before that an inn. I discovered — the folks remembered — that delegates from the Cadmus Grange years before [had come to] Spring Hill, where they were having a national grange annual meeting, and they stayed in this little inn, so-called, above this cabinetmaker's shop. I get the lumber, and with his saws and planes and all, I make this drum-pedal trap. I take it up the first time to the rehearsal of the orchestra that plays kind of for fun, as well as for the dance, and it was quite a sensation in Spring Hill — somebody can play two drums at once. We were rehearsing... there was a guest there, so to speak, an onlooker. Turns out later, he's sort of the half-wit of the town. While we're playing, he goes around and bothers people. He looks down under the cornet player; he looks here and he looks there. Finally, the fellow who really directed the orchestra (the cornet player of the drug store — a very good player) stopped, and he says, "What's the matter, Henry?" Well, he says, "I'm trying to find out who's playing that bass drum." We had more instruments than people. [tape recorder turned off] Of course, the Blairs were new in Spring Hill. They permit me to work on Saturdays in the grange store, even beyond counting the eggs, to work in the grocery department. Vera, once in a while, would come in the store, but she was under very strict management by her father; her mother had passed on with consumption two years [before]. She had a sister, Mary. Whenever there was a party of any kind, for some reason somebody would say, "You bring Vera." Well, that pleased me, as having a date... I had never heard of such a thing. Vera was very much on my mind, so whenever there was a party I would take her. More to follow on that. .. At the first dance, it cost a dollar to go to the dance, but I was not then playing in the orchestra, and this was the first dance after we moved there. I didn't have any money, of course. There was a travelling salesman talking to my dad, and I go up and tell Dad that I want to go to the dance. He says, "Well, why don't you wait a while?" Why, I said, "Here we are, new in the town and you're getting $100 a month; if we're going to be part of the town, we certainly ought to be a part of it. I want to go to the dance." The travelling salesman said to Dad, he says, "Listen, be thankful. You'll find out that in a few years, he'll be asking you for five dollars instead of one." Well, Dad was just kidding with me after all. So I have my dollar and I go to the dance. They danced waltzes and two-steps--no square dances. In a short time, I have my trap drums fixed up, and I'm playing for the dances. In the high school, Professor Brooks was a wonderful person. Botany, by the way, was one of the subjects I studied there. On Saturdays, he and I would go out into the woods on Bull Creek, hunt wildflowers, shrubs, take our botany and analyze it. It was a great experience to put something you studied in school into a practical side. even though the practical side was knowledge or just plain entertainment. They had a high-school play every year. Jim Boring was in my same class, but having lived there longer, he kind of took over. But my mother got into it a little bit. They picked out a play called The Lighthouse Keeper to do for the school play; it was not necessarily a senior play. Professor Brooks was going to help us and work with us. We also had debate and things like that. But the high-school play was going to be one of the big things. So, in The Lighthouse Keeper Jim Boring seems to take over, and he decides to be the lead, the lover, or something; and I'm given the part of the lighthouse keeper. Well, never having been in a play, I was kind of glad to do that, and the lighthouse keeper was important; after all, that was the name of the play. He had to have a beard. Well, we take some wire, and we make some hooks to go around the ears and come down around the chin; and then we get the inside of an old buggy cushion for hair. [laughter] We put it on, and I have a beard 1 We rehearse and rehearse. One of the high-school girls is playing a part, and they put makeup on her; the only makeup was talcum powder and red on the lips. Her old father — not so old, but in his thought, maybe — came to pick her up one evening, after rehearsal, and drive out two miles in the country. We rehearsed in the grange hall; they have a stage in the grange hall, and we're going to have the play there. He comes in, and we're rehearsing, and his daughter's on the stage. He walks up to the stage and says, "Stop everything! My daughter is never going to have rouge on her lips!" They removed the rouge; we went ahead and rehearsed; and after that, she wore no more rouge. But on the final night, she was going to. We figured he wouldn't have the nerve to come up and try to stop the play because it would be a packed grange hall. He was the fellow that I worked for on the farm, and if anybody ever prayed any louder in church or was more concerned about rouge, he only excelled that in one way: in being mean to his horses, to his family, and to the ones working for him. [tape recorder turned off] In this play, my job was to play the trap drums in the orchestra for an overture before the curtain goes up; also to be the lighthouse keeper with the beard; and between acts, to go back and play in the orchestra without the beard. The theme of the play was something like this: the lighthouse keeper's daughter — I didn't know what it meant then — must have had some kind of a love affair. That was part of the theme. And the old man, the lighthouse keeper, when he discovered that there was something not according to Hoyle, he had to make up a sort of prayer and lament speech, expressing his great sadness. I did it so well there were tears shed in the audience; I felt wonderful. Jim Boring had the pleasure of the lead, but when I go back on in the second scene, I kneel again to make this speech to bring tears to eyes, and I feel — I forgot my beard! I'd taken it off between scenes and didn't put it back on. [tape recorder turned off] Since the phrenologist at the Cadmus church said I should be a lawyer, having felt the bumps on my head (which were natural), I thought I must be a debater or never be a lawyer — that's all lawyers did, was to debate. We have a debating group in the high school, and the subject is "Which is the most important, the cow or a horse?" So I take the side of the cow is most important. The reason is this: snare drum heads could be made out of calfskins! [laughter] And to prove how important it was to have snare drums, I take my drum to the high school to use in the debate, and to demonstrate it before the high school — Professor Brooks always cooperated. I played the imitation of the battle and the imitation of the railroad train leaving the station on the snare drum, and my whole theory was that if it wasn't for cows, they couldn't have calfskins for drums. I won the debate. [tape recorder turned off] Sometimes the shows came along to Spring Hill, and they used the grange hall. One time a troupe came, and there was a great gossip after the show. The lead man and woman stayed in the little Spring Hill inn right next to the rail-road, and the fellow who ran it said he never saw such a mess in a room as that New York actor and actress caused. Every-thing was moved around. There was bedding on the floor; there were beer bottles (he didn't know where they got the beer; you couldn't get it in Kansas). And he'd lost his respect for the great actors and actresses from New York. Something else people didn't like. Dr. Agen and Dr. Thomas were two wonderful men. Neither had any children in their family. Right in the midst of the play, they turned the story into a "How many children do you have in this... Well, say, does Dr. Agen have any children?" "No." "Does Dr. Thomas have any children?" "No." And there was a big discussion between the comics on the stage — "How does it come that everybody else has children and they don't have any?" In my farm work, out of Spring Hill, I helped thresh. They had a bigger separator and threshing machine than I'd ever seen. My job was to drive a team and hayrack; others would throw the shocks of wheat onto the wagon. I was to i place them and build up a nice load, haul it in, and drive up [along] one side of the separator. But this was such a big machine, they had another wagon drive up on the other side. This machine you couldn't stall; you could throw the wheat bundles in there just as fast as you wanted to. Well, the man opposite me--I'm still a boy, I must be at that time about sixteen or seventeen — the man on the other side is throwing a bundle at a time, and I am, too. But the owner of the outfit, the threshing machine--he's paid by the number of bushels — came around, and he says, "Throw two at a time." Well, I think it was the second time in my life I had to stand up for myself, and I had the nerve to do it. I said, "When the man on the other side throws two at a time, I will." He didn't bother me anymore. Later on, this old fellow that was on the machine — he was a bachelor — got married. I was working for him at that time on his farm. I was running a corn binder, doing things like that with a team, and I'm given a bedroom in his house, a bachelor house. You had to go through one bedroom into the one they gave me; and that night of that day this old farmer and his bride came home from the marriage ceremony, they occupied the bedroom between me and the outside of the house. There was no bathroom; everything was out-houses. Well, I didn't sleep much that night; I didn't have the nerve to go through the bride-and-groom's bedroom to get outdoors. So that was a little indication of life in Kansas. [tape recorder turned off] Another job I had with a farmer (whose daughter went to Spring Hill High School) was to scoop grain with a scoop shovel out of the granary, after threshing season, into a wagon. [Then I] drive the team in a mile and a half to the railroad car in Spring Hill, on the siding, and then scoop it into the freight car — bulk, nothing in sacks. I worked with others to haul the grain from this big granary. The others were farmers, helping each other as they did. Two loads a day was a day's work; you had to scoop it from the granary^ up over the sideboards of the wagon, drive in, and scoop it out of that into the freight car. We each made a trip in the morning and a trip in the afternoon. Well, the week was over, and I was getting I didn't know what. But the fanner came to me and said, "How much do I owe you?" He was a granger, a friend of the family, in a way. I said, "Whatever the others get." He says, "Well, you're just a boy." I says, "Yeah, I know, but I hauled as many loads as they did." Well, then he says, "All right. I'll pay you a dollar and a half a day, the same as the others." He went into my dad later, and he says, "Ed, these hired men, if they keep charging us more, some day we won't be able to afford any hired men. He said, "When you spoil a boy, paying him as much as a man when he isn't yet a man, what are we going to come to?" [tape recorder turned off] Now, Dr. Thomas had a nephew who worked in the drugstore; he wanted to be a pharmacist. He knew what he was going to be. I didn't know whether I was going to be a lawyer or not. The only things you ever got paid if you didn't have money to have a business was to be a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer. I was puzzled: if I didn't make good as a debater, I couldn't be a lawyer. Anyway, Dr. Thomas and his wife had decided to go to the World's Fair in St. Louis; this was in 1904. They were going to take their nephew, Marvin. The folks said I could go along. Mrs. Thomas fixed up baskets full of crackers with some wonderful tasting frosting-like things on top, and she had a big basket full. You're not going to buy anything to eat on the train — why, they charge ten cents for a sandwich! We couldn't go from Spring Hill to St. Louis without going to Kansas City first, but Dr. Thomas figured out that [if] somebody would take us in a surrey to the little town, Louisburg, not far from Spring Hill, [we could] get on a train there that went direct to St. Louis. We're in coaches, it's overnight, but you sleep on a train — certainly nobody would ride and pay for a bed. When my dad and mother left me with the Loves, at Cadmus, and went two weeks to the World's Fair of 189 3 in Chicago, they were always being asked, "Did you see this and did you see that?" Nobody ever saw what everybody else did, outside of maybe some wild animals. This boy Marvin and I, we decided that we were going to see everything, so [if anybody] asked us did we see it, we could say yes. So, when we get to St. Louis, we get a map, or a catalog, of every building — what's going on in every building. Well, the first thing we selected were the big railroad engines and some cannons; we had never seen a cannon. The Kansas City Fire Department had an exhibit where a bell would ring, here they would come, drop the harness on the horses, buckle it; and in two minutes they would have harnessed two horses. And with the bell clanging, they would drive out at full speed to a block where everybody could see it, put up ladders, climb to the third floor, and save somebody. Well, we saw that two or three times — that was always at night. But, we said we must see everything, so we laid out a schedule, how many buildings each day, what aisles; and hand in hand, almost, we ran up every aisle lengthwise and every aisle crosswise in each building, and we had seen everything! And of course, nothing. We did, however, get a ride on a horseless carriage for a block for twenty-five cents. It went with no horses. We did see the Igorot village; they lived on dogs — not dog food, but dogs. [tape recorder turned off] On the way home, my parents with a rented surrey and team met us at the town of Louisburg, and as we approached Spring Hill, of course we passed, on the edge of town, the home where Vera lived. Well, I'd been away a long time; I had an excuse. I had to tell about the Igorots and a lot of things. I tell Dad to stop the team and I get out. He says, "What are you going to do?" I says, "Oh, I'm going in here a little while." They drove on. And that's the first time, without having gone to a party or anything, I really stopped to see Vera. The grange store was going along very well, and one day a telegram comes. Now that meant somebody died, ordinarily. It was from Cadmus, Kansas, and it said, "Ed, the grange store was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Come down." The stone grange hall — merchandise and everything — gone, completely. Dad got a horse and buggy and we went down. Theodore (Dory), who was the manager after Dad left, was there. And Dad said, "Well, this is terrible. Dory, but it won't take long, with the insurance, to get things going again. Some of the walls can be used." And Dory says, "You know, it didn't have any insurance." Dad says, "It didn't have any insurance! I was always the agent for all the grange farmers insurance; and when I left, you were." And he says, "Yes, I am." He says, "You mean you didn't have any insurance on the store, and yet you're the insurance agent for eastern Kansas!" "Yes, I'm sorry, but I didn't." Dad says, "Why not?" He says, "I didn't think it would burn." [tape recorder turned off] Eventually, of course, graduation comes for my class in the high school. I'm the valedictorian of the class, and we're going to have a senior play. But in the meantime. Professor Brooks had been offered a better position. They let him go, and they put another fellow in there to be principal of the high school [during] my senior year. He wore a cutaway black coat and striped trousers--the coat was green with age. He wore a celluloid collar; he wore a derby brown hat; he had a red, bitter face — chewing, you might think, but he never chewed. Just teeth. The way he taught was this: we seniors stand up in front of the blackboard; he gets the lesson we were to have in the textbook and asks you a question, you a question. You answer it; he puts down the grade; he doesn't tell you whether you are right or wrong. Everything is grades. We were sick; we were insulted. Seniors standing up like children. Time comes for the senior play. He has nothing to do with it — nothing. It happens at that time a man comes in, and he says he's from New York; [he] coaches home talent shows. He was to get so much money [for arranging the show], and he would stay there till the show came on, then he would be paid. All right, he selected the play, Goethe's Faust. Well, are we going to do something ! I'm going to be Valentine [sic]. We rent costumes from Kansas City. We rehearse and start working. The professor never comes near — where was Professor Brooks? I'm in the grocery store on Saturdays, in comes this fellow from New York, our coach, and he buys lemon extract every day. Well, I'm wondering... he's living in the little hotel down there where that man and woman messed things up. I tell my dad about it, and Mr. Kevin, who worked in the store, said, "Listen, that fellow's drinking that." Right away I said to myself, "In Kansas, drink?" That's still the old innocent thing I had: I was too conscientious to be happy; I was too good to have any fun. Anyway, he comes in again for a bottle of extract, and I tell him, I said, "Listen, you drink this?" Oh, he says, "A little." Well, I says, "You're not going to get any more. Don't you know you're going to be a drunkard? We can't have this; you're coaching our high-school play." He says, "All right." I found out later, he goes just across the railroad to a halfway druggist or something and gets the real thing. That disgrace is so terrible. He says, "I've taught you all I can. Why do I have to stay for the show? I'll settle for so much and go my way." The school board said all right. They paid him whatever it was, and he left. So we're on our own, with no support from the principal, and we put on Faust — the play; no opera, of course. [tape recorder turned off] Of course, we'd been rehearsing this high-school play practically the last half of the year off and on, and when the play goes on, he doesn't even come to the play. Well, we had [the performance] early in the year; it's not around graduation. I am correspondent for the Spring Hill New Era. William Wilkerson was editor — pals with my dad. His writings and little editorials in the weekly paper were copied and quoted by the New York Times. I'm a correspondent; I write high-school news. When this fellow didn't come to our high-school senior play, I wrote all about the difference between him and Professor Brooks, and they printed it! The people got in arms and they fired the fellow, who had better grades and more degrees than any schoolteacher or principal in eastern Kansas; but he was just an old-time pedagogue and nothing more, and would like to have had a whip! Then they get a fellow that comes in, and he's the one. thank goodness, that is there when we graduate. He cooperates; but of course. Professor Brooks was the real one in my heart. Our play was so good, we thought that we [would] go out to another town--Gardner, Kansas — and rent a hall. We're going to put on a play to make money. Gardner probably never had a show before. So the Spring Hill High School senior class is putting on Faust in Gardner. We go over there; they have a packed house; and we make a few dollars apiece. I am Valentine. Everything goes pretty good, but I have another great embarrassment: I have one great spot where I'm going to stab the devil, or whoever caused the ruin of my daughter, Faust's daughter. I reach for my sword to stab the fellow — my sword was left behind the stage; I didn't have it. [laughter]

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
MAY 7, 1965

BLAIR

Cadmus keeps bobbing up; in fact, it goes on into Spring Hill. We always tried to raise watermelons on our acre in Cadmus, but never had much luck. We raised potatoes, and cabbage, and all of our own vegetables, of course. Popcorn I hoed, and pulled potatoes; but the popcorn I liked to hoe better than anything else, because when it got time to husk it, I'd have my little wagon, get small wagonloads of popcorn, and put them in what had been an early flour bin. I felt set for the winter when I had this full of popcorn. But Mother, making dresses for the farmer women and everyone, seemed to have overworked herself or something. Anyway, she had a pain in her side for a long time. She went to a hospital in Kansas City, which was almost unheard of — for anybody to go to a hospital. Apparently it was not too serious, but I had never been in a hospital or known anything about that, of course. When she was about ready to come home. Dad says we ought to go up and see her. We'd had one watermelon that you might say was big enough to eat. In fact, it was the only one at all that the whole big vine produced. The reason we didn't have good big watermelons [was that] Dad dug a hole about four feet deep and two and a half feet square and filled it full of manure on the theory that the richer the soil, the bigger the watermelons, So we planted the melons; the vines came up; and they ran over the whole acre. All this produced just about one melon. I was determined to take Mother a piece of this melon in Kansas City; it was such a wonderful thing for us to have a watermelon. In the meantime, I got my first long-pants suit. How happy Mother would be to see me in my new long-pants suit! Anyway we go six miles to Parker, and we get on the train to go to Kansas City [and] the hospital. When we go in, I thought Mother would be elated with the watermelon, but she begins to cry. Well, at that moment, of course, in her mind (which I didn't understand) was that no longer was I just a child. I was a young man. The watermelon, by that time, was pretty warm and mushy, but she pretended it was very good. Now, talking about being sick: in the community of Cadmus, it really was like one big family, as we said before. If anyone was sick, there was always somebody to sit up all night with the sick. It seems to me, as a child, this happened time and time again. Very often, it was either my father or my mother. If someone passed on, the Grange sometimes would have part of the ceremony, sometimes at a church, but mostly that was just a custom of having a sermon preached. Then they would go to the graveyard a mile and a half north of Cadmus, or some of the farmers or the boys had dug a grave in the red and yellow soil. Because it was in that graveyard, I always thought yellow and red soil may never look good anywhere. There was one case where an elderly woman had passed on. Dad was to preach the final words of the thing, really the message and comments at the grange ceremony. Well, then at the grave, the last thing in the ceremony, he'd always reach over and pick up a clod of dirt and drop it down on the coffin box. Everybody cried louder than ever at that moment. I can remember, as they would take the body up on a spring wagon, they passed our house; and I knew there was a funeral. I didn't want to look but I had to look. There was only one thing that bothered me about the whole thing of dying: when they buried me, I wouldn't be able to breathe; that was the thing that I wouldn't like about it. After the woman passed on, the old man was there, they turned away from the grave, and Dad was giving the old talk. He says, "Jake, I guess it's going to be pretty bad. You're going to miss Jenny a whole lot now, but we all have to do it." And the old man says, "Yes," he says, "I'm sure going to miss her; she never missed getting my breakfast once in forty years." [laughter] I believed everything that anybody ever told me. I thought the whole world was honest. I remember one time coming home from the Cadmus school, some of the big boys said they were going to throw me into the hedge — that was the hedge fence along the road — and set it on fire and burn it. I believed it. I ran almost half a mile to save my life. Well, that was a laugh, that was fun for the big boys. I went by the blacksmith's shop — not Uncle Love's — and I almost ran in there for help. When the big boys came down further, they were laughing out of fun, and I remember the blacksmith went out and gave them a good scolding. In the cow pasture which was about three-quarters of a mile up Elm Creek (where Uncle Love used to walk down), we had our two horses, small horses, after Billy died. It was quite new for me to be able to ride, to ride a horse of course, with no saddle or anything like that. (That was before I went to school in Parker, where I had a saddle.) Instead of bringing the horses in from the pasture the regular way, in through the gate at the end of our acre, I decided to go through another gate, up through another farmyard. I'd ride one horse and tie the other one around the neck with a halter--no bridles--and come right down through Cadmus to show people how great I was, riding one horse and leading another. I got on the road that was about halfway between the school and the Cadmus store. I'm on Bud, the slow, red bay--he was the dull one that didn't pull much in the buggy. I had a rope around Bird's neck and a rope around the neck of the one I was riding. I go down just nice to Cadmus, and the people see me riding one horse and leading another, but just the minute we turn the corner for home, which was almost a quarter-mile. Bird breaks into a dead run to get home. Well, the horse I'm on, I only have a halter around him, no bit or anything, and I'm just helpless, but I stay on until they turn. The minute they get to the gate, they turn to go in our farm gate from the road, and I fall right off between them. I still have a scar where probably a pebble or something hit me. They were careful not to step on me if they knew it, but Bird, one of the horses, stepped right between my legs and ripped my trousers all through the crotch. I was knocked almost senseless. The hired girl we had at that time rushed out, of course, and she helped me get in and lay me on the couch. I didn't feel so much hurt, but when I saw how my trousers were ripped and I was exposed, that was the catastrophe of the whole thing. I'll never forget that. Sometimes one might wonder about milking today, if they ever wonder. There's a procedure and something to be learned about everything in life on the farm or anywhere else, but I just wonder how many know which side of a cow to milk her on. That's important.

DIXON

Well, it is_ important.

BLAIR

Yes, all I can say is this: if you don't know, just start to milk and you'll soon find out. [laughter] A mule kicks quicker than any other animal according to all the farmers. But you can tell, if you're real careful, when a mule is going to kick, because a mule will throw back its ears and switch its tail just afterwards. That's how.

DIXON

Just afterwards?

BLAIR

Yes, that's the nearest. [tape recorder turned off] As to high school, aside from the senior play that was such a great success--Faust--graduation was another thing. Professor Brooks was not there; the professor they hired in the meantime they fired; but they had a very cooperative fellow at graduation time. But it comes around for the grading of the three years as to who shall be valedictorian. That's something I didn't know much about. But I did know that it meant you made a graduation speech, and that you had the best grades from three years. It turned out that in the graduation class, there was just one girl and seven boys. I had the highest grades. Well, just as time approached for the class to follow custom and select their speech maker, their valedictorian, one of the boys got up and said since we only had one girl in the class, he thought it'd be a fine thing to make her valedictorian. Well, to me that would be like destroying the Constitution all of a sudden. I didn't want anything as an honor; but I had earned it, and I wanted it, that was all. That was probably the first time I stood up at least a little bit in public for myself. I'm sure that if I hadn't done this, the rest of them would have voted to let her be [valedictorian]. I liked her; she was a good friend, just fine, and a good student. Of course, she'd been there the full three years. I was only there two years and a half, but even so, my grades had earned it. I got up and said, trying to be impersonal, that it would be too bad to destroy a custom that had been going on; that grades determined it; and if grades didn't determine it, then who would care whether there was any Victorian [sic] to be elected, if it didn't mean anything — only a plain honor. The class voted, and I was made valedictorian. I had to write a speech, and the idea was "The Imperative Need of the Hour." The imperative need of the hour was an honest man, in my mind. Probably the incentive for that was the fact that just a year or two before, the county treasurer of Johnson County had embezzled some money. To me, that was just the same as tearing the United States apart at that time. So that was my speech, "The Imperative Need of the Hour. " That night, after this commencement exercise — I played the drums in the orchestra before and after the exercises — I walked home with Vera. I was leaving the next day for Colorado. I'd had malaria off and on because the summer before, two boys and myself (one furnished the team and wagon; I furnished the groceries, wholesale, to camp with; and another boy was to pay twenty cents), were going down to fish and camp for about three days on the biggest river south of Spring Hill. We did. We had potatoes to boil, and corn you could get from the farmer to boil. Well, anyway, we ran pretty short on groceries the last day, and we were tired of drinking the creek or river water. We found a well, covered over with boards, not far from where we camped. So we thought we'd get some nice fresh water. We dipped the bucket with the rope, and we had ourselves nice cold water out of the well to drink. That night we cooked potatoes — that's all we had to eat — in this wonderful water, with the peeling on. Well, next morning, when we got up, we found that the only thing we had to eat was some cornmeal. We did have some salt; we'd have mush. Well, into this same potato water, we dumped the cornmeal, put in salt, stirred it, and we had mush. Very bitter of course, with the green water from the potato peelings. Anyway, I was sick with malaria after that — that's [how] I got it — from this well, I suppose. The well water was clear; we thought that was all that was necessary. The other boys, I guess, had a little trouble, too. I was going to leave the next morning after commencement, go to Colorado, and work in high altitudes. People said that if I would just get where the high altitude was that I wouldn't need any medicine — quinine was all they knew to give you. So I was given a round-trip ticket — coach, of course — and five dollars; and I was to go to Colorado somewhere, get a job, work in high altitude, and get rid of malaria fever. Well, Vera knew this, and we walked, after the exercise, along the road along the railroad, and came to the picket fence where her father lived. He leased the farm out to someone else to farm because he was the little jeweler there in town. It was kind of a sentimental thing to me to say goodbye to Vera, and she sent her younger sister into the house. She said, "Roll your hoop," The moon war shining. Vera put her arms around me and says, "I love you. Kiss me. God will take care of you." Well, right then I knew I was set for life. That's all there was. I go to Colorado on the train, and I get off at La Junta. I think I'll get a job at a clothing store, because I had worked in the grange stores and sold what furnishings they had; but they didn't need anybody. I got on the train again and got off at Rocky Ford — cantaloupes came from Rocky Ford. Up to that time, they were what we called "mushmelons." I think it was "muskmelons, " but [we called them] "mushmelons." I hear that there was a place where they hire people to thin beets. I go to that place and they put me on. I get an old room for, I don't know, a dollar maybe, for two nights. But I'm going to earn money, and they say they will hire me to thin beets for a third of a cent a rod, with Indians and Mexicans, out in the irrigated part of Colorado. The truth of it is, you can really see Pike's Peak snow from there on a clear day. I get in a wagon with a bunch of others that, they had hired, and they take us out to the fields. It was something new to me; I had never seen beets, planted, except the red ones, planted here and there, a seed or two, at home. Well, these were sugar beets, seeder drilled, thick — just like raising onions when you set out to plant onions for seed. They gave me a short-handled hoe--probably the handle was over a foot long and about a seven-inch hoe [blade]. I'd walk on my knees, straddling the row, chop once; and then with the right hand pull out, leave one plant; then chop again, leave a few; and then with the left hand — in the hot sun all day. I made five dollars the first day. Yes. A third of a cent per rod. They hauled us workers back at night. It was a Saturday, I guess, [when] I got this first job. I was sick in bed for four days, with fever and all, from this overwork, but I had the five dollars. So, I think I'll get a different job. I hear of another place where the farmers come in to hire some help. This is a place where they are hiring some to go out and hoe cantaloupes — that sounds good. Here's a nice looking farmer more like I'd see in Cadmus or somewhere, and he said, "Now what do you want? Do you want a job?" I said, "Yes." He says, "You don't want to work." I was dressed up perhaps a little better than some of them. "Don't want to work! I always have worked." He said, "What did you do?" "I've plowed; I've done this." "Well, you don't look like you could work, but we'll try you." Well, he took me home. I was the only one he hired. I was to hoe cantaloupes, and he had some beets, too. Anyway, I was to get my board and a dollar and a half a day on that job. Well, the hoeing was easy. He had a son and a daughter; and the wife was just as friendly and nice as any farming woman I have ever seen anywhere; and I felt very much at home. But there was another fellow already working there. The first day or two we hoed cantaloupe, and it was fine. It was a whole lot easier than thinning beets. I remember the second night, this fellow wanted me to walk in to Rocky Ford, about three miles, after working all day, and go to a tent religious meeting. Because I didn't want to go, he thought I was certainly on the road to hell. It hurt my conscience a little — maybe he knew more about it than I did. Anyway, I felt guilty about it because it was always hard for me to say no. But I didn't go. I was paid at the end of the week. He roomed in the same room with me in this farmhouse. I had a five-dollar bill given me, and I put it in my suitcase. Finally, on Saturday night — we weren't going to have to work Sunday — he persuaded me to walk into town to this meeting, and we did. We got back, I guess, around midnight. Sunday we were around there; we helped do the chores. When I come in from work Monday evening, this other boy, this fellow, has quit. [They said], "Yes, he went into town today; he quit." Well, I went back to look through my suitcase, just to see what I was accumulating. I had a plate camera with twelve plates — I could take pictures. My five-dollar bill was gone. So, the religious fellow, he sure had that. The farmer goes to town to see if we can catch him anywhere, and tell somebody. They said, yes, they said they knew such a fellow; he came in there and stole a Victrola out of the shop, then got away with it, and he was on the way to get on the train. They caught him at the depot with the Victrola, and he was arrested and in jail. But I didn't get my five dollars back. Well, that was that. [tape recorder turned off] Jim Boring, whose father was a stonemason in Spring Hill, went with me to Colorado on that trip. And I almost forgot about him, because he didn't want to work. He had two sisters working, one of them in the telephone office, which was very new in those days. He didn't have to work much. He was to get a job like I did, and I didn't see him after the time I got off at Rocky Ford; but he did get a job playing for a dollar and a half each Saturday night in the Rocky Ford band — he wouldn't take any other job. His sisters must have sent him some money, so he stayed and loafed around quite a while just to get the dollar and a half to play the trombone in the Rocky Ford band on Saturday night, [while] I was working and saving my money. We had planned that when we got to Colorado we'd go and climb Pike's Peak; we'd go up to the mountains together. Well, I began to save my money, and I told Jim. So he got a job too, supposedly, hoeing cantaloupes somewhere else out of Rocky Ford. I worked about a month or more at this place during the summer, and I supposed that he was doing [the same], and getting his money. I got where I had thirty-five dollars saved up. Part of it was done this way: this farmer had beets as well as cantaloupes. He was paying a third of a cent a rod to thin them, just the same as the other people. But there was such a thing as a contractor, where a fellow would take the whole thing. I made a deal, wanting to be boss or something. I would do so many acres of beets. So I took the contract then and quit hoeing cantaloupes. The contract was that I would hire the Indians and Mexicans, particularly Indians around there. You might have wondered.. I still had to pay a third of a cent a rod, and that's all the farmers were going to pay. Some rows, or sections, of a field wouldn't have very many plants. You could thin maybe a hundred feet in some sections where in the same time, you could [thin only] ten feet where they were thick — I had that advantage. I took the easier rows; I was a contractor, and I felt very good about it. There were no creeks or rivers through there, [just] these wonderful, wide irrigation ditches, just like a creek, only they were too smooth; there were no stones and trees growing up. I had my camera, and I went out to where the Indians camped one time. There was one who had been doing some painting on a board or something. I saw he got his yellow from some of the yellow dirt that he had mixed up, and the red I thought, and I still wonder, was brick dust, ground up. I remember just as I went up--this Indian had been putting some colors on — he finished; and he took the cup that the red was in and drank the balance of it. I, to this day, thought he was drinking the brick juice. Since then, I now believe it might have been wild berries of some kind. That's probably what it was. [tape recorder turned off] I remember now that Jim Boring and I were to meet on a certain day, and then we would go on together to Pike's Peak. Well, when that time came, Jim said he hadn't enough money saved up, and he hadn't gotten any from his sister. I went on ahead with my thirty-five dollars. I asked Jim why he hadn't earned more on the job he took of hoeing cantaloupes. "Well," he said, "I got fired." "Fired?" He said, "You know, I liked it out there, and he had a daughter; and I just kind of stayed around the house instead of hoeing cantaloupes, and the farmer fired me." [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] Jim didn't have enough money to go on to Pike's Peak, but he agreed that he would get the money from his sisters or really work. So I go on and I get a room and write him where I was staying. On the way, I stopped at Pueblo — had to on the train — and then on up to Colorado Springs. Well, I stayed a day there, and some young people there saw I had a camera. In the group was a hunchback. They said, "Would you take our pictures?" And I said, "Yes, ten cents apiece." I took their pictures, and I took one of the hunchback. They all paid me ten cents apiece, and I was to send the hunchback ten prints. I would print them myself. I knew I could develop a plate camera in the bathroom in the dark and do my own printing. When I got to Colorado Springs, I did this — mailed all the pictures back to them and gave them my address. I get a letter in a few days (I'm waiting for Jim Boring to come, and I'm spending my money for board and room) from one of the girls who had her picture taken. They all liked them, but they said the hunchback looked terrible, that I had no business taking money from a hunchback. He was in a chair, a jolly fellow. She said they didn't think I was the kind of a thief that I would take money from a poor hunchback, and for me to send that money right back because he didn't like the pictures. Well, I was a little frightened and felt guilty, so I sent them back the dollar. By the way, while I was waiting for Jim to come, I decided I'd better earn some money. I was spending my money, and he was supposed to be getting his together. So I go out to Manitou [Springs], to the railroad freight yards along there — not the narrow gauge railroad yards, but the regular [gauge] railroad yards to Pike's Peak to Colorado Springs — and I applied for a job in a freight yard of some kind. They said, "Yes, you can get a job helping unload bridge timbers." I think at that time I must have been eighteen, I guess — seventeen or eighteen. There were some regular railroad men unloading big flatcars full of bridge timbers, about twelve by twelve, that they build trestles and bridges out of. My job was to get up on these long pieces [of timber] on the freight car; and with an implement they gave me, I could hook it over and pry and stand on it until it started to roll down off the side of the freight car; and then jump to another one and let it roll on down. Well, I stuck that out until noon. Blair had never been a quitter before, but this time he thought he was lucky to be alive by noon. So I told them I was going to quit. They didn't owe me anything — just let me out of it. The foreman said, "No, you can't quit, it is the rule of the railroad that if you work even an hour you've got to take your pay; that's the rule." Well, I said, "I don't want any pay." He said, "You've got to go to the depot. It's about a mile up the track on this side of the station. I'll give you this slip of paper; you go in there and get your pay." Well, I thought I didn't want to go to jail for not taking my pay, so I walked up; and the depot agent takes it, and he says, "You were to get two and a half a day. You will have coming to you about a dollar twenty, but insurance has to be deducted from that, and a few other things, so that if you do have an accident or anything, why, then the railroad company [isn't liable]." That was their own private system; it's a good deal like unemployment or something now. Well, I got thirty-seven cents after they took [the deductions] out. Thirty-seven cents I got, but I was alive, [tape recorder turned off] Then I get a job carrying dishes, working in a grocery store, getting a little money in, but it seems I'm spending more. I did take some trips alone, up and down canyons. One thing was pretty good. I would start up a canyon — these wonderful mountain streams there — and see people who didn't have a camera. And I would introduce myself and tell them that I had a camera; and if they would let me go on their little party with them I wouldn't expect any pay, but I would take their pictures sitting on a little foot-bridge, sitting on a rock. Well, gee whiz, for people from the East and Middle West, to have the pine trees, and here they are in the mountains... So I told them it was ten cents a picture. I would go with them to have company and take their pictures, and then at night I would go back to my room and develop and print the pictures. I made a little money that way, and had fun, too — I had some company just hiking. I don't know how it happened, but by the time Jim got there — I guess I had quit work and was paying board and room--my money [had about run out]. Jim finally came, but he [didn't have] much money; he didn't have enough to stay but one day. I financed him somewhat, so we could take some hikes up and down [the canyons]. We got down to where we had thirty-five cents between us, and we left Colorado Springs with thirty-five cents and our tickets between us to get back to Spring Hill, Kansas. [tape recorder turned off] ! When I got back to Spring Hill, my mother was gone for a day or two; and that night, when Dad got back from the store, I slept with him. About the first thing he asked me, "Did you come home with any money?" I told him I got home with nothing, that we had left with thirty-five cents, but I waited around and spent it. He laughed; he didn't scold me. He would have been surprised if I had it. The grange store in Spring Hill was making money. Everything there was just like the same [as] in Cadmus — Dad and Mother ran the community, you might say. But it was a town; there was a banker and population of seven hundred. At the same time, the grange store was the dominant business. Dad found on the books that a man that owed the store seven hundred dollars had moved down into the Ozarks — Arkansas. He wrote him some letters, and the fellow wrote back and said he know he owed him some money, but he just didn't have any money. Well, you never sued anybody in those days. People were, I think, really ninety-nine percent honest; if they couldn't pay, they couldn't pay. I know Dad had a customer at Cadmus that always owed twenty dollars. When he'd come in, he'd pay cash for things (Dad didn't want to charge anything to him), but Dad wanted him to pay something on the twenty dollars. This [man] was a combination farmer and stonemason, and he would say, "Well, Ed, you know I make good money when I work — I'm a stonemason. I get three dollars a day. I make good money. Don't worry." But the point was, he never worked. Anyway, Dad gets a letter from this man that had moved to Arkansas, saying that he had a lot of acreage, and that he would give Dad eighty acres of timberland for the seven hundred. It was on the White River. He told Dad it was full of trees mostly, but good acreage. Dad liked the idea, so Dad paid seven hundred dollars into the grange store account and took a title to the eighty acres of ground. When the tax bill came, it said one hundred and twenty acres. Dad was very honest, so he wrote to him, and he said, "You, or somebody, must have made a mistake. According to this I have title to one hundred and twenty acres instead of eighty acres. What is the reason?" The fellow wrote back and said, "Well, I was tired of paying taxes on it, and I just slipped in an extra forty on you." [tape recorder turned off] Dad didn't feel sorry a bit for himself. Billy Wilkerson, the wonderful editor of the Spring Hill New Era, and Dad decided they would go down there on the train as far as they could and hitchhike and see that ground. They did. They found beautiful black walnut trees, hickory, oak, willows, and even some Southern birch along the White River. [They] came back elated, and I told Dad (later on, however) that if he ever sold that I wanted it. Later on, you'll find that I camped out a great deal in my business, all over the nation. After Dad retired, and I was helping him a great deal (and glad to, so he could write; he was a poet), one day I said, "What about the Ozark?" "Oh," he says, "I sold it and got my money but of it." I said, "Sold it! I was to buy it." He says, "You've done enough. I didn't want you to favor me anymore." [tape recorder turned off] Some gypsies camped out, south of Spring Hill, in a wagon. [It was] the first time I ever heard of actual gypsies being where anyone else was around Kansas. It seems like some of the young men were going down there, and for some reason that I didn't understand. Some of the men, a little bit like an organized posse, went down there and chased the gypsies away from Spring Hill. Then there was a couple with a son that had a little "dirty spoon" restaurant in Spring Hill. One day the mother — they all worked in the restaurant — went to what might be a justice of the peace. (I don't think there was a justice of the peace, but there was somebody who had some authority in Spring Hill. The village was not incorporated, you know.) She told whoever it was to have her husband arrested for gambling. Well, that was unbelievable in Spring Hill. He said "Well, on what basis?" "Well, on the fact that he gambles." "Well," the justice says, "your son gambles. Do you want him arrested, too?" "No." "Why not?" "He wins." [laughter] [tape recorder turned off]. The druggist, the young man that played cornet in the Spring Hill band, was a little bit timid about business relations: that is, he was supposed to know everybody and all that sort of thing. One day, a farmer came in and bought some stuff. He knew [the farmer's] credit was good and all of that--he didn't worry--but he couldn't think of his name. Feeling that the farmer would think, "Well, you ought to know me," he said to him, "Just how do you spell your name?" The farmer said, "J-o-n-e-s, just like any other damned Jones." [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] My major farming experience out of Spring Hill was when I went to work by the month at fifty cents a day, [with] board and room, on the Newton farm, southeast of Spring Hill, two miles from town. I was to plow, do anything I could: get up at five o'clock; rub the horses; go down and get the horses in; harness them; feed them; get the cows in; milk; come in, have breakfast about six; and then be out in the field cultivating or plowing or whatever it was by almost sunup at times. I had thought that whenever it rained, I might get an easy day. We had a big rain during the night, and I thought "Well, today we can't plow." That morning, Mr. Newton says, "Well, this is a perfect day to set out sweet potato plants." So I worked on my knees all day in the mud, straddling the rows that we had plowed, setting up sweet potato plants in long rows of what they called hills, on the day I thought I might be off. Through all of that, I would walk in the two miles every Tuesday night for band practice; and then stay at home after band practice, get up extra early, and walk two miles back to the farm to be there to get the horses in around five-thirty or six o'clock. I am cultivating corn in a field east of the house. The walking cultivator [had] two little shovels, one on each side of each row, and the team goes along. They know how to straddle the rows and follow. The nearer I get to the fence, I notice some horses in a pasture from another farmer keep coming closer. They see the horses I'm driving. In that group was one of the most beautiful sorrels, young colts, that I had ever seen; [he had] kind of a light mane and tail and looked a little bit almost like a Morgan — although at that time, I never heard of a Morgan. The fence was a wire fence, three strands of barbed wire, not very solid. I kept noticing the horses getting closer, and I thought they might try to come through the fence but surely wouldn't. The terrible thing was, it seemed to be on my shoulders and my responsibility if they did, and yet there was nothing to be done about it. They got within three rows of the fence, and one of the horses stepped over the lower wire and pushed the fence towards us; and the first thing I knew, about six horses had their front feet over the lower wire of this fence, including this beautiful young colt. Well, I went over to try to make them step back, and of course, the minute I moved, they jumped back; and they were nearly all of them caught for a moment with this barbed wire under the backside of their hoof. They all jerked loose except this little colt, probably a year old. I stopped. There he was caught; I could see blood coming out underneath and behind his hoof. I had no wire cutters, but I knew I had to save that colt if I could — he would die of blood poisoning or something from that rusty wire. I found a wrench in the cultivator, and I found a flint rock in some of the dirt. I got down on my knees and went a little closer. By that time, I kind of petted his nose. He felt I was going to help him, and he stood still. Down on my knees, not knowing whether he would lunge towards me and drag me up into the wire, I pounded with the wrench into the barbed wire against the flint rock, within an inch of his foot, and finally I got it cut in two. The minute that wire loosed, his foot dropped, he jerked, and he came loose. I quit for a while, went into the house where they had a telephone, and called the farmer about it (I knew his name). He didn't take it too seriously, but he said he would go out and get the colt in. As far as I know, it got all right and didn't ruin him. That was one of the tragic moments; it was as fearsome to me as the episode of Uncle Love and my breaking the doubletree. I was glad when I had fifteen dollars coming to me at the end of the month. To do all that for fifteen dollars — I was pretty sure I didn't want to be a hired hand the rest of my life. I looked forward to my pay, but when I quit, nothing was said about the pay. I was back home working in the store doing other things around to make a little, but no pay. The farmer would come in — Mr. Newton, a fine man — trade, chat, and talk, but no pay. Finally, after about eight weeks, I told my dad that I really wanted to be paid. So the next time Mr. Newton was in. Dad spoke to him and said, "By the way, Streeter kind of wondered when you expect to pay for his work." "Why," he says, "Ed, you could have paid him and charged it to me any time." [tape recorder turned off] I think we better step back to Cadmus for a moment. The man that introduced western Kansas to soda pop and to throwing balls at dolls at a picnic for cigars moved to Cadmus finally. He could not join the Grange. His reputation was a little too shady — he probably didn't try. He rented a little house between the grange store--the new grange store that they built — and the church south of town. His wife wore a yellow blouse, quite a nonchalant type of blouse compared to the high-necked ones my mother made for the women; and she would come down to the store and get groceries. I don't know what her husband did; I guess he went back out to do fishing or whatever he was doing. One day I'm in the store, and a young farmer that lives a couple of miles south [came in]. Quite a live one. He belonged to the Grange. Just a wonderful being, but he was more talkative than most of the people. I heard my dad say prior to that, one time at home, "If he doesn't be a little careful, someone is liable to punch him in the nose." However, this fellow is in the store on this certain day, one or two other people in the store, I'm there, and in comes Kuntz's wife. Behind her, she is holding something. She walks up to this young farmer; she had a blacksnake whip in her hand; and she lays it on all over him--shoulders, legs — he takes it. [She] folds up the whip and goes back. Of course my mother, when that happened, she got on the job. She went up to see this Mrs. Kuntz. The report was that her husband said, "If you do not horsewhip that fellow, I'll kill you. " The great crime was the fact that this young fellow had made some remark about Kuntz's wife and Kuntz heard it. Therefore, Cadmus [was] probably the only village in all eastern Kansas that ever had a real horsewhipping. It happened at Cadmus — this sedate, big, one-family, crossroads town. [tape recorder turned off] We hadn't been in Spring Hill very long after moving down from Kansas City until my dad said that when his father took his family — Ira, Nixon, John, Lizzie, and of course my grandmother — in the mover wagon from near Fort Scott to catch a train in Kansas City, ninety-four miles away, [they] left the mover wagon there, and took the train to Ohio to visit relatives. But [on the way] they camped. One of the camp spots — in fact, about the last one before they got to Kansas City — was Spring Hill, this very town that we moved into from Kansas City. Dad said about six miles north of Spring Hill [his] dad realized he had lost his penknife while camping [there]. He left the family on the prairie, and he walked back the six miles looking for it; he didn't find it. He looked around the ashes and places where he might have split some shavings to start the fire, [which was] the last time he remembered using it. There was the inn in front of which they had camped { [now] owned by the Turner family — the same early Turners owned it in those days; that was before the Civil War, I guess). Well, he asked them if any of them had ever found a penknife, and they all said no. Now, [when we lived in Spring Hill], the inn itself was no longer an inn or a hotel; it was just full of baled hay and storage stuff from farms. Dad told us about the fact that his father had lost that penknife, a German penknife. I don't think they made so many real good steel penknives in America in those days. German [ones were] the best. He told us about talking to them and [how] they said none of them knew anything about the knife. It just happens that later on, when I come home from the University of Kansas on an Easter vacation — the folks have their first Ford car; this is about thirty-five years or more after Grandpa's trip to Kansas City to catch the train — and we go out riding around in an automobile to the same farms where we worked. In a couple of hours, we've practically seen all the grange homes, you might say, in the whole area. We come back home — mind you. thirty-five or forty years later — and on the front porch ;was an envelope. In it is this penknife. No name; there is the mystery. I might jump ahead here and say that later on in life, I did some painting; and one of the paintings I did was to record early American life as I remembered it: a mover wagon on the prairie; children playing; a big strong man walking back looking for a penknife. Well, today that painting..and that penknife are in a box in glass forever at the University of Kansas. [tape recorder turned off] This will likely finish most of the Spring Hill incidents. By the way, I told you about the fireworks, didn't I? [tape recorder turned off] One summer, when the Spring Hill Grange had their annual three-day picnic in the park, nobody else wanted it, so I paid ten dollars and got the rights for three days to run the refreshment stand. I was to furnish everything at wholesale. George Marks, who had gone on the camping trip with me when we got malaria, furnished the team and wagon to haul the lumber free. We borrowed the lumber from the lumber dealer. Then I got a man who made ice cream at Gardner, where I had gone with the play Faust. He was to furnish the ice cream and bring it over. Each of us, I remember now, put up ten dollars apiece in addition to the license fee to have the rights to the fair that three days. He brought the ice cream over; we had buns shipped down from Kansas City; we had bananas; we had the usual things for a picnic stand. We made lemonade; everything is ready to go; the ice cream is there packed in ice — homemade up in Gardner. George says, "I'm kind of a little leery about this, whether we are going to get our money back. You have to sell a lot of things — a sandwich at a nickel apiece and all that." Well, I was a little braver as a merchant, I guess. (Although I never got paid the full twenty-five cents for the boy that went camping with us on that other trip; he had paid twenty [cents], and he owes me a nickel yet today. It kind of burns me up.) But anyway, I tell George I'll buy his interest out for ten dollars and give him his money back. He had hauled this stuff. This creamery man, who had made the wonderful ice cream in Gardner, he says, "You know, I'm not much of a businessman, and I don't see how we are going to get out thirty dollars back and make much. I think I'd kind of like to sell out." I said, "All right, I'll give you your ten dollars." So I owned the whole thing. At the end of three days, I had a hundred dollars. Yep. [tape recorder turned off] Also, by that time, I was not only playing one drum in the Spring Hill band when we weren't playing concerts, I was playing trap drums, and I was really the band director due to that. Another thing in that period, the merchants were going to celebrate the Fourth of July. They raised a hundred dollars for fireworks — they never had fireworks [before]. They built a bandstand downtown at the end of the business section. The band is playing, and they are going to have fireworks.. "Under the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" was about the only thing we played that wasn't a march, and people loved it and cheered and we played more. The fireworks were there. Nobody knew much about shooting fireworks, but one fellow said he did, he thought he could do it. We borrowed the cart from the depot that hauled the mail up, and we put all the hundred dollars worth of the fireworks right beside the bandstand. He builds a chute where he can put skyrockets going up. Everything is there, the band plays, and it's getting darker and darker. And now the great event, a hundred dollars worth of fireworks display; they advertised it all over eastern Kansas. Many people [were] there. The first one he shot, of course, was going to be a skyrocket. He lights it; it goes right up the trough a few feet; something caught it; it fell right back into the cart and set off a hundred dollars worth of fireworks on the first shot! People ran; horses jumped and reared; and everybody ran for their lives, you might say. There was the hundred-dollar celebration over in at least two minutes. Some of them fizzled and shot sideways and everywhere. The band was hired to go to a town about eight miles away--not Gardner — to play. Vera was not in town; in fact, I am not so sure whether she had moved on to Laramie. Most of the band boys were going to take somebody, and I asked the girl that come into the store and hung around and had me wait on her one of the first days I was in the store after we moved out from Kansas City. I had never had a date with her [before]. She's to go with me, and I take my snare drum. (They had a bass drummer then.) I am quite excited and nervous. And you know, the morning that I get up early, a bumblebee stings me on the throat; and by the time I call her up to tell her I can't talk, I couldn't talk, so I didn't go. I didn't have the date. That was another one of those unexpected [things].

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
JUNE 4, 1965

BLAIR

About five years ago, I had an art show of my paintings at the University of Kansas. [It was] the fiftieth anniversary of my class of 1911. It happened that the dean of colleges at the state university, in Manhattan, Kansas--that's the agricultural division--saw the show. So for the last four or five years, I've received a letter from this man, T. [Thomas] Marshall Hahn, Jr., president of VPI [Virginia Polytechnic Institute], one of the big, old, good schools. They own about 30,000 acres, and [originally it was] based on agriculture, but it has for years been a technical school. So, he liked my paintings, and he's been buying one every year and paying for it during the year. He says presidents don't get a lot of money--even though he's president of a university. He owns about five now, and he always gets them paid up before Christmas and buys another one. He's been wanting me to come back there and do paintings of the campus, or at least come back and see VPI, and he said he'd do great things for me if I would. Finally, due to an impulse, or information, rather, that became an impulse, [I did]. There was this Pippa Passes [Alice Lloyd] College, two years, in the hills of southeast Kentucky where civilization bypassed. The [people] came in there in the Pilgrim century, and they still talk in a somewhat Elizabethan language, seventeen thousand of them in the particular county of Knott, Kentucky. They had never had any contact with civilization except the last very few years. Just to draw that picture, the seventeen thousand people in that county last year bought only thirty-one hundred dollars worth of merchandise during the year.

DIXON

Seventeen thousand people?

BLAIR

Yes. The total bank deposits from that area are in a Hazard bank at the south border of the county. The total bank deposits of all that last year averaged twenty-eight hundred dollars. I was invited due to a friend who went through the University of Kansas and met my granddaughter there in dramatics. She had been begging us to come back and see this two-year college which is the result of Alice [Geddes] Lloyd, who came in there forty years ago [to get] away from New York. She was a graduate of two colleges. She came down there for her health, and told the natives in a certain canyon there — they call them "hollows" instead of canyons — that she would stay there and work with them if they would build her a little shack. They did, and from that, she, with her own personal efforts, developed a hundred grade schools in southeast Kentucky; and then about thirty years later she started an accredited two-year college. They screen the youngsters from the county, select certain ones, and the enrollment today is two hundred and fifty in that college. This man, Mr. Prosser, from the University of Kansas, went in there to take charge of dramatics. The plan is, and they are carrying it out, that after the students graduate, they will finance them for two years in a regular college to get a degree, provided they will come back and spend two years helping in that county, and helping the college for whatever payment is available. It happens that there is no foundation [support], no state help, or anything; but from all over the nation, people send money and things, and they have a budget of about three hundred thousand dollars a year. They have two hundred and fifty students and about twenty [people] on the faculty. The wonderful thing about it is [that] faculty people there are retired from major institutions with doctor's degrees. They go down there, and they get their living, housing, and a certain amount in cash to be the faculty. But my trip was bordered on that somewhat, and the fact that — this was the main urge — the president of VPI, because I hadn't come back there on my own, said, "We have a visitor's scholar fund, and we have voted you to be a visiting scholar; to come back, and explain your primitive painting and certain things that you have done that seem a little unusual to the architectural students and the faculty, and to the art students and faculty." They said the fee they would pay me was a thousand dollars. Well, [with] that particular argument, I went. I left here by train. I don't like planes; I'm not in that big of a hurry. I took the [Santa Fe] Chief to Chicago. I was talking to a man in the club car. We were telling of our old times, and across the aisle was another fellow — I didn't think anything about ages. Pretty soon, he says, "You're just kids. You two are just kids." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Oh, I got ten years on either one of you to talk about old-time things. You're just kids." I said, "By the way how old are you?" "Well," he says, "sixty-seven." I said, "All right, you're a kid." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, you're a kid. I am seventy-seven." He said, "No." Well, anyway, I had to show him... I did say this: I couldn't prove I was seventy-seven; but I could prove I was forty-seven. Anyway, the driver's license settled it and that was just a little incident. And I'm inclined to think that there isn't any such thing as a calendar age, which we go by. The less you pay attention to the calendar and [the more you] are busy.. well, I think maybe it keeps you a little bit more active. You at least fool people to thinking you are younger than you are. By the way, when I stopped [in Chicago], I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, and I took my credentials along showing my acceptance as a painter over the nation, in Europe, at the Smithsonian [Institution], eight museums, and all the different things. I go in, and I think it might be fun to talk to somebody in the museum of art there. I go in, and they say, "Yes, you can meet the man that has charge of all the painting displays, Mr. [John] Maxon." Well, he comes up, to my surprise, sits down and says, "I know you and I know your work, and I don't like it." Well, that's quite a shock when I was just getting paid a thousand dollars to go and tell somebody about it. I said, "What do you mean?" Well, he says, "I was at the University of Kansas when you had that show during the fifty-year reunion. I was out of town a few days, and the chancellor and Mr. [Robert] Vosper, head of libraries, booked that show over my head. I resented it. I don't like primitives, and I don't like yours better than any of them." And he says, "I have not gotten over it yet." Well, I made up my mind right then that I wasn't going to let him walk away from me first, so I got up and I laid down about five pages of international and worldwide acceptance for my paintings. And I said, "You might look this over; I am in a hurry." I beat him to the draw on that. He looked at me and said, "Well, I'll put it in the files — kind of like to have it." And I left him. That was a great jumping-off point, to go where I was built up high, with great respect, and [then] hear that. I get on this train, the New York Central, to take me down to Cincinnati. On the way, they have a flat tire on the train, and it is two hours late. I missed my train — a Pullman — in Cincinnati that would have gone on to Christiansburg, which is a few miles from Blacksburg, where you get off the train. Anyway, the people out here [in Los Angeles] made up my ticket first [so that] I was going to have to get off at Bluefield. They said that was the nearest railroad stop to Blacksburg in the Virginia hills Well, then I got a letter from Dr. Hahn, saying the best place to get off the train was Christiansburg. I found out later that the California people here (Santa Fe) would have had me get off at Bluefield, a two-hour drive, or more, from Blacksburg. So, they gave me an annex after hearing from Dr. Hahn; the ticket went on to Christiansburg; and I was met there by the head of the art department at VPI. I was given quarters in the photographer's home (he was a member of the staff at VPI) next door to Carter's — that's the head of the art department. Dean Carter. The reason they put me there for three days was Dr. Hahn and his wife were away from their big home, and were not getting back till the following Wednesday. So I stayed there, and from that time on I was booked three to four big sessions a day, showing color slides to all the art classes and to the architecture classes, and then seminars with faculties and faculties and this and that. [My schedule] showed a luncheon here, and a luncheon there, and I thought, "Well, that means a sandwich and a cup of coffee or something." I get there, and there would be fifteen or twenty people from the university, and a big chicken dinner, and I wondered, "Well, how are they going to have a real dinner if they have this at luncheon?" Then at dinnertime you think, "Well, how can they have anything exciting on Christmas or Thanksgiving?" Anyway, it was just one great pressure, and I wondered if I could stand it, but I did. Unknown to me, [due to] my getting in there on a Sunday evening, on a Monday morning I am booked on television at Roanoke, forty miles away, at nine o'clock. So that's when it started; that kept on until the final, big evening, which was open to anybody on the campus. They had about three hundred people, and they had a big screen and a powerful machine to show my color slides. [tape recorder turned off] At VPI, they are opening a workshop and they would like me to come back there, and even Mrs. Blair. She does sculpture in clay, and firing, and she does plaster work. Of course she started with primitive painting, and now she's in construction and collage and that sort of thing. But now they are opening up at VPI what they call a workshop, and there is a woman coming in this summer with a certain type of weaving. They don't have to be accredited, degreed people in this. It is a touchy thing when you are showing your color slides and talking about your own paintings — an untrained and untutored individual — to dozens and dozens of youngsters who have taken a four-year course, studying drawing and everything. I could see right away they were hot — why take this course? Well, I had lectured on the psychology of advertising and salesmanship, so I sensed that right away, and I explained this. I said, "You young people here are taking something I never had the advantage of; I didn't know I would even be interested because I was in advertising and other things all my life. You are taking a four-year course, but I will warn you on something: when you get out, you still won't know how you, as an individual, would paint for maybe two or three years." And I quoted names where that was true. "Therefore, really as to whether you are going to be good or accepted or a master depends on how you would paint — not how your professors or instructors painted." Well, that dropped them down, you know. Then I came in with this: "But, when the time arrives that you are discovering how you would paint, you will have the facility of what you are getting now. Study every day; take a master's degree if you can. When you arrive at the point of doing your own type of painting, it will be like [no other]. No two people are alike; if yours is what the world wants — not like the professor's — you will have the facility due to this course and due to this work. Take everything they offer you; then you can be great. In my case and in all primitive painters, we teach ourselves, unknowingly, but always trying to do our best. We are not guided by any rules, and therefore we are limited. As far as I'm concerned, the limitations are not so great, but what I have plenty to paint yet. I am not worried about that. One thing, I just saw some paintings I did twelve years ago. I painted fifteen the first time. To me they were more interesting even than what I'd taught myself. If I could do it, I would unteach myself a little to be able to paint like when I first started." [tape recorder turned off] The main problem at VPI was how to get to Pippa Passes. These hollows were small canyons; the widest spot was around three hundred feet. Even the train went through three hundred miles of them south Cincinnati to Blacksburg. And honestly, there were twenty-four tunnels in the daylight ride. You'd see little old houses along in the woods. You don't see any dirt — the whole mountains are covered with beautiful, beautiful green trees of every description and type, and yet there would be little old houses in there. I was puzzled, of course, as to what people did. Well, they worked in the mines, and you can't see the hole in the ground where you go into the mines. And yet in one area, where a little branch railroad comes into this road, from one to two thousand freight carloads of coal come out of there every day from back in those hills. Now this machine-type of mining has put a lot of people out of employment there. The government is taking care of them to a certain extent, under welfare (I don't know what they call it, or whether that's a recent thing). So, the question was how to get to Pippa Passes. On the map it had Pippapass--they didn't even know [how to spell it]. Anyway, this is where the group lived, and where this college is. They had been bypassed by civilization, and the main mode of travel is a mule and a wooden sled — two logs shaped off like a runner up front, and boards. That is transportation in the county around outside of Pippa Passes. Well, [there was] a young man of VPI who flunked out in agriculture — just one course, and that course was one hour a week. He had to stay in school another semester to go to class on a Friday once. He wanted to drive me over to Pippa Passes; on the map, it is about seventy-five or a hundred miles. He says, "All right, I'll take you over there, and if you want me to stay a couple of days and drive you back, great." Well, I get on the phone to Mr. Prosser of Pippa Passes. He says, "Yes, you can drive that way, but it is two hundred miles of driving, because it's all curves all the way." So, I said, "Well, is there any way I could get to you? Suppose I started home from VPI and get up to Cincinnati on the way home; where is the nearest place the Norfolk and Western [Railroad] would go to Pippa Passes?" He said, "It's at Williamson; that's only about fifty miles." I said, "Fine, I'll get off there." So he met me in the afternoon. But it's a hundred and twenty miles even driving down that way. He meets me and [we travel] the winding road coming down to Pippa Passes, get in there, and I am given a little apartment on the campus. You can't tell where the campus is; there is a little house here, a building [there], and they say, "There is the science building." It is a shack about ten by twelve — after all, [they only have] two hundred and fifty students. They have one eating place, a hall, which they are getting ready to tear down, because it was built out of logs years and years ago and the northeast part of the eating hall fell here a few weeks ago. They braced it up some, and they have a Quonset hut there now for an eating hall for the students while they tear that down and build a new one. By the way, the architecture there is just as primitive--untutored and untrained. They are all wonderful buildings, built out of stone and built out of logs. The college has been going off and on now for the last thirty years. For instance, here is a shack, and then here is a porch--both of them just Gothic--with two posts at each side to hold up the porch. They rest on rock, but nothing to fasten them there. The weight holds them; you'd think you could kick them loose. Well, anyway, they are done; they just planned them. The people in the county and those would-be students, when they first started, built these places. There's a stream runs along by the road that comes in from Williamson. That was running all the time, and across it are other buildings. You could drive probably a mile through the campus, but you will just think you are going through a village of shacks. There is [only] one sign out; there is a flag at the post office. The first little house that they built for Alice Lloyd is still there, and they're going to move it and preserve it. They are going to move it, because when they build this eating hall, it is going to need some of that area. They have no athletics, but when I was there on one side of the stream there was a triangular plot, maybe about an acre or half-acre, and a fellow was trying to teach these girls Softball. They'd get up there, and once in a while, [the ball] would go over the base, and the girl would hit it and stand [there]. He couldn't get them to understand to hit the ball and run to first base. Anyway, that was new there; they were just starting. There is no band or anything like that. But they do have a singing choir, and they have been sent to New York twice. Now, they would like for me to come back there and teach Latin, and have a workshop on guiding people in painting who aren't taking a regular art course. The Latin teacher is quitting now. I won't do that, but anyway [I had] the incentive to go back and do some good there. I saw a truckload of cartons of clothing and things sent from over the nation come in, and the money comes in. There is one fellow that puts up a big part of this money each year that they think won't live too much longer. And they are [hoping] I will make up what he can do. [tape recorder turned off] Pippa Passes, like I said, is on the map as Pippapass — whoever made up that map probably didn't read [Robert] Browning's "Pippa Passes." I don't know why it would be named that, but certainly it is appropriate for the "hollows," as they call them. When Alice Lloyd passed on, they changed the college name to Alice Lloyd College at Pippa Passes, but it is one and the same thing. One afternoon Prosser said, "We want to go and get some strawberries up a hollow." Well, we drove two miles on the pavement, then we turned off on the road to the hollow--a creek. He didn't take his car; he took a large-size pickup. We ride on the rocks, and on the bank, three miles up the creek and then we turn off to the left and we are going to the place where they can get strawberries. (Now, it just happens there is a big movement on foot now--by the government, I think--to spend a lot of money in the southeastern states on roads and things. There will be a road built three miles up this creek. The rock is there; there will probably be fords with the water running over them, but a good paved road.) Then you turn off about a half a mile to this place where we are going to get strawberries. Well, here is the typical Southern, two-story house with the veranda porch — unpainted, of course. And here's a little brook comes down running into the creek. You look up that, and there are little buildings, shacks, along it, and about a hundred and fifty chickens drinking out of a little brook. Compared to California, it looked very, very exciting. Then off on the little rolling hills around this place, you see patches of cultivation. He had a mule mill and a twelve-inch plow, not a sixteen-inch [plow] like we plowed with in Kansas, and he has a little cultivator shovel. He raises there corn, garden stuff, potatoes, and whatever they need to live on; and you can tell right there that they don't have to buy much if they are one of the group that only spends thirty-one hundred [dollars] outside. They don't use these, what they used to call "quarts"--boxes of strawberries with a false bottom, so they could pack them--the government stopped them. But you get a quart, I mean a heaped-up quart [of strawberries], and they sell a big box worth, a gallon for a dollar. So I gave the woman a dollar, just because I was glad to, and right away--we were just at the truck — she said, "Well, listen, you people don't have to be in too big a hurry, wait a minute. I got something, just have some crushed strawberries." She goes in and fixes up. There were six there altogether. There was one woman who had walked up this creek from Pippa Passes to get something, I don't know what, or maybe just to visit. She was going to ride home with us in the truck, back to Pippa Passes. She comes out with six white bowls of crushed strawberries and homemade cookies, and we eat all that up standing up before we go. Then we get in and come on down. When we get to Pippa Passes, this native gets out, and though she knew the Prossers, she said, "How much do I owe you?" Nothing is done there as a favor. If anybody rides, they want to know how much they owe you. It reminds me of the old Pennsylvania Dutch dutch treat. A man that I spent twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars with in antiques, over the period of time when we were in that business, I met [one day] accidentally on the street in Lebanon, [Pennsylvania], and he said, "Here's a restaurant that I go in. Come into it and have lunch. I'll pay for it." That's a Pennsylvania Dutch treat. Over there if you do anything for anybody, it's "How much do I owe you?"

DIXON

How much did she owe?

BLAIR

Of course, nothing. [tape recorder turned off] The man that lived up at this property heard that Prosser was a little interested in some property. Prosser told me, "This road and creek goes through seventy-five acres, mostly hillside." He could buy it for four thousand dollars, but he said he couldn't afford it. He said there is an old house that could be repaired on one side of the stream, on flat ground; and if we wanted to buy that, maybe pay twenty-five hundred dollars, he'd put up fifteen hundred dollars and get a bunch of acreage on the other side. We could cultivate and have a summer home, and the things about you, or a place to live. Well, that was four thousand dollars. Prosser was telling this man, where we got the strawberries and had the mule, about this house and plot. And he says, "Say, he says his brother has got seventy-five acres, just adjoining this. Down there I think you could buy cheaper." Well, Prosser inquired about that and he thought it was interesting, and then the fellow said, "Would you pay four thousand dollars? I'll sell you my whole property here for four thousand. Seventy-five acres, with the garden cultivated, buildings and all." Now, I had talked to Prosser a little bit, and he said, "You know, that fellow is about ready to quit; he has a little still up in the mountains." [tape recorder turned off] The next day I stepped out of the little place I was staying in Pippa Passes and strolled up to the Prossers, who wanted me to come up and have Sunday morning waffles. Here I see a man on a mule. (I never saw a horse. The first evening I was there I hear horse hoofs, and I look out and here are just two country boys going along on two mules — that's the way they travel.) Here is the same man who had the four thousand [dollar] strawberry place. He's on a mule, sitting on a gunny sack stuffed with something. I just thought, "Well, that's his saddle." And I said, "What have you got in that sack there?" He said, "More sacks." He had delivered eggs and some things that morning with his mule down there. There were only three little stores in the whole mile, and you wouldn't know they were stores — you couldn't buy a steak or anything like that. They probably had flour and sugar — I don't know what they had--but he does take eggs and berries down; and then he trades for groceries which he comes down for later, with his sled and a mule, and carries home. [tape recorder turned off] The girls of this college dress in white lace sailor blouses and blue skirts and blue shoes. The boys wear white shirts and trousers and a tie. They pay forty dollars a year tuition to come there. But if they can't pay it--and, like Prosser said, some of them never saw twenty dollars in their lives — why, then this fund takes care of it, and they work. [They have a] dining hall (where they don't have enough tables for all of them to eat at once — they apparently have different hours). There will be breakfast and three meals a day. Two girls do the cooking for a semester, but they have help. There is a faculty table, which will seat about twelve, but they won't all be there at one time, because they have their own homes. So you go in to the faculty table, and they put on the table for breakfast a big box of cornflakes and a half a gallon of milk. Then they have fruit that is like you can get at any market; there's a truck that comes down from somewhere with supplies. They have fruit instead of orange juice or anything like that. Then they serve a big bowl of gravy and hot biscuits, but there is no meat. That is breakfast. I was a little puzzled about how they made the gravy, so I asked. "Well," he says, "they burn some lard or whatever fat they have from bacon or one thing or another, and make a gravy." Students come in, and if one runs out of anything like milk, or flakes (gravy they wouldn't; they had a great big bowl — I don't know what they did with so much of it) then you go out and look at the other tables, and if there's any more, then you get it and bring it over. One of the exciting things there, in a way, is a poet. His name is William Howard Cohen, and he has a book of poems published in Southern Illinois — a young fellow. To my mind, he is really a wonderful poet. He [became] so excited over some of my paintings, which were simple subjects, that he'd come up and say, "That's great, that's great, that's the way I write." He was just working on nerves, and I felt sorry for him. But even at the faculty table, if he happened to come in, he'd pull a chair right up between Prosser and myself, which made a corner, and start reciting poetry. He teaches English. By the way, the main subject the students take, next to English, is Latin. [Their speech goes] back to Elizabethan. For instance, they say — this is just a sidelight, one little incident--suppose a person had a flat tire, on a car, and you come along and help him. They say, "I holp him." H-o-l-p is past tense of help in that language. Just before I left, they had an art show of only supposedly qualified, could-be winners. It was a jury show to see who could get first prize in sculpture and first prize in painting. When we got there, there were four stacks of paintings, all done by four different people. They were the tops, selected probably by the man who ran the department. Over here is one, a plaster sculpture of Lincoln's head, and then about eight wooden pieces of sculpture. Well, they wanted me to be one of the jury. I didn't want to, but they made four of us [judges], and one was this young poet. Right away, he was determined that this on the left was the best pile of work. We agreed it was the best pile, but we were not judging by piles; it was one painting out of the pile. I saw a flower picture on top of the group on the right-hand side that I really liked. I thought, "Well, I'm no jurist, but I like it." So I would just vote on what I like, which is not anything technical. Well, anyway, there was quite an argument, and others got onto this flower painting. It was two [each], and I said I wouldn't vote; I liked one pile, and the poet the other. The prize was twenty-five dollars for sculpture, first prize, and twenty-five dollars for painting. That was all. When they all got ready to vote, there are two of us [each], and then Prosser, who is running the thing, says, "I'll make the deciding vote." They picked the flower painting for first prize. I was afraid to say that must be the best, because I just judge on what I like very much--it was colorful and all that. Of course, the Lincoln head got first [prize for sculpture]. Well, here is the poet with his pile down here. He is so emotional, he is crushed. He says, "This is a great pile." So I, all of a sudden, thought, "Well, my gosh, what's twenty-five dollars?" I said, "I'll give twenty-five dollars for a second prize." Then the poet says, "I'll give five dollars, and that will make thirty dollars; we will have a fifteen-dollar second prize in sculpture and one in painting." That's the way it ended, and when we voted, he got second prize for a painting out of his group. In sculpture, the wood people got a second prize; it was a kind of form cut out of maple or something, with some holes carved in it — very way-out and abstract. I finally got up to have waffles with the Prossers. The only time that all the family eats breakfast together is Sunday morning. They have two young boys, very wonderful, and we had waffles and bacon for breakfast. That was fine, but I'll say this: much as I like waffles, particularly for breakfast, I wish that the waffles that were served were cooked at least a little brown. It isn't so good to eat waffles that aren't brown and brittle. [tape recorder turned off] It was decided by my mother that I should go to KU [University of Kansas]. I asked some of the boys about KU, and they said it was a big engineering school. I didn't want to be an engineer; I was supposed to be a lawyer — that's what the cranium reader had told me when I was nine years old, at the little church [at Cadmus]. He had interpreted the dents in my head that I should be a lawyer. Anyway, my mother says, "You'll have twenty-five dollars; you go up there and get a job. It turned out that Marvin... (I went with him and his uncle to the World's Fair in 1903 in St. Louis; we ran through the aisles of every building, so when we got home people could say, "Did you see this?" And we could say yes. So many people we had heard had gone, and they didn't see this or that. So we ran, and we saw everything, but nothing.) Marvin is the nephew of the Dr. Thomas, and he wants to be a druggist. The little drugstore there was owned by a KU graduate. [Marvin] is going to have money to go--the doctor will send him — so, we get on the train. First thing I had to do, of course, was to enroll. We went up about two weeks ahead of time, and I am supposed to enroll and get a job. Well, I enroll, and they tell me that I came from a three-year high school and I have to make up a year of high school, but that I can do it on the campus and I can do a year's work in half a year. That credit I needed was to be history of some kind — medieval, perhaps. I enroll, and then I go to a place where [I asked], "Where can I get a job?" "Well, go down to Mrs. Willis at such a place; she wants somebody to wait on tables. You can get free board there." I get a job with Mrs. Willis. I can play three pieces on the piano which I had learned in Kansas City when I thought I was going to play in the YMCA Christmas concert in Kansas City, Missouri. I had a drum trap which I made so I could play both drums at once, and did so for dances in Spring Hill. So we'll jump from here; Marvin and I go back two weeks later to begin school. I take my drum, with this big long board that holds both drums, back with me, and I have my twenty-five dollars. I have a plate camera which the druggist had given me; it held twelve plates, and you could take a picture of something. My job waiting on tables is to get up in the morning and set the table for twenty-four, about twelve girls and twelve boys, that eat there. They put the plates through a little peek hole in the kitchen, and I serve people when the time comes. I decided I would take my camera and make a little money; taking a picture of anything was unusual in those days. So I start out, and I take a picture of a colonial house in Lawrence. And I rap on the door and tell the woman that I did. Would she like some? "Yes, I would." I said, "They will be ten cents apiece, and I'll get them for you." She says, "I'll take a dozen." Then she said, "Where are you from?" I say, "Spring Hill, Kansas." And she said, "We are, too. We moved up here so our daughter could go through the university about four years [ago]." She said, "You're the Blairs from there. Your father runs a store there." "Yes." "Oh, wonderful," she says, "now, listen. Right behind me are some close friends, and there is a girl there that I wish you would meet. We are going to have a party at our place. Will you come?" I said, "Well, I guess I can, if I don't have to wait tables too late." Anyway, I have contacts there, and I sell some pictures. Meantime we enter school. I have an eight o'clock class, by the way, so I had to wait on tables early in the morning, get up and get the tables set, and get up this long hill. Mount Oread. [tape recorder turned off] I see an announcement on the bulletin board in Fraser Hall, where most of the college work is done — about a fifty-five- or sixty-room, big, stone building — "band application." I finally was going to belong to the KU band. Well, I got up with my drum, and Professor [J.C.] McCandless--"Mac," everybody calls him--gives me music to play by note. I do it. He has a set of bells there. "Can you play the bells?" "Well, I can read the notes, but I played very few pieces." "Well," he says, "that's fine. You're in. You're the drummer." There were sixty-four pieces in the band, and I mean they were all there to play; they didn't just carry instruments. They played, and they played in the spirit of winning. So I write a letter back home to my dad and to the Spring Hill New Era that I am the only drummer in a sixty-four-piece band. It comes out in the newspaper that I try out with sixty-four drummers and I am the only one that makes it. Going to college was not nearly as important to me as getting to play drums somewhere. They have a symphony orchestra, so I try out for that. They have timpani, which I had never seen. But they told me that you just loosen and [you get a] G, and [you can play] the timpani. So I am in as the sole drummer in a symphony orchestra of about fifty pieces, playing traps, drums, and timpani. The next thing is to try out to see if I can play where you get paid. I hear they are going to have a dance right away, Shanty's Orchestra. Well, that was top, I found out. It turned out it was made up of Shanty (his name was Newhouse), violinist; and McCandless, the head of the band, played cornet; a plumber played clarinet ;. and one of the KU fellows played trombone. And I mean, they all played. There was a union, so I found out I also had to join the union. Shanty said, "I can use you on certain nights. whenever the theater has a show." [This was] the Bowersock Opera House, which was [on the] Shubert circuit, one-night stands out of Kansas City each week. But [for me] to play trap drums at sight in the theater was something else — shows like Midnight Sun, Merry Widow, Red Nell, and all those — so he said, "You can play at the dance, and the other fellow can play at the show, when they both come on the same night." We were to get two dollars till midnight and a dollar an hour for [each] half-hour after that. If we played till one o'clock then we would be able to get three dollars. Well, first thing, of course, is a dance. He says, "You have a trap? You play both drums?" I say, "Sure." The big dance is in the Fraternal Aid Hall, one of the great ones in Lawrence, with a spring floor for dancing. Well, I hired a horse-drawn taxi for twenty-five cents--we'd call it today a cab — and I loaded in my trap. They are to have a bass drum there. I am just a little late--that is, not for the dance, but I'm not one of the first there. They are in the hall, and they are all sitting around waiting for the orchestra to assemble. And I go up. to this long — sixty or eighty feet — dance hall, carrying my snare drum in a case and traps and then this wooden thing to play both drums with two separate sets of pedals. As I walk through there to get to the stage, there is more curiosity and a few snickers. I walk in there, and Shanty says, "What's that?" "Why," I said, "I play both drums with this." He was kind; he said, "Well, if you can do it, great." So they played the first piece. Those were the days, by the way, when the waltz was the great thing for the orchestra to play, and they had whole waltz parties, maybe only one one-step or two-step dance, but they one-stepped to the waltz. That made a gliding thing that really was great at KU. You cut corners and all that, and you really did a one-step, never a catch-step. You never changed, just a slow waltz. We opened up with a one-step march, and after the first piece Shanty said, "Ok, you've got perfect steady timing." I was in. During the intermission, he said, "You know, I told you I would put up the money for you to join the union; I'll take out twenty-five cents a dance until you pay the two dollars. But," he said, "you know, you can get a trap that you can fold up and put in your pocket to play both drums. You just attach it." "I can? Well, how much is it?" "I can get you one for about eight severity-five," he says. "We'll get that, and you just forget about your other one. I'll have one for you next time." By the way, in the KU band, I was, I said, the only drummer. Well, for the first rehearsal or two, they did have another snare drummer, and he was the one that played trap drum for the theater. But he leaves, and now I am top guy in the KU band--sixty-four pieces! They have no drummer if the show and the theater come the same night, but when the theater is important, we go. So I play at sight and make good at it, [doing] one-night stands in the Shubert circuit theater. So all through school I am running a boarding club; I am playing in the symphony; and we have rehearsal every week in the KU band. I sell suits, made to measure for boys. Then, after the first half-year of this, the steward of this club (who was manager; all he had to do was collect the rent and keep the club filled up so the woman wouldn't lose money) [joined] Sigma Chi, and he quit. He was going to marry the daughter of the woman that ran the boarding club, but he went over to live in the Sigma Chi house. So I became steward at the end of the first half-year. They got another fellow to wait on tables. By the way, [the steward] had to make ice cream. I had to make ice cream when I was carrying dishes every Wednesday — homemade; I had to turn the freezer and do all that. Mind you, I had to make up a year of high school and specialize, of all things, in Latin. Why? Well, here's where logic comes in; it's just wonderful, logic is. You know the earth was absolutely flat. I mean it was flat--till they proved otherwise. The logic was this: people don't like Latin, and there might be a shortage of Latin teachers. I knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer; I was fairly sure of that. And I certainly wasn't going to be an engineer. I had no money to be a merchant. So what else was there? Well, teach. Then, if there is a shortage of Latin teachers because people don't like Latin, I'll be sure of a job. I didn't figure that if people don't like Latin, they don't need many Latin teachers. That's the second time the earth isn't flat. Anyway, I do specialize in that, which will come up a little later when I get through school. Why didn't they have another drummer in the KU band? I was so excited with the spirit when I found out what KU was in football and all of that, which I knew nothing about, that when I played my note I put so many things in my drumming that Mac would never let a second drummer come in there. He got me an oversized snare drum and never let a second drummer come, because if you have another drummer you've got to play the note. I had the spirit, and I developed the drum beat that became quite recognized wherever the band would go. Even when I got out of school later, and went around in the advertising business, I stopped at the University of Pennsylvania, where I had the privilege to go because I was writing magazines at that time for high-school boys. I gave this [demonstration] --of course, I can't put this on the tape — but I'd get the applause on the simplest drum beat ever invented. [gives a vocal imitation of his drum beat] From that time on, of course, I was playing at all the dances and at the theater, and I could make my way through school with drums. I didn't have to work in the summertime, and I was steward of the club, social secretary, you might say. [Being steward] was a little bit embarrassing at times. I knew very well that if a girl in the club, when we put on our own dances, didn't get a date, she might go to some other boarding club. Well, when I realized it was my job to keep the boarding club filled, Mrs. Willis said, "You ought to go up now when they are enrolling for the second semester and see if you can't pick up somebody who would like to board down here." So 1 did, and when I saw a good-looking blond (or perhaps a brunette) standing in line, waiting to enroll (I was already enrolled), I just walk up and say, "Do you have a place to board yet?" "No." Well, I would say, "I have a club down here with about twelve to sixteen girls and boys." So she said, "I have a roommate. Can she come, too?" I said, "Yes." Right away, I had two for the club. They turned out to be Ruby [Souders] and Chloe [Corey] — Ruby was the one I had talked to. They were in my club the whole time through. Ruby, I found out, was engaged to a fellow from her hometown in Kansas. As I mentioned before, [there was] the night at the auditorium when I thought I was engaged to Vera--she said she loved me and God will take care of me. I thought that meant I was engaged. Ruby and I had a talk and a walk, and she told me about [her boyfriend], and I said, "Well, I tell you what we ought to do. We'll kind of go together, and I'll kind of protect you. You be loyal to your man and [I'll be loyal to Vera]." A lot goes on after that, but that was the deal. Chloe was really the one that I liked very much; and when Easter came, Chloe and Tim Shotts, the assistant athletic director there (he used to stand on his hands and do everything; he sold aluminum in the summertime to help go through school), and Ruby and I all went down home to Spring Hill for Easter. Down there, after I went back later. my mother told me that Chloe told her she was in love with me. Anyway there it was, but I [couldn't] go with anyone I liked; I had to keep my club full. I waited until the last girl did or did not get a date, and then I took whichever one [was left] because of business, you know. That's just a little bit of the, you might say, social life I had at KU.

DIXON

Did the club have a name?

BLAIR

Yes, I called it the La Sorella Club. "La Sorella" was one of the pieces I learned to play on the piano, [whistles tune] I had heard that in the bands out at Colorado Springs when I went out there. I learned that on the piano, and every time I joined a band later in life, they would play "La Sorella," so it was called the La Sorella Club. We had the importance, by the way, almost better than a fraternity as far as social life. People wanting to get in. [tape recorder turned off] I still had an idea that I might have to be a lawyer. The University of Kansas was going to debate Oklahoma on whether or not we should have postal savings banks. They were going to debate Colorado on the same thing. I tried out for the debating team. By the way, the husband of Mrs. Willis, who ran the boarding club, was a retired (nervous breakdown) lawyer. He was all right, but he couldn't do much else. He told me never to have a set speech; just study the thing, get up there, and talk. I did that, and believe it or not, I was selected one of sixteen, one of eight, and then one of four. They only send three to Oklahoma, so I am an alternate. So I don't go; nobody got sick. Now they tell us that for Colorado it's the same question. Well, I am one of three, but they only send two debaters to Colorado; I am an alternate. I gave up trying to be a lawyer. I thought being a lawyer you just debated; I didn't know anything. If I had known there were contract lawyers, I would have been one. Anyway, it is a pretty good profession. [tape recorder turned off] In Latin, my professor was Dean [Arthur Tappan] Walker. I took all the Latin they had and some Greek that I had to — my major was classics — and I enrolled in a course called Educational Classics under Dr. Schweigler. I didn't know what it meant, but he covered many things in life; and the one thing he hammered on was this: the behavior of the human will. It's not anything in the world, but a variable, just like the sixteen film sections [frames] going through per second. All psychology centers on understanding the behavior of the human will. A strong-willed man or a weak-willed man is not like your arm. Every new evidence that comes in changes the decision right at that moment if you have to make one. He said it's all based on past experience, plus environment, plus the urge to be up and doing--that's the divine urge — but prior to that a little of the hereditary influence. Knowing that, I gained self-confidence. I knew that selling could come in there. If you could own a clothing store, with only forty-nine percent of a man's apparel mind, and another store owns fifty-one percent, I knew that if you had the finest way of presenting your advertising and you had prestige; [then] the time could happen [when] you could own fifty and one-tenth percent of that man's apparel mind and the other fellow own forty-nine and nine-tenths. And [the customer] could not go to his old store; he would have to come in [to your store]. [tape recorder turned off] This thing seemed to crystallize in me and gave me self-confidence. You were not set to be smart or non-smart, or this or that; it's all based on the things we just mentioned, Your decisions were based on actual things that can be bought and paid for, you might say. So, it comes graduating time, and I don't make Phi Beta Kappa, [although] everybody thought I would. My Latin grades were good enough, but I slighted some mathematics. I didn't flunk in anything, but I was not a Phi Beta Kappa. That didn't mean anything either to me then. So what am I going to do? I am going to graduate. I specialized in the classics, and my spirit is football. I knew the rules, [although I] never played a game in my life. They send me to Sabetha, Kansas, to get a job, and they say I should get ninety dollars a month for nine months. They wanted a Latin teacher and an English teacher and somebody interested in football for the Sabetha, Kansas, high school. [It was] the most modern little town. They had their own municipal laundry and municipal everything. It was way out in front, a town of about twenty-seven hundred in northeast Kansas. I go there and meet with the school board — a banker and two doctors. They say, "It's wonderful. We want you as much because you can teach Latin, [as because] you say you can coach football and basketball. We need that. But we can't pay you but eighty dollars a month, not ninety." I said, "Why?" Well, they said, "Our principal only gets eighty dollars a month. We can't pay a teacher more than a principal." I said, "I'm sorry, I have to leave." I went down to the depot to return to KU. A messenger comes and says, "The board wants to see you again." So I go back up and they say, "Well, we will do this. We will make a concession. We'll explain if we have to, but our principal is all right." The superintendent, however, ran the schools there — one big brick building, grades down below and high school above, with several rooms. It was quite a large school compared to Spring Hill. Anyway, I got the job, and they were going to pay me ninety. I go back, and I still have a few more weeks of school, so what will I do in the summer? I can go to Colorado or play in orchestras. But it turned out I decided to go to Colorado, and a fellow by the name of Clark (who went with Chloe, it seems), and Ruby's people happen to decide to go to Colorado, too. And then Chloe decides to go. So here Clark, a fellow in my club (a wonderful fellow; his father had a furniture store in western Kansas), and I go; and then here come the two families, Chloe's and Ruby's families, all in Colorado Springs. I am playing in an orchestra. We hike in the mountains, the four of us, and all this time, why, I was kind of wishing I were with Chloe, but Ruby is wonderful and all that. But we're being faithful, you know, to each other's charge. I spend my last few minutes at the depot when they are all leaving in the fall talking to Chloe. Well, I get a letter written on the train from Ruby saying, "You made me so miserable, but I admit I didn't keep my part of the bargain." And that was that. [tape recorder turned off] I go home after graduation. My father and mother came up to see me graduated at KU. Go back to Spring Hill for a little while, of course, and then this interlude we just mentioned of going and playing in the mountains before school. I get home about ten days before [it was] time to go to Sabetha, Kansas, and take over my new job. At that time, I was still drum-minded. Sabetha was a town of twenty-seven hundred, a very modern town for that time. That's going to be the next chapter.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
JUNE 11, 1965

BLAIR

Likely you remember that I mentioned the fact that my grandfather drove ninety miles from his blacksmith shop south of Kansas City with his family and wife and a basketful of doughnuts, to take the train and go back and visit relatives in Ohio. They camped out in front of Spring Hill, and then they got six miles north and he missed his penknife. He left, you remember; he walked back, and he didn't find it. When I'm a sophomore at the University of Kansas, I go home one Easter, and my mother and father have a used Ford. First time they ever had a car. In fact, there was only one other car in Spring Hill, Kansas. This was about 1912. The jeweler had a car, a Ford. So, we get in the car one afternoon to drive around and visit the farms. With a horse and buggy we couldn't visit but one a day, but we could visit five or six because we had an automobile. I think I have mentioned the fact that when we first moved to Spring Hill, my dad remembered that's where his father had lost his penknife — somewhere in there. He went to the old Spring Hill Inn. It was full of hay and grain and stuff but was still there. He asked the Turners, who were grandchildren or some descendants of the original Turners that owned the inn when my grandfather had camped out (they couldn't afford to go into the inn), he asked them if any of them had ever found a penknife, and they said no. That was when we first moved to Spring Hill. So, after about three years in high school and one year in college at KU, this was about thirty-five years later when my folks get this Ford and I am down there for Easter vacation. We go out and visit friends in the country, some of the places I had plowed when I was in high school, and when we got home there was an envelope on the front porch. In it was that penknife. Thirty-five to thirty-eight years later. We didn't know who left it there. Of course, now we feel that all the time they had the penknife, but for some reason their conscience kind of got after them. So that winds up the penknife episode. [tape recorder turned off] After I started painting (my main interest, of course, was folk life before motor power), I did a painting of the old Spring Hill Inn — it is still there, I guess — which showed that there had been a campfire in front of it. I showed a mover wagon way up the prairie six miles with the children and the family waiting, and my grandfather, quite a husky fellow, walking back looking for his penknife. I did that painting, which the University of Kansas today owns. It's in a museum, and also the knife in a glass case beside it forever. [tape recorder turned off] Getting back to the four years at KU, where I made up a year in high school, specialized in Latin, ran a boarding club, and got free board after the first semester, that first semester I waited on tables and played in orchestras and all that, but I did have an eight o'clock class. We'd get up and get the tables ready for thirty-two people in the morning and wait on them. They, too, had to make eight o'clock classes, of course, but I had to clear the table and get up the hill [as well]. Oread is really quite a mountain for Kansas. That was really a strenuous period. Of course, some of them didn't meet every morning. Maybe twice or three times a week was about as often as they had classes. I took advanced botany; I think I had that in the afternoon for two hours where we did experimental work. We did research, and we made drawings under microscopes. Perhaps there is where I showed some talent, maybe, with painting. [I did] my notebook in color--the insides of plants, and yeast, and all that sort of thing — the growing of so-called matter. [These] were done in color, and I got a top grade on it. Maybe that was an indication that sometime I might paint. Climbing the hill. Mount Oread, in the snow... I want to tell you, it was so steep that when there was ice we had to hold on to things to get up it to make our eight o'clock classes. I kept my club social in order not to lose members. In fact, some of the [students] would rather belong to my club than to a sorority or fraternity because we had social life. I had never guided a sled except coasting down a little hill in Spring Hill or in Cadmus, but I rent a bobsled that will hold ten. There's about twenty-four in the club. We get on a brick street that comes down Mount Oread, not so steep as the one we climb to go up, and I have to be the hero ; they don't want a guide because we are going to cross several streets and one streetcar line, and you don't know what is going to be crossing it. You can't stop a bobsled. It was pretty icy. They loaded up on the back, and I'm being the hero; I had never guided one in my life. We start down that hill; everything was clear and bright; and can you imagine, a streetcar — just as we are going, I expect, sixty miles an hour; I didn't know it was ice and not snow — goes across. I just swerve a little and miss it.. The next block, here is a woman with a baby buggy going across. She rushes a little, and I miss her. When we get to the top, I am through! The other sixteen or ten don't get a ride. [tape recorder turned off] Going for my first job--not principal of the high school at Sabetha, but getting ten dollars more a month than the principal because I can coach football, teach Latin and English — I arrive there two or three days early. I find out that Sabetha has a girls' symphony orchestra of about thirty members, directed by a Mrs. [Flora] Murdock, the wife of the outstanding doctor of Sabetha. (In fact, he had his own little hospital.) Where is everybody? They say that there is a celebration and fair down the railroad track toward St. Joe [St. Joseph, Missouri] about twenty miles. They are all down there, and there is a train going, so I go down. Sabetha, which was the most cultured center in northeastern Kansas, just like Cadmus was the most cultured center in the eastern southern part. Here I see a girls' orchestra playing. There's firecrackers going on. It wasn't the Fourth--it was in the fall — but it was really a celebration. Well, I make myself acquainted to Mrs. Murdock, who directs it. She says, "I hear you play trap drums." I said, "Yes," Well, she says, "We have a girl playing trap drums; she does pretty good. But maybe if you'd play a number with the orchestra — you are going ,to be a teacher at the high school — why, maybe it would teach her a little, or she would get an inspiration." They played one of these Hungarian rhapsodies or something (I don't know the name of it) which increases in tempo, and she directs. I can almost whistle the piece, but I can't describe it. Anyway, I am used to playing under a director in the Shubert circuit theater at KU. I take them through, and I give them some drums I guess the rest of the orchestra hadn't hardly had before. So they think I am great. Well, I didn't mind that, whatever they thought. All afternoon, I am just standing around, and at different times young people will go by, take a look, and then dash away. And then they will steal another look. They undoubtedly know that the Latin teacher of Sabetha is there. That night, we're going back to Sabetha, and all the people that went down from Sabetha are on that train. Murdock is sitting two seats in back of me, and I heard her tell someone,."Isn't it wonderful? We're going to have somebody in the high school who can take part in student activities." [tape recorder turned off] The morning of the first assembly of the high school, there were around two hundred and fifty or three hundred students — a lot to me. The teachers were on the platform to be introduced. We were told by the superintendent — not the principal, but the superintendent, because the grade schools were in the lower floor — to write on the blackboard the next day's lesson. Well, what am I going to tell them? Study in Latin? I tell the Latin class to read the preface, whatever that was, and then I tell the English people to be sure they have the right textbook and to read the preface. After we are introduced, and I make a little talk and all that sort of thing, there is a big fellow sitting right down in the front row, and he beckons to me. He says, "Are you going to help us in football?" His name was Harry Patton. I said, "Well, yes. I certainly am." He says, "When are we going to meet?" "Day after tomorrow. Where do you meet?" He says, "Half a mile south of town." We went out there, and although I know the rules and some plays, I don't know anything about teaching to tackle or anything [else]. Forward passes were new, and I knew that a forward pass could be made provided it was made five yards — that's fifteen feet — back of the line of scrimmage; otherwise you would be penalized. So I see this big fellow, and I think of Tub Reid, who played guard at KU. He was so big they never tried to come through his side of the line. I still thought that might be a great idea, but I knew something else. I didn't know that the backfield could do just this and that and not other things, but it comes to me — there are four men in the backfield: a quarterback, two halfbacks, and a fullback. I put Patton in the right halfback, to carry the ball. I could play him sometimes in the line. He could be jerked out of the line according to the rules then, and put five yards back — fifteen feet — and carry the ball, but that gave him a disadvantage. Well, I thought if he does that, he's got fifteen feet to go before he hits where the line was, and they could block him. So.1 put him in as right halfback, he could stand up as close as he wanted to the line and play at right halfback. I have three other fellows who can carry the ball: the quarterback, the fullback, and the other half. Do you know, we won some games the first year, and the second year we were champions? Yet when they first heard around the town of Sabetha that I put this heavy fellow Harry Patton in as right [halfback], they said, "He doesn't know anything about football. What we want is a football coach." You know the way I figured it? You got four tries to make ten yards. If you don't make it on the fourth down, you've got to kick and give it to the other team. You can't win a game if you don't have the ball. Many times teams would get three of the four downs — they could only lack three inches, but they've got to kick. They can't gamble; they might lose. Then, if a team gets the ball behind your own line because they blocked you back there, you don't even have to kick to them. They've got it right there. I figured out this guy could fall five yards. He'd start running with the ball, and he could stumble five yards. He did; he made the downs; and we won our championship on that basis. [tape recorder turned off] Something happened during the two years I was there. I could have stayed forever, but something else comes up later where I leave. It seems in the junior class was a very dark-haired, naturally curly-headed girl. Mind you, I'm not ever to have any dates...

DIXON

You're a teacher.

BLAIR

... but here comes Halloween, somebody's going to give a Halloween party, and I'm not going to take anybody. There were two or three young women there from KU (I had never seen them at KU). I'm going to the Halloween party, and this fellow Patton, the big guy, I knew was a close friend of the curly-haired brunette. He says to me, "Who are you going to take to the Halloween party?" I said, "Nobody." Well, he said, "Why don't you take Camille?" "Camille?" "Yeah, Camille Hook." There was an inn between Sabetha and St, Joe, and one of my paintings shows that whenever a stagecoach comes over the hill (a grey horizon; a day and a half drive out of St. Joe to Sabetha), the people of this country inn, which was a farm, could say, "Now, it is going to be an hour and a half before they get here. Plenty of time to kill the chickens, pick the chickens, make angel food cake, peel the potatoes, and have a big dinner when the [stage] arrives." Well, it happened that Camille's mother, who did live in Sabetha ([Camille's] grandfather had been a chairmaker from the East), would go down there and help the Hook [House] Inn people get served and all that. She later became a Hook. Anyway, Patton says, "Why don't you take her?" "Aren't you going to take her?" "No." Well, I was a little uneasy about it, but Patton is the big guy in the school — he is the football hero — and so I asked Camille if she wanted to go to this Halloween party. She was in the Latin class. I found out later that she didn't like Latin and had a poor grade in beginning Latin. But she tells me now that when the different ones were being introduced that morning, she said, "Who's that?" Somebody said, "He's the new Latin teacher." And she says, "I'm for Latin." Here's what happened. At this Halloween party, I walk in with her a little late, and these teachers from KU... there's a dead silence. After that, Camille was flunked almost in everything she took from those teachers. Well, the mother, Mrs. Hook, realized that things were kind of serious. I never had a date with her, really, after that, but sometimes I would go over there. Her father died shortly after, and I went over. The odd thing was, she came into my office one day and said, "May I be excused this afternoon from classes?" I said no. I wanted to be right strict to the line. She didn't tell me why. Well, her father had died; and so, when I found that out I went over one evening to apologize and explain. Then I would go every once in a while, but her mother would give me the milk bottle at ten o'clock and say, "It's time to put the milk bottle out. Get out of here." After that, Camille didn't get good grades even in domestic science that one year; it was kind of tedious. I learned out later that during that period Camille knew she wasn't a good student, and she had a pony. In other words, she cheated right away. But she did make her grade [in Latin], because I graded greatly on grammar, and she did get the understanding. Right at the moment we will let her go. During this first year, the first snow has come, and I am standing out on the porch of where I roomed in that town, and I hear the fire bells. Well, if there's a fire I ought to go down and find out. Down the main street, here comes a homemade fire [engine] pulled by men, with a pump that they can work. Nobody is on the front end of the tongue, and being the new guy in town, I want to be [helpful], so I go over and grab the front end, and all the rest of them let loose. Here I go downgrade with the new fire wagon alone, and I run by the fire a half a block. Another incident. I hear somebody calling in front of where I roomed. Here is a laundry delivery wagon and a horse, and in it are Camille and a girl [Muriel Whitman] that roomed at her home. They are driving this laundry wagon. Mind you, I am one of the teachers in the high school. I go out. "Come and take a ride with us." "Well, are you delivering laundry?" "No, we stole it. It belongs to Harry Wiggins. We saw it, and we just took his horse." They're just kids in high school. "He was somewhere, and we just got in. We're driving around, and we'll take you for a ride." I was really very, very embarrassed, but I said, "Well, I'll ride around the block." Nobody saw us, I'm sure. [tape recorder turned off] In the contract signed with the teachers' committee in Sabetha, I was not to dance; teachers were not supposed to go to dances. But I'm playing in the band and all that, and somebody in the high school is having a dance in the Odd Fellows Hall in Sabetha. They wanted me to play trap drums, and [they] paid three dollars. Well, I had signed up not to dance, so I go to the bank president, who is one of the three on the teachers' committee. I say, "You know, I've signed up not to go to a dance, but I am offered a job to play in the orchestra Friday night. What about this?" "Well, all right." I say, "Are you sure?" "Yes," he says. "That's business." So I played the dance, and Camille was there with Patton. [During] one encore, Patton says, "Why don't you dance a little with Camille?" Well, I do, but I expect to lose my job in the high school the next day. But it didn't happen. [tape recorder turned off] Since I had specialized in Latin and Greek and the classics at the University of Kansas, I got an idea of writing a play. Now, as high school people go along today, they probably think of Caesar and Cicero as friends. They were originally. But Shakespeare, in my mind, really overlooked a great bet when he didn't write a play about the relationship of Caesar and Cicero. So I worked and worked and wrote a play called Cicero. We held little tryouts in the high school, and made up the cast. I did it, well, more like Shakespeare would have done it, let's put it that way. Here is the story. The truth was never told about the relationship of Caesar and Cicero just by reading what Latin [we get] in the schools. Maia is Latin for May Day, and May Day was women's day in Rome. The queen — not necessarily the queen; the head woman of the world--in this case would have been Julius Caesar's wife... You have all heard the expression "Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion." Well, that had never really been put in words, so I wrote this play, and May Day is the opening scene. Nobody dared be there but women. In this celebration and reception, someone like a woman stoops to kiss Caesar's wife's hand, and she knows it is not a woman, jerks off the wig, and it's a man. It turns out later, however, that this very man became tribune of the people, more powerful than any king. It goes on from there. Caesar is in Gaul and the Rubicon has not yet been crossed, but he hears about this thing. By the way, Pompey had been off in a campaign in the north, and [when] he came in he was against any law of any kind in Rome for any general to ever parade his army through Rome. They were a democracy, and he didn't want any dictatorship taking the town over. Rome was the nation, you might say. Pompey keeps getting closer and closer, when news comes that Caesar has stopped his victorious armies from Gaul on the other side of the Rubicon. He told them that if Pompey marches he will cross the Rubicon. That's the story. We know that Cicero believed there was still a democracy, Caesar knew there was no more democracy ever, and that Pompey would rule like a dictator. He knew that if he got in there he could bring back the democracy. Poor old Cicero didn't believe in that; he believed in democracy. Well, this fellow at Mai a, who became tribune of the people, was in with the bunch that did not want democracy; and as tribune of the people, he exiled Cicero and his daughter Tullia onto an island out of Rome. Now isn't that a typical Roman or Greek tragedy? (By the way, Cicero had the first shorthand secretary that ever lived in the world. He could take down Cicero's talks in some figures that he could read.) Cicero and Tullia are on this island, and he hears that Caesar is assassinated. He likes Caesar; but he is elated. He thought Caesar wanted to be king, but Caesar was really coming in to keep Pompey from being king, and to save whatever could be made into a democracy. He knew there was no democracy. Want a reason why? There was no trial in those days held in Rome that was fair. People could sit in the upper. balcony and spit on the judges, and nothing was done about it. There was no democracy. Well, when Cicero hears that Caesar is assassinated, he grieves for Caesar, but he is joyful for Rome. There will not be a king or a dictator. He gets a little boat, and against the rules of the so-called " Maia tribune" he ^returns to Rome] with his secretary. He comes in to meet with the conspirators, thinking, "Now we shall have a democracy." Then I have a scene in this show--all dark, and here are the conspirators, just candlelighted, and they are going like this: "Ten thousand sesterces for you, ten sesterces for you." They are dividing up the spoils. Cicero comes in. He thinks they are going to arrange a good government. He can't believe it. He shows that, and they know he's not with them anymore. They draw knives, he realizes, and he flees for his life down to the little ship to get away. They assassinate him before he gets on the ship. That's all in the play, [tape recorder turned off] The play was about an hour and a half long. Unbeknown to me, there is a representative there from the University of Kansas. I always was publicizing my own activities, and they sent a representative out there. He congratulated me and said it was true, in his mind, that maybe I had in my way written a play that Shakespeare really could have done in his classic manner. [tape recorder turned off] I was hired as principal the second year in Sabetha. Mrs. Hook, realizing that Camille was not getting good grades, she decides that Camille (who is a wonderful flute player; she is in the girls' symphony orchestra there) should enter KU. They moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and Camille enters the fine arts school as a specialist in music. Well, she joins the KU band, and plays flute in it, the first girl that ever plays in the KU band and in the symphony. I am in Sabetha. I didn't know we were engaged, but it seems we were. I was so dumb. I realize this at the end of the first year, when I go home to Spring Hill for two-weeks vacation at Christmas. I feel very uneasy, and I come back to Sabetha a couple or three days earlier than I had to. I hunt up the Hook family and Camille, and I rent a horse and sleigh at the livery stable and take Camille out for a ride. I know she isn't going to be [in Sabetha] this coming year; they were going to be in Lawrence. So we're out taking a sleigh ride in the moonlight, and just as we go over a culvert (you don't see those anymore--a wooden culvert over a little stream), the horse stops, and I really have the nerve to kiss Camille. I say, "Now I've kissed you. You can tell the school board, and I'll lose my job." [tape recorder turned off] That doesn't bother her; she doesn't think about a thing like that. Well, that part is over. That is Christmas, at the end of the first semester. After that, we go along fine, and then summer vacation comes before she is going to move. So we go out one day for a little picnic with a horse and buggy during the summer; no school is on. So I think, "I'm going to ask her if she'll marry me." I remember we're having lunch under a tree in a pasture. Why, she says, "We're already engaged." "Engaged?" "Yes, you kissed mo. " [laughter] I-^go back to Spring Hill after that and think, "Gee, I must get a diamond ring." There is a little jeweler in Spring Hill — the only one who had an automobile. I say I want a real diamond, and I ask, "What do I have to pay?" He said, "I can give you a real diamond, and a nice one, for ninety dollars." Well, that's just about all I had saved up out of the first year of school. I remembered he shows me this ring in a black derby hat; it looks great in there. So I buy the ring. In the meantime, Camille and her mother have gone down to Oklahoma, where they had relatives, to spend the summer. Well, I go down there, and they run a store in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, I have this ring, so I decide that I am going to give it to her then. We take a walk. There is a school there. We sit on the steps of the school, and I give her the diamond ring. Then we go back to the store and she shows it. We all come back on the train; I get off at Spring Hill and they go on to Sabetha. This fall, she goes with her mother to KU, and I'm principal of the high school. About when half the football season is over, there is a convention at Topeka, Kansas, where the teachers of Kansas meet. I go to that. I had written a song, a piece of music, called "My Spanish Lady," which was published; and my play had been printed; and I am taken as quite a literary [figure] at that time. Topeka is not too far from Lawrence, so I go down there from Topeka, but I get on the wrong train. Camille knows I am to come; she is to meet me in a horse-drawn cab at the depot about nine o'clock in the evening. By golly, I find out I am on the Rock Island train which does not dare stop at Lawrence, because they use the Union Pacific tracks between Topeka and Kansas City. Well, here I am. They slow down going through [Lawrence], and one fellow on the train says, "Well, sometimes they stop for water." I am hoping they are; and you know, just about the time I think they are going to stop, they begin speeding up. I jump and hang on to a suitcase — should have thrown it and jumped. Do you know, I slide with the damned suitcase on gravel. I just miss a cement pillar by six inches with my head; I am full of cinders all down the right side of my face; and my arm is almost limp, but not broken--full of cinders. Camille is just about ready, thinking I didn't come on the train, to leave. I call or something, and they find me. By the way, there was a big ball, a junior prom or something like that, and I was supposed to take her to that. We get home; they put me to bed at her home (her mother keeps two or three roomers there — girls rooming to help pay expenses). I am full of cinders. They call a doctor, and he spends most of the night picking out cinders and putting my arm in a sling. I have to go back the following Sunday to Sabetha as principal of the high school [tape recorder turned off] They have a chapel meeting every morning for a few minutes in the high school, where I make announcements and, I think, somebody said a little prayer. So I appear as the principal of the high school the next Monday morning with my arm in a sling and all that sort of thing. It got around town, of course, that I had jumped off of a train at Lawrence, but that was about all. It didn't make much difference, because I am on pretty good terms with the women teachers now, because Camille is out of the road. I decide I should write another play, a mythological play. I decide on the subject of the river god. Now the river god, in mythology, wanted to marry the king's daughter in Greece, but the king wouldn't allow it; so he dried up the river and there was a drouth on. I start from there. In the first scene, two rustics come onstage with a bucket, and they are pedantic. I give them Latin names. Hue and Illuc, for the names of the two rustics. They are used for comedy. Hue means "here" and Illuc means "there"; so. Here and There. They come on singing. I write music for this show. I don't play piano, but I worked out these tunes, and I play the piano whenever the chorus sings. [It is] purely Greek, with a chorus in the back, and acted just like a Greek play. I was teaching a course in mythology (got no credit for it) just because the [students] were interested. By the way, there were two boys, both football men, in the play. One day in a class — not in mythology class, which was voluntary--they started laughing; and I asked what was going on. They said, "We've just discovered we're cousins." I say, "What do you mean?" "Well, in this play, if certain ones are the descendants of this [person], why, according to those parts we're playing, we're cousins." These youngsters, by getting into this thing, really got something more than might be expected in the routine classes. So Hue and Illuc come on singing, "Hue, Illuc, nor prince, nor duke, some water we would get. The river is dry, the river is dry, the white river is dry, but wet likes dry and dry likes wet." Then they laughed at their own comedy, and the first thing you know, the whole audience was howling. That was the first thing on the stage. [tape recorder turned off]. Well, I bring Hercules into the plot, and the old river god finally agrees that he will permit the river to flow if he can have any fair chance to win the king's daughter. This scene is at Piraeus, Greece. The play goes on and on for the chorus, and it turns out that they have an agreement that there will be a fight between the river god and Hercules The river god is dressed up in different costumes, animal-like, kind of a vulgar-looking fellow. Hercules was Patton, the big football guy, of course. Carrying through the Greek style, the chorus is onstage and the fight is going to be offstage — they never had them onstage. (By the way, the first time that anything mechanical was ever put on a stage was when a god would appear from the heavens; they let him down in a kind of a pulley affair and then he would appear. The Greeks did that.) I stuck to the tradition that there wouldn't be any fight onstage; I didn't know how I would have done it anyway. Hue and Illuc are going to be the messengers to tell the chorus what is going on at the fight, and they did a wonderful job. They'd run in, "He's got him by the neck," and this and this. The audience got tense; they wanted Hercules to win, of course. Well, that's the way it turns out, and Hercules goes further into the play. But when I finish my first year of high school, I realize I am making a success, and I want a master's degree. So I enroll at the University of Chicago, and go back to work summer school. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

Before you go on to that I would like to ask you a question. How did you come on to the idea of doing a play for the high school?

BLAIR

[During] my study at KU (where we didn't have Cicero or Caesar — that was m high school), all through [Tacitus's] Agricola and Terence and all of them, [this idea] is hounding me all the time. Shakespeare and the classics were being studied at the same time, and I kept thinking that I could play Julius Caesar [this way]. But I just had the desire to do it, for no particular reason except I thought it ought to be recorded. By the way, on this second play, the mythological one, I saw possibilities. They had a representative from KU out there, and I didn't know it. I got a note at the intermission of the second [play] saying, "You have uncovered a lead. Drake." Well, I didn't know what a lead meant. He meant this was a whole new area of plays. Mythological themes — putting them [in dramatic settings] and making them modern.

SCHIPPERS

Had you seen any formal productions?

BLAIR

Nothing except Faust. When I was in high school, I did go to see Faust, which had nothing to do, really, with this.

DIXON

You had never seen how they do Greek tragedies?

BLAIR

Oh, no, I had never seen a Shakespeare play.

DIXON

Or a Greek or a Roman?

BLAIR

No, but we studied those. I even knew how a Roman house could be built, with a fountain and a little water in the center and [the house] all built around it. I had very specific ideas on Roman and Greek life but never saw anything that portrayed it. These [ideas] were strictly original. I don't know whether that answered your question at all.

SCHIPPERS

Fine. What sort of finances did they have for these productions you did? And what sort of stage did you have to work on?

BLAIR

In the auditorium at Sabetha High School, there was a pretty good stage. In fact, I organized a high school band and a little high school orchestra. There was always a piano player and a few [others who] played on there, but it was not a [real] stage. We put up temporary false curtains, of course. As far as costumes... I remember now; I'm glad you brought it up. The women and the girls all made Greek [costumes] for the chorus out of, not chiffon, but some sleazy white [material]. I had pictures, from my classics work at KU, so I knew how they dressed. By the way, the men all wore togas, but the king wore a — what's the other one? the toga is the big one — short [tunic] that comes to the knees. Well, isn't that too bad, I should know its [name]. Anyway, they were all dressed appropriately, and they made their own wigs. (They did a better job than I did when I was in high school; I had a beard made out of wire and the inside of a buggy cushion. That hurt.) That play was such a hit that it got wonderful reviews in the local paper. After the second year, I was back down at Spring Hill, and I organized a group there. Camille came down to play the part of the lead character in the mythological one. We put that on at other cities around [Kansas]. We rented costumes from Kansas City. It was very high-class.

SCHIPPERS

Did all the town folks come to see this play when it was at the high school?

BLAIR

Oh, it was packed. In fact, I think we ran the mythological play a second night. So at the end of second year, I am engaged to be married. Here is what the deal was. At the end of my second year at Sabetha, right in the middle of class, I get a long-distance call from Junction City, Kansas. He says, "We understand you have made a great record there. If you will come to Junction City, we will pay you twelve hundred dollars a year." (They knew I was getting ninety dollars a month or eight hundred and ten dollars.) "If you can straighten out our school, just mile and a half from Fort Riley, and get them interested in school instead of the fort and the soldiers, you name your own price; we. will pay you twelve hundred. Will you come and talk to us?" I went out. They asked me about religion and things like that; but they said, "All right, you are hired." I go back, and there is quite a sadness around Sabetha. I was one of the family. I practically loved every one of those students. Later in the season, they had a football banquet, just the championship football team and not too many. There were twins, the daughters of the Congregational minister, and we asked him, he was a wonderful fellow. He took charge of the banquet and introduced me. When I got up to talk, the last time we were going to meet, I couldn't say a word. Those people, and the football team, who were there, I really loved all of them, and they loved me — just one, wonderful family. I couldn't say a word. He got up and said, "Just a moment, this is the most wonderful moment that can happen to a human being. You're on one plane; there is nothing to say." He called attention and said, "This is an experience we may never have again in life." We were just that close. Then I broke over and made a talk, [tape recorder turned off] They asked me, [when] I went to Junction City to come out and interview with the teacher's committee, "Are you married?" I said, "No." They said, "You'll have to be to take this job." "Well," I said, "I expect to be in August." "All right." Then I am all enthused about staying in school work. I go to the University of Chicago and enroll in education, toward a master's degree. Camille, from KU, gets a job playing flute in a traveling girls' orchestra on the Red Path-Horner Chautauqua [circuit]. That ends August 1, so we set the time for our wedding for August 3. I engage a cabin in the Rocky Mountains — where I had played when I was at KU — from a KU man who owned a cabin in Estes Park [Colorado]. We would be up there in August and then go back to Junction City. By the way, this might be interesting. I am getting along fine toward my master's degree. At KU, I never took psychology; I never had it in high school. But Dr. Schweigler [taught] educational classics, and I took that because it was credited toward my major--Latin and Greek. I didn't know what it was, but all the way through, he hammered one thing. The human will was no specific thing — a variable, every tenth of a second based on little bit of inheritance, past experience, environment, and the divine urge to be up and do. That was the whole thing. When I get to the University of Chicago, I say, "I want to take applied psychology." Well, they said, "You can't. You never had any psychology during high school or at the University of Kansas." Well, I said, "I want to." "How can you? It's ridiculous. Of course, if you can pass an examination, then you can take it. We'll give you one if you want." I said, "All right." Do you know what they asked me? They [asked] only one question, "Describe the behavior of the human will." So, I make a hundred percent on the question they asked. I'm in. Applied psychology was interesting. I'll go into it in just a moment. Here's what one thing was. They have a machine, and you have a pen, hooked to the machine some way with arms and wire. If you want to make a dot, maybe the machine will make a straight line a half-inch long over here. You think you are going to make a circle; it may make a triangle, it might make a letter G. You don't know any of that. So they give you a motto to learn to write, and you are supposed to write, let's say, just one short sentence. It is a hot day. You keep experimenting, and you keep a tab on how many trials you make before you can do that. Mine was about ninety trials, and I could do it. Then they say, "Take your left hand and see how many [before] you can do it." Forty-two. The difference there, between ninety and forty-two, is transferred learning. He taught education in this whole thing. The whole thing was based on my specialist education, you see.

DIXON

We've got to get his name on tape first.

BLAIR

[Charles] Judd. That is the man in Chicago who handled the special course. Mind you, I need only about four credits to be completed in a summer and a half for my master's degree. Another thing he had us do was to take handwriting [samples] from children from all the Chicago area, and he had us study those and classify them. You would find maybe a thousand handwritten little compositions that they had written in grade school, and classify those into classes, of this type, that type, and this type another. That was one of the courses, and I got a good grade in that. From that they drew certain conclusions, which I don't even remember, indicating something of the child's nature. That was what they believed in at least; right or wrong, I don't know. University of Chicago was one of the first to have an actual grade school on the campus and experiment in improved methods of teaching children. This fellow Judd was the one back of it. When it came to language, you know what he did? Instead of saying just learn the German, he goes to open the door, and he says, "Offnen die tur." Right away, they know how to open the door; that was a new way of teaching it. I felt that I was certainly on the way to go ahead and be an executive in school work, and I loved it. All this time, the weeks are going by; Camille is traveling; and I am looking forward naturally to a month in Colorado and then back to Junction City. I get a letter about five days before the end of my work there. The Homer-Red Path Company said that they were going to extend her tour with the girls' orchestra for thirty days. They told her that if she didn't go with the orchestra, never again could she get a job with IIorner-Red Path. Well, my God, that's the month of August! Thirty days more, and I'm only four days from being on duty with five hundred students and twenty teachers in Junction City, Kansas — having to have a wife. Well, would you believe, the day I got that letter from Camille, a letter the next morning comes from Mary, the sister of Vera, in Laramie. (Vera is married.) Mary says, "What are you doing? Where are you? I want to see you." I almost sent a wire to Mary to come to Chicago, "I've got to have a wife; let's be married," or something like that. In this letter from Camille, she said, "After all, I never had any freedom or anything like that. I'm not too sure I really ought to be married right now." I was in hell for a while — my job and the disappointment and all that. But another letter comes, and she says, "Well, really we'll be married, but I have to keep this job through August." We'll be married in Kansas City on [September] 1, and I'm supposed to be in Junction City on [September] 3. She had an aunt living in Kansas City. Well, I don't know what [to do]. Here comes an announcement on a billboard at the University of Chicago: "Santa Fe Railroad Company wants fifty University of Chicago men to check freight and passengers for the provenance of evidence for a lawsuit the government is bringing against the Santa Fe Railroad for charging too much on freight rates." They were going to hire fifty of us. They cannot move one wheel on any train in the Santa Fe system without one of us fifty on there — freight or passenger. Why? The government had overlooked the fact that they haul back hundreds of freight cars empty from California. They couldn't move a wheel but we'd get on a passenger train and check tickets, where they're going and where from. They had forms, so it wasn't hard work. Then you'd ride in the caboose, and the conductor on the freight would give you all the way bills so you could note car number, counties, where to, where from, and so on. Well, a guy that loves trains, I would have done it for nothing; but we're getting paid pretty good — I think fifty dollars a week. During that time, the Chautauqua that Camille's in shows up not too many miles from my run, which is from Argentine, Kansas to Marceline, Missouri. Then I'd come back on another train, sometimes passenger, sometimes freight Well, Camille is on the Chautauqua circuit, only about ten miles from Marceline. I go to the agent, and I say, "How far down the board am I?" "You're number twelve." "OK then." I've got a couple of days in Marceline. There's a taxi that runs over to this place — not a taxi but a bus. I go, and we're together there. I get back, and they are holding up a freight train with a hundred freight cars because there is nobody to get on it. It seems a special came through. They used up three [before me], and they have held that train up an hour and a half for me to get there. I was in the clear; I had a leave of absence. Well, sir, it's hot, and of course I am uneasy, too. Finally, I appear, and the conductor [is upset]; he doesn't know when I'm getting back. Nobody does. I didn't know there was trouble. I'm holding up the Santa Fe Railroad system, with trains behind them. But this lawsuit is important, and that was the deal. So I'm in there going through the freight bills. Here comes the conductor-- I think he'd been drinking something. He sees me, and he has no complaints. He's hot. You know, they have an ice-water tank in the front [of the car] with a cup. So he walks in; he takes a cup and turns it on; and he [exclaims], "God damn it!" It's full of soap; the brakomen had taken the ice-water can and filled it with soft soap for hot boxes on the train. This conductor got a half a swallow of pure soap. Naturally, he swore. [tape recorder turned off] Of course, I stayed and roomed in Marceline, Missouri, when I was there, sometimes for a day or a day and a half. I roomed with a widow, and she had pictures all over the house of a beautiful daughter. I would sleep there, and then I would be gone for two days. She didn't even serve meals. Every time I would go there, she would say, "Oh, my daughter went down into Alabama. I wish she were home; you would just love to meet her." I heard that all the time, but of course, I am one-hundred percent old Kansas, engaged to somebody. When my trip with the Santa Fe is over, I go to Kansas City, where I have ordered a wedding suit, a black suit with just braid on the lapels. Now I probably had never had a suitcase of my own before, but I buy a suitcase. Camille is coming in on a Saturday. We'll go to her aunt's — we are going to be married in her aunt's home on Saturday night-- and then I am to be principal of the high school in Junction City Monday morning. I get my suit and rent a room at the Coates House, then the top hotel in Kansas City. I get this suit in my suitcase--a new one — and I hadn't gone very far with it until I think, "My gosh, it's locked, and the key is inside." Well, there's my suit in there, and here is a new suitcase. How can you get it open but to cut it or something? I drove in to a place where they sell luggage, and I say, "I am in a predicament. The suitcase is locked, and the key is inside." The fellow just took it, moved his thumb, and said, "It isn't locked. You have to lock it with a key." Well, I learned that. Then I get on the streetcar, and I'm going out to leave. I don't know why I am on the streetcar, but I am going somewhere. When I get off of the streetcar and it goes on, I don't have my suitcase with my wedding suit in there. Well, I think, "What can I do?" I knew the streetcar was a certain — not a number — but a name. It was going to Pulitzer Park or whatever; I can't remember the name now. But supposedly they all keep going around on that circuit; they all came downtown past the loop. So I figured if it didn't go to the car barn and if the guy wasn't just off. duty, why, it would keep coming. So I waited and waited, I expect for an hour and a half, right where I got off of the streetcar. Here comes that car. I get on, and there is my suitcase, under the seat. I get it and go to the Coates House. We are married that night. The next day we have to get on the train, two hundred and fifty miles to Junction City. I had rented a little cottage for us to live in, there in Junction City. We get there Sunday, and Mrs. Blair's mother is there. My God! I appear the next morning at the high school wearing my wedding suit; it just had braid on it, wasn't too [fancy] So here's chapel. I am introduced as the new principal. They have about four hundred students and all the teachers in a big assembly. They introduce me last, the new principal.

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
JUNE 18, 1965

BLAIR

I had just been introduced as the new principal of the high school in Junction City, Kansas. The teachers had been introduced, and then the new principal was introduced. As I remember, the first thing I said was this: "I am glad you are all here. If you weren't here, I would not bo here. I feel happy that I'm here already. Do you know why you are here? My father got twenty dollars a month for teaching school because his father had given him a calf. He didn't let his father sell the calf and give him another one, as was the custom; but he held on to it and sold the calf, got the money himself, and had six weeks in the Fort Scott Normal School. Therefore, he was an unusually well-educated man. So he was teaching school for twenty dollars a month at Cadmus. "Now here you are in a big building, with a lot of us wonderful teachers. You are here. Why? Did you all have a calf to sell? No. Your parent's, your neighbors, and your grandparents in this whole area paid taxes, and some of the money that they pay on property taxes for the state comes in here. You have this wonderful building and this faculty, and you are here. ^'Now why in addition to that are you here? You must be a little above the average in intelligence or you wouldn't be here. A lot of people quit school when they get to the eighth grade. Do you happen to know that for any high school graduate who gets a diploma from a school like this, one of the best in the state — that's why I'm proud to be here--the rest of your life that diploma is worth at least five hundred dollars a year earning power, or in business (according to government statistics), over those who never go beyond the eighth grade. So let's be glad we are here this morning. "I want to tell you one very important thing according to the customs. It used to be that the minute a new teacher came in to a school, she or he stated rules. My dad had a rule when he took over the school in Cadmus. No young man" (I say young man — they went to school until they were married or twenty-one) "would spit tobacco juice on the floor of the school. That was one of the main rules. I have a very, very important rule, and I mean I am going to stick to it, and I am going to be severe on it. You people must know this rule. Now, what is it? We won't have any rule. You are here because you are defined intelligent, and you know right from wrong. You know that we are here for business so that you can get your diploma and graduation recognition and go into life armed so much better than those who stop at the eighth grade. Those who stop at the eighth grade in life are going to be a great deal like the Indian fighting shotguns with a bow and arrow. "That sounds like a lot of work. Well, I like to play. Don't you know that all work and no play makes Jack? Now a man with a million dollars of Jack may not be very happy. What we want to do now is do the work we must do, so we have time to play. In that play, we may get relaxation and something of life as important as a good good grade in this school. But you must get a good grade. And we do not want all of you to turn out to be geniuses. A genius is not always so happy." Turn it off. [tape recorder turned off] "It would be a very bad situation if all you got A-plus in your grades. Let me bring out one point: there is A; there is B; there is C; and I think there's an F, meaning you don't pass. Don't ever get an F, but don't always try in every subject to get an A-plus. At least, try to get good grades — B, or B-plus, or B-minus — and maybe get an A or so. Maybe that A is your key to what you should be as a professional or what you might do in life. "Now about the play. We have over here a very highly socialized fort life a mile and a half away. That is wonderful, but right here in Junction City we want to have one of the greatest high schools in the state of Kansas. Not because of grades and facilities that your taxpayers have provided for you, including downstairs a wonderful manual training department; we want to be known also for a cultural, living high school. So let us have the Student Enterprise Association where each one [of you] is important. How will you be important? You will fit into some of these categories. You may be officers in this institution of student enterprise. But we also want to have dramatics; we want to produce a play once in a while. We want to have an orchestra; we want to have a band; we want to have basketball. I want to tell you something else: we may have a debating team. That may lead to someone being a lawyer, even though they don't debate in law. [Lawyers] have to learn to talk on their feet and not from notes. Do you know something else? We are going to have a football team." At that point they cheered. I said, "Listen, you didn't understand me. We're going to have a football team." And they yelled. "I'm supposed to coach the football and teach Latin and English. I think they hired me because maybe I could coach football. But let me tell you something: I don't know anything about coaching football, but the second year in Sabetha, Kansas, where I came from, we had a championship team." (Do you know that later on--I'll tell you this now — I got a wire from Sabeth^i saying they were ever-victorious in northeastern Kansas.) "Now I know a few of the rules, but I can't teach any young man here how to tackle or run interference. But 1 can teach him one thing: you can win by spirit. I see a big fellow down here--I don't know what his name is yet--but people will laugh when I put him, if, he comes out for football, in the backfield. There was a big fellow in Sabetha, Kansas. Three other fellows can run from the backfield and carry the ball. When you play football you must hang on to the ball, not give it to the other team, or you never can win. If we needed a yard, or two yeirds even, on the third down or the fourth down to retain possession of the ball, I'll give the ball to this big man that everybody else said should play in the line. Well, if he's going to play in the line, they are going to run around him; they are not going to try to tackle him or try to run through him. But this big fellow back there could fall two yards, and we'd have the ball." [tape recorder turned off] "I don't even know what your school yell is, or your school song. There is a war cry used by the Greeks that frightened the enemy. Well, you on the sidelines backing up your team may not frighten the enemy; but if you like this yell, I want to give it to you. Let's see how it works. When you stand up at the end of it, as far as I'm concerned we're going to get down to business and we are going to do good work so we can have a lot of fun to play. And here is the yell: "ooo la la, ooo la la, ooo la la, oooooooo, and you rise." [tape recorder turned off] After this chapel so-called, or assembly, was dismissed, the students went out with a great, it seemed to me, enthusiasm. So now they get down to business. The football team came out, and as far as football was concerned, this first year we did do one thing: we beat Abilene, their main enemy, so to speak, in football. Downstairs was a wonderful manual training department. I discovered that only fourteen boys were taking manual training. I learned from my work on my master's degree at University of Chicago to inject so-called business principles into teaching and managing schools. If I had stayed in school work it would have been as an executive in school work. Dr. Judd was the one who portrayed that to me. I asked the head of the manual training department how he taught his classes, if he taught them in classes all together, Today, maybe they are learning to make a dovetail in wood,. or they are maybe learning how to sharpen a saw, that's the next lesson. He said yes. Well, I said, "Do some of them do better, and get through [faster] than others?" "Yes." "Well, then, why do we not have more young men down here?" "Well," he said, "there are classes in English, Latin, history, and all the other things. They can only come at the time when they have a free hour in the school schedule." I said, "Could you go into piecework? Let each fellow be promoted to what he was going to do?" He said, "Yes." "Some might be making a nail cabinet, another might have it morticed at the corners, and another might have some chamfer work on it." He said, "We could run that way." Anyway, we installed that immediately, and inside of forty-eight hours we had seventy-six boys taking manual training. On the strength of the promise of the school board that if I could straighten out this school and disassociate it a little bit with the social life at Fort Riley (especially the two upper classes) I could name my own price. We bought the little cottage that we had rented for twenty-five hundred dollars. I borrowed five hundred dollars from the Spring Hill bank (back where I went through high school) to pay down, and I was to pay each month [an amount] no more than the rent we were paying. We have plays; we have a band; we have an orchestra; we have all these things. And I changed the bookkeeping from book records. Each teacher kept a book, and they had a book in the office to keep a record of grades and all that. I put in a card catalog system which I had learned to use at the University of Kansas. It was [also] emphasized by Dr. Judd to get away from the old-time bookkeeping method. I hadn't been in school but about six weeks there, when in comes Dr. Yates, one of the three doctors who comprised the teachers' committee. When they elected me, it had to be unanimous; the three had to agree on any principal or any teacher. He came in one day and said, "I want to speak to you. Professor Blair." I didn't like the word professor. I said, "Fine, come right in." He said, "I want you to know one thing. My daughter Irma has always gotten good grades in this school--always. I just want you to know that." Well, I was a little bit astounded, so I thought I'll be tactful, tell him something that he can understand, but don't say it. I said, "Dr. Yates, you haven't a worry in the world. I happen to know. She is in one of my English classes. She is a good student. You have nothing to worry about, if this is on your mind. If anybody ever came up those stairs and wanted any grade manipulations I would have kicked them down the stairs as soon as I found out what they were here for. Don't worry." He loft. We go on through with all the routine in the school, and it's very successful. Just about thirty days or so [before the end of the school year] they come to the different teachers with contracts to know who is going to be there the coming year. I had asked for a five hundred dollar raise. I was getting twelve hundred a year. When my contract was submitted to me, they gave me a two hundred and fifty dollar raise. I felt helpless. I had bought the home; I signed. But I thought to myself, "What else can I do? If politics is like this in school work, I don't think I want to be in it any more." My mother-in-law was after me all the time to get into business. She thought schoolteachers were not paid much, and they weren't; there's no doubt about that. She said I had experience in business to a certain extent, with the country store and all, and I ought to get into business. But I signed up. She says that if I will go into business she will loan me twenty-five hundred dollars at ten percent. It just turns out there is a clothing store for sale in Junction City. [tape recorder turned off] I tell my real estate man, who had sold me this little house, about this thing, and he said, "I can get you twenty-five hundred dollars at a bank and you can have it as long as you want it." There's a store for sale here." I said, "What?" "Van Leeuwen's." Two brothers owned this clothing store, and they had also a clothing store in Oklahoma. The man that owned the clothing department owned the store in Oklahoma, and his brother owned the shoe department in this store. He wanted to stay, but the brother that owned the [store] in Oklahoma wanted to get rid of the clothing department section at Junction City. They agreed to sell out for around five thousand dollars down, and then I could pay along as I sold merchandise. I decided I would to that, and the real estate man brought me the note to sign from the banker. He told me that I could have the money as long as I wanted, but according to the regulations of Wall Street and the government and all that, they could not take any note longer than six months. But it could be renewed every six months. I signed and bought the store. This particular store was the one that outfitted the soldiers being discharged from Fort Riley. They bought civilian clothes and paid in gold. It was a good business. I bought the store, and I resigned, after having been hired at two hundred and fifty dollars a year raise, from the Junction City High School. "hi?; This came about, I think, a few weeks, maybe, after this contract had been signed near the end of school the first year. A daughter, Betsy Lynette, was born, and the doctor we had — I forget his name, but I think MacDowell, or some name like that — came to mo and said, "You know, you have resigned; it puts us in a bad position. Doc Yates is very worried and angry with you for resigning. But I want you to know why we didn't give you the five hundred dollars. Doc Yates said, 'This fellow has bought a home and can't get out of town; we don't have to pay him but two-fifty.'" I knew then it wasn't the buying of the home. He was glad of it; he had an excuse there. He didn't like the way I had mentally kicked him downstairs when he wanted grades looked after. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

You made a comment about the social life of the high school being tied with the camp. In what way?

BLAIR

Well, it was like this. I had some duty, or the possibility of taking part, in all the activities of the upperclassmen; out of about three hundred and eighty students, maybe only eighty or one hundred were upperclassmen. I had them on committees; I had them so important, so busy, so active, that they forgot all about Fort Riley.

DIXON

Well, wait just a minute. What did Fort Riley have?

BLAIR

Nothing more than this: over there were thousands and thousands of soldiers and officers and social life. They'd have fairs; they'd raise money for this and that. I remember we went over there once. A good many of the students were there. They were having some kind of a fundraising affair. The colonel's wife — I don't know what his name was now, MacPherson or something — was a tongue-tied person. She was selling cigarettes. Now you couldn't sell cigarettes in Kansas, or buy, or even give away papers with tobacco. But Fort Riley was government property, and she was selling cigarettes, going around dressed up like Fatima, with a short skirt--sort of risque in those days. In other words, there was a social life there, and the soldiers would come in to Junction City for dates and things like that. That was one of the reasons they said the school needed some straightening out. Well, I remember I happened to hear this. There was an old fellow sitting on the bandstand over there, and here comes Fatima, the colonel's wife, "Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes." [laughter] The old man says, "I don't know what you're saying." She says, "Go to hell! You understand that, don't you?" [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] I guess the answer is, we got the students' spirit built up. That's the caption for all this: student enterprise. We were getting a pretty good football team. They had something to do; even the little thing of making more boys interested in manual training themselves — that's typical of this thing. They all had a special interest, [tape recorder turned off] When I resigned. Dr. Yates called me on the telephone and said that I was a traitor. He would see to it that never again could I get a job teaching in the state of Kansas. I bought the store, and my mother-in-law loaned me the twenty-five hundred dollars at ten percent. Now, why at ten? Well, in the earlier days, after she was a widow, she let a nephew in Oklahoma borrow twenty-five hundred dollars from her to run a cab business, horse cabs instead of taxicabs. He was paying her ten percent. But automobiles were coming in, and taxis were cutting out this business. She got worried about the ten percent. This nephew also owned a drugstore in Oklahoma. So she got the money away from him and gave it to me, still getting ten percent; she should believe in me some way. I took over the store, and I started advertising. By the way, while I was in town I took the Junction City Band, which the chamber of commerce had [formed], and developed a new way to have a town band. The way it was before, there were a bunch of fellows meeting and they were calling themselves a band; the merchants didn't give support, So I went around to the other merchants, and I say to them, "We could have a good band here. If the merchants contribute even two dollars a month apiece we'd have a band concert every Saturday night and bring people to town in the park." I signed up enough of these [merchants] that we could hire a director. It happened I got a KU fellow who had played in the KU band. He was there on some other business. Here is the unusual thing about it. A band is no good if they don't have good band practice. Any man that plays in a band, if he likes being in a band at all, will go to band practice every night if the band is going to be there. But if he goes, and only twelve out of twenty or twenty-four come, he wonders why did he go. So we take this subscription money, plus any jobs the band might get for going somewhere and playing, like maybe fifty dollars or one hundred dollars for the Fourth of July. We put it all in one pot. But we don't pay. They all came out when there was a pay job, you know, but they didn't come to practice. Therefore, we didn't have a very good band. We had to pay the director, I think, about thirty dollars a month. He lived there anyway. I work out a plan that the end of every month we take the money that has come in from the merchants, plus any pay jobs, and we pay, not on the pay job — it counts as one — but on attendance. A band rehearsal counted the same as a band job. It would work out that at the end of the month, these band members might get four dollars. But that wasn't why they came to band practice. It was wonderful; you had a full band. They all came, not for the four dollars a month, or five dollars sometimes, but because it was going to be a good rehearsal. [tape recorder turned off] As life goes along, there is a war with Mexico. The soldiers were sent to Mexico; Pershing was ahead of them. My store depended principally on discharged soldiers buying clothes and paying in gold. But my advertising was going along, and farmers were coming in. I remember one farmer would come in and buy; he'd say, "I want to get a su-it." But he bought good things and paid cash. One day, he comes in with a little package. He walks the full length of my clothing department, and he says, "I want to exchange a shirt." Well, I think that's all right. He's got a shirt he doesn't like, so he wants to exchange it. He goes back into the dressing room and takes off his shirt and puts on another one he brought from home. He's in town; he wants to have a clean shirt on. So he exchanged the shirt, [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] At the end of the fifth month, I take a check for the interest and go down to the bank, and the banker, before I can say anything, says, "I just wanted to see you." "Well, fine, I came down to pay my interest. It isn't due yet for thirty days." "Well," he says, "there's a problem here: money is very tight now in New York. We can't renew your note. We can't renew this six-month note." Well, I reach in my pocket, lay my keys down, and say, "Well, you own a clothing store." "What?" I say, "Yes, you own a clothing store." "Oh, no, no," he says. "You can't afford to lose your money." I say, "I haven't any money in the business." "You haven't any money in the business?" I say, "No, I borrowed from you and my mother-in-law. I never made a statement. I never met you until today." Well, he says, "That man told me." I said, "Well, all right. You own a clothing store." "On, no," he says. "Don't worry, don't worry." I found out later he o\^7ned a hardware store, a furniture store, and a mortuary department the same way. Somebody had a few thousand in there, he couldn't pay, and [the banker] gets that. I know I can't stick it out there very long. What will I do? I've got to move away. They don't know how long the war is going to last. The man from Oklahoma who had sold me the store agreed to take some merchandise — he was doing pretty well down there — so I pay him off some with some of the merchandise, like Society brand clothes, and Kuppenheimer. He sold me those suits which would have retailed then for about twenty dollars. I think I bought them for eight or nine dollars; he had paid twelve and ho had wanted to get out. He took back some merchandise. Where will I get five thousand dollars, or at least twenty-five hundred, to move out of town? The great thought comes, let me find in Kansas somewhere a town that doesn't have a clothing store. This is where logic comes in again — it doesn't work out. I go to Garden City; there is no clothing store there, at least not a good one. It turned out that this real estate man that made the deal with the banker owned a cottage (so he said), a lot, and a house in Garden City. He said, "You have an equity in your cottage here in Junction City." Well it's a long way out to Garden City. And I don't really go, because I hear of another place, which I think might be better, which doesn't have a clothing store. The real estate man says, "I have a lot and a cottage in Garden City and I'll trade you that clear for your equity in the cottage which you bought here in Junction City." I make the deal sight unseen. I think I'll jump ahead here, because it turns out three or four years later, when I'm in another town. Fort Scott, with my clothing store, I get a letter from the city of Garden City saying, "You are apparently the owner of a lot so and so, with a cottage so and so. It has been declared a nuisance. Unless you pay twenty-five dollars you'll be sued. If you pay twenty-five dollars and relinquish the property, the city will take it over." I sent twenty-five dollars. [tape recorder turned off] Of course we know my grandfather had the first blacksmith shop near Fort Scott, Kansas. My father was always [from] eastern Kansas, and of course Junction City is at least considered to be western Kansas. My dad says when I wrote him, why don't we do down to Fort Scott? Well, I gave up the idea of trying to find a town with no clothing store. I got to talking to the Van Leeuwens, who were good merchants. They said, "Don't go where there's no clothing business. Go where there is a clothing business." Well, Fort Scott had three third-generation, big clothing stores in a town of about fifteen thousand or less, and they didn't advertise. They worked on the theory that everybody knew they were there, so they didn't advertise. George Marble, of the Fort Scott Tribune, [was] one of the sharpest editors in Kansas, quoted all over the nation, including New York. My father and I go down there. We talk to a bank; we tell them we have an inventory of six thousand dollars or seven thousand dollars worth of merchandise to ship down. It is clear, with the five thousand dollars I had put in, and maybe a little profit I had shown, or perhaps the increase in value of the clothing. It turns out there's an empty place between the bank and one of the oldest and best third-generation clothing stores, right there in Fort Scott. It's an airy room, about twenty feet wide and goes back to an alley. The bank, knowing the history of my dad and the family and all, said they would loan the five thousand dollars, and take over the whole debt if I wanted to move down there. The man that handles the deal was a close friend of the banker. This room I can get for seventy-five dollars a month, or something like that, right next door to Lippman and Company, which the farmers called "Leepman. " So I move my stock down there. I decided to run a fifteen dollar clothes shop — nothing over fifteen dollars. In those days Hickey-Freeman [suits], the best, could be bought for twenty-five dollars. I open up, advertise my opening, and I wonder who will be the first customer. Well, the first customer was a young fellow who came in and said, "I want a hat." He said, "My dad and mother run a little inn down here by the railroad." It was a two-dollar hat, and he said, "I can't pay for it right now." But the first customer bought a two-dollar hat, and I charged it to him. It turned out later I never saw him again, and I never got the two dollars. That was the first customer. In comes a farmer woman, and she says, "Do you carry boys' clothing?" I said, "Yes." "Well, I'll go and get my boy." She brings in the boy; he's twenty-two. [laughter] He wears about a thirty-eight long. I wondered where Caesar got his army if he was a boy. They buy a suit for fifteen dollars. I said to her, "How did you happen to come in here?" She says, "Well, I have always bought my clothing here." [tape recorder turned off] She thought she was in Lippman's next door, the big clothing store. They had a fifty-foot store and mine was twenty. Right after that, in came Mr. Lippman, the older one; he was the third-generation owner. He came in and said, "I wish you well. I wish all young men well." No other person in Fort Scott came in except the druggist. The druggist (pool table-and-cigarstand man) came and bought three shirts, paid cash, and said to deliver them. That was smart. I thought it over; he wanted me as a customer at the drugstore. Anyway, those shirts were Arrow shirts at two dollars apiece; today they'd be about seven or eight, When I went down, he gave me a check for six dollars. I sold him a fifteen dollar suit. Mr. Lippman had wished me well. The next day Mr. Lippman came in. I had some wonderful, what could be called hand-knit, sweaters; there was a process that was far different that somebody had developed up in Milwaukee for knitting wonderful sweaters. [They had] big roll collars in white and colors. In comes Mr. Lippman with a young man. He said, "This young man wants the sweater in your window." I said, "Well, fine." And he says, "Bring the bill in, retail, and I'll pay you." The young man took [the sweater]. I said, "Mr. Lippman you have sweaters; who is this?" He said, "He's working for me." I said, "You come in here to buy him a sweater?" He says, "I'm honest." He said, "I told the young man he was. to sweep out, he was to do this, he was to do that, you know, for so much. If you make good the first month, and you do your work well, you can have any sweater you want." The young man that worked there saw the sweater in my window, liked it, and told Mr. Lippman the sweater he wanted. Mr. Lippman stuck it out; he bought it. It's another case almost like the woman who thought she was buying in Lippman's, but the young man knew better. He was a young country fellow, and that's the sweater he liked. I want to say right here that humanity seemed very good, expressed right in this one man, Mr. Lippman. Now about advertising. I went down to the editor [George Marble] and said, "According to the retail clothiers association [National Association of Retail Clothiers and Furnishers], five percent of retail sales is legitimate for a retail clothing store for advertising. I see no ads in this paper for any other clothing store. If you would allow me what space I need, I would gladly give you the right to check my books and pay you five percent every month of whatever I sell." He said, "That's fine. That's a deal. I'll do that." Inside of six months, I had every clothing store there advertising. Now, what is advertising? It's worth nothing if you don't get attention to it. Regardless of your space, you've got to get attention. A second thing, it has to make a favorable impression. Well, being original in a way, maybe in other things I had done, I decided to lot a pup write my advertising. I had an artist do a picture of a little white pup with a black eye, and I called him "the pup." He would write something every day at the top [of the ad] to get attention, and then would be the merchandise. This thing that the pup said had nothing to do with clothing. For instance, one of the statements was "A black eye is OK provided it is natural." That [referred to] himself. "Lightning strikes but once in a place; once is enough." The next day maybe, "All that goes up must come down, unless it goes up in smoke." Things of that type. Do you know, people got to watching those ads. One day, in c£une a man for a suit for himself, and he said, "My boy wouldn't let me go to Lippman's. He wanted me to come to the pup's store." A traveling man came through, and he said, "You mean you are calling yours the 'pup' store? Don't you know what that is?" "No, what's that?" "Why," he said, "a pup all over the industry and the clothing business is something you can't sell. It's no good; you're stuck with a pup." I said, "Tvnyway, the public doesn't know it; I didn't know it. So what?" Here's a man comes in and buys a suit, not a boy's suit, because the boy said, "Dad, I want your suit to come from the pup store." Well, then I saw my advertising was clicking, and I was doing a good business. At this bank, all I had to do was pay the interest. They were wonderful fellows. They went so far as this--cooperative buying. Here is something that maybe is historical a little bit in business. Chain stores and big buyers could buy cheaper than individual clothiers. Right today, if we look about, we see there are very few small markets, very few small individual stores; it is a chain-store business. So a bunch of us (I had a little to do with it), organized, out of Chicago, a retail clothiers' cooperative buying organization, or something like that. We would hold a meeting in Chicago, a ten-day convention with lines displayed in the different hotels — shoes and everything--all the manufacturers would come; and the total sales of [our] purchases would be figured as though it competed with J.C. Penney or anybody. If our total purchases equaled that of a chain store, we'd get the same price per dozen as they did. By the way, the First World War was beginning; merchandise was hard to get. Through this organization, I get word I can buy a whole case of fleece-lined underwear for men at a certain price, but I don't have the money. I go over to the bank where I already owe five thousand dollars, and say, "Look what I can buy. I'd like to have ten dozen at least, but I don't feel [I have enough cash]." The banker says, "Why don't we get the whole case?" For the first time in my life I found humanity in a bank. [tape recorder turned off] I had cooperation from a banker, and it was wonderful. I felt proud when one day I had a sale on something, and after hours I called the bank, "I had a thousand-dollar day today." (I was selling for cash then.) "I don't like to leave it in the store." That was the way we worked with this bank. He was so happy that I had a thousand-dollar day — for more reasons than one, probably. I developed something else: direct mail advertising. I started in keeping a list of customers. I knew something about direct mail advertising in general; people buy mailing lists and they mail out something. I classified my mailing list. I classified them [according] to age: young men, boys, older men. I had different styled suits for the different types of people. So I would send out a letter or something direct to the young men on things they were interested in, and to [older] men on the other [things]. I developed, I think for the first time in America, what you call a classified audience. Along with that, I got write-ups in the retail clothiers association magazine, printed in Chicago, and I would send in my advertising. I know one time I decided to have a special feature sale. I hand-lettered some arrows, and I went out through the country and tacked them on fences, pointing to my store, and then a big arrow across the front of my store. Well, I was surprised when the retail clothiers association ran a two-page [story]. They reproduced the front of the store and scenes of it, and said, "Here is someone with some new ideas in getting clothing business." I was getting publicity. Naturally, all the good stores in America read those things. [tape -recorder turned off] I think [the truth of] my dad's advice and others is very plain: don't try to go to a town and open a clothing store where there is no clothing store, on the theory that you would have a lot of business. The theory which brought me to Fort Scott was to go where there is a clothing business. Undoubtedly, for a town of fifteen thousand to have three two-story, third-generation stores meant they were drawing the clothing business from all over southeast Kansas. It was a clothing market. I was very fortunate, even though I had traded the equity that I had in the cottage in Junction City clear for a clear nuisance with no mortgage on it in Garden City. I think it was very fortunate that although I lost my equity in the Junction City cottage plus twenty-five dollars to get out of the nuisance deal, I'm in a town where there is a clothing business and I am doing pretty good. [tape recorder turned off] Naturally, I joined the chamber of commerce. Some of the clothiers didn't even belong. They joined, and they began advertising. I was made secretary of the merchants division. One of the first things I did, of course, was to get a band organized on the same basis that I had in Junction City. There was a twelve-piece band run by an Italian who was a wonderful baritone player and ran a picture show. Whenever anybody wanted a band, he would get twelve together--they never practiced — and go out and toot. That was called the Fort Scott Band. I go around and do the same thing [I did in Junction City]. We get about a twenty-five- or thirty-piece band organized, merchant-support. They were wonderful musicians. My wife played flute, and she played alboradas everywhere with the most famous singer in the town. We were in the musical world. I remember we lived with our youngster, when we moved to Fort Scott, over a plumbing shop for twelve dollars a month. Everything we had was in the store. This place where we lived upstairs had been a photographer's studio. The north skylights were still there, and there was running water; that's about all you could say. Behind where we lived, there were empty offices. We would hear noises at night, and we didn't know what was making [them]. Would you believe it? Here comes the mayor and the president of the Fort Scott Life Insurance Company, Mr. Tiernan, up those stairs to our twelve-dollar-a-month place to invite my wife, Camille, to play flute alboradas with the famous singer Mazie Walls, [tape recorder turned off] at a big meeting of the Masonic Lodge. Here right away we are accepted into the top society in Fort Scott. Of course, I am playing drums in the band. Later on, I organize a symphony orchestra. We want a real leader. The merchants are delighted at the band concerts; we have a band to march down the street. I also organize, believe this or not, an automobile parade; now, that's odd. Automobiles were new; we had our little old Ford. An automobile parade, with different cars (there were some wealthy people there), and the band would draw a crowd of people from the country any time. [It was] to get activity and get people [involved] with the town, not just a cold-blooded merchandising thing. Fort Scott years ago had had some national convention or state convention. They had built a great or large convention hall with a big stage. It was being used for nothing there, not even for roller skating. We make a deal to get that--I think it was owned by the city--for concerts. Next thing was to get a symphony orchestra director. We had a wonderful band director, just a wonderful fellow. He came in there, and he taught music in the schools in Fort Scott. We paid him about thirty dollars a month to direct this band. So the band is going along, and now the symphony. We find out there is an Italian director who had come to New York City with an Italian band, a big band. [They] advertised on billboards all through New York City. They went broke. It wasn't Banda Rosa, but it was as good. The Italian bands used to come to America. We get this great director for fifty dollars a month. Well, he doesn't know much about our ways, and he's on my shoulders. He doesn't have worthwhile clothes, so I sell him a Palm Beach suit at cost and charge it to him. He's the director. I remember the first time he ever got them all together, he told them, "Sound a certain note," and to me that was the most glorious harmony: every instrument doing something except the drums. There was the beginning of the symphony orchestra. We rehearse in the convention hall. This fellow caused me a good deal of bother; he doesn't understand things people say. One day he comes in and says, "I will not stay in this town another night." I say, "Well, what is the matter?" He says, "Little children; they would kill little children. I read in the paper, they find a crack in the schoolhouse wall. A man would build a building to crack and little children get killed when it falls down." Well, I explained to him this and this. But we go ahead. By the way, the best cornet player in town was the fellow that runs, not Western Union, but the Postal Telegraph [-Cable] Company [of Texas]. But the merchants never gave him any business; they all called Western Union. Now, mind you, I had a little trouble also with the band, with this Italian that ran the picture show and had his twelve-piece band. There was a good tuba player down in the Frisco railroad yards. This was quite a railroad town; the Missouri-Pacific and the Frisco both came in. I had a lot of politics there, getting the band organized. The railroad men didn't like the chamber of commerce; they thought they represented capital. I guess there was a union in the railroads. I go to these people and I talk to them, and I say, "I have plowed, and I belonged to a union when I was in school." I get the baritone player, who was leading the picture-show orchestra, and I get the tuba player. They find out they are all people: not railroad men, not union men, not chamber of commerce men. They are people. We have a darned good band. We are so good that they hire a train to bring us to other towns like Pittsburg, [Kansas], to come down and play on special things. All that money goes into the pot. Now then, as for the symphony, the toughest one to crack was the cornet player who ran the postal station. I give him my business, and I tell him, "Join the band; you're going to get some business. Rex Walls will send every telegram through you." We're going to have the first concert of the symphony orchestra in the convention hall. The baritone player and all the different players are there, and here is first chair--the postal telegraph man on cornet. It's the day before the concert. We are going to charge ten cents admission [for the] community orchestra. The director sees it, and he comes in and says, "We will not have any concert tomorrow night." I say, "What do you mean?" He says, "Giagetto will play for nothing, but he will not play for a dime." [laughter] I explain, I explain, I explain, and I think I get his white suit pressed or something. Anyway, he finally agrees to go on. The hall is packed. I expect there are close to a thousand people in that convention hall at ten cents a head; well, there's at least a hundred dollars to Iveep the orchestra going. Here's the big stage, and the orchestra is all ready. For the first piece, the cornet comes out; it's his [solo]. We have to be easy with him; he's very touchy yet, even though he likes it. The first notes he has are ta ta ta daaa, on the horn. Here's the Italian director and the fellow goes ta ta ta daaaa [fanfare]. Right before the whole audience this Italian director points and says, "Not ta ta ta daaaa; ta ta ta daaaa." Before a thousand people! I wouldn't have blamed that cornet player if he had got up and walked out, but he didn't. So what happens? We start all over. The cornet player starts out ta ta ta daaaaaaa --so loud it makes people's ears ring. And the orchestra is a success. [tape recorder turned off] Rotary Club is organized, and I am immediately made chairman of the membership committee. The rule of the Rotary was this: any man that misses three meetings and doesn't make provision for missing is automatically out. Rotary had the same policy [as the band]; if they all come, they are going to love the Rotary meetings, just like band practice. The life insurance man, Mr. Tiernan, missed three. I called him up and said, "You're no longer a member. I'm that kind of a guy. Tiernan," I said, "we're all alike. This is terrible; we need you." Well, he said, "I did have reasons, but I'll admit I was negligent." I said, "All right, give me the reasons. I'll bring them before the acceptance committee. Don't worry." Well, that's what happened. But I was that strict with things; I wasn't afraid of anybody. Now, there is Rex Walls, this wonderful young fellow married to Mazie, the singer. They have the finest ready-to-wear store there. He's top in the Masons; he's everywhere; but he can't get in the Rotary Club. I don't understand it. I find out that a child born to them was a little early or something, years before, a beautiful young dancer who danced now with Tiernan's daughter. Here is this Victorian thing at Fort Scott; it goes on and on. By the way, my wife and I were made delegates to the International Rotary convention in Salt Lake City. They sent the Fort Scott group and us by special car. Camille played flute, and I played my drum. We had banners, "We're Fort Scott," and we were on the same train with the Kansas City Special. We met Ray Havens, International Rotary president-to-be at this same thing. That's a sidelight. Anyway, here we are. One day I stand up before the Rotary Club in Fort Scott, Kansas, and I say, "Listen, I'm proposing the name of Rex Walls to join the Rotary Club. There's not a finer civic worker, a more honorable fellow in the world. I want to say this in addition. I'm not only proposing it, but if he is not accepted, I resign today." They stood up, accepted, and cheered. The farmers around Fort Scott tried to raise corn all the time. Generally there was a flood — too wet — or [else] too dry. Seldom one out of five they'd get a good crop. Well, a bunch of us got wise to the fact of dairying. They always had corn big enough to make good silage. So, as chairman of the merchants division, but with the cooperation of all, we go around and sign up a hundred farmers to buy tickets to take a special train to Wisconsin with our thirty-piece Fort Scott band and one hundred merchants. We take them on this special train. We stop in Chicago; Armour found out about it. We are invited to stop there for a steak dinner. Why? Armour was — mind you, this is right after the war — getting a lot of ill will from the public in general because big business was interfering with little business. The small meat-market man, doing his own slaughtering every day or two, was having bigger competition. They gave us a wonderful steak dinner. The First World War was over at this time. When the president. of Armour got up to [address] these one hundred farmers and one hundred merchants and our band in Chicago, he said, "I will call your attention to one thing. We work the same as any of you to try to make a respectable profit. But do you know that during this last war, when your sons and your brothers and fathers, perhaps, were over in Europe, we got an order for a hundred carloads of meat to be delivered at the wharf in New York within seventy-two hours?" He said, "Do you think that all of the wonderful little meatmen all over America could have ever done it in a year?" Then the farmers and the merchants cheered. We go on from there, and up in Wisconsin we are met there by chambers of commerce in many towns. [They take] all of us around on a tour through these dairy industries. The bankers are along, too. The farmers see silage. A bank in a small town there had deposits as big as all of the banks in Fort Scott put together, in a town of no bigger size. They only needed corn to be big enough for silage, not to have ears of corn to grind and sell. The farmers bought bulls, and they bought heifers — pure blood. We found out that the black and white gives the most milk, and that's wonderful for cheese. But if you are not going to have a cheese center, then get the richer milk. I remember the Swedish heifers, I think it was, with great brown ears, were some of the best for ordinary milk production. They bought some of each, and they shipped down these cattle. These farmers owned them; the bank financed them. Do you know, that inside of one year, Borden's came in there and put in a plant, and Fort Scott was a prosperous town. [tape recorder turned off] In a few years, I had a one-hundred-thousand-dollar clothing business. A place where there had been a ten-cent store was available down in the best location, in the middle of the main block. The man wants to rent it to me for two hundred dollars a month, I believe. He will put in long display windows. It's a deep lot, right in the main section, on the right side of the street. I move my store down there. I'm having a fellow hired to move my stock, and all of a sudden, here comes all of the Rotary Club. In one night, they moved my entire stock down into this new building. I had a Victrola. I liked a little music around my store; it made it more homey than a big store. I'll never forget; the banker and the president of the life insurance company turned this [Victrola] on to a march record and carried it a block and a half down to the new location. Everybody was carrying shirts, ties, clothes, and everything else. The cooperation and the spirit of the Rotary Club was expressed in that. [tape recorder turned off] I put in new Grand Rapids fixtures. The Rotarian banker [did not have] my account, but he wanted it. So he begged me, and they loaned me, supposedly, ten thousand dollars more capital. A wealthy farmer has a young man that he wishes very sincerely to learn the business. His older son is a cashier in a bank in Gardner, another town not too far from Fort Scott. The arrangement this time, when I go into new fixtures and all of this, is that I would have ten thousand dollars instead of five from my Rotarian banker, and ten thousand capital put in from the rich wheat farmer further west. The young man is going to work with me and learn the business, and I'm to pay a certain amount of interest to those two. By the way, I had windows put in at least fifteen feet back, so I had thirty feet of window displays in a twenty-five-foot building. The setup this time is twenty thousand dollars capital instead of five. I remember when I couldn't pay a bill one time, I wrote that I would be able, after next Saturday's business, to send a check; I was pressed [for cash]. I used to write that I would either have the money or the merchandise. They knew I was honest. I thought that was all that was necessary; I knew nothing about credit. So here comes a big blizzard on this Saturday, and nobody comes to town. I write this man saying, "I was to send you money, but we had a big blizzard Saturday, and nobody came to town. I can't send you anything." I got a letter back from this fellow who handled their collections. He says, "One sparrow does not make a spring; one snowstorm does not make a winter. We want some money."

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
JUNE 25, 1965

BLAIR

I had the new store with Grand Rapids fine fixtures, a shelf for every shirt, and all that sort of thing, and this cost around four thousand dollars. The Rotarians moved my stock as a surprise. Now, why did this all happen? In the Rotary Club was I.O. Trask. He knew my mother-in-law in Sabetha some way; [perhaps] he knew some of her relatives in Oklahoma. He was vice-president of the [Citizens] National Bank in Fort Scott. The [City] State Bank was the one that put up the five thousand dollars to get me out of the hole in Junction City when the army moved away. In that bank, it was a very friendly arrangement; I had five thousand dollars as long as I wanted it at interest. The vice-president who handled my loan account is the one who, later on during the First World War, when I had a chance to get a case of fleece-lined underwear for men, he said, "Let's get the whole case." I don't know how old he was, but he was plenty old--maybe eighty or eighty-five — but he could outdance anybody. Well, he didn't belong to the Rotary Club. That was that. So this Rotarian, I.O. Trask, who was vice-president. (he was long, tall, and lanky, like Shakespeare's Brutus or somebody), and the president was a Mr. [CD.] Sample. He kept after me in the Rotary Club to bring my account to their bank. He said, "What would it take to get your account down here, away from [City] State?" I said, "Well, if I had ten thousand dollars instead of five, I could go ahead and do a lot of things. I've got a chance to rent this store." So he arranged it. They gave me the ten-thousand-dollar loan; they take over my account; and I bought the fixtures on that strength. About that time or before, I thought of having [more than] just a fifteen-dollar clothes shop, all suits fifteen dollars. I kept knowing about Hickey-Freeman clothes and Woolf Brothers in Kansas City, with their great advertising man, whom I envied and who helped them build a million-dollar business on an ad in the Kansas City Star, never bigger than a two-column ten, sales and all. The Woolf Brothers label was everything. For Hickey-Freeman clothes, the top price then was twenty-five dollars a suit; and on Johnston & Murphy shoes, five dollars was tops. They were the best. That was the top price you could pay for really handmade shoes in those days. So I decided to get Hickey-Freeman clothes with my new store, and I do. A young man by the name of Ray Homan came through from Kansas City, [Missouri], selling clothes that I could sell for fifteen dollars; I was still going to carry them. I got to talking to him. His uncle was the manufacturer of these suits that could be sold for fifteen dollars; they were good fabric and all that. In fact (did I tell you this?), in them was fabric by the American Woolen Company identical [to what] was in the Hickey-Freemans, [which] retailed at twenty-five dollars. This fellow had them at fifteen dollars. Well, being pretty dumb in the clothing business after all, I think, "Gee, this is great." So I buy some of those. I not only buy some, but the young fellow says he does not like to work for his uncle, and he wished he didn't have to travel, so I hire him to work for me. Then he sells me this bill and sends his samples back to his uncle. So in my new store, I have Ray Homan, who later becomes, by the way, my brother-in-law. These suits come in. So to show people what a great value I had for fifteen dollars, I put this suit [with the] same fabric in the window with a fifteen-dollar tag, and right beside it a twenty-five-dollar Hickey-Freeman, I think I'll show the people how great I am having a fifteen-dollar suit, even though I have Hickey-Freeman. A farmer comes in. He says, "Is there a mistake in the window? You got the same suit, one for fifteen dollars, one for twenty-five dollars." I said, "No, I want to show you what a great value our fifteen-dollar suit is. I put them in that way. Hickey-Freeman is the finest you can buy." He wanted a suit; he liked the fabric. He tried on the fifteen-dollar one, looked in the mirror, and he said, "Let me try on the other one." Well, I was surprised, but we put the Hickey-Freeman on him. You know what he did? He bought the Hickey-Freeman suit.

DIXON

The name.

BLAIR

No, not the name--tailoring. Tailoring. Hand done. Anyway, I didn't have sense enough to know the difference, but the farmer, not knowing anything, did; he felt it. Well, then I began to recast my evaluation of tailoring. Hickey-Freeman suits, even today, are the best you can buy. I am told they sell for about a hundred and fifty dollars. I learned that lesson. The young man stays with me. [tape recorder turned off] I feel very progressive and successful when I get this new store with the new fixtures. I am paying so much a month on the fixtures to Grand Rapids. [tape recorder turned off] The Rotary Club is going fine. In the meantime, Mrs. Blair and I — she plays the flute, I think I told you — go to Salt Lake [City] as the representatives of our club to the International Rotary convention I mentioned. Well, anyway, that's all in there. The young man is getting along fine in the store, excepi-lnq one thing: the only time I ever didn't lock up myself, I told him to lock up; and he left the back door open, and we were robbed that night. That's the one time that we ever left it unlocked. I have to stop here and win the First World War. At least when it was over. President Wilson intimated I had a lot to do with it. [tape recorder turned off] There is this state Rotary convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Our club goes up almost en masse from Fort Scott; it's only ninety-six miles. One of the speakers in a big theater there was from London. He was with the government. I couldn't say he was prime minister. Probably not. The war had already started in Europe. In his speech, he told the awful thing that airplanes with boml^s were flying over them. They were helpless. He begged the Rotary Club to get behind [England], to get the United States into the war and help save England and help save themselves. We had never seen a plane in the air, but planes were flying over London dropping bombs. They were just helpless; there was no defense. There were probably one thousand, or five hundred at least, Rotarians listening to this; I was one of them. In this theater (I think it was the Wilkswood Theater in Kansas ,City, Missouri), he pictures how helpless, and what a terrible thing [it] is: that you can be bombed from the I, air, but you can't shoot back. Anyway, he sells the Rotarians the bill to save ourselves; if they take England, they will take us. So we hear about that. It sounds terrible. Later on, the war is going on in Europe, but so far we are not into it. President Wilson says we are going to be neutral at this time. Others want to crawl in a hole and not take any part in it. Yet one day, we hear a plane, an American plane, is going to fly from Kansas City to somewhere in Oklahoma. Fort Scott is on the path. In the town, the businessmen were kind of watching, when all of a sudden here comes something through the sky, flying through the air. It flies right over Fort Scott. It could have dropped a bomb on us. We had a different understanding of what the London representative had been telling us. [tape recorder turned off] [When] the Lusitania was blown up, that's when President Wilson said it was an overt act: we have been attacked; and we are in the war. Immediately, of course, there is a board to rate those eligible to go to war. Well my brother-in-law (not a brother-in-law then), this Ray Homan, being single and all, he was drafted. The draft board in Fort Scott carefully went over [each eligible young man] according to their duties. It happens, however — I wouldn't want to infer anything, but it sounds a little odd — the eligible young son of one of these three big [clothiers] there immediately began to go around on a crutch. He really wasn't drafted as far as I know, but there was a little bit of wondering about it. He, all of a sudden, got very much crutchified. But my brother-in-law-to-be went. So I am left at the store, and I go to one of the other stores--in fact, to Lippman's--where old man Lippman had brought his helper in to get any sweater he wanted. There was a fellow in that store who was a very good salesman. He had been there for years. I think he was getting thirty dollars a month, after all those years. By the way, he had been hit by an automobile, which was a rare thing. An automobile parade in Fort Scott would draw a big crowd any time; automobiles were that rare. He was hit by an automobile one evening in the rain, and knocked out. [He was] not able to work for several weeks and months. The automobile was owned by the Roedeckers, whose son was going around on crutches. They paid him nothing on doctor bills; there was no such thing as automobile insurance. Yet the [insurance] company in Fort Scott was one of the first (owned by another man and Mr. Tiernan) to have automobile insurance. Right at that point, I wrote some ads [on] how important it was to have automobile insurance. All I did was have a drawing made of an automobile wheel and a gloved hand. The copy was something like this: "Does your future life, or all you have if you're sued, depend on whether that glove slips on a wheel? Or should you have automobile insurance?" I go to this fellow and say, "I'll give you thirty-five dollars a month." He leaves that store and comes with me. He was a comedian almost. He really could have been a good actor; he was in a lot of plays. He was a humorist and knew how to handle country people. He could do lettering; he could make signs. Well, that was a miracle. He was working on a sign which said, "Special Discount. Cotton flannel gloves, three pairs for a quarter," or something like that. A farmer came in. This fellow had his little piece of canvas there, and he had taken a pencil and kind of outlined where the letters were going to go. As I know now, he was not going to trace those lines, but he did it to get spaced; he would have those as a guide. The farmer watched him a while and saw him with those lines. He came to me, and he said, "Say, there's a trick to everything. These fellows that can paint like that — I knew there was a trick to it." "What's the trick?" "Making the pencil letters first." [tape recorder turned off] The truth of it was, in those days, who ever saw any kind of a painting? I think I mentioned once before that some of the women had brass easels in the parlor, and they would copy something. Nearly all of them were pictures of a mountain, a waterfall, a deer, and a pine tree. You could go into any home that had any painting, that's what it was. It was a social thing. That was at the time, of course, that I had my pup writing the headlines for copy. Of course, I had the pup done; I couldn't even do it today like that fellow did. So anyway we're in the war.

SCHIPPERS

How did you feel about entering the war before you heard that speech?

BLAIR

Our attitude before what?

DIXON

Before you heard the speech.

BLAIR

Well, I think it was something like this. I remember as a youngster, when I read in the Kansas City Star that we were at war with Spain, I ran home expecting Spaniards were behind every fence. The farmers said, "Why, we could get a million men with shotguns in twenty-four hours." I think the attitude was a little bit like that. "There's a war over there; we have nothing to do with it." But this man, in the speech at the convention, made us realize that we were no longer isolated when they could fly like that, even from Germany to England and back. I think that we had more fear to realize that we were not isolated; the world was getting smaller. Then, when this plane went over Fort Scott, we knew very well that we were not completely isolated if the air is going to be the battlefield instead of shotguns and forests and fences. [tape recorder turned off] During the war, I was made chairman of the rationing committee; and through the chamber of commerce (I happened to be secretary of the merchants division of the chamber of commerce), I was also made — automatically, you might say — secretary of the committee to sell bonds. In the sugar rationing, which was all the rationing there was, my job was to tell people not to use sugar; and, if they could, not to use sugar in their coffee. I ran ads in the little county papers in the area. The main job, however, was when it came time to raise five hundred thousand dollars in bonds in Fort Scott. The banks said that they would loan the money to people and keep the bond until they could pay it out. We made up a posted — you might say almost a printed — list that we ran in the paper, of what a person should pay based on a certain income and things like that, but we didn't use actual names. Well, we had been on drives for charity and things like that, where a bunch of us leave our business and go out and ring doorbells and give this for this. I said to myself, and to my other two on the committee, "This is everybody's war. We have been attacked when they blew up the Lusitania. " I said to the editor, "If you will let me have the space, we are going to do something that probably won't be done anywhere else in America. We are not going to solicit anybody by ringing doorbells. They are going to be told, in copy that I will try to write, that it's their war, their husbands', their sons'. By the way, I wasn't in the draft until the fourth draft, because I had a business and a family, a mother-in-law and two girls, Sazette and Betz. After all, business was supposed to be part of the [national] resources. Income tax came out about that time, and I remember the first one I filled out, they refunded me; I paid twice too much. Anyway, I'm to raise these bonds. I run copy along the line: "This is everybody's war. You can go to any one of the banks, and they will loan you the money necessary. You find out what your quota is. We're not going to solicit anybody, but we will know who buys and who does not buy." When I opened my clothing store, I began to get conscious of overhead costs (unlike the farmers who ran the Cadmus store; they thought if you paid a dollar for something and sold it for a dollar and a quarter, you made a quarter — but who ran the store?). For some reason, being concerned about [overhead] — I can't understand why — I happened to get into a kind of a three-ball shop, a little clothing store down on the square, not one of the big stores. The family lived upstairs, and he bought and sold. During the war the government was after the retailers to show their profits, so they wouldn't be taking advantage of the war for bigger profits [because of] scarcity of merchandise. Lakin-McKey overalls, manufactured in Fort Scott, [were] as handmade as an overall could be, and farmers knew it. They retailed for a dollar, [when] you could buy many [other] overalls for seventy-five cents and even fifty cents a pair. By the way, Lloyd Lakin played in the band and was one of the businessmen. McKey was the fellow who really knew the merchandising. Lloyd more or less financed the company, but was active in it, of course. McKey was the one who put over the selling and made an overall that fit a man just like a suit of clothes almost. They jumped to two dollars and two and a half a pair. Wheat jumped like that also. In this survey the government put on to see if the merchants were profiteering, we all filled out papers. We proved to the government that the overhead for a clothing store at that time was 33 percent. A lot of clothiers didn't do so well, because they thought they figured wrong. If they pay a dollar for something and sell it for a dollar and a half, they think they are getting a 50 percent markup. When you sell, it's only 33 1/3 percent, and a lot of them were not doing so well. The statistics showed, over the nation, that the merchants had an overhead of about 33 1/3 percent, and they were lucky if they made 5 percent on net sales, providing they could take discounts. You can always get a discount from a clothing manufacturer if you pay your bill in ten days for cash, but if you let it run thirty, it's net. I was up against that. I happened to be in this little store, and I asked the fellow, "How do you figure your overhead?" "Overhead?" Well, he says, "I pay two dollars or two fifty for a pair of shoes and I sell them." I said, "What markup do you take?" Well he says, "How do I know? Sometimes I get three fifty, and sometimes I get two seventy-five." Well, I said, "Don't you know that if you pay two fifty for a pair of shoes and sell it for even three fifty you're not making hardly anything? You lose money if you sell them at two seventy-five." He says, "No, I have a quarter? I can buy strawberries." [tape recorder turned off] Later on, it turns out this is the only fellow, in the town of Fort Scott at least, who hadn't come into the bank. There was only one day to go, four o'clock [the next] day to buy your bond on this newspaper drive. He is the only one that has not come in. So I tell my two other businessmen, and we go down to see him. I wasn't so severe, but one of them said to him, "If you don't buy your four-hundred-dollar bond before four o'clock today, we're going to run you and your family out of this town. You're in this war just the same as the rest of us." The fellow says, "Well, what do I do?" "Go up to the bank and buy the bond. We'll go with you. They'll loan you the money." So he goes with us. He goes into the banker, and he says, "How much is the bond I should buy?" "Four hundred dollars." He said, "You loan the money to buy the bond?" "Yes." "What is the interest?" "Well, the interest is 6 percent." "What interest does the bond pay?" "Three percent." "Do you think I'm a fool?" He paid cash for his bond. [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] During this period, business was good; I built a business there of a hundred thousand dollars a year. Pinch-back suits, pleated in the back, were the style. They [were] nearly all that the civilians were buying when the boys were away. They were all in dark blue flannel. There was a concern in Cincinnati that featured these. That suit I could sell for about eighteen or twenty dollars. I remember because the young man who was the son of the man who owned this business in Cincinnati liked me. He started me on this, and he would let me pay along as I could. I got those suits when other merchants couldn't get them, for some reason. I would sell practically all that type of thing, and business was good. When the armistice came--we are jumping a little ahead--I was next up; but the armistice came just before I was to be drawn. Of course, the older man who had worked for Lippman's for so long was there and could run the store if I had had to go. During that period, I took a trip to Rochester [New York] to see Hickey-Freeman. This is a thought that I think should be valuable to anyone. Here is Woolf Brothers, who can probably buy half a million dollars or more worth of men's suits a year, and here I am and can buy maybe a thousand or two thousand. I think it was Mr. Rickey that I worked with. Again, here was a combination: Hickey was the financial man; and Freeman was a fine tailor who was in with him in this big company. He managed the tailoring. They were very cordial to me. I couldn't buy but two or three thousand dollars [worth of clothing] a year, and I said to Mr. Hickey, "Why is it that you give attention to us (accusative case objective; us, not we) little fellows. There's Woolf Brothers." "Oh," he said, "I'll tell you something, young man. You know, Woolf Brothers could quit me overnight and I'd be in a bad way. There's another store in New York; there's another one in Atlanta. Any one of them could quit me anytime. But the thousands of you little fellows are not going to quit overnight. I'd still have a business." I thought that was a good attitude, and I have always kept that in mind. The little customer may have a lot of friends, too, you know. You treat him fine. Just like the experience I had where nobody would pay any attention to one of my customers; thay all told me, "Don't waste your time." But I did sell him a pair of socks or something. I was nice to him, and he brought in two or three friends who bought more than a lot of other customers. There was no television or radio, but telegrams would come from Chicago to George Marble of the Fort Scott Tribune. A telegram would come about the war. My to-be-brother-in-law, Ray Homan, was over there and carrying a gun. It just happened that at the time of the armistice, he was in the front lines, I think in the Argonne drive. I'll jump now a little bit to what happened when the news of the armistice [came], All the stores were closed. The Missouri-Pacific and the Frisco [railroads] had prepared a steam engine that could run on wheels. When we were sure we were going to win the war, and we knew there would be a big parade, they had fixed this engine up where they could run it [on the street]. It was a smaller engine; it might have been an engine they got out of some mine, I don't know. But it could run. Anyway, the time comes for the armistice celebration. The band gets out (I'm in that, of course); everyone gets out. I remember the Baptist preacher came down with a dishpan and a wooden club. As they celebrated on this street, here comes this engine, here comes anything that could be moved, you might say, with a flag on it. We all had flags out. This thing went on for hours and hours. I remember when it was all over, the dishpan wasn't any bigger than about three tomato cans, but it still made a noise. I won't try to describe that, but people were as near hilarious and wild and happy as a whole town could be.

DIXON

Was your town taken in by the false armistice?

BLAIR

By the what?

DIXON

By the first false armistice that was a couple days before that?

BLAIR

Oh, by the way, I had forgotten about that. Apparently it wasn't very serious, because I did forget about it. I do remember that there was a rumor we believed. And I believe there was some activity. One of these telegrams came, or something that was false. I don't remember the detail on that; it's odd.

DIXON

A lot of towns practically used up their supply of everything on the first celebration.

BLAIR

Well, you know, all I can remember is, I know the steam engine didn't appear, at least. And I don't think the band got out. I believe there was a lot of activity. I don't know how long it was before the correct news came by. Was it hours, or was it days? .

DIXON

I think it was a matter of a few hours.

BLAIR

Well, I think during that period, it was assembling. After all, this thing, spontaneous as it was, the news [still] had to get around. There was no radio, you know. I think that we didn't have a real, all-out celebration at all. I certainly would have remembered the double. [tape recorder turned off] The celebration, however, was something that Fort Scott had never seen or heard of, even on any Fourth of July. The young men started coming home. I remember the young man, Ray Homan. We loved to camp out on the Marmaton River there. They used to say, "Anybody ever drank water out of the Marmaton River, if they ever left Fort Scott, they would come back." But there were nice camping places. About the first thing we did when Ray got home--of course, [the soldiers] were not organized; they came back at different times (there was really no parade at that time of the soldiers coming home like you might think) --would be to have a steak fry for Ray. So we get everything ready and we go out somewhere. There are some big flat rocks; we are going to camp out all night. Well, you might think in reverse on this, but our assumption was he just loved to camp out like we used to once in a while. We'd make a real deal of it. We all slept on those hard, flat limestone rocks that night. Our youngsters and Mrs. Blair and I, we were kind of sore the next morning, but Ray just slept great. The people kidded us about taking a soldier, who's had to sleep on the ground, [on a camping trip]. He might think a feather bed was great, you know. (By the way, they had feather beds then, too.) Ray just slept great. We were the ones that were bunged up. [tape recorder turned off] Most of the boys within the year are home, probably all of them, I suppose. I get an idea that these men, these soldiers, should know what Fort Scott did when we got the good news. I know these ideas don't fit, but you [may] wonder how I tended to my business. We had a secretary of the chamber of commerce, Harry Russell, who was just driving somebody all the time. The editor, George Marble, was always saying, "Every time Harry Russell comes in, I know I am going to do something I don't want to do." But he was full of pep, and he backed me up on everything. By the way, during that period every now and then I am selling my advertising for the newspaper, just the cut and the copy — the pup. It looks like there is a business there, but it is kind of a hobby. Anyway, I get in my head that we ought to repeat the armistice [celebration]. I go down to the editor, and I say, "I'd like to run the complete notice of the first news we got of the real armistice, and followed the news for a week in advance, day by day, leading up to the armistice, the write-up of the parade, and all that sort of thing. And let's have a repeat Armistice [Day celebration], so the soldiers can see what Fort Scott did." Well, he felt that was a good idea, and we did it. He came out and reproduced, with the daily news behind, the front page of the paper: the complete news, reprinted,, just every word. The news comes out, and we are going to repeat [the Armistice Day celebration]. We think we will get the railroad men, the union ones, lined up. And I get word: they say they won't appear. Well, I had the same [sort of] problem there that I had with the Italian symphony orchestra director; he wouldn't pay for a dime, but he would play for nothing. I had to handle all that. And then, remember the postal union fellow and his cornet embarrassment? I go down to the men in charge of the railroad company. It was the Missouri-Pacific bunch who had the engine. "What is the trouble?" "Well, we do not like to have our flag made fun of." I said, "What do you mean?" Then he called him a certain word, [the man who] had a big grocery store on the street where you could buy stuff by the case, almost wholesale but not quite. And he said, "Does that fellow belong to the chamber of commerce?" I said, "Why, certainly." Well, he said, "We'll never bring that engine up, if that guy is going to be doing what he did." I said, "What was that?" He said, "Well, he had a flag up over his store, and we had a flag on our engine. You know, when our engine went by, our flag had been out, it was dirty, and it was soiled. During the war we said we would never take it down. That fellow came out and made fun of our flag." I said, "Now, just a minute. If that is true, I am for you, but let me find out." He says, "You'll find out." I go back to this fellow. He says, "For goodness sakes! Maybe they didn't see it; I had a flag on my store that I even left out when I shouldn't. It was just as soiled and ragged almost as the one on the engine. I went out and waved to them and pointed to their engine and laughed and felt so good, and then I pointed to mine. They didn't know what it was all about. I was trying to say, 'Here's two of us proud of our dirty flags.'" I told the union fellows, and then they felt good and brought out their steam engine. And we had another parade in Fort Scott, Kansas. Some of the soldier boys said, "Maybe it's the first time we felt how joyful it is to have the war over." [tape recorder turned off] After all of this, I received a signed certificate from President Wilson congratulating me on being of great service in the war. I guess it's because I told people not to use sugar. Anyway, that was my part in the war. Ray Homan gets back, and he marries my sister Mae, who has graduated from the University of Kansas in fine arts, [she] taught piano and played wonderfully. She played classics so well that she couldn't play an ordinary nice waltz and popular piece like I liked with feeling; she just played the notes. In classics, she was great. Now mind you, I have this store. The bank has loaned me ten thousand dollars, and that's why I am still paying on my fixtures. So, in comes a farmer who is a good customer. He has one son who is cashier of a bank not too far from Fort Scott, maybe eighteen miles. Remember, [there are] hardly any automobiles; it's a country town. He has another son who doesn't like the farm. (I have already covered the point of another farmer who had a daughter who didn't like the farm. She came in to work for me, and rung up a "no sale.") He comes in to me, this farmer, and he says, "You know, you're really going places. You have a fine store. My son buys his clothes here, and he wants to learn the business. Could you give him a job?" I said, "We are doing quite a business, and I now have my brother-in-law and this other man." The older man that comes, and he wants to quit and do something else. I don't know what he's going to do. So I tell him, "Listen, I don't have the capital yet to make the money I should. I can't even yet take discounts on paying for fixtures." He said, "Well, how much would you like?" This was a wealthy beef farmer, unusual in eastern Kansas; most of them are out west. Well, I said, "If I had had another ten thousand dollars, I could do this and this and this. If you want to do this, your young man could come here, and I'll pay a certain amount. With this additional money, I would give him a bonus based on profits due to this additional capital as we go along. I can take discounts then; I can take 6 percent on bills for clothing if I can pay them within ten days." He said, "That's fine. That's all right." Young man comes in and goes to work for me. And he says, "I'll have the money for you very shortly." I get a phone call from this [Citizens] National Bank that had loaned me ten thousand dollars, which I could have as long as I wanted, supposedly, through the Rotarians Mr. Trask and Mr. Sample. You know, I never got very close to him. Except when Trask was just about to get my account, lo and behold, here's Sample, the wealthiest man in town, and his wife come along in a big car, and [they] take Mrs. Blair, my two youngsters, and myself [for] an automobile ride out through the country. That's before they get my account. I think, "Gee, I'm really getting into high society here, running around with the Samples. " All right, the phone rings one day, and it says Mr. — I can't think of his name right now — left ten thousand dollars here. I said, "I'll be right down." The minute I got down there, they gave me a piece of paper to sign, and I signed it. You know what I signed? They take that ten thousand dollars and pay off the ten thousand dollars I already had. Now you talk about bankers! I don't care if the world can know it! They're not all that way, thank goodness. I know a lot of wonderful ones. [It was a deal] like the one in Junction City. They pay that note; I don't get a dime. Well, you can imagine how I feel. Here's the worst of it: naturally, I have to tell this farmer, who left the ten thousand dollars with his own son, cashier at this neighboring bank where they live, and he sends it over there for me, and the bank pays themselves. I wondered then, "What is business?" I didn't run my business that way. I remember this man who had never had any freedom at the big store he worked for. If business was kind of bad, we'd leave, and he and I would go out on the Marmaton and go fishing on a weekday afternoons out in the woods. Business had to be fun, too. [tape recorder turned off] Right away, I call up the farmer who sent in the ten thousand dollars, and I tell the young man, his son, working for me. He says, "I didn't know what it was all about; I just put up the ten thousand dollars. I had my son at that bank send it over to [your] bank. I feel kind of worried." I said, "Maybe you think I don't? You better come in." So he gets his son, who is cashier at this small-town bank, and they come in. Here I am. Well, I promise things according to my desires. Sometimes that isn't good business. So I make out this kind of a deal, with a carbon copy; we don't get a lawyer. Something like this every month, I will pay him on his ten thousand dollars. He wants his money. I still haven't paid for over half of the fixtures. I don't even have the ten thousand dollars the bank told me I could have, which caused me to buy the fixtures and do all that. But now I am not going to have the farmer's ten thousand dollars, because he's worried now. And I don't blame him. I think I agree to pay 10 percent of my sales or something like that to him every month; maybe 5, I don't know what it was.

DIXON

Ten percent of your gross sales?

BLAIR

Well, whatever it was, I promised to pay. It wasn't so much a month; it was a percentage. All this time, I am getting more and more response to my pup advertising. Everything has been a hobby so far, and this is another one. I write to the retail clothiers association [National Association of Retail Clothiers and Furnishers]. I think to myself, "Well, for God's sake, I am going to get out of the clothing business if I can sell my store. Then somebody that's got money can take that over." The retail clothiers association tells me there's a man in Trinidad [Colorado] who has just sold his store. One good thing about the retail clothiers: they work together all over the nation. They said, "This fellow is a reliable person who just sold his store in Trinidad, Colorado. It is in escrow for something like ninety days. He's looking for a store." They bring the two of us together; the young fellow comes [to Fort Scott]. He likes my store and he says, "I can pay you twenty thousand dollars." It turns out in my inventory I had twenty thousand dollars in merchandise after these ten or eleven years I had been in this. I had twenty thousand dollars equity. But here's my debts [also]. I can't pay these people in merchandise. I used to tell them, "Well, I'll either have the merchandise or the money; I'm honest." Of course, I found out they wanted the money, not the merchandise they had sold me. So this fellow and I make an agreement to buy my store at a certain amount, and when he gets his money I will get twenty thousand dollars. I am free then to get out and to go into my advertising. First I get on the train. I go down to Birmingham, Alabama, where my brother-in-law John Turner and my wife's sister lived. They had inherited cotton mills and stuff. His father had a cotton mill in Georgia. I had never seen them. I go down there to tell John Turner about it. I have a prospectus of my ads and things and all that. I go down there, and I sell J. Blach and Sons — that's the finest store in Birmingham. They're going to use Tim's pup in their ads right straight through, and pay twenty dollars a month. It will cost me just three dollars to give them the whole thing. Right away, I have a prestige store for the South. John Turner gets excited; he wants to get out of what he's in. He says, "Listen, you are going to have to write this stuff, and you have sold your store." "Yes, it's all signed up." He said, "Listen, I know an advertising company here, an old fellow who would like this. Let's see if we can't start a company. I said, "John Turner, I will give you a third interest in the whole thing if you can handle the selling of the business." So they made a deal that they would put up ten thousand dollars for this. I would get so much a month; John Turner will get so much a month; and we are going out and sell. By the way, I get out a campaign by mail that started before I went down there; and some orders by mail, [including] one [from a] store in Illinois, a wonderful store in Peoria. When I left there, things are rosy. I am going to get a drawing capital of three hundred dollars a month. They are going to handle all the selling, and John Turner is going to be sales manager. The old advertising fellow has other accounts; he is financing it. We've got J. Blach and Sons, and another one, too, that I had sold by mail. And we're rich. By the way, down there I learned a little bit about life. In my business, it was always just like blinders on. Everything is just exactly what you think it is: you tend to business; you are honest; and that is all that is necessary. When social life comes, you hold hands with one girl; you marry her; and that's it. Well, in this Birmingham society, they put on a big party for me. It starts at four o'clock in the afternoon. These southerners, you know, they live a little. So around three-thirty or four, here are bankers and people who come in to a party. Why, I never heard of such a thing. The table is piled full of hams and southern cooking, you know. I had never tasted corn liquor, and I had never smoked a cigarette up to that time. I had never tasted any kind of liquor, not even wine. I stay there two or three or four days, I guess. And things go on like that. They all want to give a party for me. They all know Camille's sister, Addie, John Turner's wife. Anyway, the first party they have, why, I get hungry; I wonder when they are going to have dinner. The table is full of stuff, and I notice people taking nibbles, but I am still strange; I had never seen my brother-in-law and sister-in-law down there. Long about six, I said, "Addie, what time is dinner?" She said, "We've been having it all afternoon." Well, to eat like that and not sit down at a table, that's news to me. And in the morning, when I'd get up, there would be a colored person come and bring me black coffee. John Turner said, "Streeter, you ought to have a little nip before breakfast. Corn liquor." It smelled like a skunk; it was only nine days old. It was bootlegged, of course, because you never could sell liquor in Alabama because of the colored people. It was against the law, but the white folks all had it. It was a big story down there. I even wrote a book about it, called The Black Belt, later on. I paid Irving Stone (the great writer today), when he was a beginner in New York. I'm jumping ahead a little here, but I was told he was the fellow who could edit it and knew publishers. He went through that, and I paid him. He sent me two copies, and we loaned them out and never got them back. I don't know whatever became of the story called The Black Belt. [tape recorder turned off] John Turner says, "Streeter, we got to take a little ride this afternoon," one of the days. He says, "We got to cure some corn liquor. We're about out." He says, "You know, I get a five-gallon keg, put it [in] the back of the car, drive around and drive around--it's charcoal-lined--and we've got old liquor." We do that for a while, and he takes me to places. Addie says, "Streeter, you don't smoke." "No, I don't smoke." She says, "I smoke. Try one of mine." She had a cigarette called a lilac, no, a Violet [Milo], perfumed cigarette, kind of oval-shaped. She got me to take a puff or two, and well, here I am smoking my first cigarette. At each meal and once in a while [I would] have a cigarette. We'll jiamp ahead a little here. I think, "Well, here I am; you can't buy cigarettes in Kansas; I've got cigarettes." I knew that my mother-in-law smoked cupeds. Cupeds were a combination of tobacco and something for a cold. I don't know what it could have been, glycerin or something. She smoked those, but that was medicine in my mind. When I was principal of the high school in Junction City, she was staying with us, and she wanted some bourbon. You couldn't buy it in Kansas at all, but I am going to Kansas City [Missouri] for something, and she said, "Could you get me a bottle of bourbon?" I was a little afraid to carry it on the train, so I decided to have this drugstore I found down in the Union Station to ship it to me. Well, of all things, I was the new principal of the high school in Junction City, the express man comes one day, and here, being delivered to my office in the high school, is an express package of a bottle of bourbon. So I suffered a lot of hell there, but I get the bourbon home. She uses it more like medicine. I know the only medicine my dad ever took at Cadmus — he had a bottle of rock candy and rye for colds. I think I told you about the couple he gave some to. This couple was camping in the wintertime on Elm Creek; it's snowing and a blizzard. We always watch the people that have mover wagons camping down there. We said, "Come up and keep warm and have dinner." We had them up. They both had bad colds right at that time, and Mother says, "Why, we have no beds, but we can put [bedding] here on the floor. Want to sleep here on the floor?" She gave them some rock and rye, and so they stay there. When we got up the next morning, we find they are gone early. The rock and rye is gone, too, and so is the mover wagon. [tape recorder turned off] Jumping ahead a little, I remember this. I bought four or five little packages of Violet [Milo] cigarettes. I didn't know the names of cigarettes, but that's what Addie smoked. I don't know what John smoked; he never tried to get me to smoke cigarettes. So I am on the train coming back [to Fort Scott] with the contract signed up. I'm in business; there's ten thousand dollars being put up, and I just have to write thirty little things for Tim's pup to say a month. Well, on the way back, I am on the smoker of the Pullman, and I feel so great, I light a cigarette. A fellow comes in, and he says, "My God, I don't have any cigarettes." I think, "Gee, I'm a real man." I offer him a cigarette. He looks at it — violet. He knocks them out of my hand, turns around and goes back out of the car. He thinks I'm a fairy or something. Of course, during this three or four days, or maybe a week, of this great success, we were organizing the company and how we are going to work it. Addie says, "Streeter, don't you like women?" I say, "Addie, what do you mean?" She says, "Don't you know down here you don't act like you like any of my friends? These southern women--didn't some of them say honey?" "Yes," I say, "I know; but that's just talk." "Yes," she says, "but you say nothing. If you don't act like you like these women, why, you're going to be a flop here; they won't like you." I said, "Well, it's easy enough for me to like them, but I don't know about saying it." Anyway, I got my first lessons to talk in the southern language, honey this and dear this. I can remember during that period, here is John Turner sitting by one of the girls, one of the women, and here is another one beside him. John Turner says something to the one that he's next to. I didn't know what it was. And the one on the outside turned and said to the other, "Don't believe a thing he says. He's had a drink or two." She's just kidding him; they're used to it, but you can't believe a thing [they say]. I remember John Turner got up and he cleared his throat, and he says, "Sarah, I want to tell you something. I never have to think of anything to say because I had a drink. That's the time I can say what I have been thinking all the time." [tape recorder turned off] During this period, Carrol Steele and his wife — he's a cotton broker — are at the party; they have a lot of money. Closest friends John and Addie and I have. And here are a bunch of women sitting around the table in the evening, and they are writing a telegram. It seems that there is a couple in New York has a fine dog, and they are giving it to one of these couples in Birmingham. Well, the women are writing a telegram. A telegram in those days was quite unusual, you know. Generally, it was when somebody died that you sent one. One of [the telegrams] read, "We have the kennel all ready. We can receive Spotty anytime it is convenient for you to ship. Please write us a letter and tell us when you can ship the dog and what train, so we will meet the train." One woman says, "Why, you've got more than ten words there; you can't send that." I hear them arguing. So another one writes it, and she ends up about as bad. Now, Carrol Steele very seldom said any small talk — but a wonderful fellow. Carrol comes by, and he had heard some of that. So one of the women says, "Carrol, how would you say to [word] this wire?" He says, "Ship bitch." I get back to Fort Scott, and the young man has come to take charge of my store. He has somebody in charge of his store, [who] is going to buy it. So I move out and I get a little office in the top of the bank building. There is a lawyer, Doug Hudson, who is one of my standbys, a young lawyer from KU. I met him in the Rotary. Then there's the secretary in the chamber of commerce, Harry Russell, who has his office up here. Here I am writing just things to put in the paper. I'm in business, syndicating. Mind you, all this is based on men's clothing. But we had the experience of a man having to come in the store because his son wanted his dad to get his suit at our store. [tape recorder turned off] I didn't have to stay very long to write thirty of those. And I send my first month ahead down to the company in Birmingham. I decided I would get out of Fort Scott and work in some big store. Well, for some reason, I go to St. Louis, Boyd's and Company. I remember it is "Straw Hat Day" when I get in there. They like this idea. I show them this, and they say, "My goodness, we can use you right here." I said, "Well, what I want, I want some kind of an income, and I want to use your store as a laboratory, to write and do anything I can. Boyd's made a deal with me, to pay me two hundred and fifty dollars a month, which was a good deal of money in those days, and I am to move to St. Louis, \ 329 use Boyd's for my laboratory, and do as I please, on their money. I come home elated; this is great. So I'm practically ready to go down there. Mrs. Blair is going to move later; I am going to find a place. I stop in Kansas City, and I think I will see this wonderful store of Woolf Brothers, Hickey-Freeman clothes and unusual advertising. I said they had built a million-dollar business — two column sixes. This cartoonist, the type of work he did (if I haven't told you) went something like this: they featured Manhattan shirts, J. and M. shoes, Hickey-Freeman clothes, and that's all. They just kept selling their label all the time. This leads up to my psychology of advertising, which later on was a hobby. For instance, here is a little cartoon. (This fellow [was] untaught. I suppose he wore a purple robe; you know, he was a genius.) Here is a man walking down the street, a Chinaman. Behind are two men. The copy at the heading reads, "Well, look at that fellow with his shirt out. Why, do you suppose?" "Well, it's probably a [Manhattan] He's proud of it." It was that type of advertising that built [Woolf Brothers]. Well, automatically, without my knowing it, you might say, my attention-getter was my pup. Also, I had direct mail experience; at Fort Scott, I mailed to a classified audience. Did I tell you about that? All right. So I am to do that also at Boyd's. I stop in, and I happen to get to talk to Herb Woolf. Woolf Brothers did have the most beautiful store in America, [with] concave windows. You could see the merchandise and reach to touch it, but there is glass there and you can't see it. I talk to Herb Woolf. And he says, "Do you like St. Louis better than Kansas City?" I said, "No, you know Kansas City. My grandmother lives here and all this." He says, "Why don't you do all that here?" I said, "Woolf Brothers?" He said, "Yes." Put in that direct-mail system. We have a piece of work right now, and I wish you'd go up and look at it." Well, I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Go up and look at it; see what you think about it." I came back down and said, "Mr. Woolf, one thing: you're sending out a letter to all the doctors in America." (They were having a national doctor's association meeting in Kansas City.) "You've got first-class letters up there by the thousands. I happened to peek into two or three to check on them. Do you know, I bet you there are four thousand being mailed in Kansas City." "No." I said, "Yes. Do you know what the letter says?" 'When you come to Kansas City, there will be a treat for you if you will come into Woolf Brothers.' You are telling these four thousand doctors here that they have never been at Woolf Brothers." He raised Cain about that. He said, "I'll pay you your two hundred and fifty and all that. You come in here. I've got three things I want you to do: direct mail on your system--classif ied audience — and use your pup in the advertising to a certain extent, but primarily as a direct mail. We've got this Mr. [George] Cartlich, the advertising man. I'm going to tell you what your third job is." I said, "What's that?" "Manage Cartlich." Well, here is this man, George Cartlich, who had built their business. I found out later that he was a carefree, typical artist type. He'd go out and buy an automobile, pay down something and drive it; and if something got wrong with it, he'd come back and say, "Go get your car. I don't want it; it's no good." That was it. And Woolf Brothers would dig up a little money for him every time, but they never gave him a raise in the fifteen years he had been there. But they would do this: when he had to have more money, they gave it to him and charged it to him. I found that out later. [tape recorder turned off] Now here, instead of going to St. Louis, I go back elated to Fort Scott. I tell the people there we are going to move to Kansas City and why. They all think it's great. Then right away, some of them want to know if I will write advertising for them. Anyway, the Rotary Club has a big farewell meeting. We are there, and there are tears shed on both sides. But we are moving to Kansas City, and I am going to have Woolf Brothers — prestige store — their label. At KU, if one fellow had a suit from Woolf Brothers, he could sell [the label] when the suit was old for four dollars to a boy so he could put it in his suit. Woolf Brothers had the prestige strictly on small advertising and great merchandise. So we have these different farewells. Where are we going to live? We are going to move and all that sort of thing. I have an idea that I want to use--I had found it out and experimented on it before I left for Mr. Woolf — that is, advertising direct to the boy through Tim's pup. That will come in later; it's going to be another hobby. I think we can stop with Fort Scott here. They gave us a wonderful clock, the Rotary Club did, as a memento. In those days, there were no electric clocks. We had never heard of them, but we were given a great clock, a beautiful clock from the Rotary Club. We are only going to be about ninety miles away. So we're packing up now and we're going to Kansas City to find a place to live. And I'm going to go into an office in Woolf Brothers to help manage the great genius advertising man. (I hope I don't forget one of the first things I ran onto, which seems to me very humorous.) But I am now ready to enter, you might say, the advertising business.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
JULY 2, 1965

BLAIR

Right after the First World War, when we had that good business — the soldiers getting civilian clothes — there was a big slump in business. Of course, at that time I was still doing business on paying off the farmer who loaned me the ten thousand [dollars] that the bank took upon itself to pay off. I had to start paying him, so I wasn't much better off, because I had bought these fixtures. Anyway, there was a slump. One day a fellow came along from New York selling hats, a hat salesman. He introduced himself as being the most homely man in America or something like that, but he was one of the most likable and clever. Jumping ahead a little, he would make statements that were original — at least to me, it seemed — and his attitude in life was, "When you're in Rome, do as the Romanians do." [laughter] Well, anyway, I was fascinated with the line of hats he had. Although business was bad, I bought a dozen grey fedora hats. Fedoras then were just as popular as straight-brimmed hats in Texas. Anyway, they had a wide black band. I remember after he left that I had read in the paper that the king of Spain had bought a new hat which was a grey fedora with a wide black band. Well, these hats come in--I just got a dozen — and I put them in the window. I made a sign that said, "The king of Spain hat." I sold enough of those, that I ordered some more from New York. Well, inside of two weeks after that, in comes this same fellow again from New York. He said, "You're the only man I sold any hats to all on my trip." Business was so bad all through the Middle West. He said, "How did you even get a dozen hats? You're the only one who bought any. Now here you reorder. What did you do?" Well, I told him about my publicity, and showed him the sign and the ad, with the little pup writing my ads saying about the king of Spain having a certain hat at Streeter Blair's store or something like that. So this fellow took that publicity and went on his way. Now later on — I'll jump ahead — he told me that he sold every account at least a dozen or more hats, based on my advertisement. He was curious there about my type of advertising. At that time, I had a term for it; I called it "romance your merchandise." If you have a pile of suits, on the table, you know, stacked instead of on hangers, if you pick up a Hickey-Freeman suit, handle it like it was precious, it makes a little impression. At that time in the Rotary Club, I happened to be, in addition to holding some other offices, chairman of the program committee. So I booked this fellow to come and talk to the Rotary Club on hats, in particular, straw hats. He had worked in sweatshops in New York as a small kid helping make, braiding, straw hats. And so he did. He came and he appeared for the Rotary Club, and he brought some hats, partly in work and explained. It was a very interesting meeting. Now we'll let this fellow, Kay Kamin, step aside for a little while, because we must move on to Kansas City pretty soon. First thing we did, of course, was to find a place to live. We rented a flat. Well, a flat in those days seemed almost like a fine apartment today. You didn't have to mow a yard; you didn't have to do this. You just lived. I remember there was no garbage disposal; we went down a stairway about fifteen steps and there were garbage cans. The city picked it up. That was new; that was something else. We had our own garbage cans at the bottom. We lived on the first floor, but there was still one flat below us that faced toward the garbage. Going to Woolf Brothers, naturally I was a little timid. I was supposed to advertise by direct mail. I had the permission to experiment with my advertising and even try to sell it from there — my advertising, which was being syndicated out of Birmingham. Well, I hadn't been in Kansas City but a little while, and the Birmingham bunch blew up. Now they promised and signed to give me ten thousand dollars for this thing and promote. But what they did: this fellow promised himself he would and promised me; but they paid me three hundred dollars a month, I think, for three months. Then my brother-in-law got three hundred dollars a month, and that was about the end of it. They tried to sell by mail. This man that ran the business got on the train and came up. He rode in the chair car up to Kansas City, and I went around with him. He was dirty and covered with coal dust. He had spent a lot of money on a catalog telling all about this. [They] just mailed them out and didn't get any answers, so they stopped. Then I am left in Kansas City with two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and the store is being run by the fellow who had bought it from Trinidad. He is waiting for his money, and I am supposed to get twenty thousand dollars. So that's the picture right now. I have a mother-in-law, wife, and two children, and we are living in this flat. The first job, they said, was to keep tabs and try to see that the wonderful genius George Cartlich — which they couldn't get along without, it seemed--did get out his ad and do things like that. And I would sell by direct mail. Along with that, I decided to have a boys' magazine in addition to using the Tim's pup ad, being syndicated supposedly, for men's clothing. [It was] based on the fact that boys (I think we said) made their dad come in and buy their clothes at Tim's pup's store, where the pup was. So I had this artist, Cartlich, draw a face of a youngster about twelve years old; I was going to name him Tim. He's just a little line drawing with a big smile and drawn very nicely. We made a cut of that. Now I am going to have a boys' magazine edited by Tim and Tim's pup. At home, I can remember, in this flat, evenings, I would work on this thing. When first I got it out, Woolf Brothers said I could mail it out. They had no boys' list, but I went through the boys' department and got names, because they kept the parents' names of every suit sold, even like they did in the men's department. So we had a mailing list, and we addressed it to the parents. At this time, we didn't have a boys' list, but I intended, of course, to have a boys' mailing list, so that the boy would get direct mail, probably the first mail he ever got in his life with his name on it. So I work at nights, and I get a magazine out, eight pages on nice paper, just about five-by-seven size, or maybe six-by-eight [inches]. I mailed it out to the Boys' Outfitter publishing company in New York. The Boys' Outfitter was a magazine strictly sent to boys' departments, the only one in America. I get a letter back from them that they would like to buy this whole idea. They [wanted to] syndicate the magazine. Well, I thought it over--it was a compliment in a way--but the Boys' Outfitter goes to every clothing store that has a boys' department in each town. This thing could only be for one store. I don't know what ideas they had, but I turned it down. Then I decide to get out a different magazine. So I come up with one not much larger than a little postcard size, eight pages on cheap paper. On the cover, I call it The Knicker Magazine. Long pants for boys then were not in. Inside [was] Tim, and a picture of [Tim's] pup. Tim would say, "I am a famous editor, detective, spy, sloganmaker, style coach, and champion pie eater of the world. If you will sign a contract that you like pie, you can get the magazine free." Well, we sent those out, then, on the other mailing list to parents, and of course, subscriptions came in; they signed up. So, I have that thing started. We'll drop that for a moment. That was my own laboratory work. In direct mail, on the idea of romancing merchandise, I first featured a cap made in England. I can't remember the name of it; could have been, it was as simple as Leeds, but Leeds is a very early pottery made in England. But anyway, this cap was imported and sold for five dollars. First I get a mailing list out, of suit customers. For every suit that had been sold, there was a ticket with alterations. I mail that out, and we sell a good many. They think that's fine there. Probably for this first thing, I spent as much [as we made] on postage and mimeographing the letter. (They were good reproductions, with a signed plate that looked almost like a personal letter.) I announce at that time [that] we are going to render a style service for Woolf Brothers, the foremost style organization in America. If they would like, we would continue to give them our style service every month, which turned out to be, of course, featuring a certain type of merchandise. Well, the next letter that got out was featuring a white shirt. Now, Manhattan was the only shirt ever mentioned by Woolf Brothers — Manhattan shirts, J & M shoes, and Hickey-Freeman clothes. So they bought a hundred dozen of the Manhattan shirts. But I gave them another name. The Manhattan shirts they had in a sea island mercerized cotton which sold for five-fifty. So we worked out to buy a hundred dozen of the same shirts without the Manhattan label; \ 341 and in that quantity, we can sell the same shirt for six dollars. Now, it is my job to sell it. So I have them get little inch-square swatches of the fabric that we can clip to each letter. Here is our style service with the blank order to buy new clothes. I mail out those; orders come by the hundreds and hundreds; and we get out of certain sizes. Well, here comes an order from a Texas banker. And he orders four of those shirts. I call the shirt Glow-Twink. The letter was written by Glow-Twink, the shirt, "I am so-and-so. I will come out of the laundry whiter and brighter than any white silk," and all that sort of thing. Well, here we are out of this Texas banker's size. So here I get this order for four shirts at six dollars {each] from this banker with his check. We are out of his size. Then I write this letter to him, "It happens that we have the same identical fabric made by Manhattan, who made these shirts (this is sort of confidential, but it is true); and if you don't mind, I will refund you the difference and send you the four Manhattan shirts." Now, to show you the power of romancing merchandise, the banker wrote back and said, "No, I will wait until you get some more Glow-Twinks. " [laughter] Now, that gets over into further expansion. The people who printed our letters were a mimeograph company. I can't remember the name right now; it will come to me. They were doing a good business there, but they didn't know how to use their mailing list--I mean, not even their machines. The mimeograph had little tabs you could put on the plates. They first cut plates, you know. You're going to mail over and over, or you wouldn't use these. You could put in, I think, ten different classifications. So I decide to build myself a real mailing list. I get the [Rand McNally International Bankers Directory] and I take vice-presidents, not presidents. I put every bank vice-president in America, at least in the Midwest and East. Then I get all the country club names I can from the secretary of the club or the chamber of commerce in all the Midwest and East, clear down into Florida and New York. Now, I put all of them on one list; they are country club members. I know they have a little money to spend and they dress. Now why did I use the vice-president instead of the president? The president generally wears a suit as long as he can; he just meets with the board of directors. But the vice-president, he is out acting. At the bank I did business with before, the fellow that belonged to the Rotary Club was the vice-president, but the president had other duties; he wasn't so social. Then I get another idea. [I had] built a twenty-thousand mailing list. Mr. Woolf okayed it all. We go back five years and take names of suit customers (they are filed alphabetically) who have not bought a suit from Woolf Brothers since five years, but had bought a suit then. I had that group. Now with these tabs, I could write a letter just on men's suits if I wanted to and send it just to these men, by tab number three. Automatically, the machine went through addresses and skipped envelopes that had that classification. Number six classification, maybe, would be the bankers. Another would be the country club [members]. And then I could send them to all if I wanted to, none of them would trip in the machine. I install this; they give me some help. Whenever we got a mail order, we hunted the plate; we made a list; and we would notify the addressograph company of every sale we made when our month's mailing was over. If it was straw hats, they would go and take the plate and run a tab through there [to indicate] a straw hat customer, or a suit customer over here, regardless of the name. Then we had another tab on there that could be flipped at the same time; it would only send letters south of Kansas--Oklahoma and south depending on weather. We wouldn't feature a straw hat as early in Kansas City and in the North and Midwest; except from Oklahoma south, straw-hat day was earlier. We had all those classifications. I could send a letter to a man who lived south of Kansas, in Oklahoma or Texas or wherever it was, who had bought a suit, who had bought a straw hat, but who had never bought a pair of shoes. I had all those classifications. We kept detailed checking of n£unes; every name that was deceased or moved and that returned [in the mail] was pulled out. Probably it was the most complete and the most scientif ic--at least practical--mailing list ever developed. It was early in those days to have any classified mailing list, or even to advertise by direct mail. [tape recorder turned off] Saulka had done some direct mailing advertising just on neckwear. Saulka, I think, was in New York. I remember I happened to get a banker or somebody in Florida on my list, and I sent little pieces of silk in my version of our neckwear. He ordered a half-dozen ties, and said it was the first time in years he had bought anything except from Saulka. So we cut in on that. Another job I had — I'm going to try to cover the things I did for Woolf Brothers before I get into the boys' magazine — was to instruct the people, or hold classes, on the psychology of selling and salesmanship. I had to be very tactful, because they were wonderful salesmen; for years, they had been with Woolf Brothers. But I kept them out; I only invited the new ones. I explained to them the psychology of selling and the different types of customers there are who buy clothing. We went into seven classes; I'll only name two or three. One was the impulsive buyer. Another one was the fellow who couldn't make up his mind. The other was the fellow who came in and said, "I just want to see you fellows. I heard a lot about you," or something, you know. That gets over in the psychology of advertising. Another class was the fellow who looks and spends his time and wants to go out and look around, he says, before [he buys]. I think I told you that in Fort Scott there was a little fellow running a store there, and whenever anybody sort of got that way, he'd call his partner and say, "Hey, bring up the stepladder; the fellow wants to look around." Anyway, people would puzzle what to do. You were generally sure that if they went out to look around, you would lose them; they wouldn't come back. So I went through all of these things, and briefly... have I covered this before?

DIXON

No.

BLAIR

All right. An impulsive buyer sees a tie in the window. He comes in and he says, "I want that tie there." He's impulsive. Now, what does the ordinary salesman do? "Oh, which one?" And then he starts looking around in the showcase. "You mean, is it this?" "No." Well, this fellow's enthusiasm is going right down just like a ski down the slope. And the first thing you know, the fellow decides to get the tie out of the window, but it doesn't look the same in the showcase as it does in the window. The thing to do is open the window, get in there, get the tie, and say, "What else?" The man bought that tie before he ever came in the store. He's impulsive. The result is you monkey around and finally get the thing to show the fellow, and he says, "Oh, well, I guess I'll think it over," And he goes. You should say, right there when he's in the buying mood, "Want to look at some hosiery?" He's bought the tie; don't tell him how good it is. Then there's the type of fellow who can't make up his mind. So you lay out some shirts, and now, to find out something, just say something wrong. If you ask the fellow what is his size, he might not even know. Just say, "You wear a sixteen, don't you?" Well, if you're right, he'll say so; if you're wrong, he'll say, "No, fifteen and a half." Now he's contributed into the deal. You're acquainted a little. You lay out a shirt, and you know he's going to take a neckband with the bosom. They had that style then, of course, and starched collars. Arrow collars; everybody wore a starched collar. The collar business was great. We just felt the world forever would have Arrow collars; I don't know where I'd buy one today, if I had a neckband shirt. They had thirty-four different styles, and Woolf Brothers had them all. The price on them, all over the nation, was fifteen cents apiece, or two for a quarter. Well, I've had fellows come in and say, "I'll have the second one for twelve and a half cents. " Anyway, you know that the man is going to buy a neckband, collar-attached [shirt]. You lay out one, and he kind of looks at it; and you lay out another one, and this one is so much and so on. You see his hands go back to the second one while you're getting another one. Well, you can show him too many. Anybody has trouble to make up his mind if there [are too many choices]. The fewer you show, the easier it is for the customer. Now, a lot of people say, "I want that and that and that." But I'm talking about the fellow now that you can lose a sale on. He can't make up his mind. He'd be happy if he could, but he doesn't buy a shirt every day; it's a major event. Well, once you find out there's one shirt there that his hand has gone back to three times, or twice at least, you say, "Well, you have made a wonderful selection.I see you like this shirt the best." Now, he didn't touch the ones he didn't like. So you say to him, "You have made a wonderful selection. Let's look at the hosiery and some neckwear." The fellow is happy. "I'll take two of those." Talk about umbrellas and he'll go from there on. Well, that was one little thing I told those people about how to handle that type of customer. You can tell [the type] when you go to wait on him; he's quibbling about his shirt, but I'm talking about the fellow. Now we'll jump over a bunch of others to the fellow who wants to go out and look around. He tries on suits, tries on suits. (Now, bear in mind, all the time I am working with untrained new people, and I have got to be tactful because the old-timers [would say], "Here's an upstart comes in here telling us how to sell." I wasn't telling them anything. I'm going to use them later. They are going to be boosters. ) So, take an overcoat: a man spends a half an hour or an hour with his wife looking at an overcoat. You find out which is really the one he likes the best. That's a major event. Maybe they buy an overcoat every five years in those days; you can't tell. They wore them until they wore out. (That leads into something else: romancing merchandise and selling where you don't sell on how long they will wear.) So this fellow says, "Well, we think we'll go out and look around." Now, here is what you do. Call another salesman. because you may not beat him [if the customer returns]. Now, you say to this salesman, "Remember, pride of ownership is an instinct. 'This is mine; that isn't. Don't touch mine.' You capitalize on that." Now I say [so they can hear], "This is Mr. So-and-so [and his wife]. They are going out to see what other styles of apparel are in town. They've been here quite a while, and when they come back they are going to be a little weary. This is the one he likes right here. We don't want to have to take another ten minutes to find which one, and where I am. Now Jake, if I'm not here, you'll recognize him when he comes in. They won't be gone too long. You hang that coat here, not back in the rack." The fellow feels pretty good, and they start out. Sometimes they kind of wish they weren't going out to look around; "That's my coat," may be in his mind. What do they do? They go across the street to Rothschild's or somewhere, and some man says, "Well, what for you?" "Oh, I kind of want to look at overcoats." He is weary. Now this man begins all over. Here is this and this; he has heard all of that from Woolf Brothers and maybe with the same truth. Who knows? Pretty soon, really, in nine out of ten cases, they will say, "Well, thanks." They come back; they come in; and what do you do? Get the overcoat on the guy who is [buying] it, and start wrapping it up. If it's a suit and he isn't going to look around, the same thing comes in. Whenever a man looking at a suit, stops resisting — I call it that — he keeps saying he doesn't like this or that. That is an excuse; he is getting sold on himself. Whenever he stops making what I call excuses, call the tailor. If this fellow is going to buy any suit, that's it; you know it. Call the tailor. This fellow immediately is either going to walk right out and say, "I don't want a suit today," or he is going to be glad, "That's my suit." The tailor comes; you know how they can do. The first thing they do is get him in the dressing room, get his pants off, and start to get the measurements and everything. Anyway, let the fellow have, as soon as possible, the pride of owning his new suit. I carried that on in different places. And I will tell you that in Shreveport, Louisiana, in Chicago, in Cleveland, we would tell the salespeople this, the whole salespeople in the store. And I had been up the next morning in the promotion manager's office of a big store. Maybe about eleven o'clock, here would come a salesman with a check — I remember it was Shreveport — for ninety dollars. A fellow looked at a fine overcoat around nine-thirty or ten and went out to look around. By eleven, he was back in there; and that was his coat, and here's the check. This was all practical. Now, where did the "natural-born salesmen," as I used to call them, [get their knowledge]? They were self-taught salesmen just like a self-taught painter. Some were more naturally salesmen; I'd agree with them on that. So while this [class] was going on, I went to two of the top, oldest, and best salesmen there. "Would you please come up and help me a little bit with these people on salesmanship?" The class knew what I had told them. When [the two salesmen] come up, they are kind of flattered. I am not going to teach them anything. I wanted them to help me, just common psychology or tactfulness. "Now, here is our helper this morning, our advisor. V7e all know him — Jake. You know these things I have been telling you? I_ had to learn them. They've been doing it for years; they do it in their own way, no two alike." I'd ask them a question, maybe just one. "What do you do where you know a man, if he is going to buy a suit, it's that one?" He'd say, "I'd call the tailor." Well, that's enough of that; but anyway, that's where I got the goodwill of these people. Now then, the psychology of advertising. I developed a service of that, and also this, where I sold it by mail to the clothiers, just dollar mimeographed sheets; but that was just on the side. The psychology of advertising is based on the fact that the behavior of the human will is a variable with new evidence coming in. You can own 49 percent of a man's mind, and someone else owns 51 percent; but keep on sending mail to him. Have ads that are going to get his attention; then you are only about fifty-fifty. And then he goes to a party, and you've featured the prestige of your clothes, and here is an overcoat with a VVoolf Brothers label in it. Sure, that man is a little proud of a Woolf Brothers suit. On the way home that night, maybe the little woman says, "You know, you need an overcoat too." So that extra one-tenth of 1 percent of that man's interest [influences] his will power, or the decision he makes. All impulses are in little bunches of nerve cells and groups. I used to call them little bunches of grapes in the brain. According to psychologists, they jar; you drop one shot in the bottle, and the whole bottle has to [change]. Every shot in there has to make some adjustment when the one shot goes in, and that happens with all impulses. We don't tie in ice cream sodas in the same area of the brain necessarily as we do [when] buying a pair of snowshoes. (Maybe I am wrong; maybe the ice cream soda being cold is like the snowshoes for the snow.) You can buy and sell, if you have the correct advertising, a person's apparel mind, or any other mind. And we are glad we like a certain one over another, like a certain car and a certain type of horse. Anyway, that was a service. We had classes in advertising, just in general, but I used that primarily as I went over the country later, lecturing at advertising clubs and conventions, at clothiers' conventions, and to store people. I think I will jump ahead and finish that, because this happens, really, after I get out of Woolf Brothers. But I remember later on (in an advertising account which developed around the boys' magazine), the Hub in Chicago, the biggest clothing store in the world, knew about this. They were using my service and boys' magazine, and Mr. Lytton, the owner, said, "I want you to talk to every salesperson we've got on advertising and selling, particularly on selling." He keeps them after store hours for forty minutes. And I tell them all this on selling. When I am over, he gets up on the table-- the president, the owner, of the big Hub in Chicago — and he says, "Goddamn it, here's a fellow from the sticks" (anybody from Kansas City was from the sticks) "comes in and tells us more about selling than we have learned in sixty years--the oldest clothing store in Chicago." [tape recorder turned off] In this selling by direct mail, we would sell hundreds of dozens of Mark Cross gloves made in England and all that sort of thing, and in a way that was classified-audience mailing. And I go ahead with my boys' magazine. Now, this fellow Cartlich, the great genius, really was a genius. He was going on a vacation for two weeks, which he had coming to him. They said, "George, write us two ads a day before you leave — that would be twenty-eight or thirty — and have them all here, so that when you're gone we can have those ads run in the [Kansas City] Times, and in the Kansas City Star. " Two-column-ten, no bigger than that; they built a million-dollar business getting attention through their advertising. They're unique. George does; and Mr. Reed, the merchandising manager (he is a Canadian), sees them; Herb Woolf sees them; and I see them. There they are. George is going to leave in two weeks. By the way, I love English and Canadians, but we all have different types of minds. But what I call a "Canadian" mind is sort of... they have, not a block, but they have a point of view. So all the time I am doing this. Herb Woolf was pleased. We were getting people in there to buy who hadn't bought at all; they hadn't bought a suit, and now they were buying suits again. We checked all these mailing lists against the suit tickets down there. I wanted to know; I didn't want to just guess. Here's a man, but here's a suit [ticket] that shows he hasn't bought anything for four years. But Mr. Reed, the merchandising manager, says, "Why do you keep sending these letters to people who don't buy?" I said, "Mr. Reed, the first letter sells so many, the second letter sells just as many. When you started with three thousand names, you had no direct mail; today you've got nine thousand. If I hadn't sent them to anybody except the ones that buy, I wouldn't have mailed any." But he still wondered why I kept sending them. [It was] because the same list on the tenth letter would sell as many as the first did. I kept owning more minds. [tape recorder turned off] Well, when George left on his vacation, they said, "Now, each day you send one to the Times and one to the Star. " I couldn't find them. Mr. Reed couldn't find them. I got to checking through the ads, and George Cartlich, not worrying about other people's business much, had used these thirty ads in the two weeks that he had left before he went on "his vacation. [laughter] But they couldn't fire George; he was too good, too great. As I said, he could go out and buy a new car, pay down a little and drive it. When something went bad, he'd say, "Go and get it; I got my money's worth." Well, anyway, Mr. Woolf says, "You're going to have to go through and write it." So I went through and picked up drawings and mats of former drawings of merchanidse to get the attention. He romanced merchandise by selling the label and the name. So I had to write some copy. I saw a drawing pen, so I took it and did this ad in ink — my copy, hand-lettered and poorly written. Well, the next day Mr. Woolf comes up with a storm. At twelve o'clock the bulldog edition of the Kansas City Star was out. Here's my ad, produced with my hand-lettering, not typed. He called the Kansas City Star, and they stopped the presses for him. George had an understanding down there; anything he wrote in ink or did in ink, they run, just a plate from that. But his was good hand-lettering; it might be a little drawing. Anything written in pencil was to be set in type. Well, here the guys down there see the whole ad done in drawing ink (which I didn't know), and the whole ad comes out that way. [tape recorder turned off] My boys' magazine is being used by Woolf Brothers but not syndicated. During this time, I saw the possibility, but I hadn't really syndicated my boys' magazine yet nationally; I was working out of Woolf Brothers. This one is my cheap edition about Tim and Tim's pup. George Cartlich had never had a raise, by the way. Anytime he needed money, they gave him money and charged it to him. And he always needed money. So I wanted to syndicate George Cartlich's newspaper ads along with mine and start that. Mr. Woolf said all right. I said, "What if I would take him away from you?" He said, "You won't do that. If he ever pays us all he owes, he can leave. Maybe he could even work for you and get out our ads." George didn't do anything else. So I start selling those to merchants. You know what I do? By mail, I sell enough of George Cartlich's old ads, so much per month to other merchants over the nation, that I pay George's salary, the five thousand dollars that he owed Woolf Brothers, and my salary. By the way, they had raised me to five thousand dollars [a year] on this basis, [tape recorder turned off] (I forget I'm not making a speech; I don't have to talk so loud into that thing.) About the time my three hundred dollars was cut off, and the fellow that was running the store [in Fort Scott] hadn't gotten anything, I get a letter from a friend who had lived in Spring Hill, Kansas, where I went to school. He knew of my work; [he had] followed it through. He had a furniture business in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. They are having a war down there between the Catholics and the non-Catholics in the chamber of commerce. The town is not getting anywhere. He thinks that I have done some good work in Fort Scott, and the letter says, "Come down and apply." I'll make it very short. I go down there, and I show the letter from Mr. Woolf — I am getting two hundred and fifty dollars [a month] at Woolf Brothers — and I meet the board of directors, They are sold on the fact of what I had done in Fort. Scott — you know, organizing a train to get cattle for a dairy business and all that stuff. They question me more about religion. I say I don't belong to any church, but I taught Sunday school at three churches. I tell them about my school work. I had a basketball team of all Catholics and didn't know it, and I got meat for them [on Friday] ; I had a football team banquet and I don't know any better. I say, "Gentlemen, I am not conscious of your religion, race or politics." Well, they dismiss me, and they are going to have a little meeting. My friend comes out and says, "They want you to sign this contract." I said, "I can't sign it. until I go home and tell my wife and tell Mr. Woolf." But it was wonderful; they are going to pay me five thousand dollars a year. Then he told me that the chairman of the board of directors said, "That fellow is as keen as a scent on the end of the nose of a bird dog," or something like that. In other words, they knew I wasn't prejudiced; that's all there is. I go home, and Herb Woolf says, "I'll pay you five thousand dollars. Sign a three-year contract." [tape recorder turned off] So now I am thinking of a general syndicate business. There is my newspaper stuff (but I kind of gave that up to write the boys' magazine; Woolf Brothers are using it, and getting results); and I can syndicate George Cartlich's ads, and he can write for other interests. I make arrangements with Mr. Woolf so that Cartlich could leave — I had paid off his five thousand — not said just quite that way, but that George could write their ads, two a day, in an hour, and why couldn't he work for me? And Mr. Woolf says, "That's fine. He'll work here in the mornings, and you can pay him something over there. Maybe that would be good for George." It was all friendly. So then I decide to go into the syndicate business, in which my boys' magazine would be one thing and Cartlich's ads another. Cartlich would write undertakers' ads (this fellow who got me down to Okmulgee, you see, was an undertaker and furniture man) and insurance [ads]. There was an insurance company in town there that George wrote some ads for. It was something like this: "Samson will always pay your rent." Well, he meant if you were insured, you know. I remember one time, a colored woman came into Woolf Brothers. She had heard that this was the man who paid the rent, and she said, "I want you all to pay my rent," She just got it that here was somebody who will pay her rent. This fellow had human interest advertising; that's what the whole thing was. So I go to a printer, Ray Havens, who was International Rotary president and was the one elected at the time that ^Irs. Blair and I at Fort Scott were sent as delegates to Salt Lake [City]. Ray Havens was the printer in Kansas City. He had been chief potentate of the shrine, and his father before him [had been] — a unique thing. He was from Fort Scott. By the way, he was a clever fellow; he made a speech like this down at our Rotary Club in Fort Scott. We got acquainted with him, you see, on this trip to Salt Lake [City] when we were delegates from the Fort Scott Rotary Club. And one of the first things he told the Rotary Club when he came to talk to them, he said, "You know, I appreciate greatly what Fort Scott has done to recognize my great success in life. You know, maybe some of you don't know this, but the city fathers have put a metal plaque right on the corner where I was born and raised." Somebody said, "Wonder why we didn't know about that?" And one of them says, "Well, Ray Havens, we have visited that; what does it say?" "It says Two East Fifty-fourth. " [laughter] Anyway, I went to him, and I said, "I don't want to guarantee you the printing, but it will be competitive. You can have the printing--! assume you're competitive — and if you put up twenty-five hundred dollars to start this company, I'll give you a half-interest in this company. He thinks it is a great idea, and he sees printing possibilities. I said, "I'm going to syndicate my boys' magazine." Well, right away there it is. So I rent office space in his building, where he does all his printing. He's a wonderful fellow, and a singer; he's just an all-around wonderful businessman and all that. But he uses sentiment in business, romance in business. He just wasn't hardheaded, as we'd call it. Maybe [he] wasn't getting rich too fast, but [he was] very successful. So George Cartlich comes over, and he is going to do his drawing for the Tim magazine and write ads for insurance, and we're going to get a salesman. And I get a man to go out, who is the brother, it turns out, of the great Ober of Ober's Clothing Company in Lawrence, Kansas. Well, the first thing we do, he sells his brother my Tim magazine there and carries all of these things. This fellow is a good salesman, so we're in business. We hire another fellow who was at Woolf Brothers who is a good salesman. He wants to travel, and we give him fifty dollars a week traveling expenses and, beyond that, his commission. Well, about the first trip, we get a wire from the fellow who had been a clothing salesman in Woolf Brothers [saying] that he is stuck stranded in Canada. Now, he had no business going to Canada but that he could buy liquor up there. But he got up there and lost his dough. so we send him another fifty dollars. He sold; it came out all right. Well then, one of them goes up to the Nebraska Clothing Company, the biggest clothing store in the Midwest outside of Chicago. An advertising man there by the name of Louis Lepky buys the boys' magazine. We are in business when that store and Ober carried us. Ober had been president of the retail clothiers association. We are in business, because if the best clothing company uses it, they don't even [have to] know; they'll buy it. We're working along, and I am going down the street to get a package of cigarettes, when I stumble into a fellow carrying a bunch of hats. It's Kay Kamin, the fellow that had sold me the kind of Spain idea. Well, you know, we couldn't believe it. He says, "I'm not doing anything. I'm trying to sell hats. Business is bad. When they can make them fast enough, I can't sell them; when I can sell them, they can't make them fast enough." I tell him about my business, this boys' magazine. He says, "I am an ex-hat salesman." Kay Kamin sends his line in. We give him a deal. He doesn't have much either. And he is to get fifty or sixty dollars a week drawing accounts. Well, Kay Kamin goes first to California; he says, "I know the prestige store in America in the West — Desmond's. He's gone a week; we don't hear anything from him. Pretty soon comes a contract for five thousand dollars from Desmond's, and he says, "We are now in big business — Desmond's, Nebraska Clothing Company, Ober's." Well, that's great. Things are fine. But here comes a telegram, "A clothier from Cincinnati and the farmer who put up the ten thousand dollars that paid off the bank debt are coming to see you." They come up there; they are throwing me into bankruptcy. Now, not because they [wanted to] ; but a little old fellow we had bought about two hundred dollars worth of trousers from, somewhere in some eastern place, didn't get his money. He sues for that and [needs] only two others to sign--three [can force] bankruptcy — under my name. Now what happened? The man running my store from Trinidad didn't get his money; that man went under. They throw me in bankruptcy. My twenty thousand dollars is gone. I am in business, but no profit yet. I am not getting fifty-seven dollars and a half [per week] from Woolf Brothers now, mind you. I gambled on twenty-five hundred bucks, but I was to continue for six months writing letters for Woolf Brothers and directing the direct mail, which somebody else was going to take over. But there was nothing more to do. I said, "Mr. Woolf, I've got two years of contract here yet, but it's all in work. You have all my knowledge." He says, "That's right." [tape recorder turned off] I am frightened, of course. But I am going to get my five thousand dollars a year [from Woolf Brothers]. Well, anyway, I sign up, of course. I am glad to get rich. Everything is going fine. My name was used in bankruptcy; I had been out of the store over six months when this poor fellow lost his store. I know my mother-in-law, who had loaned me money at 10 percent, she got eight hundred dollars, they paid about 10 percent [on the dollar]. At that time she had eight thousand dollars in the business. And I guess the farmer of wheat got a thousand dollars out of his ten. The bank, you know, didn't lose anything. We go ahead. I'm going to boil this all down. Mind you, during this time I am beginning to travel and sell my magazine. I didn't think I could sell on my own. I found out I could. I would make these lectures on salesmanship, and the others didn't. Even Kay Kamin, who turned out to be a great salesman, would book me in some store to come in and talk [on the] psychology of salesmanship. We serviced our accounts. Now, my wife also traveled, and another woman traveled a little. We had a good salesman who had been in the music business, Harold Knudtsen. He took to this, and he was a good salesman. So we had Knudtsen. And then his wife would travel and service [accounts], and my wife would travel and service [accounts] for a little while in this, going around and getting people to use it. We had stores who would buy the magazine and say it was no good. They never mailed them; they were giving them away at the sales counter. Well, we kind of covered those and held the accounts. We built that magazine up to half a million circulation. [We had] a hundred of the finest stores in America--Godchaux's in New Orleans and people like that. Anyway, during this period, Mickey Mouse is coming to the forefront. Now, the Disneys were from Kansas City. Kay Kamin knew a fellow who knew the Disneys. Kay Kamin got the idea we should have Mickey Mouse write a magazine for..them. Well, we find out that Disneys will not deal with Kay Kamin or anybody but me. So through me, we get the rights to license merchandise with Mickey Mouse on it. So we go into that, but I don't write a boys' magazine for Mickey Mouse. While traveling, selling the Tim magazine, they can get exclusive orders for merchandise from these merchants, one in a town and our account only. Do you know that Kay Kamin then gets so excited that he 365a quits selling Tim's magazine, but it's [all right]; we're incorporated. He goes to London, though; he can't stand it in America. He gets twenty-five thousand dollars advance royalties on a dollar Mickey Mouse clock from the people that made some clock called the dollar clock. It was called The Tower of London, or the London clock, or something.

DIXON

Big Ben.

BLAIR

Big Ben. Twenty-five thousand dollars. You know what happens? He spends that money to open an office in Paris. He's back, and we get a ten thousand advance, a twenty-five thousand advance, and it's my company--from Tim. He opens big offices in New York. He spends. He's clever; he gets to New York. Can you believe this? If anybody answers in certain places of business in New York, they answer the phone "Mickey Mouse." He's that kind. He wants to be a millionaire, but he spends. At the end of the first year, we should have had twenty-five or forty thousand dollars apiece from Mickey Mouse. You know how much I got in my share? Twelve hundred dollars. And he's not selling Tim. All right. I could have quit Tim according to the money coming in; but not if Kay Kamin was going to also spend it. He's a partner. Over the phone, I make a deal with Kay. I said, "Kay, we are not keeping \ 366 up our Tim magazine; you're not giving any attention to it. I would like to trade you with some boot. I want some money out of it. I'll trade you my half-interest in Mickey Mouse for your half-interest in my company. I'll own my company. We'll cooperate and bo friendly." Well, he says, "How much do you want?" This guy saw the money, the big money. First I said, "Oh, I don't know, a couple of thousand dollars." He said, "Make up your mind." See, he got a little rough. My dearest friend — oh God, these people who are friends! Let a dollar come up--to hell with them! There's no such thing as a friend if there ever is a dollar. If there is an occasion to be, your friends are not going to be the people where a dollar is related one way or another; they are somebody else. You two right hero could be closer friends than I ever had in this so-called big thing. Oh, yes, we signed, "If you ever get hungry you can come to me." I said, "Five thousand dollars." He said, "Sold." I could have gotten twenty. I know I could. All right, I own my company and I go ahead. I treat my people [well]. One fellow has quit, Harold Knudtsen; I paid him commissions on renewals for five years after he quit. I'm that kind of a guy. Money wasn't so important as success in a way. Seems like that. Kay Kamin went ahead, and he was worth a million dollars \ 367 if any other man but Kay had been running the business. He and his wife were killed on an Air France airplane a few years later, coming from France to this country. Now listen to this: Kay didn't think too much of his nephew who had worked for us for a little while selling Tim. This nephew's father had had an antique shop in Chicago. So in this company, Kay hires this nephew to work for Tim. All right, that's fine. I get the phone call from the nephew--he didn't call Kay, he called me. He says, "My father is about to go blind. He's got to have five hundred dollars. Would you send it?" I did. Kay wouldn't have. It goes on like that, and Kay fires his own nephew. I hire him back. Kay didn't tell him how to sell. Now mind you, Kay is out of the picture. I take this young fellow, and I tell him specifically six things to do. He goes out that week, had never sold a contract; Kay--his own uncle — had fired him. This fellow sells his first contract that week, after I had worked with him for a day telling him what to do. He sells it up in New England to a good store. Those are just human interest things; they have nothing to do with history. So, Kay is killed in this terrible catastrophe. The nephew and his wife come. So the nephew figures, "Well, Kay is worth a million dollars." He's going to be rich. (At this time I have quit the advertising, you'll learn a little later. I am in California, in something else — antique business.) The nephew comes. He says, "Streeter, so far we have had no record of where Kay left me anything in his million dollars." I said, "Well, no wonder." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Do you know what his total estate is? Forty-six thousand dollars." He spent it all being bigger. A million he had; it went through his hands. The biggest thing of merchandise promotion in America — through me. Kay Kamin [was] overaggressive. The nephew got nothing; he wasn't even mentioned in the will.

SCHIPPERS

How did Tim's magazine work?

BLAIR

It was like this. I'm glad you mentioned it. Let's forget now we've jumped ahead. Kay Kamin, a wonderful fellow, was so citified; he had never lived in the country. And I camped out a lot. Camille and I one time got him to go camping with us in Arkansas--Arkansas, where my dad had forty acres of land slipped in on him for seven hundred dollars; we have gone over that. We take Kay Kamin, who had always been raised in the slums and an apartment in New York, down there. That's perhaps why he loved success. I was told by his friends anyway, that after he got this Mickey Mouse thing [as] his own and was doing so well, his best friend--a Jewish friend, Edgar Cohen, who had helped him along--met him on a train; and Kay barely spoke to him. he was so inflated with success. Now I don't blame Kay; that's human nature. Kay is a soul, a great one. His friend lives in Malibu today. Now, we go camping. We want Kay to get down to earth. He has a brand-new straw hat. (He's still straw-hat minded; he used to make them.) He's in the money, and yet, we are working cooperatively. My company is going all right, and so is his; he hasn't spent everything yet in his company. He gets out of the taxi and looks around, at the beautiful stream of water flowing there (I wish I were there today) and the mountains. And he says, "Call me a yellow." He wants a cab to get out of there. He wore a swimsuit and his new straw hat all the time he was there. The wind blew the new sailor straw hat off, and a little piece of straw slipped out. He was ruined. That night, we are camping out, and we find a shed--just a roof — and we build a fire for cooking out and coffee. In the Ozarks. Mountain streams. A rain comes up and hailstones. Mrs. Blair (Camille) gets up (we have the fire going to make coffee), and she grabs a bunch of newspapers and puts them over the fire to keep the rain off the fire. [laughter] And they burn. We all get in this tin shed for shelter. And it pounds down there; you think you're being bombed by machine guns. Next morning Kay says, "Take me to a yellow." We get in the car, and we take him to the nearest town so he can get on a train and go back to Kansas City or wherever he's going. Now, about the Tim magazine. We didn't care whether merchants advertised merchandise or not on the back page, but they had that right, and they did. When we'd go in to sell it, the merchant would first say, "The mother buys the clothes." We'd say, "Would you like to know where she is going to buy them?" He says, "What do you mean?" I said, "Listen. Tim, a hero in the mind of the boy — famous inventor, detective, spy, style coach, champion pie-eater of the world — says, 'This is your official magazine from my official store, your clothes are not official.'" Leave it to imagination. The boys' minds are way ahead of you lots of times, even today. They can talk about atomic energy more than I can. We had case after case where the mother took the boy to her regular department store or some other clothing store to buy a suit. The boy would not try it on. We had hundreds of cases of this. Why? The suit was not official And the clerk there would get disturbed and would try to force one on him. In Louisville, Kentucky, Colonel Levy says the boy took the coat off, threw it on the floor and kicked it. All right. What did the mother do? She went to Tim's official store. The salesman wondered why. Now, would you believe it, that same store was one of the stores that hadn't mailed them yet. When we got busy on servicing, they did. That happened in Colonel Levy's store in Louisville, So all that was why the Tim magazine worked. We took advantage, innocently, of a boy's heroism worship, or whatever you want to call it. They would not permit the mother to buy clothes anywhere else. Right here in Los Angeles, Desmond's have about four or five branch stores. They opened most of their boys' departments through Tim. They even built a corral. Tim had a fifty-thousand-acre rancho somewhere, and in it was Echo Canyon. Tim would go down there, and it was spooky. [A fellow named] Scotty ran the ranch for Tim. This became a book by itself that the boys got at the store by coming in. [Tim] went down there, and he was to get off of the train at Hoot Holler Oak Trees. Alone. Scotty was to meet him. Tim got off of the train alone, and Scotty wasn't there. The chapter ended that issue. Later on, Tim starts out to find the ranch housG--his rancho--and Scotty. Finally he hollers, makes a noise, yells, "Scotty!" There's an echo. He keeps on, and this echo canyon, instead of just saying, "Scotty," the echo just said, "Who are you?" Well, it was Scotty on the way. We had that suspense and things. Jessie Horowitz of Rochester, New York, put in a boys' department in his fine clothing store in Rochester, a boys' department based on Tim. And he used it properly. He made a great success as a clothier in Rochester against competition. I asked him one day, I said, "How does it feel to be on top?" He says, "Tougher than getting there is to stay on top." I learned something from him. But anyway, he went ahead and built his whole boys' department around Tim's official store. Here is a letter he received by a boy after Christmas. The boy wrote, "Dear official store: I just found out there ain't no Santa Claus, and I bet you there ain't no Jesus nor Tim either!" [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

There are about seven pages in each of these little Tim magazines. The page is about three inches by seven inches. Here is a typical poem: "Pup Hunts for Tim" Tim's store is a regular show; That's the place I like to go. Got my hat there and my cap; Got my suit there, it had snap.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
JULY 9, 1965

BLAIR

About 1928, when the Hub in Chicago (the largest clothing store in the world, owned by Mr. Lytton) became our prime account, I moved in there. In fact, we sold our house in Kansas City. Mrs. Blair was going to travel some and put the two youngsters, Sazette and Betz, in private schools at the beginning, I think, of '29. And we have a big studio room with a fireplace and a little kitchen and bath off of it, because we are both going to travel in and out. Mrs. Blair will service accounts, and I will be there to take care of Lytton's. I also decided, while I was there, to enroll again in the University of Chicago and complete a master's degree. Well, to highlight that part of it, I chose business management or something of that kind, which was way off from the classics and my main interest, education. But I chose this, and inside of about five sessions, I realized you had to remember trigonometry and a lot of things that had to do with charts for business; and I just didn't appear any more at the University of Chicago. In the meantime, the two youngsters were in private school. This was the fall of '29, I believe. They were very particular. I remember I wanted to take Betz, the oldest daughter, out for dinner one evening, and they wouldn't let me, because even a parent couldn't take out the daughter. So it leads up to where we took them both out [of that school]. Later on, we moved to California. But in the meantime, I did lecture on the psychology of salesmanship and advertising to the Hub in Chicago, and at the University of Illinois, and later on [at the University of] Alabama and different places in addition to advertising clubs and clothing conventions. When Mr. Lytton had eight hundred of his employees stay after closing hours to listen to my psychology of salesmanship, well, I felt that was quite a step forward. It gave me the courage I guess, to offer myself to other fields. Well, anyway, when I got through my salesmanship talk — the same thing I had worked out at Woolf Brothers — he got up on a table and swore a little and said, "Here is a fellow from the sticks" (that meant Kansas City; anybody from, you know, further west than Chicago was from the sticks) "comes in here and tells us more about running a clothier's business than we've learned in fifty years."

DIXON

When you first went into the clothing business, did you study selling, the psychology of it?

BLAIR

Oh, no. It's an odd thing, though, that maybe I was selling, yes; but I didn't know it. In other words, I had never studied psychology at the University of Kansas, just Schweigler, you know; I think we mentioned him. You know, the behavior of the human will is a thing [like] a verdict that can be changed each tenth of a second with new evidence brought in on anything, just like in a court. [Schweigler] said that every decision is momentary unless new evidence comes in. New evidence is brought in only by environment, something that happens that ties in with something in the past. At that time, the decree was that every behavior of the human will, every second of your life, is based on a little bit of hereditary influence — not much — and past experience, plus environment, plus the divine urge to do something. Of course, I had that understanding in mind when I went to Fort Scott. But as far as having any psychology back of it, or a purposeful thought, it was just a kind of a natural thing, like the king of Spain hats I put in the window. I just always tried to do things a little different. In other words, my great problem was to not be a copycat. Don't do this, and don't do this. It wasn't natural for me. Don't copy, don't lie and do those things. At the University of Kansas one time, I happened to look over the shoulder of a fellow, and I saw an answer I already knew. I put down the wrong answer. Otherwise, that damned conscience says it's copying, and yet I knew the answer before I saw his. Right here, I might tell a story. I'll get back to the Lytton. There was a great star football player, and a big game is coming up where he must play; and he is flunked. One professor flunks him; he can't play. Well, the coaches and other professors say, "What? You can't give him another examination?" "No, I can't. He's not only copied, but he's not dependable. He's a cheater." "Well, what do you mean?" Well, he says, "He sits right behind my best student, my A-plus student, and his answers are identical to this fellow." Well, they said, "Were the answers right?" He says, "Yes." "Well, how could they be different?" Well, he says, "Listen to this. He's a liar in a way. The first nine were answered identical. I admit that if there was any variation, maybe he knew them. But on the tenth question, this A-plus student put down, 'I do not know the answer to this one.'" Well, they said, "What did he do?" He says, "I do not know the answer to this one either.'" [laughter]

SCHIPPERS

When was your first selling experience encountered? You said you worked for your father.

BLAIR

Oh, yes, in the country store. My dad didn't want me around the store; [there was] a little jealousy there. We lived in the town, but I worked on the farms because my dad didn't want the farmers to say, "Blair is promoting his son." You know. But they would, on Saturday, get so busy. The farmers would bring in crates of chickens and eggs and all. So they let me count eggs for the first thing, but no pay ever from the store. Then I got advanced to where I could sell nails. Well, the nails were all there in bins; you could weigh them out. And then thread: there was a thread box, and I even got into selling like that. Finally, I got to where I could help out on Saturdays in the country store, both at Cadmus and later at Spring Hill. I remember at Cadmus, there was one old lady named Mrs. Kempton. She was a bother. The other clerks wouldn't wait on her at all. She'd come down there just to kill time, Her son, Mr. Kempton, was just less than a quarter of a mile from the store, right up a hill west. I would get her, of course, and then I would feel important that I had somebody to wait on. One day, she wanted some perfume. I said, "Well, here is the perfume. What kind [do you want]?" She said, "I don't know. I want a certain smell." Well, this old lady spent a long time smelling. She didn't quite find it, and she said, "You ought to know. You ought to know what smell I want. I can't find the one I want. I'll tell you, if you'd come up home and smell my drawers and things, you would know what perfume I wanted."

SCHIPPERS

Looking back over your selling career, how much of it was guided by theory, and how much of it was guided by what you found out in practical experience?

BLAIR

Absolutely nothing from theory. The idea of the behavior of the human will had nothing to do whatsoever with selling. It's just that one thing. When I first went for a master's degree at the University of Chicago, and I wanted to study applied psychology, that didn't teach anything. But they said I [couldn't take it] because I had never had any psychology, even in high school. But [I could] take an examination which [they thought] was hopeless. They only asked one question, "Describe the behavior of the human will." I got a hundred percent. But applied psychology had nothing to do [with selling]. It was mechanical like transferred learning. Now, where it came from I think was this. When I went into the clothing business, I think I mentioned one of the merchants said, "Don't ever pay attention to old so-and-so. He never [buys anything]. [He'll] just fill your time." But I was so eager to sell something, that finally I paid attention to him, this old fellow that came in and worried everybody. I sold him a pair of socks, and he brought in customers. So I began to study treatment of people without any thought of developing salesmanship. I would see in the fine windows of Woolf Brothers and other places where I worked, a man comes in wants a tie in the window. [He looks at their ties] and he walks out. I knew that was a problem. He was an impulsive buyer. That's one class. Then I got to thinking about it, and I had had experiences where certain men couldn't make up their minds. I found out they were happy when I could make them think they made up their minds by saying, "I noticed you picked up this shirt three times and none of the others. That's your favorite. That's a wonderful selection. Now, what about umbrellas?" Then [there were] the people always going out to look around. I've said about the old Jewish competitor I had there. Somebody would come in and say, "I'm going to look at a coat," or "I'm going out to look around." He would yell, "Well, bring the stepladder; the man wants to look around." Well, they insulted people, and I had merely found out. Instinct of possession was the other thing [I worked on]. Collection is an instinct; that I did get in educational classics. So that came in — the power [of possession] — you didn't want to jump too soon and say, "Now wrap it up." But when you know the fellow is resisting and this is his favorite one, then the power of ownership, or possession, is very close. That's where I worked out practically the idea to put the coat [in front], and say, "When you come back for it." That assumes it's his, subtly, not too strong. There was nothing at all as to theory or trying experiments. It just developed. [tape recorder turned off] Going back to the Hub, when we took this studio place, and the youngsters [were] in private school. Mrs. Blair and the wife of our head salesman, Knudtsen, came to service the [West] Coast in early December of '29. Well, out here in California, everything is fine, you know. She got off of the train when she came back to Chicago, and there was a blizzard on. She said, "Since we're going to travel, and since particularly you're going to travel, what difference does it make where we live? We have Desmond's and stores up and down the coast." We're going to move to California. Well, we get the two youngsters, just before Christmas, in December, out of the private school. We had sold our house in Kansas City; although we hadn't gotten the money, really, but we had gotten some down payment. Anyway, the man had bought it. I had a fast car. In those days the Reo Flying Cloud was the fastest car on the road. It was a six-cylinder. I had a black and white coupe. In my traveling, I would not race, but cars would race me. The Chrysler was supposed to be fast, and it was. It seemed some young fellow, through every village I'd go, would come out and drive up--there were gravel roads mostly — and I knew he was going to test his Chrysler against the Reo Flying Cloud. I had a flag on mine with Tim on it. (That's the editor, you know; on the back was Tim's picture on the cover of the spare tire. It was a smart thing; people noticed it.) Well, those fellows would come out. I knew I had it on them, at least in this way. They probably didn't have their car tuned up, but mine was carefully oiled and everything, because I was driving all day. I'd jump from Kansas City or Chicago to New Orleans, and maybe out here and stop at San Antonio, and all over. I camped out in about thirty-eight states. Anyway, these fellows would come around and race. I would let them slip up on me; and then when we'd come to a little wide place in the road, I'd pull over, and they'd keep coming up beside me. I would just stay with them until they burned out a bearing. I had a lot of fun doing that. But when they really got alongside me, and when they are going to make it, I always had more and more and more. In fact, I raced against time from Kansas City, leaving in the evening for St. Louis. The dealer in Kansas City, where I bought this [car], had sent [out] a bulletin, a telegram. In fact, on my long trips, they used this daredevil driving to sell Reos. I made the fastest time — faster than a train — between Kansas City and St. Louis one time. I sent the wire in the minute I got in the hotel. I even lost a few minutes there. \ . 382 other things were going on historically about cars then. I don't know if I mentioned Jed Durkee or not, the Buick dealer we knew later in Kansas City. Well, he raced the Union Pacific train from Kansas City to Denver, and they posted bands along the way to play as he came through. He was going to try and beat the train; he beat it by an hour. And he could turn corners. He could have been a racer. He could turn these square corners; there were no curves over those wagon roads. In one town in particular, they had the band out. He was going to drive all day and all night, and the next day as far as necessary. He was to go through the town at eight o'clock in the morning. Well, they had the band out and all, but the band got mixed up on his time, and the band went into a restaurant to get a little breakfast. Jed went through town and nobody saw him. [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] Kay Kamin was still with us then. I remember Kay didn't like to drive fast, but he decided it was a great thing for us to move to California. So in this same Flying Cloud, Camille (Mrs. Blair), Kay Kamin, and I are going to drive out in my flagship. The two girls were to leave at a certain time on the train, because we had friends in Chicago [who were] going to come within a few days to Los iKnqeles. So they would be on the train, but the two girls would have their own money and tickets. This party is going to see that they get on. We are going to get here ahead of them. Well, on the way out, Kay Kamin was afraid of going across the desert and all these things; we could get into terrible trouble. So he bought a lot of sardines. He had sardines and crackers and things that we could live on if we got stranded in the desert. He had always gone by train, and so had we up to that time. I remember the first day out, he would open a can of sardines and hold it out the side. (He sat on the outside, Camille between us.) And he would get rid of the juice, the oil, of the sardines. When we got to stop the first time for gas, there was sardine oil all over my car--the wind blew it — and dust on it. Anyway, we get into San Diego a night or two before Christmas. Mrs. Blair never had her own car and things are going pretty well. Ford has come out with a little roadster that's got brass; it's got red; and the whole thing was probably eight feet long. But at that day, it was the top sports car. Just for fun, I went down to the dealer. I knew a fellow there. Art Gaynes, who had bought my stuff. We weren't too close, but he knew we were coming, moving to California. The Ford dealer had one of these, and it was seven hundred and forty-six dollars. I wrote a check for that, and Camille didn't know it. It was going to be her Christmas present. I am going to be traveling, and she is going to need a car out here anyway. It was an open little phaeton I'm sure, and maybe a one-seater. We had that dolled up and put right outside of the hotel where we're staying. It's all out there, and we know it's there; the doorman says it is. We were all pretty worn out and not too happy being together. Kay and I had a few words, and we were all worn out from having to drive and drive across the desert and all. So anyway, we said, "Let's go down and go somewhere." We went downstairs and into the lobby. Camille sees that car, not knowing anything about it. And, "Oh!" We handed her the key to it. Right there. This nephew of Kay Kamin happened to be out there, too. Kay had fired [him] a couple of times, and I had rehired him. He sold the first week he went out after I told him how to sell. He was there. It was all a great surprise with this car and everything. We are coming on to Los Angeles and get here, I guess, the day before Christmas. George Kamin is the nephew's name, and he is going to ride up in Camille's car and Kay and I will come in the flagship. Well, do you know, they hadn't been out of San Diego over an hour and they smelled smoke. This George Kamin had dropped a lighted cigarette somewhere in the upholstery. That was the first proof it was a used car. Camille never could get over that to this day. We go on, and we locate out here in the Beverly Glen Canyon, in a house built up a few steps, with one great big room and a fireplace, not well painted or anything like that. Just like a camp house. We rent that for about seventy-five dollars a month. Now, the girls are coming out on the train, and we had told them to tip. I don't know how old Betz could have been, maybe eight — she was the oldest one — and Sazette was probably six. They had a great time on the diner. Well, tipping to Betz--everybody that does anything for them, she gives them a dollar. [laughter] [tape recorder turned off] We hadn't stayed in this house in Beverly Glen too long, when we got a chance to buy a house in Westwood on Tavistock [Avenue], right practically in the university--UCLA--now. It was a brick building, English, and a wonderful place. We buy it. They were asking twenty-two-five, and we bought it for twenty thousand dollars. Just because it was less, we thought we got a bargain, and I guess we did; if we had it today, it [would be] worth plenty. So we move in there. I'm traveling in and out. Desmond's, of course, was my account here, and they had a big police parade. The police out here all used Buicks. Every car in the parade on Sunday was to be police, and they all were Buicks. Well, I got around and got in with my flagship. I was the only car in the parade that wasn't a Buick. Tim was on the back, on the [spare tire] cover, and the flag, and everything. Desmond's liked that, because they had the exclusive [rights] here on Tim's magazine. Well, in traveling, many things happened. All over the nation. I had to lecture on salesmanship at Godchaux's in New Orleans at nine o'clock on a certain morning to all the sales people. I was driving down from Cincinnati or somewhere, and just when I get within, oh, a few miles, of Lake Pontchartrain (which they told me was the longest bridge in the world at that time, a bridge right across Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana), all four tires go flat. It's about eleven o'clock at night. There's a garage on [the road], just a proper distance that when you find out they're flat, there's somebody that can fix it. Well, whoever heard of — maybe two tires--four at once within a minute, or rather, a quarter-mile? Anyway, they fix me up and I get on my way. Apparently, from then on, on the right-hand side, there were no tacks in the road. But there were tacks probably for people coming in the other way. I don't know. I couldn't swear to this, but it was quite a thing. Here is Lake Pontchartrain, and here a big strong fellow comes out with two guns on him and stops me. He says, "It's a dollar." And I said, "Fine." I tried to talk pretty nice to him. I said, "Listen, I've only got ninety-eight cents in change." "Can't take it. It's a dollar." I said, "All right, here's a twenty-dollar bill." "Can't change a twenty-dollar bill." Well, I said, "Now, just a moment, I've got to lecture in the morning, and I've got to get across this bridge." "It's a dollar; can't change a twenty." "Oh," I said, "just a minute." I looked through and I find a two-cent stamp. "Now, here is a stamp." "Can't take stamps." This actually happened word for word, "Can't take stamps." I thought, "Well, gee whiz, is there such a thing as some way for the little--well, maybe, supposed — intelligence I had to overcome brute force? I had heard about it." Well, I stop and I say, "Well, where are you from?" He says, "loway." I said, "Well, I'm from Kansas. Isn't that odd? You know, I had an uncle in the legislature..." I was going to get his mind clear off of the dollar if I could. We talk a while, and I said, "My mother still lives in Kansas. Do your folks still live there?" "Yup." I said, "I travel all the. time. Do you ever write your mother?" "Oh, every once in a while." "Does she write?" "Oh, yeah, I hear from my mother." Well, I said, "I am the same way. I am busy, busy, busy, and you know mothers. They like to know where their sons are. You know, a letter is a great thing to them," I said, "Hey, I'll make you a deal. If you will write a letter to your mother tonight, I will write a letter to mine." He said, "That's a deal." And we shook on it. I said, "Do you have any stationery?" "Yeah, I got some things to write on." I said, "How about stamps?" He says, "Ain't got no stamps." This is what I can't believe myself. I said, "Well, by the way, I'll sell you this stamp here." He gave me two pennies, he took the stamp, and I handed him a dollar. His mouth dropped open; he didn't know what had happened. [laughter] I just drove away. [tape recorder turned off] We hadn't lived on Tavistock very long (this was in '29) when there was a market crash, as you know, the big collapse in '29. That happened, I guess, before we moved out here, earlier in '29. Anyway, I remember seeing men carried out of the stockbrokers' places. I had been buying stocks; I'd had a good experience. I had bought some stocks in Kansas City. Fellow said you ought to do it; I didn't know anything about it. We moved to Chicago (this was before the market broke). Men were paying five dollars for a belt and bragging. Everybody had so much money and all that sort of thing. One man said, "All you need to do to make a hundred dollars a week is just buy and sell a little." But in Kansas City, I had bought some stocks. I didn't know how they bought it; somebody said, "Here it is," and I gave them the money. Well, when I get to Chicago — when we move there — I decide I will find someplace there where you can do that. I wanted my assets all in one town, so I had it transferred to a broker. I go in for my check, and there is a hundred dollars more than I had paid. Well, I said, "How's this?" He said, "That's the dividend; that's the earnings. You made a profit on about a five-hundred-dollar investment. It's easy to do. You do that once a week; what more do you need? Your stocks are going up all the time." So I open up an account and I put in a thousand dollars. I buy this and buy that and what they recommend. I am not selling right away, because the market seems to slip a little; it doesn't seem to go up. But here's a bargain: the stock market went down so here's another thousand. By the time I'm in five thousand, they call me and say, "You're on margin, you know, and you've got five thousand dollars up, but you've got about fifteen thousand dollars worth of stock and it's slipped. You've got to dig up another thousand to cover that margin." And I said — luckily — "If I can't make any money on five thousand dollars, how am I going to make any on six thousand dollars?" Dumb or not, I didn't do it. Well, I keep the stock. But I remember when the crash came, I was down there, and my stocks not only were wiped out but they wanted another seven hundred dollars--the loss on it. They sold it without order on the way down. And I don't pay that. Well, that comes up a little later. I'll go on through that. A year or so later, they were after me to pay that seven hundred dollars, and the only threat they ever made was that if I didn't [pay], I never again could buy any stocks from a broker. [laughter] That pleased me. But I was kind, I said, "Now listen, things are real cheap. Maybe you can give me one stock that I buy seven hundred dollars worth and it's going to go up, bound to, why then you could have your seven hundred dollars first. " And they named a stock, by gosh, and bought it for me. And the market went down again. They wanted some more money to cover that, and I didn't send it. I found out that they had no right to recommend a stock that I could buy to cover a debt which they claimed I owed them. [tape recorder turned off] We buy this big, wonderful house on Tavistock. We have a real estate man, a friend — all California's pastime, you know, is looking into real estate. Here is a fellow we like very much. He knew somebody in Kansas City, and one evening he says, "Come over home, we're going to have some homemade beer." See, it was in prohibition. We go over, and over some homemade beer he says, "You know, tomorrow morning the bank is throwing on the market a foreclosure: all of that long block between San Vicente, on Canyon View Drive clear up to Bristol." (That's Bristol Circle, which is, you know. Sunset Boulevard.) And he said, "You can buy a lot — they are beautiful — for four hundred dollars. You can buy three of those right on the corner of one block, one lot away from San Vicente, on Canyon View coming west." So we said, "We'll take three of them." He said, "Don't you want to go look at them?" I said, "No, not at that price for goodness sake." So we buy those three lots sight unseen; I write him a check for it. The next morning we go over to look at it. A little stream runs down through it, and there is only one house between there and Sunset. [tape recorder turned off] This is right in the hotbed of the Depression where people couldn't get work. We go over next morning and look at out lots, and here are two tramps with a little fire. Well, I went over first, and I go back and tell Camille. [She said] "We own ground. I'm not going to have tramps there. We're not going to have that--a campsite for tramps." She goes over there and she's going to tell them to get off you know. We step up — I hadn't said anything to them--and the man says, "I'm Scotty. Meet my chef, Joe." Well, here is a tramp with a chef. The Irishman, Joe, had big blue eyes, and Scotty was sharp. He said, "You know, we came over here and [things got] pretty bad, so we hocked all our tools. I'm a jointer, an apprenticed jointer, and Joe here is my companion, but he is a good cook. We get along fine. We hocked all of our tools in New York, and we got out this far. It's kind of nice here." And we said, "A jointer? You mean you build the old-fashioned way?" He says, "Yes, I built these homes in Scotland. There's no nails in a lot of them, just pegs joined. You can join together two big beams, so you can't pull them apart or crush them down — all that sort of thing." We said, "By the way, we're thinking about building here and selling the house we've got. We want to do an early American house. In the traveling, we get a little bit interested in the Pilgrim houses and in the houses we saw in New England. They were furnished, of course, in furniture that we knew nothing about. The only thing we thought was an antique was a little love seat, made, we found out later, about 1849, Victorian. So it works out that Scotty says he will work if we will buy the material. He says, "You ought to use used material. It may take a long time, but [meanwhile] we'd like to get something to live on. If we had a little place to stay here, we'd build any kind of a house you want. Only thing you would have to hire would be a bricklayer. You going to have a fireplace?" We said, "Yes, sure." First thing we do, we get some new lumber. Tliat's the only [new] thing there. Scotty builds a little bunk place with a fireplace in it, right down by the little stream, where they could live and do their own cooking. [It had] two bunks, and they arc going to live there until we're through building whatever house. Well, we get excited. We know about fireplaces; I had been looking at houses back East. I don't think we had bought any antiques. No. Not anything; antiques were just something that was old-fashioned. A friendship was almost broken up in Spring Hill [over an antique]. An antique to me was something that would break down if you sat on it. There was this Billy Wilkerson that my dad went hiking with in Arkansas. Well, [Mrs. Wilkerson] had a little rose carved chair. Every time my dad would sit in it, she'd make him get up. She said, "That's precious; that's an antique." Well, one time Dad sat back and leaned back and cracked something and... well, the friendship lasted. But that was antique. So we weren't antique-minded. But what happens. There was an earthquake, and you could get all the used brick you wanted in Long Beach. That was about '32.

DIXON

Nineteen thirty-three.

BLAIR

Thirty-three, all right. And you could get timber. They were tearing down out here at the soldiers' place...

DIXON

Sawtelle [Boulevard]?

BLAIR

Some big buildings on Sawtelle. We got two-by-twelves, old lumber; we got beams — twelve-by-twelves--anything we wanted, at a song almost, and piled them out there. And Scotty said it was just what we wanted. Here's what we do. I'll leave out the details. We built a heavy board fence around as a fence in front; it was built pretty close to the street. A drive coming in. We built a six-bedroom, six-bath, seven-fireplace house; it's out there today. Shake shingles — I mean real ones — hand-split. Each fireplace was a replica of one I had seen in the East. You could stand up in certain ones. Every bedroom had one. The floors were old plank material. We had an entrance hall [with a] brick [floor] and stairs going up. We had a keeping room and what you might call today a parlor. Now, the keeping room was going to have furniture in it, old furniture, we hoped. But there was a little kitchen off it. Ida, our maid, could not cook right in the keeping room, as it would have been in the early days. At the fireplace, there you had a place where you could build a fire and bake bread. It had everything that any of the fireplaces had. The bigger room across the hall was just a big entertainment room, you might say, or parlor, if you think. It had a fireplace you could stand up in, and room enough that you could put a ladder-back chair in there. If you came in from the blizzards outside during those days, you could sit in the fireplace and warm your feet and get warm quicker than if you came into a cold room. Now we have the setting, and we have the buildings. Across the place, we build a shake-shingle, covered barbecue, built out of brick. We get a horse or two, and we have a little stable of our own. Of course, I am traveling a great deal. The architect was [Allen G.] Siple. He was new, Siple had the same imagination. He drew the plans, and we laid out what we wanted. He made it early American outside and in. He put a dormer here and something there. A beautiful thing. It's out there today. Some wild people.. well, they don't own it today. Anyway, Camille says, "You should begin to pick up some old things to put in this house." Well, when I'm in New England I decide I will, but I don't know anything about them. I want to learn. I didn't see much of these fancy, as I know now, Victorian things. They didn't pay any attention to that stuff; it was a dime a dozen in the antique country, Pennsylvania and New England. They wouldn't even haul them home. And so I didn't see any. But I would see earlier things. I am driving along one day, getting into Harrisburg [Pennsylvania], not far from Lebanon, in that area. I see a sign. Marrow Sale. Well, that meant an auction sale in the country. They were always [held on] Saturdays everywhere. Just as I drive up, there is the auctioneer, holding up a half-gallon jar of raspberries. He's calling out bidding in [Pennsylvania] Dutch and English, "Fünf-five, fünf-five." Well, I knew what that meant; I. bid six. I didn't know if it was thousands of dollars or what it was. But I get it, and there's eighty of them; they're bidding on eighty, but he's holding up one. So I own eighty half-gallons of home-canned raspberries. Well, the fellow collects; I owed four-eighty. And they load them in the back of my Packard. I'm driving a Packard then, a beautiful red — "silver wheels," we called it — red-everything phaeton. The eighty [jars] go in there. Well, I drive on a little further, and they are selling a clock. I didn't know anything about clocks. I know now it was a small grandfather's clock. Some call them a grandmother's clock. But this was extra small. I remember there were some pictures there that sold for sixty dollars. great big prints of all the race horses that had won in America, full color. It was a Currier and Ives, but who knew about Currier and Ives? I found out later that if I had bought that I could have gotten a thousand dollars for them from a fellow who collected and was looking for those. That's part of the romance. But that encouraged me to learn something about it. I go on a little further, and here is another sale. I go in, and they are bidding on a simple table. Camille had said, "Get some early things that'll look good. I don't want something that will look new." Well, here's a table with four splay legs, just looked like [they were] cut out by hand, and a two-board top. And across one end was a smooth plank, morticed to hold the two ends, but not on the other [end]. There, a cleat was underneath. Well, I thought they had probably sawed the other end off. It looks pretty good. We could put it out in the yard, and use it to put pots on. Well, I get it for two dollars and a half. Of course, it has to be hauled. It has four legs and a two-board top — pretty crude. Well, then, pretty soon they are shifted over around behind the barn, selling stuff there. Before they go up to the house and sell the dishes, they got rid of the barn stuff. Well, they are up to — I thought I understood — fifty-six on a thing so big I didn't know what it was. I said, "What is it?" The man said, "I don't know. There's the man who lives here." He said, "I don't know. My great-grandfather said it was here when he moved in here." "Well, what is^ it?" "I don't know." It was a great big wooden wheel, probably four or five feet [across], solid wood and beams, put together with pegs. There was a great big pedal across the bit to move it. There [had been] a belt (but it was gone) that would turn the big wheel, and that big wheel would turn something else; and you could stretch out and put things in there. It turned out, of course--but I didn't know it — to be a lathe. It would take the footpower of two or three men to run it. Well, they are bidding, and I say to myself, "I'll go a hundred dollars on that thing, just as a curio. That's really a curiosity." I get it at fifty-seven. Well you know, they were up to fifty-six, and I feel great. That's wonderful. So I'm not there long, and a big Dutch boy comes along with pretzels and a leather pouch, and he says, "I want to collect for the machine you bought." (They didn't know what to call it; none of them knew it was a lathe.) Well, I said, "I am a little embarrassed. You know, I am traveling and all that, and I have credit everywhere in hotels, but I don't really have enough to pay cash. Who could I talk to...?" He says, "You're from California, ain't you?" I said, "Yes, I am." And so he says, "You mean to tell me you're all the way from California, and you don't even have fifty-seven cents?" [laughter] I couldn't believe it, I paid him. There was a man there, of course, with a team--very few automobiles. And I said, "I want to get these things shipped to California. I thought it would be nice to have them out in the yard somewhere." So he said, "I know a fellow in Hummelstown down there, C.B. Smith. He is in the antique business. He would [help you] crate it or ship it." I said, "Well, what would you charge to haul this on to Hummelstown?" He said, "Well, I'd have to have about five dollars." I said, "All right," and I paid him. I followed him, and we stopped someplace. He went in and out comes C.B. C.B. looks, and he says, "Where did you find the first Pilgrim table ever found in the state of Pennsylvania?" He said, " Where did you get the first Pilgrim-century lathe that they could turn bedposts on for the tall beds?" Well. He crates them; he takes it all. I still don't realize what they are: both of them Pilgrim-century pieces. There's a bank holiday and I have them crated. Like a fool, I don't even know about freight rates. If you're shipping old things, you know, there's a limit to liability. Well anyway, I had invested two, two-fifty, five dollars, seven-fifty, [a total of] eight dollars and seven cents in those things up to date. So this C.B. has a lot of things to sell, too. I go in and they began to teach me and tell me these are good and that's not good. Mrs. Smith and all of them were collectors; that was their business. She was a sharp one, Mrs. Smith, and C.B. was the ruler of the place. But they turn out to be great friends. Anyway, I bought some things from them. Now, what I got, I just took their word for it. I got sets of chairs; I found cherry drop-leaf tables, of which he said, "These with the turned legs are not quite as good as the tapered. " They had them for twenty-five or thirty dollars. I bought two or three corner cupboards. They [pointed out] the different mouldings and said, "This is made in the Sheraton period." That didn't mean a thing to me; all I ever heard of was Grand Rapids. So I spent eight hundred dollars on stuff in addition to these pieces and go happily on my way, wishing I knew what I had bought and how did they know. She'd say, "This is better; this is good." Now those people knew it, but they knew nothing about years, particularly. "This is good; this is better; this is good. " That was their grading. Well, I decide I am going to learn something there. But I have to travel and get on. And I said, "Where can you find out how to tell what's good? I'm driving all the time and I might pick up something." Well, he said, "If you really want to [learn], get some books." Well, to make this other story short, Mrs. Blair is out there alone, you know, and our house is just about finished after almost two years in building. Joe, the chef, after the earthquake, he says, "I'm getting out of here." I remember I wasn't home, but Camille gave him some money, and she took him to a railroad over in the [San Fernando] Valley; and Joe, the last she saw him, was with a stick with his pouch. He went up the rail. But Scotty stayed. He quoted Shakespeare. The neighbors invited him to dinner. Scotty was the socialite of the time. He lived there, you know. And finally the house is done. Scotty goes out, too. [tape recorder turned off] By the way, the stuff is on the road from Pennsylvania now, crated, and C.B. sent it. I think Camille is going to be so happy. Our total investment in that house was something like sixteen thousand dollars. It was all cash, of course. Couldn't get a mortgage on it. I went to the bank; they wouldn't loan a dime on the house. It didn't fit the Los Angeles architecture; who could say what it was worth? Wouldn't loan a dime — that's the Security First National [Bank]. I had personal credit. I could go in and borrow a thousand dollars. But no, they wouldn't loan anything on that house. I had a spring come out of it. I did things like this. In the fireplace in the living room, I had a little pipe come out of the stone-- [the fireplace] was part stone--and it looked like a little spring. This pipe with water turned on would drip out of the rock into a little pot, and then drop down and run through a little stream right along the floor. You could walk over it; you could sleep over it. Here's running water running right through the stone floor in the living room and going out right through the flowerbeds. Then, in the keeping house, I had an old Pennsylvania Dutch sink, a dry sink, they called it. I had a pump put in that, and you could pump city water right there, just like in the early days, in that keeping room. Anyway, the stuff arrives out there and there is a bank holiday; all assets of the bank are frozen. There is due five hundred dollars freight on my purchase of all the stuff, which ran around a thousand dollars. Couldn't get a dime anywhere. But a fellow came out, a friend from Kansas City who was in business and pretty slick, and he was loaded with silver and bills. He didn't leave his money in the bank. So Camille gave him a check, knowing that our check would be good eventually, and he gave her money in cash to pay the \ 403 .freight. But she was sick. It looked like junk: nothing refinished, old paint, maybe a leg loose. She had told me to get old things, and here I ship a thousand dollars worth of [junk] with five hundred dollars freight. She could have killed me. She doesn't know where I am. In the meantime, I begin to see what things bring back there at country auctions. I decide to learn; I buy books now to learn about how to tell good things. And I spend a hundred dollars on ten- and fifteen-dollar books. And you know, they all have the same damn pictures out of the Metropolitan Museum [of Art] of the originals, I mean the original design made out of mahogany, some of them made in England, from which Americans, out of native wood — tulipwood, pine, cherry, maple, tiger maple, bird's-eye [maple] — jfmade their furniture]. And walnut, but not black walnut. Here's the difference. I found that out; you learn. Virginia red walnut — that's different. It looks like mahogany, but it's more beautiful. These tables we have are that. They are not black walnut like they are in the Middle West. That was Victorianism, you see; that stuff didn't come out until 1849 or later. Anyway, I decide to learn. I find out in the back of these books, there's about four pages on early American furniture. Well, why isn't there more? Somebody said. ."Well, what you do, go to Mrs. Leete on Leete's Island up in Connecticut. Her family was the governor — Governor Leete. She is the first one that collected for the Metropolitan Museum [of Art] in New York, for the American wing"--which was put in about 1911 or '12, I think. Well, I go there, and she says, "Yes, you can have a room across the street where my daughter lives if you want to. I have a room of Hepplewhite, Queen Anne, Sheraton, Chippendale, and Victorian. These I have collected by myself. I have a room of each, ready to use, and I use them for guests. You can room over there. You come in, and I will help you." I stayed four days, and on the fourth day I can go and say, "This is a Hepplewhite room," and tell her why. And then I say, "This is Sheraton," and tell her why. [tape recorder turned off] When I left there, I could tell one room from another, and I had my identification. So I feel f ine I start out driving on my accounts, doing advertising, weekends and all. And I run onto things at good prices at auctions. Not a thing like what's in any of those rooms or books. I know later that Mrs. Leete collected some English and some American [furniture] made in mahogany, but she selected those that were made for the wealthy class, inlaid all over. There was inlay in Sheraton and in Hepplewhite; never, of course, in Chippendale. They didn't do that, and they weren't made in those dark woods. They left out [these pieces]. I didn't know that at the time, and I was so discouraged, after being there and buying these books, that I don't see anything like Mrs. Leete had. Of course, she had the same things approximately in the Metropolitan Museum, American wing; she was the first collector for them. (By the way, her father was an undertaker. How they got into it: people couldn't pay their debts when somebody died, so he'd take furniture out of their house to pay the debts of the funeral. That's the way Mrs. Leete got interested in it.) So one night I am driving through Maryland. There's a snowstorm, and I see a sign that says Antique Show. And it's in a church. Well. I stop. It's blizzardy; it was quite stormy. I go in there. It's well lighted, and there are booths all around the walls in this... I guess it was a schoolhouse instead of a church, or maybe a big dance hall connected with something. [There are] antique booths on the first floor. There. are the things I had been buying and wanting to know [about]. I don't see any of the dark pieces inlaid at that time. Of course, there were some, but I just wasn't conscious of them. So I just said to somebody, "Is there anybody here can tell me how to know what kind of furniture that is?" "Yes. That man right over there with the whiskers." I go over there and it's Joe Kindig. Now Joe Kindig, of Lancaster--no, York [Pennsylvania] --for the last forty years, Joe Kindig has bought the [inside front] page on Antiques magazine. He has sold an American piece as high as fifty thousand dollars--found in America. He was the one authority, and there he was. I shuddered when I found out. No, I didn't even know he was in the antique business and was the top one in America for fine things, and was in the Antiques magazine always. Well, he says, "It's very simple to tell what it is. Just look at the legs on it and at the mouldings. You'll learn to see some tool marks later, and whether it's a wide dovetail or narrow. And look at a drawer. Run your hand underneath, and see if it's rough or smooth. You'll know if it's handmade. It's easy." I said, "Well, I'm going to have to really learn a little." He said, "Well, learn the different legs. Didn't you see up at Mrs. Leete's that the round legs were Sheraton? And some of them had a spade at the bottom with a kind of a round rim that would be a little foot. The Hepplewhites were all square-legged and tapered, and then had maybe a little spade on the foresides." "Yes, that's right." Well, he said, "Forget about the detail and the carving of the wood. Look at the legs. If it's a chair, look at the back and at the seat." He went through those things, and he said, "You'll have to learn the different turnings for the different centuries. "Now, this may surprise you. You think turnings, like we see in the Victorian period, where you see a lot of turnings clear across, why, you'd think that maybe would be Victorian." (Well, I realized that these Victorian what-nots were all turnings.) "But those can go back to the earliest building — Elizabethan. The first chairs made in Americ [were turned], the Carver chair." He explained all this. He said, "Don't be fooled. Anything you see in furniture of the Victorian [period] can be machine-made, but the idea and the design could have come from the Elizabethan or later period, particularly the Jacobean [period]. King James." Right away I began to learn history: who was king and what years. I learned that if I was going to teach history today, I would teach antiques, because they all follow. And whatever fashion King James was, they were headed in other places, even in this country. That's when we were first getting started. I knew for the first time that Queen Anne only reigned a few years right after 1700. I didn't get that in history; it was just a date. Anyway — again anyway — I decide that I am going to learn this. [tape recorder turned off] I'll tell you one thing: the New England and eastern accounts got good servicing because I was getting the antique fever and I was beginning to learn. Now, you take a little candlestand, with a birdcage and a dish top. Well, you wouldn't see them often; but at little country sales, you might see something made out of maple or pine. Well, I began to find out that I had [already] seen the elaborate ones somewhere, and here is such a version of it. That's where I really began to get the hang of this thing--with Joe Kindig. By the way, before we got all of this eight-hundred-dollar shipment, except the lathe and the table, refinished, a woman came by. Scotty was right in the glory of it. He said, "Oh I know how to refinish these things." He was going to do it. "You have to take the paint off, but don't take off too much wood. Those things you learn. You can kill the very thing that gives it the beauty — the patina." A woman comes along and says, "Say, these are... what is this?" I wasn't there at the time. But she came there first, and Camille said, "My husband is coming back next week from the East." And she said, "I think I would like to have these things." Well, she bought them all--Mrs. Belzer, the mother of Loretta Young. Mrs. Belzer has made plenty of money up to this day, I understand, by taking old houses and old apartments, and redecorating and furnishing them in genuine early American antiques. She rented them during the Depression at low rent. She took everything we had. But when I get home, I think, "Well, we sold it, at a profit, too." She had practically stolen them. She knew it. I had stolen them in a way. And I think I doxobled my money. That was easier than selling a contract in advertising. But from then on, for some time, I was as antique-conscious as I was advertising-conscious. [tape recorder turned off] Naturally, the next trip out I began to buy. I had confidence; I had learned. You take a Pennsylvania, pine dry sink. The dry sink was used to put the dishpan in; it had the water [not the sink]. And then they had a "wasser" well. The water well was very similar. A water well was something that looked like a pine dry sink with a drawer and a cupboard underneath where they poured water and dipped out of there. So I begin to learn these things. Traveling around, I made some wonderful nests I'd uncover, where I could buy ten dry sinks if I wanted, all at once for maybe two dollars apiece or five dollars apiece. So I have stuff bought and stored in different places in the East. I [ship it] and when [it arrives] we find out what it is, and then we and Scotty do some refinishing at home. We have shipments come out. We furnished that whole house. [For instance], rope beds — with rails. There was no such thing as a single bed. People say, "I've got an antique single bed." No they haven't. Maybe it's been cut down, but they were two inches shorter than normal beds. Some were what we might call full double [beds]. But the three-quarter [width bed] was used in a small room as a double bed. I think they [were the] same width over the rails. You see, the rope pegs were along the rails, which were about four-by-fours, hand-done and all that. There were pegs every few inches, and ropes stretched across. The straw tick went on there, and then the feather bed, and you had a high bed. And then we'd find trundle beds. Well, anyway, anything that there was, we had. We furnished that whole house. We had corner cupboards; we had our Pilgrim table; and the old wood lathe was kept outside. By the way, when we decided once that we wanted to go back East to live and collect antiques for a while, [Norman] Wilcox [from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art] and his wife came along and lived in this Pilgrim house. When we got back from our few months, we thought we would buy a farm, maybe, and stay back there and travel out of Maryland, to be where the antique country is, and yet still advertising. But when they moved, he made arrangements for my wood lathe to be put in the Los Angeles museum. They borrowed it for five years. To follow that on through, they returned it, because they didn't have room. But just recently, a year or two ago, they knew they were going to have this new art section on Wilshire [Boulevard] and they sent word they would like to have that permanently. In the meantime I had given it to a friend who did wonderful refinishing out here. I might say now that we eventually got into the antique business [together]. Art Arnstsen, one of the finest fellows to refinish and appreciate and all, had the wood lathe. Then about three years ago, the museum came along and said, "We would like to have that permanently." I called up [Art] and we had it appraised for over five hundred dollars minimum. I said, "Art, it's yours." He said, "No, it's yours; I've kept it for you." So I said, "All right. We'll let them have it in your name and mine, and we'll each take two hundred and fifty dollars off our income tax." And that's what happened. The wood lathe is out here forever now, at the big Los Angeles County Museum [of Art]. Our house became a showplace> Ole Olsen, of Olsen and Johnson, liked it so much that he wanted to buy it. Two or three of the actors wanted to buy it, but their business managers talked them out of it. That was in '32, and you see, we lived in it until about '37. Now the children were in high school, and we didn't need this big place. Olsen of Olsen and Johnson would come down with people and knock on the door and have all the food there and say, "We came here to have the party here instead of at our house." He was that kind of a fellow, this hiomorist. He wanted to buy the place. Moira, the daughter, loved it, too. We were invited up to his place, and we got acquainted that way. And do you know, he spent a whole evening showing me his joke books, just volumes of them. [laughter] Then at the dinner table, everything was quiet--we were kind of formal — and he's down at the head. We were just ready to start eating, and we are kind of uneasy, being in a celebrity's place like Olsen of Olsen and Johnson. Pretty soon he says, "PASS THE BREAD!" Things were informal from that time. He was just that kind of a guy. Anyway, we lived there, and we did get the idea to go back East and collect antiques. We'd buy a farm in Maryland. We'd go back there and rent the house to Norman Wilcox. By the way, Ogden Nash lived there the first time we took a trip. He rented it, and when I got back there was a lot of mail and stuff. (This is jumping back a little.) We did rent it to him a little while when we left on a trip. In the fireplace was his mail, and I picked up his royalty account for April, so and so and so. I looked at it. They had paid him that month six dollars, and he was fifty-eight cents overdrawn. That's the kind of royalties Ogden Nash was getting, at that time at least. So we go back to Maryland, and we want to buy a farm. We stay at the Arcadia Manor, a forty-five-room brick place. I have done an oil painting of it. It was one of the first major things I tackled, and it's crude. And the McKinneys lived there. He was the director of a bank and the assessor. They inherited this ground. But this manor in Frederick, Arcadia Manor, was built by an Englishman. He had brought all yellow brick over from England for ballast to build this home for his bride — she never came — a forty-five-room house. That's where we stayed and tried to buy a farm. So we'd go out and look, and you could buy--with a stone barn, a stone house, a stream running through, and forest — eighty acres or one hundred and sixty acres of wonderful ground, some of it white fenced. You could buy it for nine thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, so we bought three of them. In this way: "We'll take this one." The real estate man out of Frederick, Maryland, would say, "All right, I'll get in contact with the people." He would call up and say, "You know, that was sold four years ago." So we picked out another one. That happened three times. We're staying there the six months. I'm doing my traveling, and we're collecting antiques and having a great time, because we think we are going to get into the business. I find a fellow back there who would repair; he could take something to repair and do it there, so we wouldn't have to get it done out here. We stay there through Christinas. They serve tea on silver plate, just like the early days, at four o'clock. They have colored help, and, well, it was just living the old plantation life over.

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
JULY 16, 1965

BLAIR

My partner, George Cartlich, [was] the one that had been the advertising manager for Woolf's. I paid off [his debts] by selling his own used ads and paid [Woolf Brothers] five thousand dollars so he was free. He comes over with my company and we have our company of George Cartlich's newspaper ads syndicated and my magazine. It turned out that in not too long a time the printer, Mr. Ray Havens, decided (and I did, too) that the magazine was enough. So I sell out my interest to Cartlich; that is, I give him about five hundred dollars boot and he takes his work. Right at that time, he gets an idea to submit an advertisement to [William Randolph] Hearst publications. All Cartlich advertising was unusual. What he did, he did an ad, drew it crudely, of a big long table. Around it are sitting a bunch of wealthy-looking dollar-sign men, but one empty chair. There was United States Steel, and American Tel and Tel, and all the different things there sitting at this table, but one empty chair. The copy below simply said, "Wouldn't you like to sit at this table?" That was an advertisement to advertisers. He sent it to Hearst. Well, Hearst got ahold of that ad and told to whoever handled his personal affairs or his business affairs that way, "I don't know who did that, but get him and pay him twenty thousand dollars a year to come to New York." That's the kind of advertising Cartlich did. So George Cartlich, I told you, could buy a car and run it, and if it went bad — he hadn't paid down much — "Go and get the car"; he's through with it. Responsibility was not a part of him. He war really a genius, I think. Now, George goes back, and I have my own company — just the Tim magazine. And then I started a magazine for high-school youngsters called Style Coach. Mrs. Blair had started a girls' magazine that we could sell at the same time, done by a doll called Ruffles — a big rag doll. We had those dolls made, big ones (that could be put in the store window) and small ones. We had that part in our own business. Now, George goes back there. First thing he does is buy a castle. [laughter] Anyhow, it's a castle, and in it is a German room, an Iranian room, or whatever it is, and a French [room] — murals on the walls. No heat in it, apparently, but fireplaces. It gets cold up there, but it's not far from New York. And back there is a friend, Tony Balcom, an artist, a great big fellow with clumsy hands, but he did the finest little woodcuts and linoleum cuts. .This fellow was sent around the world free, paid by the government, to do travel sketches for the government, linoleum cuts. They were close friends, and had been for years. Tony one time came out to Woolf Brothers, and George and he were great pals. So now George buys this castle, and Tony Balcom is there. The first time I am back [East] with Mrs. Blair (in our advertising, we were separated), we go there. The basement is full of mud and water; the flues don't work too good; and they don't have any general heat. This is in the wintertime, and I remember we stayed there all night. The next morning, it was so cold I put my trousers on over my pajama pants and left the shirt part, the top part of the pajamas, on the bed. Well, after breakfast and all, there is commotion going around. They have a colored maid; they live like millionaires. The maids were making up the bed, and they found my pajama tops; they couldn't find the lower part. That was a big to-do. Of course, I am wearing them under my trousers to keep warm. Now Tony Balcom was very definite in his opinions, just like Cartlich. They clashed once in a while. So enmity almost came about. George explained it to me, and I'll tell you what it was. He said, "You know, Tony drives a little old open car with just a little bell like teachers would have on their desk, goes ting ting if you tap it." Instead of a horn or anything, he put that on. So Tony would ride aroung through Connecticut and those places, and tingle tingle. When they would pass each other going somewhere, why, George would wave and all that. He said, "After a little while, well, Tony would just tap the bell once and go on." George said, "You know, Tony and I are having problems." Then he said it got so bad he wouldn't tap the bell at all. If they passed each other on the street, he would just wave his hand. Now what happened was, Tony and his wife came over there to have dinner one night in this castle. They got to talking about the murals in the different rooms. Tony didn't like the German walls. So he said to George, "Well, let's get rid of that; let's paint it out and put something else on there." George said it was a pretty good idea, but nothing more was said. Finally, Tony got up from the dinner table and said, "Come on, George. Come on. Let's do that." George says, "What?" Tony says, "Let's go change that." Anyway Maude, George's wife, says, "Listen. This is our house. When we get ready to change that, we'll do it." That caused this split.. Now in the meantime, I get a letter from Cartlich, after we get back to Kansas City, saying, "We have opened a place. a restaurant. It isn't going too good." Remember further back, he said when we came out here in '26, the first time, it was to find a nice English place where he could [open a restaurant]. Well, he went into one of those places over there. I don't know how he got out of the castle or whether he did or not — I know he couldn't have paid down a lot. Anyway, here's what the telegram says: "We have opened this restaurant, and it's fun and all that, but we are not making a living out of it. You know, when you paid me the boot," (five hundred or, I forget, maybe a thousand dollars in buying his part of the advertising company) "you know, you just paid it out like we said. But I didn't charge you any interest. I know there was no interest charge, but after all, you were about a year paying it out and there might have been a certain amount of interest. All we have that we can eat ourselves now is a can of dog food. Would you send me any interest?" Well, I sent George a hundred dollars. [tape recorder turned off] What happened really, after all these experiences, George came back to Woolf Brothers and was in Kansas City and in the role as usual. Now I don't know where we were exactly. Oh, yes, we were in Maryland staying at the Arcadia Manor. My wife and daughter, Sazz, went out for a ride, came back home, and she says, "Let's go back to California." We'd tried to buy a farm, but they had all been sold, and the real estate man didn't know it. We came back out. In the meantime we had rented our house, I think, to Ogden Nash, but I mentioned that before. I think I mentioned the fact that some mail was in the fireplace when we came back. His royalty statement for the month was six seventy-two or something like that--overdrawn by fifty-seven cents. Well, part of that time the curator of the Los Angeles County Museum, Gregory Norman Wilcox, and his wife stayed there. We were back to Canyon View, and we decide that the children are in school and we don't need that big house. I remember that Olsen of Olsen and Johnson used to bring his party down, with food and everything, to knock at the door to have his party in our big Pilgrim house, which was fun. The Depression comes along again. This is '32. It dragged along and dragged along. We have three friends: Harold Knudtsen, Edgar Cohen, and a fellow. Chuck Moyle, from Kansas City who invented something and had a machine company. He invented something that had to do with brakes on railroad trains; he was pretty well fixed. He had come out and bought a little ranch, an orange ranch down in San Diego County. They are afraid that there is never going to be prosperity. Well, luckily, in advertising I am doing all right. Now these people are all pretty well fixed. So we find a ranch, five hundred acres in San Diego County up on at Lakeside — five hundred acres, trails through it; you can see the ocean almost. It is twenty-five miles from the ocean, and on a clear day, you can see Catalina Island. We decide to buy this ranch. We can get it for nine thousand dollars. It had a swimming pool, a Spanish stucco house, and it had three cottages on it. The old Butter field stage-coach used to go from San Diego up to Riverside and climb this mountain back and forth going through this ranch. There is a big oak tree there, an enormous tree, where they would camp that night, the first night out of San Diego. There was a little cottage there; I guess maybe it might have been used for a dining room--we don't know. Anyway, we all buy that. We name it "No De Venta," which Tom LaMadrid, the Spanish blacksmith down at Lakeside, said meant "not for sale." We sign up that this would be owned by the four of us. Seventy-five or a hundred acres was tillable, and [there was] a spring, a little stream. You could make your living if you had to. And I mean people thought [the Depression] was that serious. So we buy it. Now, the rest of them go about on their business. Well, we can live anywhere; I am a traveler. So we make an agreement that we shall stay there and develop the ranch. Any money we spend, each will kick in 25 percent. We're going to get our free rent there, of course? we're managing the thing. So we get horses; we get some cattle; we get some pigs. That's on our own; there was no bill for that, building fences and doing things like that. Getting the road fixed better — it was about a mile and a half, from Lakeside up a canyon, and then a first-gear road for the last mile up to this ranch, but beautiful when you got there. Anyway, we go ahead wholeheartedly on that thing. We raise oathay; we had a wonderful crop of oats. We get a fellow and his wife we found down (they were about starving) in Lakeside from South Dakota to come up and live in one of these houses, help in the farming, and do whatever they could. Julius Anderson and his wife. When we found Julius down there, he had been trying to spade ground, but they had nothing. The Depression was terrible. A spade, you know, is about twelve inches deep. Without a plow or anything, he had spaded and spaded to raise stuff for them to eat, because you raised things year-round, almost. The spade wasn't over five inches or six inches long. He had worn that much off the spade. Julius had no fear; he was a cowboy. He told us many things about South Dakota. [He told] about trying to pull a heifer out of a mud pond where it got dry-stuck. He roped the, heifer and he was on the horse to pull. The [heifer] made a lunge and pulled him off of the horse. He fell into the imud with the heifer on top of him. He had many wild stories. Anyway, we locate there. We have a pump put in, and a big water tank. We have a spring, a little spring well that we know can be expanded. There's a man says he's a water witch. This water witch builds wells and does a little mining. He comes up there, takes his witch and goes there. He says the water that runs into the hill spring [comes from] a vein here and a vein there. So he has a way to go down for it and drill at right angles to reach that. And do you know, water gushed in from all three of those places where he said the water came in. [tape recorder turned off] We put in an electric pump for the tank we have. We had to put up two hundred dollars to get a telephone put in there; there was no telephone. And then the agreement was that with somebody else hooked on to it we could get a proportionate refund. That's the way they do. We had these cattle, and they said there was enough [grazing] without feeding to run fifty head of cattle. Well, we didn't try that many; we got about ten. By the way, milking was something. We got another fellow at a certain time. We were there, I guess, a couple of years. But you know, these fellows that I hired had cramped hands; they couldn't milk. So I did it when I was there, or Camilla did it all the time. Down below, you could see green pasture — alfalfa. Our cattle could go over the cliffs and look down and see that. Every now and then, the phone would ring, and this fellow would say, "Your cattle are in my alfalfa." Now they had five hundred acres to run in, but they liked the green stuff, So we got rid of the cattle except the milk cows. We kept the thing going so we'd have food for everybody. I had raised sweet potato plants in Kansas, but to raise a lot of them [was another matter]. I didn't know [that unless] everything was fenced in, the rabbits would eat the sweet potato plants. We decided it was rich soil right along the little stream. We get a thousand sweet potato plants and we have a little party. People come up, and we set in sweet potato plants. The ranchers all said, "No, nothing will bother to eat sweet potato plants." Well, we put those in one night (it isn't fenced yet), and the next morning they are beginning to stand up a little. In another day or so, they are standing up and growing. So I go down the second morning to see how it was. There was not a sweet potato plant anywhere — the rabbits had a feast. You could just see little sprigs; they had eaten everything off. Now, the house gets on fire someway — we don't know how. Julius and I get the hose. We didn't have sense; we turned the hose on first to get up on top of this house, and that's hard to handle. The fire is burning in the roof, and we're pretty sure we can get it out. We found out you get your hose up there, and then you turn the water on. But you let a high-pressure hose run, and it's pretty hard to hold, climb a ladder, and get it where you want. The damage to the house was about three or four hundred dollars. None of the other people paid anything on this, but we didn't complain on that, of course. I'm not sure that the insurance covered it. I don't remember any insurance, but we must have had insurance. An association of Lakeside has a rodeo about two miles or three down from our ranch — that's about twenty miles east of San Diego. I join the sheriff's posse. I guess we were approaching the time when the Second World War is coming along, although not close — there were just rumblings. We have horses. When we bought horses first, we just thought a horse was a horse, in a way. Charlie Andrews would buy and sell horses. He was part artist and a little rancher. We bought four or five horses from Charlie, I expect twenty to twenty-five dollars apiece. We would ride. Then, I got a pretty good horse called Lucky from a rancher. This horse had never been off of a ranch. He was quick. when he was on a ranch, but afraid of anything man had moved. If you'd ride him along a road, and a rock had been moved. he'd shy at it. To him, nature was nature; he had never been on a road. But Lucky was a good cow horse — which didn't mean a lot to me; I wasn't any cowboy. But I am invited to join the sheriff's posse. Now, the sheriff's posse of San Diego County had a lot of silver-saddle people and fine horses. I don't join yet, but I am interested in getting to ride like a cowboy. So I have old Lucky to ride, and Mrs. Blair has a horse she rides. The rodeo time is coming up. They always have wild horses — never had a rope on them — on an Indian reservation up around Warner Hot Springs; so a bunch of us go up there. We ride our horses thirty miles or more and take trailers. Bill Koehner is the head of the rodeo riding field. Tom LaMadrid, I think, was the president. Bill Koehner was a fellow I don't know how old, but he said he was born on a horse. He had a little Indian in him. But anyway. Bill Koehner was a real old-time Mormon cowboy. He was an adventurer and an explorer. He knew every spring and road between San Diego and Riverside, California, every trail. We go up to the Indian reservation on horses and camp out. I think Bill Koehner was the manager of this hunt to get horses. You'd have to catch them and rope them. So he would have Mrs. Blair (I think my daughter went along, too) stationed there, because the wild horses won't go where there is a rider on a regular horse. So they put us where.they could chase and find them when they got a bunch of them rounded up. We would be kind of blocks for it. We found some tracks of wild horses, and Bill Koehner says, "How about that? Old burra is a-leadin' those." Wild horses would follow a little old wild burro. That was the leader; he wouldn't be any bigger, maybe, than a great big dog. And he said, "These tracks are about eight hours old." All right, we follow, we follow. We have lunch and we stop a little. We did camp at night in the woods, of course. That day, we didn't get caught up with these [wild horses], but we know where we are going to start next. We come back to camp. Indians are around in there. We all sleep out. Mrs. Blair and some of them cook hotcakes and things like that for fun. The first night, we would see a head sticking up behind a tree — Indians. Well, these Indians, they are curious. One of them might have a straw hat on him that somebody gave. Just on the reservation up there. By the way, the government had given them money to build houses, instead of living in a hogan. Well, they did. The Indians built these wood places and put the cows in there, and they still stayed in their wigwams, so to speak. Well, these Indians are looking out behind trees. We always cooked enough for them; they would come in and eat. The next day again, we are out on this trail. Bill says we are getting closer; they are slowing down and not moving very fast. We ought to reach them today. We came out onto a cliff, and we looked down five or six hundred feet to a little green plot. And there is the old burro and wild horses. So he tells us all what to do to block them. We want to get them back through camp if we can, near the place where we're going to load them. We're stationed, and they start running after the burro, and they come through the camp. One cowboy roped a wild horse that went through where we'd camped. The rest of them get on by, and they get into uncut brush — trees. Bill Koehner and the rest of us were there. He stations us now: we're in this little woods of brush. That Bill Koehner goes in there — I saw it with my own eyes — and he throws a figure-eight rope on a wild horse, in the brush, and catches it, two front feet and the two hind feet in the figure-eight at once. That was what Bill Koehner did. And that was nothing to him. We get about four or five, maybe six horses on the whole. Then you have to buy them from the Indians. Well, they wanted eight or ten dollars apiece. Some big stallion, a real high-class stallion, had gotten into that area in the earlier days of the breeding. These horses, you might call Indian ponies or whatever, but they were bigger than that. Anyway, they were a good breed. So we had to buy them. Well, the association bought these horses, I think, at ten dollars apiece from one Indian. We're about ready to go, and then another Indian comes. It seems that three Indians owned these horses, so we had to pay ten dollars apiece to three Indians to get them. We loaded them up in trailers and took them on back for the rodeo. [tape recorder turned off] During this period up there, I had been collecting and having antiques stored in the East, and I decided (not knowing any better) to ship everything by boat; they said the freight was cheaper. They had a man crate them, and we shipped them. They came out by boat and landed at San Diego. We ordered a delivery made by a fellow who had a big truck. One day up the hill, here comes a forty-foot trailer truck. Forty feet long is a long thing, but he made it. Stacked to the heavens, almost, with crates of furniture. So it comes, and we store it around in these different little cottages, one cottage one place and one another. We have it, but people find us, and they come up there — dealers from Los Angeles — to buy this stuff. We are more and more getting into the antique business. Now to make things a little bit brief, business is getting a little better. The other fellows, one of [the co-owners] of No De Venta decided, "I don't think I want mine." Well, we had spent money, our own money, and we expected to stick it out, to stay there. Of course we could travel in and out of there in the antique business, but we didn't know if we were going to be in that. But the other fellows wanted to get out; so finally we decided to sell. We sold the ranch with improvements, electric pump and all this — remember, we had paid altogether twelve thousand dollars — we sold it with new improvements for twenty thousand dollars. Well, we had invested at least a thousand dollars there improving the ranch; that had nothing to do with our living. I, assuming close friends — friends, they are goddam great, aren't they? They are all right when a dollar isn't there. So they say, "Well, you raised seven hundred dollars worth of oathay." None of them did; they didn't want it. Anyway, they want to get out, and for once I take a stand. I say, "Yes, where is the oathay? It's in a shed we built and spent that much on down there. It's being used to keep cattle and things going so that if you did have to hole in here to make your living, you would have something." Well, things are different, and they are not afraid. Well, anyway, I hold out that we had paid twelve thousand dollars, and we had spent a thousand. I want that thousand back. There are some things there, why, we can get twenty thousand. The real estate man says, "I know a buyer for this place if you've done what you said." He came up there to see if we did, and he called a man in Los Angeles and sold it for twenty thousand — got us twenty thousand in ten days. We had spent the thousand dollars; they had not kicked in. Sure, we raised oathay, but where was it? We had fed some of it; and [besides], you couldn't get seven hundred dollars for that hay. Somebody would have to buy it, and somebody would have to haul it. Anyway, for once, I just stood up; so I said, "All right, we just don't sell." "Oh, no, we want to sell." So they drew up a paper of escrow, and we all had to sign it. In that, one thousand dollars would be allotted to me, and the profit of twelve to twenty, left nine thousand [sic] to be divided equally amongst the four. Well, one of the four signed under protest. That was the last, and we are good friends since. But it was one of those experiences of community property. So what will we do? We hear that down in El Cajon, there's a place — forty acres, right in El Cajon city limits almost (that's just twenty miles.east of San Diego). Here is the most level, beautiful forty acres. The back end of it is a mountain that goes up, not too high but right straight up, and the fence is at the top of this mountain. There is a spring there called El Granite Spring. Indians, we found out, used to go there and fight to get control of that spring; it was supposed to be mineral water. We had it analyzed, and it had twelve different minerals in it. Big trees in the back and level. So we find out it's for sale. It's owned by a wealthy woman in San Diego. Mind you the Depression is still on for most people. This real estate man, an old-timer in El Cajon, says, "I got the place for you." He shows us a house, and it's twenty-five feet by sixty feet, but it's down in the mud. In there were chickens and an Okie family living. We said, "What is the price for the whole forty acres and that [house]?" He said, "Six thousand dollars." Well, we said, "We'll buy it." He says, "I've tried to sell this for this woman, and that's the best offer we've had. She's wealthy and lives in town." He got on the phone right while we were there in his real estate office, and he said, "I have an offer of six thousand dollars for this forty acres — the spring and the house, whatever is there. Will you take that?" I don't know what she said, but pretty soon he said, "If you don't take this offer, you get yourself another boy. I'm through with you." Well, she took it. We buy this for six thousand dollars. We have it fenced, whitewash fences. We take the spring, and I have it cleaned up. It was running the year around; it never" went dry around there. It's desert around there, twenty-miles from San Diego, [but we could] irrigate. We build a barn, with stalls, I think six stalls. We learn something: that it costs just as much to feed a cheap horse as a good horse. We sold our horses. There is a man up in Alpine, San Diego County, going to get some Morgan horses from Illinois, the old, genuine thoroughbred — not thoroughbred; but one vertebrae short. The Morgan horse is America's own horse. It can pull more for its weight than any horse that ever lived, can travel everywhere, can plow, can trot; it's a buggy horse. The Morgan was America's eastern horse. There were voliomes just on Morgans, by the way, and we got to studying. We got a volume for fifty dollars, the history from the first Justin Morgan clear up to the present time. This fellow is going to bring it. We say, "All right, get us two." The price is arranged; he gets them; and we get two Morgans. Their names are in the books, and they were bred where he got them. Jumping way ahead, we were raising these Morgans, and then one of them throws a foal. We name it El Granito after the springs. He turns out to be a light mane and tail and a beautiful bay. I remember they were having an international horse show at that time over in San Diego. What's that island you cross? Coronado. We took this young El Granito over there — a yearling by the way — and he got first prize in an international horse show. Now where are we? Let's get back to the ranch. The spring is fixed up; we build barns; we have some cows; and we fence the back. Everybody says, "You're going to burn the house, aren't you? It's down in the mud." We found out that at one time there had been a dam somewhere up a little canyon, just above this spring that had broken, and that it had come down and washed the mud down. The house was down in the mud at least a foot, but as we found it, people were still living there. Well, a Mexican comes along and hears we are going to reclaim this ranch. There is a cottage over by the spring, and I could live in it today and love it. We fixed it up, and this Mexican said he wanted a job and he wanted to work; he'd do anything we wanted. And I said, "How much?" He said, "Thirty dollars a_ month." I said, "Well, how many in your family?" He said, "Me and five boys." So they come. His name is Larry. Now about raising the house. I get some house movers, and they come. They agreed to raise the house, put a foundation under it for so much money (you would be surprised for how little in those days; remember, the Depression is still on). They raise the house, and they are ready to let it down; but he says, "We won't let it down." "You won't? Why?" He says, "We can't. Those are hand-hewn beams under there. They are not regular timbers. How are you going to get them to hit here and miss there?" Well, I said, "If I do all of that and you let it down, what's the bill?" Well, he took off [something], I think. He was going to put the foundation in, all right. But when it hit, and there was [no] support in the middle, that was what was bugging him. Hand-hewn, irregular beams. But anyway, he made a price; and I said, "All right, I think I can work it, so you can just let it down at my risk." By the way, there was a fireplace in there. This fireplace must have been built where there was cement, because there was a bunch of rock that came up with the fireplace when they raised this house. The fireplace was in a wall, the big kitchen was on one side of this fireplace, and the living room was on the other side. There were two or three bedrooms. I get under there, and I measure. First I set cement blocks that won't touch any of the beams, all underneath. Then I measure each cement block till it hits the hand-hewn beam and give each a number. Then I get a fellow, and we get railroad ties. They had torn up a railroad that runs out of San Diego; it goes through eight tunnels. It is out of business today; it was called the Arizona-San Diego or something like that. So I get blocks of wood. If there were four inches between my cement and all, we are going to have to let it down so much; I had run these cement blocks that near. Well, maybe we need only an inch-and-a-half block, but over here, number sixteen, we need a two-inch block, maybe here a three [-inch block]. I suppose there were fifty or sixty of those. So I take and get them all cut, and I put them in there. They have got the foundation in. I call; they come and let it down; and there is only one place that hits wrong.That is a corner they got too high in their foundation. [tape recorder turned off] Of course, when we left Canyon View, we hated to go; but we rented it again to the curator of the Los Angeles County Museum [of Art]. So we came up once in a while. Then a camerman from [Twentieth Century-] Fox [rented the house] — if I can only think of his name. They had gotten back from England, where they were doing a picture. He said they were over there doing this picture, and they had it all done but one scene. They wanted a. certain scene in the afternoon, but the sun didn't come out in London until about four o'clock. It was dingy, he said, and they kept them there two weeks for one sunny shot so they could come home. He had his family over there during this period for Fox. So they'd go out every day — all their extras and all their equipment. The sun might come out, if at all, around four o'clock or three-thirty. One day, they got all set, and when the sun comes out — now this is the truth — they said, "Teatime." Everybody stopped, and they had tea, not the shot. They didn't need [even] a ten-minute shot, and they had tea. He came back disgusted with England. Now those people are in our house to sell it. We had gone down to San Diego County, and they are living there, paying a reasonable rent. We're up one day to spend a little time. (Now mind you, this is before we go to El Cajon and the other ranch.) So we are up one day, and a woman comes in while we are there to look at the house. She has on dark glasses and looks kind of Hollywood-like. She goes through the house, so we don't enter; this fellow is selling. We are going to give him a little commission. He is living there and paying a little rent, but we are going to give him a gift if he sells it. We had in the house, I think, a total — with all the six fireplaces, baths and everything, built with Scotty.and Joe—around twelve thousand dollars, maybe sixteen thousand dollars in the house. The bank wouldn't loan a dime on it, because it wasn't according to Hoyle. It wasn't just one of those -things. We were getting along all right, [although] we -would like to have borrowed a sum and maybe done some other -things but we didn't. Well, this woman comes to look at the house. Here's -the salesmanship this guy has. The woman says, "Sure dark In here, isn't it?" "Oh, yes, it's very dark here." She says, "These floors, they are rough aren't they?" "Oh, yes, the floors are rough." He'd agree to everything she said; he didn't try to sell a thing. We think, "Well, why doesn't he try to sell her something?" He says, "Why, really, it is so dark. Those bricks are laid a little wrong; and even in the entrance hall, they are kind of hard to walk on." "Oh, no." "Yes," he says, "they are. You've got to watch your step." She goes away, and she comes back in about an hour, and we are there. She says, "You know, I had my dark glasses on. It isn't so dark in here, is it?" He says, "No, it isn't so dark." She says, "Well, after all, those bricks there — they are not so rough." And he says, "No, they're not so rough." She bought the house. Now she was a Karl of Karl Shoe Company, if I'm not mistaken. They have shoe stores. I could be wrong on that name. Anyway, they haven't the money to pay much. I tell you, things were still pretty tight. But we're out at No De Venta, and luckily we're in the advertising yet; I hadn't gotten rid of that. And we are selling antiques. I don't know why; somebody has money. So they take the house; we are free.from that; then we are down to our big ranch; and now we are back to El Cajon again. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

This is just a little review for the sake of sequence. Now, you had the house here in Beverly Hills...

BLAIR

... West Los Angeles, yes. About where we are now.

SCHIPPERS

Then you went back East, and you tried to buy some farms.

BLAIR

In Maryland.

SCHIPPERS

That's right, and they wouldn't....

BLAIR

They were all sold.

SCHIPPERS

Right. Then you came back to California, and you got the ranch.

BLAIR

No, we came back to our house here that we had rented to Wilcox and Ogden Nash while we were gone. We thought we were going to move back there and sell.

SCHIPPERS

Then you went down and got the ranch.

BLAIR

The first one, No De Venta.

SCHIPPERS

It was during that time that you sold the house here in Beverly Hills, and then you got the ranch down at El Cajon. All right. There is one thing we are missing. This is the story of when you left Maryland and why you came back to California.

BLAIR

I tell you, it was so wonderful. We were living in this forty-five-room manor house, Arcadia Manor, with the tea service in the afternoon. I was traveling in and out of there (that's the beauty of [advertising]; we could live anywhere, and that's why we went back there). Most of our accounts were in the East, of course — more population. Well, they have horses there. We had only gone there that summer or early fall. We had Christmas there. Snow. By the way, one of the McKinneys was the assessor. When he found out we were interested in antiques, he said, "My goodness, I've got a chance to go into the action. I've learned some." We bought a lot where he spotted things. (I'll still answer your question.) Here's what could happen. There was Stiegel glass and another glass; the name slips me right now, but [it was] American. [Henry William] Stiegel came over from Germany and started his glass factory in the 1700s. The truth of it is, he started iron first. He was making iron stove backs, fireplace backs that had designs on them. Stiegel glass was what he was famous for — the finest. And Amelung is what I am after. Amelung glass was an American product made just a few miles from Frederick. So we heard about it; we go over there. They had just plowed up some ground. We got many pieces, broken pieces of the earliest blown glass in America, Amelung. Then we would go around to country sales and bid and get things, to have them stored — eventually, mind you, to be shipped out in that big bunch of stuff later that came by boat and was hauled up to the ranch. I'll answer right here why we came back during this period of antiquing and my advertising business there. My wife and daughter went out for a horseback ride in March. The wind came up and they froze so, they got back and said, "What are we staying here for?" And we came back to California. That's why we came back, and that was the only reason. We still had the house out here, so that's when we came back and thought we would stay there. Then the ranch deal came up later. Now, about the Amelung glass and the adventure and romance in the antiquing. I'm talking to a fellow at a country sale. He was what you call a picker; he just went around and found things. I said, "How are things going?" He says, "Oh, I had a wonderful deal. An old woman lived by herself. And up in the attic, she had a bell, a glass bell about eight inches across, that I knew was Amelung. She had it tied there hanging from the ceiling, but she wouldn't sell it." So he said, "I have been going back there about two or three weeks to get her to sell that Amelung bell. I didn't tell her it was Amelung (I was very sure she didn't know Amelung) ; it was just a bell, just a keepsake. Finally," he says, "I sold her." I said, "What did you do?" He said, "She had it hung there with binding twine. I told her that as the years go by, binding twine gets weaker, and someday it's going to break and smash and you won't have any bell." He said, "I made a good buy, but I paid her plenty. I paid her twenty-five dollars for that bell. Did I clean up! Boy, you know what I did?" I said, "What?" "I went down to Baltimore, and I sold it for a hundred dollars." Amelung bell. That was great. Well, I met the same fellow at another sale a couple of weeks later. I said, "How's business?" He says, "Oh, I feel so bad." I said, "What do you mean? I thought you felt so good." He said, "That bell." I said, "No, you were happy." He said, "No, no. That fellow got five hundred dollars for it." [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

Right. Now, these are experiences that you had down at El Cajon.

BLAIR

Yes, I had it down there. Mind you, I am still in the advertising business. I have a fellow working for me by the name of Samson, and he is a sharp salesman. He is really very talented. He told me of something that I never knew existed. He said in New York on Sundays he and some other businessmen would go out and paint together as a hobby. He called them Sunday painters. That was a new thing to me. jZa though I was in advertising, I bought anything that I 4ised. I didn't do any painting. * Well, this Samson Diamond: I don't hold anything against anybody, but he was so clever that he hurt himself. Uow, I had my Tim trademark; I had the accounts; I am free. Harold Knudtsen had gone with Donne Lee Dress Company. Samson Diamond and I were the two, we had our accounts, and we had to keep them going. Well, he had a peculiar idea. Everything I had was copyrighted, but I discovered that in a store in Toledo somewhere he got the idea of putting Tim's picture on something. I don't know what; maybe it was a necktie. I don't care what; we weren't into merchandising. Now, I had shirts with Tim's picture on them, and sweat-shirts for boys, and we had Tim's official this and that. We didn't get royalties off of it, but it gave merchandise to our accounts that nobody else could have. The boys could wear them through town, and that was part of our service. I discovered that he sold this Toledo store the idea of getting fifty or a hundred dozen and put the Tim label in it. He was doing that as his business, and getting royalties from the manufacturer. It didn't amount to a lot. Well, we had that out and went ahead. So, here we decide, why travel so much? I have accounts going along: Desmond's out here, maybe in their twelfth year. Why not be in the antique business? You just get a carload in, and you can almost sell it immediately, double and triple your money. I worked on the basis of markup, that if I spent five thousand dollars for a carload, I would figure five thousand dollars for freight, for refinishing, for anything, and five thousand dollars net. It worked out that way. Now mind you, we are not really in the business. So we say this house is wonderful, and we are going to build an antique shop adjoining this house and make it an L. Now, we have good tiles; we have the Morgan horses; and by the way, [we have] grapes. The oldest grapevines on this El Cajon ranch were there. The oldest lemon trees in California were there, and the lemons — would you believe it? four or five trees — were bigger than a baseball. And I mean bigger than a baseball that country boys would make out of binding twine. Great big lemons; you couldn't believe it. And then there were these pomegranates, the Bible [fruit]. This was one of the oldest ranches in the state of California. The spring we had done over,; we piped water down to the house, underground. We built.this barn. We want more water than the spring — that's drinking water — [can supply]. It runs all the time, so many gallons a day, and all of that. But there is a well right next to the barn. We get the same man that had the witch-stick ability to come in, and he swept near this well so we could irrigate this whole, forty acres with a pressure pump just like we had done some up above (which was not irrigation, but having water). He comes with his witch stick. Now, this is funny. Oh, by the way, first we built the adobe room. It runs out to the east from the end of the house, and it's twenty-five by sixty feet. So we find out we can buy adobe brick from Mexico. We have them hauled up very cheap. You'd be surprised. They'd make them down there and bring them up. We figure how many bricks will do a room twenty-five feet wide with a big fireplace in the end — brick-lined adobe, of course — and sixty feet long. They deliver the brick. So Camille and I decide we will lay those adobe bricks ourselves; I'm not traveling very much. Diamond is servicing and going around, and such and such. We find out what they use for mortar. Well, they use adobe soil mixed with water. We got some fellow that knew, and right on that ranch, just above the place of the mountain, here's an outbreak of the kind of clay they use to make adobe brick. You just can't make it out of dirt. So we got some pointers, and we mix it up, and it's fun; we don't have anything else to do. We lay beautifully smooth, but [it took us] a long time, three layers of bricks, sixty feet up, across the end, [and back]. Where it joins onto the house, we are going to have carpenters do that. In fact, it touches [the house], but there's no door between in the back. And we find out we're foolish [to lay it ourselves]. We hear of a Mexican that lays adobe brick. Now mind you, we have done a beautiful job, we think — smooth. We get him, and it's the bad wolf story. The little fellow was a picture of the brickmason they had in that picture [about] the big bad wolf. He would be standing up, you know, and building the chimney. He was short and chubby. We let him stay there somewhere on the place, and he's going to lay it. Well, he brings along a helper and they mix up the adobe. So here's what happens: he has one fellow hand him the brick, and he has this mud mortar made with the adobe liquid. We call it... what's the name for it?

SCHIPPERS

Mud.

BLAIR

Mud. Now, that's a good word. That's exactly what it is. They'd hand him a big brick. He'd put it down, wiggle it around, and the corners stuck out. We thought, "Oh, God, what..." He goes on and on, just as fast. He does it, and that's a beautiful thing. Symmetry and everything — but rough. When he dropped his adobe — he knew it was going to be plastered inside — brick, that's it. But the overall picture is handwork, and it's beautiful. Our smooth three layers below looked awful; so we planted shrubs around to hide it. The fireplace is great. Here are these grapevines, the oldest in California. They are the muscatel [variety]. They were the early ones. Some of the grapevines at the bottom had been trimmed every year; they were six inches through. We got a fellow that knew about grapes. You have to trim them every year and leave just the branches you want to bear, or else they will grow into a bush and you won't have any grapes. We found sweet potatoes there that these Okies had planted that weighed five pounds. They went off and left them. The Depression is on, remember. We plant alfalfa. Now, the water witch. Here is this well, and he comes around there, and he says, "I'm going to find out if there aren't some veins that feed that well like I did up above." I said, "Fine." He starts in close to the house and he goes in a straight line that leads right up to the spring. He says, "Say, this I don't understand. This is a wonderful vein." Do you know what he did? Now, he didn't know this. We had laid a pipe about a foot underground for drinking water from the spring into the house. This water-witch guy followed that. He didn't know; he thought it was a vein. He followed that pipe full of water underneath the spring. We said, "Listen, fellow, you haven't found any vein. We have a pipe of water there." Now I saw the stick break in his hands, Yup. Well, he says, "I've got to get away from this place." And he goes over, and he starts. He says, "Oh, there's a big bunch of water coming in over there. Oh, that's a good one. I've got to drill slants, you know." And I said, "Now, just a minute here. We've got a friend who would like to come down here and buy some ground for investment next to us. While you're here, let's go over; there's forty acres adjoining ours, no building or anything, because this fellow would like to come down and buy it for a kind of investment." He is a friend of one of the four that bought No De Venta. He goes over there, goes through the fence, goes around, and he says, "Right here. Dig a well here." All right. We tell this fellow, he comes down, and he says, "You mean you think there will be water here? That's all I want; I'll buy it." Whatever the price was, he was stealing it, of course. It was forty acres, smooth, and a mountain going right up behind. Anyway, he buys it. (We'll jump ahead.) He has a man come and drill, and he strikes a wonderful well of water. Now, about the branches going out from our well near our barn. He drills into those, and we get fifty gallons a minute out of that well, continuous pumping. We get a good circular pump, and we have a pump man put it in. We could turn it on and throw water, continuously water the forty acres, I guess all in alfalfa outside of one plot. (We have about thirty acres in alfalfa.) You could cut three crops or four crops if you got water. We have our white fences around; and by the way, Larry was to build these fences, so I buy railroad ties (they tore up this old railroad). The fences are in below. We want the fence across the back, and we want a fence up the mountain a ways to our line across, and back down again. I didn't want Larry to work so hard, so I get a tractor guy to come. You can buy anything for a dollar in those days. I am pretty lucky. People would do [a lot], but you could also buy a lot for a dollar, so they weren't so bad. Now, these railroad ties are there. We are going to make fenceposts out of those railroad ties. The rest of it was done, white boards painted up in the back pasture. The cows were running up there, but there was [a need for] a fence there. Larry is going to build this fence right behind our house, at the foot of the mountain, just about six or eight feet from the end of our house before it starts up the mountain. That's the backyard. And the back [pasture] is going to be all fenced [also]. So I get a tractor, and I get these railroad ties hauled up to the top of our line, so he wouldn't have to carry them up where he's going to set them across. Then I have [another] pile for these behind the house, going over to the barn. We go away for about a week for some reason, come back; and the fence is up behind the house, but there are all the railroad ties! I said, "Larry, you had the boards and everything?" "Yes, you're all fenced in, but you passed your amount." I said, "Larry, where did you get the posts? The railroad ties were across the back of the forty acres." Well, he says, "Up on the mountain." "What?" "Yes, up on the mountain." I said, "You mean you used the posts I had up there so you wouldn't have to carry them up, down here?" He said yes. I said, "I had them hauled up there so you wouldn't have to work so hard." He said, "Easy. Downhill." There were no posts up there; the posts were down here. That was Larry. [tape recorder turned off] We finally got it fenced. We have our horses running in the pasture and a milk cow. With all these grapes, I decide to make wine. By the way, there were olive trees there, on this ranch. I know about olive oil, of course. Well, there's a group that makes olive oil, and what they do-.-they gp out and pay you so much for your olives, knock them off the trees, and so many pounds of olives means so much money; or they will give it to you in olive oil. Well, these olive trees, some of them were right next to the adobe building we made where we had antiques. We were refinishing and doing things, and I was practically not traveling. Samson Diamond [was] doing it. They came in and knocked [the olives] off with cane poles and canvas underneath. They gave us eight gallons of olive oil in payment for the olives they took off our olive trees. And then about curing olives: I think, "Why don't we cure some?" They didn't take them all. I find out you do this: you put them in lye water, plain strong lye water; so much lye to so much water in jars. Watch them for a day or so. Whenever they turn brown a little bit under the skin, cut one, and if the thickness of a dime is still white around the seed, take them out of the lye water, rinse them and rinse them; and what's in there will finish on into the seed. And they are cured. Well, we did that. Then I must not forget this. Up on the upper ranch, there was an orchard of apples. We were shipping in fifty-gallon copper kettles and different things from Pennsylvania--big, wonderful copper kettles; they boiled their water in [them], did their washing, and made apple butter. There was an orchard up there of apples, Gravensteins, the best apple that grows in California. The poor things didn't have any water, but there was a windmill there that wouldn't run; so we reclaimed that and irrigated those trees. When we were up there, we had wonderful Gravenstein apples. We could bring them down to the grocery store and trade them for sugar or anything. So, being antique-minded, we think how much fun [it would be] to make apple butter. At the Maryland manor, we saw them make apple butter. What they do [is] : the women meet and peel and quarter them; and they get what looks like a ton of peeled apples. Then they start the next morning with cider, fill it with cider; put the apples in, so much sugar, so much cinnamon, so much what; and stir for ten hours constantly. Well, I had found these things you stir with back there, a long-handled thing so you can get away from the fire, and a scoop type of a paddle, with holes through it so the apple butter juice can run through there and around. And there is a certain motion. All right. We get some neighbors when we are up at the other ranch. They meet all day, and we have fun and make coffee and peel apples. We are going to furnish the apples, and we are going to give them some apple butter. We know what to do. We build a fire, and we keep the fire going. The next morning, they come back. We have cider; so we put so much cider to so many apples, so much sugar, and so much spices. And start stirring. You stir around and cross, around and cross. That way, with the paddle, nothing can burn on the bottom of the kettle. But you've got to keep it going for ten hours. You put more apples in as fast as it works down, more apples all day long. Well, that day, by about ten o'clock at night, we had two kettles going. We changed with the stirring; and we had, I suppose, about forty gallons, when it was all boiled down, of apple butter. They brought their fruit jars, and everybody took home apple butter just like they did in the Pilgrim century. I decided to make wine. I get the proper jars and find out we could take these muscatel grapes, and they are almost ready to bottle. Right behind the house (there is only six or eight feet, and here is the fence and the cow pasture), I put these jars back there, a little bit in the shade. Here I have about a twenty-gallon jar of wine foaming, almost ready. I go out there one day right after that and I see the old cow running up the side of the mountain kicking up her heels. What had happened? She had reached through this board fence and drank a gallon or two of that wine. She was drunk. Now it isn't long before the Second World War and the sheriff's posse comes up next in the story with El Cajon. We have our lemons and all these things, alfalfa, and run.ning irrigation. I am raising onions; they are wonderful. Spanish onions: sow them; transplant one every six inches; and we sold onions at five cents a pound growing in that rich soil. And if you don't think that isn't fun living.. If you could make your living that way, I would do it again today.

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
JULY 23, 1965

BLAIR

The activities of the El Cajon ranch — the one that had the grapes and the oldest lemon trees in California, and where we had the adobe room built by the Mexican — that was the period in which I belonged to the sheriff's possee, mostly a social thing or a parade outfit. During that period, we developed an ownership of so many horses, around six or eight, including our Morgans, which we had shipped from Illinois. The antique business was really very profitable. I think I shipped my first full freight carload about that time; in fact, I know it was at El Cajon. What to do with it to store it? We had a barn, and we had an adobe room to put finished things, or some in the rough. People were coming down from Los Angeles, and we could sell a carload, almost before we would get them refinished, to dealers up in Los Angeles. But chairs — chairs take so much room. So we put up big spikes all through the barn and hung chairs over the horses' heads. Now horses are just like dogs. You take my dog now. If it is four o'clock and she sits in front of you, it means it's time to eat. These horses with good pasture would come to the gate down the hill and stand at four o'clock. It was time to come in and get in the barn. A little bit later, the cow would come down; that was time for her to be, fed (she's the one that got drunk on wine through the fence) and to be milked. During that period we hung these chairs all through the barn. The horses would be in there chewing their oats and hay with chairs just above their heads. So people would come down from Los Angeles to look at antiques, and we'd take them in the barn. If it was in the afternoon after four o'clock, they would go in there and they could hardly get by the horses to see the chairs. That's the way the business started as a business. And having gotten rid of my advertising business, that was the main thing. I refinished and repaired and liked to do it. We had a horse trailer, of course, and Mrs. Blair one day had taken one of our horses somewhere; and as she came to a bridge across the San Diego River (which is where there was a river when it rained), she found a young calf on the bridge. It was out in the country more, not on the main highway. So she felt sorry for the calf. She stopped the car on the bridge, put the calf in the trailer, and started on to the ranch. Well, in a day or so, a man came along and said, "We don't know that you are a stealer of cattle, but someone saw you take a calf off of the bridge and the man is looking for it. We wonder if you still have the calf." Well, she had the calf, and she didn't go to jail, but there is a penalty for that. In her trying to save the calf, why, she almost got into trouble. [tape recorder turned off] I used our horse trailer to deliver antiques in Los Angeles arid different places. Naturally, I forget the date, but history certainly knows. I had delivered a horse trailer full of antiques to Long Beach, and I was on the way home. Instead of going through San Diego, I cut off on Mission Valley. That's where the first mission, I think, in California was. It was put in in the early days, right along the San Diego River. I have a radio in the car, and all of a sudden comes the news that Hawaii has been bombed. Well, from that moment we knew the destruction... how soon would the airplanes and all from Japan come right on? Everyone knew so. I go on home; and everybody else, of course, knows the news. Things changed immediately from that. The big Consolidated [Aircraft] plant in San Diego — one of the largest, I guess, at that time in the nation — was right along the coast. They hire an interior decorator in San Diego to camouflage the whole area for a mile and a half along the coast, so no one could tell from the air where is the Consolidated plant. Well, he conceived the idea, which was carried out and okayed by the government, of covering the whole area with chicken wire, and on top 6f that feathers. That would be perfectly camouflage, all right, I guess. Well, when they figure out how many feathers they need, or how many pounds (you kept thinking of the old question, which is the heaviest: a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? — well, it still is a pound) they figure it will take one hundred tons of chicken feathers. Now, this is a government idea. So he decides to call up all the places that supply chickens for restaurants and all that sort of thing. He thinks he is going to have a lot of fun, and he does for a while. He has an office down at Consolidated. The wire was up; now they need the chicken feathers. They are going to drop them or scatter them some way — blow them, I guess, with glue, so they will stick to the chicken wire. He calls up a fellow in Escondido who provides chicken for a certain hotel, and he says, "Do you have any chicken feathers?" And the fellow says, "Yes. How many do you want?" He says, "I want a hundred tons." Well, right then, the fellow having chicken feathers, he almost fainted, he couldn't believe such a thing. He could get two ton there. He calls other ones, in different towns—same thing, "How many?" "One hundred tons." Then he calls a place down on the border, just this side of Mexico, probably a hundred yards, just in the nation barely. They apparently supply many chickens, because he says to them, "I want chicken feathers." And the fellow says, "How many?" He says a hundred ton. The fellow says, "What color?" He has them. He wanted to know if he wanted Plymouth Rocks, grey and white, red Leghorns, or whites. [tape recorder turned off] Really San Diego — particularly that area — believed that we could be bombed at any moment. Every civilian got war-conscious very quickly. They sent out calls for everyone, women included, to come and work in the big Consolidated Aircraft plant. Mrs. Blair went down there, applied, and got a job. She would get up in the morning and sing to the cow while she milked it — this one certain cow — and then go to work at five o'clock in the morning; that is, she would leave our ranch. My job was to take care of it, and to do other things that I could do. Of course I was a member of the sheriff's possee. Mrs. Blair worked at Consolidated as a messenger. It was a great big plant, and [she would] go from one [part of the] plant [to another] with orders. I don't think she used roller skates, but some of them did. I think they gave her a little electric car to run anywhere through the plant. The sheriff called the sheriff's posse together. He said, "Maybe you don't know it, but all this time you have been parading, you have been deputies of the sheriff's office. Now, we are proud of our silver saddles, but I want to know how many of you are going to represent the sheriff? The war is on." Well, there were probably six or eight that shouldn't have been in anything but parade groups. Of course, I am in on it, and I am one that is supposed to be capable of at least riding a horse and knowing what the sheriff's posse is supposed to do in time of war. They divide up different groups of different areas of the county, and they happen to give me — the tenderfoot of all — the job of enrolling and enlisting cowboys and different people around the Lakeside-El Cajon area, to represent the sheriff and defend. It just happened that although we had been tenderfoot people, the cowboys had great respect. We had gone on camping trips where they roped horses and all that sort of thing. I was the first one to get my quota of that corps or division of the sheriff's posse for the county. I expect, all in all, they probably had a couple of hundred horsemen, but in different groups. They could be called on to have duty in certain areas. Bill Koehner, the one that had roped the wild horse in the figure eight in the brush, was in my group, of course, and he knew every trail and every spring between San Diego and Riverside. Now, the waterworks for San Diego and that area were up in the hills right on that route. We figured the first thing the Japs might do would be to blow up the water system. So our particular Lakeside-El Cajon group was to be on the lookout for that. Right at the same time they wanted the power lines to be continuously ridden and watched for sabotage between San Diego and Los Angeles, and up in here. Carl Helm, who had been our horse trainer, was the one to do that. He took El Granito, our young stallion, who had won first prize at the international horse show in Coronado, to ride. He would ride that power line as many hours as he could, and he'd stay at the Meadowlark Ranch, probably a third of the way up to San Diego. That's where El Granito was working during that time. Mrs. Blair was working in the Consolidated [plant], and I am looking after the ranch and our horses and being in the sheriff's posse. [tape recorder turned off] The first thing, of course, that the sheriff had us do (I was not manager, but there was a manager of our group who had a good horse and a business in San Diego) was to find all the trails in our area to get to a certain place if there was a bombing. We start out one Sunday. Bill Koehner knows all these trails. He's showing us how to get to the waterworks if we had to get there — why, I don't know. We are going along, thinking already that the Japs probably had landed in Mexico and had filtered in. In the sheriff's posse was Pansy Keene — I mean her husband was, but she was a wonderful horsewoman who trained horses, and put on an actual circus. Her husband was a good horseman and a member of the posse. She was quite sure that the Japs were going to come right in from Mexico, so she got a gun, and practiced shooting a gun from her horse, to kill any Japs that might come up from Mexico. A time or two, she thought she saw an airplane that she knew was a Jap airplane coming up, and she shot at it, but luckily she didn't hit it. So Bill Koehner gives us the practice of finding trails and how to get to certain places. An incident [occurred] on one trip to get to the waterworks. We were supposed to go with guns and defend if there was a landing. All of a sudden, he says stop. We look across the canyon, and there are two characters over there. I don't know much about rifles, but he had one of these thirty-five or thirty-eight caliber rifles. He was a marshal and he was aiming at these characters. No, I beg your pardon; he thought they were goats, wild goats. You could just see movement up in there. He was just about ready to fire, and one of the other posse members grabbed his arm. It was two men over there, maybe doing the same thing we were, or maybe just out hunting. That was quite a little fright. We go on and do what we are supposed to do, and we learn what we are to do.. Then he put a contest on. He had one bunch of the posse go in automobiles and supposedly be Japs coming in. He put a flag on top of a mountain right nearby. He selects me and two or three of the others to go along with him; I don't know why I was in on it. We were supposed to get to that flag first — before the "Japs" do. We won on that, because Bill knew all the little trails through the brush. We got the flag. [tape recorder turned off] Of course, there is a lot written about what happened in the war, amongst the armies and all in Europe, but probably not a great deal about just the civilian activity during that period. We all took it very seriously, much more so than even Los Angeles, because the big Consolidated plant down there would have been the first bombing. Rationing comes in. You have coupons for gasoline, for groceries, and for everything else. They have a ration board. One man handles "tires; another one gasoline rationing; and people have to come in and get their stamps before they can buy anywhere. No dealer can sell without taking in those stamps. It was a ranch country, but the fellows running it didn't seem to realize that a rancher needed something more than what the ration in the rule book would amount to. How silly it is: the fellow who rationed tires to anybody rode a bicycle and didn't have a car. Well, to him, the purpose of the government was to not let anybody have tires, I'm very sure, because there was a lot of trouble going on. All of a sudden, I find out he is going to be kicked out, and I am appointed chief of the ration board. Well, I don't have gasoline myself, [even though] we have a little ranch there, but I can only have so many gallons. Anyway, I take over, and I read the rules. I let the people go that didn't understand things, and I put in my dear friend, Arthur Gaynes, the vice-president of the Lion Clothing Company, who lived just a few blocks from us. I put him dh charge of certain things and different ones. I put in a secretary. You couldn't tell a farmer or a rancher who would come in for gasoline--he's busy; he's got to get home and do things that the government says he must do as a rancher — that they couldn't find his records. Well, I had to get a secretary to put in everything. If they took a man's record out, they used to lay it in a case instead of putting it back. I got it really finely organized. I appointed Chuck Moyle, a rancher (the one that bought the lemon grove and came out from Kansas City) [to ration], I think, gasoline. Well, the fellow that drove the bicycle wrote a letter to the paper and they printed it. It said, "Smells to high heaven...." He mentioned my coming in and putting in friends. Well, it went on and on like that. Nothing happened, but that was a little embarrassing to me, of course. Now, Chuck Moyle had this experience. He had a tenant. The tenant came in. He had a family; he had groceries to buy; and he needed a tire. This tire fellow wouldn't give him a used tire or anything, because, he said, "Your owner, Moyle, has a car that will run; he can come in and get your groceries." That was one of the things, of course, that sounded unbelievable. Ani'way, I run out of gas on my regular amount. I have no amount of gas extra, and I have got to go to the office; it's a mile and a half down there every day and back for lunch. So I want to find out about just what you really do. The head man was in San Diego. I call him up and say, "I have no gas." He says, "Write yourself a coupon for ten gallons." I say, "Oh, no. Now, listen; if the United States government doesn't provide gasoline for the people that are going to run the ration board, then I am resigning right this minute." He says, "We are trying to get people who are reasonable and understand. We are not trying to see how few tires we can put up. We want them in the right places." I said, "What are you going to do?" Well, he says, "Won't you get some gas?" I said, "No." "All right, I'll get gas to you within an hour." He sends out a station wagon with gasoline and coupons and an order signed by him for gas stamps so it didn't have to go through my office. There was a group of people down there called, I think. Seventh Day Adventist. Now, each one of those is a minister, I believe, in their language. And of course, they are conscientous objectors. That's respectable; there is no bad reflection. Well, I found out that any minister — now, that is supposedly in the eyes of the government — has to be a preacher; has to go to church and preach once a week; and he has to visit some people and do his duties. He has the right to a certain amount of gasoline. I found out that practically all the Seventh Day Adventists were preachers, and they all had lots of gasoline. So I call in these fellows, and I find out there are certain ones that do attend regular meetings and do do [their duties], so we gave them extra gas and cut off the others. Some people had two cars, but they didn't need gas for both of them. It ran into all that sort of thing. There was a judge in this town that seemed to get all the gas he wanted because he was a judge. This seems terrible to say, but we heard about it. We went to the filling station, and it was true that he had gotten some gas without coupons. So we called the judge — we'd go right down the line, not favoring anybody— in to the office, and we have a meeting with him. He frankly admits that there was some laxity there, but we don't do anything, and we don't expose [him]. It seems that so many people wanted to see if they could beat it — it was like a game; they weren't really crooked. I find out also I am appointed an air-raid warden, a senior warden. Well, that's different from the chief. Now, the senior warden was supposed to cover a certain two square miles, or whatever it was, all over the county; and in case of any troioble, or a bomb being dropped, he would be notified first by the chief. The sheriff put in an office in the high-school building, where day and night — regardless of high school — day and night, people would be on watch. They called them senior [wardens]. Art Gaynes and I, we might be called in for a certain night; I am one of them. Then they have tests. You are not supposed to let anybody drive, by the way, with any lights anywhere after dark, not even on the highway. Well Art Gaynes, my dear friend, he drove in late from work one night from San Diego, and one of the other senior wardens stopped him. (He was a warden, too.) He was driving with his lights on, and he was the first one arrested in the whole war, but that was handled. Well, for some reason, the fellow that had my area before I was made senior warden, he would just ride around on horseback all through the night, looking for lights. If he saw one light on anywhere, it was a penalty. Well, there was a light always, it seemed, above us, on the mountain behind us. Nobody could find where the light was, but we were all sure that must be a spy bunch. [tape recorder turned off] The system the government had put in was this: normally, a green light would show in the chief's office at this high school; if there was a warning for unidentifiable planes, it would be yellow. And you watch that. Well, then you call the senior wardens. It probably took fifteen minutes to call all the senior wardens in this county. Mind you, this county ran clear on up into Alpine. We had territory there of thousands of acres, and square miles even. Of course, if a red came on, it really meant danger, and get busy. Well, they hardly knew what to do. But they would have a test. The fire department was involved. In tests the army would put on once in a while, they tell the sheriff there was supposedly a bomb dropped on some place in the county. Then the sheriff would call the chief out at the high school; he would call all the seniors; and then, the seniors were to call all of the wardens. Well, there were probably three hundred wardens in the county. All that together took about thirty or thirty-five minutes. The army doesn't think there is any better system. I don't know how it happened, but I was also then made chief air-raid warden of the county. I'm getting to be pretty busy. I am up at the high school a great deal, and I decide I am going to put in a new system. Here's what it is: they give me about six weeks or so before there is any test, but I don't know when it is going to be. Neither did we know when there was going to be a bomb dropped. I might bring in the fact that also I was made part of the air watch. There had to be watch at a certain place for unidentifiable planes. My wife and I were in that too ; we would take so many hours, maybe five to seven in the morning, and maybe different nights, one to three. I had to organize that. We were out there at that watch when we saw — we had a telephone there — a plane come down through. It looked like a catfish; I never had seen anything like it. I called in to the sheriff's office; and inside of four minutes, I'm sure, a fighter plane comes over us and buzzes us. They didn't know about the plane, but it was a new model, they had just been notified. It looked like a big catfish flying. All right, we go back to chief air-raid warden. I hold a meeting with all of them to explain just what the new system is. When the sheriff notifies them that there is a yellow, they not only call the seniors, but they tell them to immediately have the wardens of their area bring their spades, first aid, bicycles — whatever they are going to use — and come to the senior's home, and stay there during the yellow. That was going to save a lot of time of the chief telling the seniors, and then the seniors telling the wardens. Well, we practiced that. To prove that I might be right, I put in a fake call to the fire department. I called in, and the fire department goes out about three miles in the county — no fire, no anything. And I thought how easy for sabotage, if it's planned, you know? So I put in a system like this: the chief would be the only one from my office who could report to the fire department. I put a code in; and I said, "Each day the fire chiefs will be given a code. It will begin with a vegetable — cabbage maybe — and then you report a fire." Next one could be a walnut. Well, we had that all worked [out]. I had proven how it could be sabotaged and the fire department sent to the wrong place if a bomb was burning. The army comes along and puts in a call. They are going to make a test. None of us knows anything but the sheriff. The sheriff calls us. After the meeting, all the wardens of the county are to meet in the big high school auditorium. So here comes this call. We don't know it's a test, just the sheriff. Here Art Gaynes and I are up there that night, and the yellow light comes on. Immediately, we call the seniors at their homes to get the men there. By gosh, in a little while, the red goes on. That means a bombing, supposedly: a bomb dropped. We notify; the men are all ready; they go to wherever it was in that area. After this goes on, they have this big meeting with the brass, and they get up and say, "For some reason, there has been some spy work, because this thing where we were going to drop the bomb and all that was known undoubtedly before." Now he said, "It's very serious. We don't know whether it is a trickster or some sabotage. [We are] trying to find out. But we'll have to call this a failure. We'll have to try it again; we don't know how it leaked out." Well, the fellow moderating over the whole thing said, "Do you have anything to say from the chief air-raid warden?" The brass had said there was help within three minutes where the bomb was supposed to have been dropped. It was roped off, and there was first aid within three minutes — that can't be. He said thirty minutes is good. I got up and explained my system. They were dumbfounded; and the government adopted that system, at least in California at that time. Now then, it might make a little difference as to how thirty minutes was saved from the time help is needed and the time it arrives. In the government system, when the yellow came on in the chief air-raid warden's office, he called his senior wardens, who covered the whole county. The senior warden then was to call (in the government plan) all his wardens that there was a yellow on; to stand by. Well, that took many, many minutes to do that, we'll say. Then a red came on, there is supposedly a bomb. Well, in our system, when the yellow came, I had the senior warden call his wardens not to stand by, but to come to his head-quarters, to his home, with their spades, first aid, and all that sort of thing. So when a red hit, we'd just call a senior warden; and in two minutes, they could be ten blocks, or a half a mile, or a mile almost, with the car. They had the right to drive a car even with lights after a red. So we saved there about twenty-five or thirty minutes. That was the difference in the two systems, and the government adopted it after this test which they thought [had been] sabotaged.

DIXON

Could civilians drive with lights?

BLAIR

Not at all.

DIXON

I know not during an alert, but they had the brown-out up here [Los Angeles] ; and you had to drive in certain areas with low beams, and other areas with no lights at all.

BLAIR

In our area, there were no lights at all. No lights could shine out of your window at home. We had black tar paper [covering] every window in the home.

DIXON

This was every night?

BLAIR

Every night. There was a blackout down there all the time. Up on the hill was this light that we never could figure out. We'd go up there but never could get to where it was. It worried us. We thought some signal could be given to an airplane from that. I remember we finally chased it down, and we found it was something like this: that there was a family lived there, and they weren't in touch with things. They were kind of odd. [There was a] relationship between them and the light there. I forget now what the excuse was, but supposedly there was a child or somebody in the house that had to get up nights and couldn't get up in the dark and all. They left the light on in the bathroom all the time for some reason — I think it was something like that. We found out that the people were all right. [tape recorder turned off] Other things came in as you went about your life. Between San Diego and Los Angeles were many Japanese fruit stands and things — places like that. Well, this fellow Art Gaynes had a big imagination., He was the kind who could tell a story about a bear and all that, and you would almost wish there was one, but know there wasn't. We figured out that these Japanese places could be wonderful connections for signaling; they could see the ocean, and they could see ships, you know. So we took a trip to Los Angeles and stopped at these places and investigated. No one knew what we were doing. We thought we were being great spies — to spy on spies perhaps. There is one thing that still is not clear to me. During that period, Arthur Gaynes was up here buying goods, certain things to be shipped to the Lion Clothing Company. He would take shopping trips up here, and with him came a fellow by the name of Adler. Now Adler had just leased the top floor of the Lion Clothing Company for a millinery business. The Lion Clothing Company was going to do all the advertising and collect the bills, and he would pay them 10 percent of all sales. So he had a millinery business there (they got plenty on millinery in those days), and he was doing a wonderful business. In fact, one year he did a hundred thousand dollars worth of profit to the Lion Clothing Company. They were in such a high bracket of income tax already that out of that one hundred thousand dollars (this fellow must have done enormously if their share was around that), had increased their income tax total so much that they only got to keep seven hundred and fifty dollars of the one hundred thousand dollars. The rest of it went to the government. [tape recorder turned off] During this period Arthur Gaynes is up here, and then Adler came with him. They are staying in a hotel downtown, and they speak of it today as the night that Los Angeles was bombed. Now I don't yet understand it.

DIXON

I was here then.

BLAIR

There was shooting — can you tell me what it was?

DIXON

They still don't know what actually happened. I know what people thought happened.

BLAIR

Well, what was that?

DIXON

Well, some people say there was a test for the anti-aircraft batteries. I know there was something in the searchlights because I could see something.

BLAIR

All right, and wasn't there also the thought that there was a submarine spotted between here and Santa Barbara?

DIXON

That happened before.

BLAIR

That was another one; that's right.

DIXON

By the time the whatever-it-was got over the Long Beach area, they did get some of the Japanese who were down there, because they thought the submarine was out there and was ready to land. They were firing Very pistols and we could see red and green Very lights to the south and east of us.

BLAIR

Well, there was noise. Didn't our antiaircraft

DIXON

They sure did. They shot, and there were people wounded; there were two or three people killed.

BLAIR

You mean with our own ammunition, and our own guns, not theirs?

DIXON

Our own antiaircraft guns, yes. Around all the aircraft plants they had these antiaircraft batteries. They were shooting; and there was a lot of shrapnel; and this shrapnel was falling. I thought our bedroom had collapsed.

BLAIR

Is that so?

DIXON

And a friend of mine did lose his leg in that.

BLAIR

My God. Well, you see — now, that's the most exact, report I've ever had. Anyway, Art Gaynes and Adler are up here in a hotel. Art Gaynes was so easily frightened, yet so strong. But naturally in a hotel, you'd think if there is going to be a bombing, they're going to bomb the town and plants first. Right during that period. Art told me he had never hated a fellow so much in all his life. Adler came in from his room and said to Art seriously, "Listen, Art, what do you think is the future of the millinery business?" [tape recorder turned off] One night, Arthur Gaynes and I were up there on the night watch. We have guns. Art had a pistol; I think he would have been afraid to shoot it. I had one. They had had the sheriff's posse practice at marks, shooting certain pistols. I didn't have one; so Art's friend, Charlie Hafter, had one, [and he gave it to me]. He rode in the posse; in fact, he was the manager of our section of the posse out in El Cajon. I'm jumping back a little bit right here, but I practiced with this pistol; and later on Bill Koehner saw the pistol and said, "Where did you get that pistol?" I said, "Charlie Hafter gave it to me." He says, "You haven't fired it, have you?" I said, "Yes, I have been practicing at marks to be able to shoot as I go down and all that stuff." He said, "You are sure lucky you've got two arms. That barrel could have exploded in your hands at any time. I'd hate to hold it even if it wasn't loaded." Arthur Gaynes always liked gadgets. He had a pistol belt. Art, like people that aren't going to be rough and tough, really had the spirit in him. Well, one night, we are sitting there and we hear a noise. We hear a noise in the high-school building, and we think, "Now, here is some Jap with a bomb to destroy the contact with the sheriff." If they wanted to they would have gotten us first. The sheriff couldn't call out wardens or anything.

DIXON

Yes, it would h^ve been the smartest thing to do.

BLAIR

Then we see a little light going off and on. Oh, boy! We get our guns out. What are we going to do? We don't know. Then we hear nothing. We hear a noise again, and finally we think — well, I will admit we were brave to do what we did. I have a different gun, and he has one. We go out foolishly to attack whatever it was. That really took a little bravery, because you know that if there was anything there it would be armed — first thing they'd do. We sneak around, and we don't make any noise. And here we see this light off and on. Finally — I think we are behind something — we say something, "Halt. Who are you?" It's the night watchman. My daughter was attending [the University of] Arizona, that wonderful university. She was specializing in fine arts. She was a good horseback rider, and she did exhibition jvunping. They used army horses. Now the young fellow she was going with was in the cavalry.

DIXON

Which daughter was this?

BLAIR

The one, Sazette, that was here last night at the party. One that now works in the employment bu-reau of the state government. She has now risen in five years by promotion — taking tests, both written and verbal. They are doing wonderful work in this way: even training trainers to know how to train other people who are going to do the work. She is now doing training but will probably go on up in management. During that period then, this young man was in the cavalry and a good rider. He was raised up around Snowflake, Arizona. Snowflake is the name of the town; I have driven through there. His name was Robert Wigely. The government, because the war is on, wants to modernize things; they do away with the horse cavalry and make it mechanized. Now, he transfers from the cavalry that quick, [snaps fingers] He's being trained up in Oregon somewhere. That comes; he resigns and transfers to flying. He has to learn to fly. He had a wonderful mind. He takes the training — I'm going to make that brief — they send him to Italy, and he flies fifty missions (that's the limit) out of Italy bombing with bombers. He's the one that leads the group and knows what and where to bomb. Before he went overseas to do that, my daughter and he were married. So she is home with us. (She has graduated with honors. We went over there to the commencement exercises. ) She is with us. He went through fifty missions with no one injured and no planes lost. But here is the irony of it: his group made one of the greatest, perfect strikes of any group in the war out of Italy. Here's what it was. They were sent to bomb Germany; they were ordered back and told to unload all their bombs on their way back on a certain place on the seacoast. He gave the signals; they unloaded their bombs; and every bomb was a direct hit on Ammunition dumps of the enemy. The most perfect strike of the war. His group did not return quite as quick as the ground crews thought they should from one mission. It was a normal thing, if they thought a plane had been shot down, to go to the wardrobe of the soldier; particularly to see if he had left a pair of shoes there. They were so late one time that Bob's shoes were in the hands of somebody else when they got back; they figured they were gone, [tape recorder turned off] We really are gradually getting into the antique business. I have sold my advertising business, although I didn't get any money out of it except about four thousand dollars down—I think we covered that. But my note for twenty thousand dollars due me, paid so much a year, I still have — unpaid. But there was always something more interesting, so why worry! Now, here we are in the antique business. You can't charter a freight car; you can't do anything unless it's government supplied. Everything is government, and I mean everything. I remember that on the diners (I would go back by train to buy antiques), you could not sit and smoke a cigarette with your coffee after being in the diner. You had to get up and get out. There were soldiers, of course, ahead of everybody, and we were all happy to think we could step aside for a soldier; that little we could do. But here I am with a carload or more of antiques back there — furniture to ship out. This is an odd thing. Man-hours were the important thing. So I apply to the government for freight cars to ship on this basis: I was using no man-hours. Here is furniture [already] made. The furniture factories were making everything for the government; you couldn't buy a new chair. I am collecting furniture that has the man-hours already paid for; I merely want to get it to California. I am not using man-hours to make that furniture. We are doing our own refinishing. There are no man-hours, no soldiers that could be in the Army, no military to be in that. We are delivering to peop^.e who are also paying taxes and are working for the government maybe. They have got to have some furniture. I get an okay from the government; I can get a freight car any time I want it. And I start shipping. I hire people who can't work for the government to help scrape off paint and all that sort of thing. We develop a process later. So we are very fortunate in being able to have furniture, antique furniture. Compared to prices — we stole it back there, and the people who. bought it, you might say, stole it off us. Handmade early American furniture. The antique business is growing, and we realize that people drive from Los Angeles — dealers and all — down to San Diego, find El Cajon, and find us on a ranch. We decide the thing for us to do is to sell the ranch. We had only.bought it for six thousand dollars, remember, and we had done all this improvement. We [would] look for some place on the main highway between there and San Diego, on the main highway, [U.S.] 101, and find a place where we can live and have the antique business closer to San Diego. So we write up a prospectus for this ranch. My wife has lunch that day with my friend Art Gaynes, and she has a copy of it. She lets Art read it. Art says, "I know a fellow who will buy that." He calls up this fellow who owns restaurants in San Diego. Art knows that he's looking for a place where he can be close to San Diego and have a ranch. The fellow comes out, looks at it, and buys it that day for twenty-five thousand dollars. We didn't make a lot on it, but I don't think our total investment was over five or six thousand over the six thousand dollars we paid. So that day we start out up the coast to see if we can find a place where we can have our antique shop and live. We see a little park, and here is an English building with three vacant stores underneath, a nice apartment upstairs, and three vacant storerooms. One of the stores that had been in there couldn't get merchandise; that was probably why they were empty. And we find out that a couple lives in there. He is supposed to be a doctor. According to what we believed then, he was about the first man in America to sell vitamins. Anyway, as we went in to look through the [building], the real estate man there said, "You can buy, but there's a man on the way from Escondido today to look at it. He may buy it; he's on the way." Well, he's a good real estate [salesman]; he wasn't like the real estate salesman in Maryland. He was a typical Calif ornian, but he was telling the truth. We go in this place, and here in the storerooms are great big tubs and things, and dirt. All over the floor are newspapers and pills. This supposed doctor is doing a mail-order business with these pills that rejuvenate you. He advertises them in all the little papers all over the nation. Making money — a land-office business. We start moving some papers, but he says, "Don't move those papers. I don't believe in banks; my money is laid in layers of those newspapers so nobody will know it." Well, we make a deal; we buy that property for nine thousand dollars. A wonderful, typical English building: stucco; beams showing all through it; in perfect condition, but empty. This couple was so glad to get out of that place, and we said to them, "How soon can you vacate?" He said, "Just as soon as we can get away from 'they.'" I said, "What do you mean, 'they?'" Well, he says, "These people here— 'they' do things; we don't want them to know what we do. 'They' — no telling what 'they' might do. We might have to escape as soon as we get our money. We are going to go to Hemet or somewhere." We said, "Why?" Well, he says, "My life work is this: to determine the effect on humanity of altitude, depth, ocean, north, and now I must explore the effect on humanity of the desert — low. And we are going there." We said, "Do you have a car or anything?" "No. We don't. We are going to take the train, and 'they' will think we are going to Los Angeles; and then we're going to Hemet. We don't want 'they' to know where we go." Naturally, there was two or three weeks in escrow or something, but we made a quick deal. Would you believe this? Remember in 1926, we came out to find an English-type building for my partner George Cartlich? He wanted to come to California to open up a big restaurant and make it arty. This is the same building they recommended to him, and we have pictures of it in 1926. This is in 1942 or '43 or '44. It's the same one. It's uncanny in my world how everything ties together, just like these whatnots I have been writing, things that have been coming to me. One sample is this: not philosophy, but one thought is, "When a woman says no, it's unanimous." I just put it down; it just comes to mind. Another one is: "All that goes up must come down, unless it goes up in smoke." [These thoughts] are being researched now for probably a book tying in with my paintings. So we buy the place, and we call these people, "Are you ready to go?" "Yes, we could go, but we haven't made arrangements to get our trunks and things on the train." Well, I said, "We have our station wagon and horse cart; we will come up and move everything you want." "Fine, come up and you can have it. We will vacate it tomorrow." We go up; we load on their trunks; they have tickets to get on the same train; and we start down. We said, "Where do you go?" He said, "Down to the depot to Encinitas, a mile away from Leucadia." So we go down there and take the trunks off a few hours before the train comes. We start to say goodbye to them, and they say, "Oh, no, we are not going on this train." I said, "You mean you're.... You have your tickets, don't you?" "Yes, we have tickets from here for our baggage, but we are not going to get on the train. We don't want 'they' to know where we are going or when. We are going to get on the train in Oceanside." Now that was ten miles north of Leucadia. So we take them to Oceanside. The train picks up their baggage at Encinitas, and they get on the train at Oceanside. They escape. "They" will not know where they went. [tape recorder turned off] We are owners of this wonderful building on a corner lot of the little city park with fountains in it and trees, kind of a garden adjoining it. We are a block and a half from the beach down there, the most beautiful beach. There are steps down to the beach (it is high above), and you can buy a lot there for seven hundred dollars. We almost did, but we do this: We need more room; we want to put in a workshop to refinish furniture and rooms to cover carloads of unfinished furniture coming in. We buy the lot next to us for a thousand dollars. We spend six hundred dollars to build sheds and a workshop in those days. For ten thousand six hundred dollars, we have one hundred feet on the highway corner next to the park. We have a really great antique layout. We have learned how to take paint off. Sal soda was pretty good, but trisodium [phosphate is better]. We built a big vat, and we could put a whole corner cupboard in this vat and let it stay for forty minutes or an hour. It had two or three or four coats of paint; the Pennsylvania Dutch painted everything every year. And then we could raise it with a pulley, turn the hose on it and wash it off and there was no scraping, no wood loss, and no lost patina. There was a woman whose husband ran a ranch nearby in Leucadia, Mamie Barnes, and she said she wanted something to do. They had had a grocery business, had retired, and they came down and got this little avocado ranch just a half a mile across the highway from us. We're on the ocean side of the highway. She is so good, and she wants to work. We make a deal with her; she would take paint off furniture as often as she wishes at so much a piece an hour. She makes good money, learns the antique business, and becomes our head helper during that time. Now, we move everything we have from El Cajon up in the wonderful apartment upstairs — three bedrooms, bath, kitchen, and all that sort of thing. We have three stores downstairs, and each one has its own restrooms. Of course, there is no sewer, but... I forget what it is.

DIXON

Cesspool?

BLAIR

Cesspool and all that. We are a block and a half from the beach. Our customers come down, and they like it. We're in business in the antique business in truth. Getting trucks to deliver furniture from the freight car is terrible. We have the right to because we are accredited by the government with saving man-hours. A freight carload would come in a mile and a half away, but who is going to haul it? We have a pickup truck and we have a station wagon. There is a fellow who is a good deal like the one in Spring Hill. He wouldn't roll a keg of sorghum; he'd lift it up to put it on his truck. This fellow had a forty-foot truck, and he could unload our cars and bring it. We were fortunate there. The freight car on the railroad sometimes wouldn't be placed where he wanted to unload it. He would drive his old truck on the railroad, hook on to a freight car, and shove the freight car wherever he wanted so that he could unload it. Why it didn't get loose and get on the main line, I don't know. It was a small place, and this station had a telegraph office, [where] I would get a telegram sometimes from the East. There was one telegram that said, "We will ship you a freight carload on the fifteenth. We think you should send us five hundred dollars, however. We don't know what the freight will be, but we are a little tight. Another thing: we would like for you to see if you can get special rates because of the government connection." This telegraph operator would come to me and say, "This is something I don't think you can do." He was deciding whether I could do these things before I read the telegram. I decide I am going to have a museum, a real early American museum. So we have a place to store them — nothing for sale. There is about three hundred feet of ground up the highway on the right side, and I decide I am going to build a regular Pilgrim house there. We could have a museum and a pump, everything as it was in the Pilgrim and early centuries. We would charge twenty-five cents admission and have the antiques. We would have spinning wheels that worked — everything early American. I buy the ground for three thousand dollars. I keep it a while, and I am putting away things. I figure out (other things had come up) that it would not be practical, and I sell the ground for six thousand dollars inside a year. Now, we want to get away from the antique shop and not live over it. So we go over to Mamie Barnes and we trade an acre or two we had bought for a couple of thousand dollars for investment up in a little valley off of there. I wish we owned it today; it's worth a fortune. We trade that to Josh; that's Mamie's husband, a wonderful fellow. They are doing refinishing already for us over there to get it away from our place. We trade him that ground over there for an acre on his ground just across the railroad and north a little bit at a curve. There is our place. We buy to build. We are going to build a Pilgrim house. We buy a streetcar place they are tearing down in San Diego during that time; you couldn't buy lumber. Twelve-by-twelves. They deliver the whole thing for a thousand dollars. We built a Pilgrim house thirty by thirty-four, one big living room with a fireplace you could stand up in and a place down below to bake bread in. We have all the kettles and everything, and a kitchen in a corner, a wonderful modern kitchen, and a good big bathroom and two bedrooms. In my iedroom is a private place to shave and a washroom. Solid walls of twelve-by-twelves. Think of it: wood, the whole house. Well, there is a garage there. I have it re-covered, and I hire a fellow to do it. He puts the shingles on this roof, and he doesn't get it right; he has it so that all the water would run against the edges of the shingles. He starts in at the top and puts them on, and then he puts the edges up over that — just the reverse. You start at the bottom for shingles. That's done. You can't get help during those times, and anyway we put a roof of tar paper over it. I am putting away one of everything that we have in this. I have one of every kind of corner cupboard, one of every kind of chair, dough trays, iron hinges — anything you can think of for this museum. But in the meantime, we sell the ground, and we realize that it isn't practical to confine ourselves to running a museum. So now we had moved over to this acre, and we are still running the antique shop. Upstairs we had furnishings and things for sale.

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
JULY 30, 1965

BLAIR

Just before we built this house out of streetcar-bridge timbers, across the tracks and away from where our antique shop was at Leucadia by the little park, while we're still there and this other place is being planned, my son-in-law is back; but they are living in a little house right next door to the two lots that we had for the antique business. We already had the building, and then we had the lot next door for the shed and everything. During that period, we take a trip up into the mountains on a Sunday, and we see a little restaurant up near Alpine. We think we'll go in here. Here's a sign that says. Homemade Bread. Well, to me that would be something. I knew nothing about recipes or any of that sort of thing, but we could not buy bakery bread at Leucadia. You had to buy the kind that makes you strong twelve ways which is baked at five hundred degrees for twenty minutes, and you can squeeze steam out of it even when you buy it. Anyway, I liked the homemade bread. I said to this woman, "I might try to bake bread. Would you give me your recipe?" Well, she did. Right at that time I started painting. Did I say about painting a picture of a barn and hanging it down in the shop? DIXON : No.

BLAIR

About that time we were shipping six and eight carloads of furniture in the rough from Pennsylvania, solid pack. We [had] ones that we called "pickers" back there; they hunt for things all the time. They even keep calendars on who may die. (There are a lot of things [people] won't sell until somebody dies.) So if they'd read that [someone] passed on, they'd go in there. They'd know where a wonderful corner cupboard is or some wonderful things; they'd know all of that, and they'd buy them. They are called "pickers." Well, we had these pickers, one or two in New England, and four or five in Pennsylvania — very dependable. C.B. Smith, who shipped my first Pilgrim table and the big wood lathe that I bought for fifty-seven cents and I thought was fifty-seven dollars [was one of our pickers] — people like that. They would put these things in their barn and send us a bill. When we got ready to load a freight car, they would put them in a big stone barn on the railroad that was empty, a basement in stone, and a driveway up to the next story, and then two stories above for feed and room for the cattle and all that sort of thing. Well, when people are buying antiques, one way I sell is to romance the product if I can. In other words, it isn't just so many pieces of merchandise if you can always tell a story about it. I call it romancing. Even the shirt — if you want to talk about the sea-island cotton and how they raised it better than any cotton not raised on an island. I would tell people about the big barn in Pennsylvania, and they'd say, "Oh, you ought to see a barn up here in Sacramento." I said, "Yes, I know; I have been to most of these places. It probably covers a quarter of an acre; it's one-story high; it's made out of board and batten; and geese can pick grass through the walls if they want to. You call that a barn? You haven't seen a barn until you see a barn made with a basement to it, hand-laid stone, and then brick, drive [ways] ; and a couple of stories above to store all of your cattle, the sheep if necessary, the horses, and the feed to feed them for three months. Then you have a barn." Well, that would go on and on. So about the time that I decided to try to make bread, I decided to get some paint. I had been encouraged to paint by a friend of mine, Arthur Gaynes, who was a commercial artist and vice-president of the Lion Clothing Company in San Diego, but no longer practicing. He came in there as an advertising man. He worked his way through school, playing in orchestras like I did in Chicago. He went to Northwestern. Well, I do the best I can to do one of these barns. I decide to make it in the wintertime. I couldn't get the roof to stay on the thing hardly or the driveway going up. It's all on a flat piece of canvas; how are you going to make a driveway go up to a second floor? Well, I did the best I could, put a frame on it, and hung it downstairs in the antique shop. You know, we had three rooms below for all the different things. A woman came along one day and says, "How much is the painting?" And I said, "Painting?" "Yes." Well, I said, "We don't have any paintings." She said, "The barn." Well, a painting? I said, "Twenty-five dollars;" and as quick as I could I wanted to say I'd take ten. But before I could, she said, "I'll take it." Well, she paid me twenty-five dollars. After that, I decide that if that is painting I can do some more. Right away, I wanted to do things that people didn't know too much about, particularly [people] in California. But primarily I felt this urge. If I could paint, I would like to record the things in the one-family farm life and the village life, where everybody had a horse and buggy. They didn't even have a livery stable, a lot of them. You never would rent one unless some man came through selling on the train, had samples, and wanted to drive through another town and haul stuff with horse and buggy. So I decided I would do that. [tape recorder turned off] As to the bread, I took the recipe (we were still living in the apartment) and I found this out: who would want to bake bread? You have to let it rise three times: once, and you punch it down; and then you let it rise again; then you put it in the pans — that's an hour — and then put it in the oven. You have to stand around. How could you do that? Well, I start painting. And I found out that when you paint, you think you've painted twenty minutes, and it's an hour. Absolutely. When the brush is working, you and the brush won't move if there is something to interrupt, like a door, a noise — a dog bark. The brush won't move. There is no environment, no contemporary contact with where you are when you are painting. Then I read the directions, and [the dough] had to double in size. Well, who can tell if a bunch of dough is going to double in size? But I knew somewhat what it meant. I started baking, and I'd go out and see how it was. I'd find out, paint another, [and then I'd be] ready to punch down and make it ready to put in the pans. I did that. Somebody said, "Why don't you send a loaf of your bread down to the San Diego County Fair." Well, we were only about eight miles from Del Mar. I had good bread, and people liked it. Of course, we would give people coming into the antique shop a little piece of homemade bread and butter. You know they remembered that, and they felt in a good mood to buy. I decided I would really enter a loaf of white bread down at the fair. Some woman or somebody came along just as I was about ready to bake, and she said, "How do you make your loaves and form them before you put them in the pan?" And I said, "Well, I just make it into a ball. " By the way, the Pennsylvania Dutch, for a long time, would ask me, "Do you ever buy any bread molds?" Well, I never heard of bread molds, I'd heard of bread pans. They were handmade, heavy tin, early, just as handmade as anything could be. I got to buying those, and people would buy them, decorate them, and put things in. This woman told me about rolling the bread out, in other words, like pie dough, put it on the board with light flour and roll it. Then start in from you, turn it, roll towards you, and pinch the ends in a little. Then you have a nice, perfect, long shaped loaf, of course, I knew to put the bread upside down in a greased pan, and then turn it over so the rough side then would be underneath. We usually had grease on top of the loaf. That seemed pretty good, so I tried one, and I decided to do that for the fair instead of the way I had been doing, [I also] put it in and pressed and molded it like the Pennsylvania Dutch did. I go down to the fair and I get second prize out of about twenty-eight entries. Well, you don't know what's inside. They judge it for appearance; they judge it for taste, odor, resiliency, grain, texture, and baking. All of that. Each one counts so much. I discovered appearance counted 5 percent. Here I get second. They cut the loaf right down the middle, and it's exposed for the public to see at the fair. Right in the middle of it was a circle of flour, I might have gotten first prize. I tried the new thing that somebody said on the one that I take to the fair. The fair down in San Diego was right after the Fourth of July, I think just three days before horse racing started or something like that. Well^ a little later in the season I hear about the [Los Angeles County] Fair in Pomona, the largest fair, practically, in the world. I get entry blanks, and they have up there nut bread entries, white bread, 50 percent whole wheat, 100 percent whole wheat, orange bread — nine different kinds you can enter if you want to do that. Anyway, I decided I would try some of that. So I bake up for that fair whole wheat (that's about half wheat, half white) ; nut bread (which is the same thing, but in white bread; all you do is add nuts and maybe a little more shortening); raisin bread; and white. I enter four kinds. I get up early in the morning. You have to get them there they day before the fair, by nine o'clock, so the judges can work at least until noon, when the fair opens. I get in there, and I take in my bread, but I don't want to wait around until noon. I told one of the women in charge, "I have to get back home. When they are through judging the bread, even if it's before twelve o'clock, could I find out?" She said, "Give me a little slip. What are your entries?" Well, I waited around, and she told me I got four firsts, four first-prize ribbons. Well, I just couldn't believe it. I go back home. It's in the newspapers and copied in the newspapers all over the nation that a man won first-prize ribbons at the big county fair in Pomona. I get letters from all over the nation from women, asking me to give them the recipe. I write long letters about the recipe to make bread. [tape recorder turned off] Out of the four loaves I generally baked, one of them would be perfect, it seemed — one of them with no cracks and perfectly round — and the others would be bulged out on one side or something. The bread was just as good as one of the others, but naturally, I took what I thought was the best-looking loaf. Later on, when I found out that appearance counted 5 percent, I was certain after I saw the competition loaves. Their bread could have been as good or maybe a little better than mine, but they were &11 lopsided. That's wonderful homemade bread, but in judging they allow 5 percent for symmetry. I didn't know why, but I was sure that's why I got these first prizes. We go along, and I am entering bread from down there at Leucadia and getting ribbons and publicity all the time. One night, I am waked up by some crackling noises, and I look out and I see that an electric cable pole right over down in the alley behind was on fire. There was a little bit of a drizzle. Sparks were falling down on the roof of our workshop, which [included] also this fifty by a hundred foot lot of sheds for the other things. Fire. Well, I had begged the Encinitas people to put a hydrant right at our corner, and I would pay for it. But the city fathers didn't and didn't. However, the whole building had its water system with hose. But the thing to do is to hose each room separately, and to get [the hose] out onto a roof somewhere on one of the sheds. I go downstairs, and I phone to the fire department. It's night; I don't know what time. I go down, and some officers are there. They didn't know we were in there. They were waiting for the fire department to come. They brought five hundred gallons of water with a little old squirt hose. I get loose one of these two-inch hoses in the building; and I pull it out, have the water turned on. and go in under the sheds to try to kill the fire. I was under the sheds, and the workshop's roof was on fire, so I couldn't get out on the roof any more safely. Well, I got almost suffocated back there and had to give that up. They have [used up] their five hundred gallons of water, and they go after some more. Right away, you know that the whole thing is going to burn. What happened — you could see it — this electric cable right behind our workshop was just like [it was] sawed right off. That's where our cable shorted some way. It burned right across like a saw, and it fell over. Well, whose fault was it? We never got a dime from the electric company. You know, what can you do? We did have insurance. Burned up probably two carloads of unfinished furniture. We got out an awful lot of the refinished furniture. I had painted a good many paintings at that time; they got most of those out. Right now in the dining room here is a fireplace bench. (The back of it goes clear to the floor, because the only heat they had in the winter in the Pilgrim and later days was a fireplace. You would sit there, and the heat rising [from] the fireplace would suck the cold air [from] all over the house on your feet if you were sitting on a chair. So the back goes to the floor. And we have it still, out here. I remember that my wife and some man got it out of there.) But we lost everything. We had insurance, I think, that totaled twenty-five thousand dollars. That ,was [for the] stock and building. That's about all you could get there, but we had that much. They carried things out in the park. Somebody carried my paintings — what few I had done — and got them in a truck. I guess I must have had fifteen or twenty, maybe thirty, paintings by that time. And somebody took those home and put them in a garage. The neighbors were great, but I couldn't suffer about it too much. It's been that way all the time. I can worry over little things, but if it's a major thing, I just feel, "So what?" Well, people would come around and say, "Oh, isn't that terrible? Does it make you sick?" You know what I said to them? I said, "By the way, did anybody lose a finger or a half of a finger on this thing?" "No." Well, I said, " That would be terrible. I can't suffer any more than I can. I wish that I could cry to please you, but I can't." We were still living upstairs. The son-in-law and daughter had moved over there in a little place they had rented; they were living in the bridge house. [tape recorder turned off] When I found out that my paintings would sell, or have acceptance to a certain extent. Dr. [Richard] Aldrich, from the University of Miami, Florida, had a summer house out there. He was the head of the history of American civilization and of the art departments. He was so good in his knowledge in the great field of archaeology. I used to go with him sometimes, and although he bought antiques, in particular he loved fabrics. We'd go down to the Museum [of Science and Technology] in San Diego. I remember we walked in there one day, and here's a corridor at least a hundred and fifty feet long. Dr. Aldrich stops. "Oh." And he says some words. There's some colored glass put in a frame with certain designs. He says, "I believe that's so-and-so." We go back there, and it was some glass from a certain temple from Israel. He knew it at a hundred and fifty feet. Well, he came along and saw I was painting. I said, "Gee, I'm glad to see you." He said, "Well, sure." I said, "I'm doing an apple orchard. I got a little Kodak picture of an apple orchard with a road through it in Pennsylvania. I thought I'd try to do that." I never had any lessons, of course, never dreamed of anything like that. So I said, "Maybe you could tell me how to make a full blooming apple orchard without putting on every blossom." He. said, "I could in about five minutes. But I won't tell you, and I hope you never find out." I said, "Why? What's the matter?" He said, "You are a natural painter, if you don't learn anything. At your age, if you learn one rule, everybody will be wanting to help you. If you learn one rule, it will bother you. If you learn them all, and study three years, fine. You'll have more facility. But you'll never be a natural primitive if you learn any rules." Well, I had suffered two things on this before that. Here is a wagon road through the apple blossoms. Well, now, here is canvas. How thick is paint? How are you going to make a rut in a road on a canvas? Well, I worked at it. First, I guess. I had to make the wagon tracks in the dirt a little darker in places. I worked and worked, and got the idea that it's a little higher. And I got the idea that the higher the thing is on the ground, the more light it reflects. It went through my mind. I finally kind of get little ridges along, and you can see there are tracks in there going around behind the trees. And here is a rut. Well, sir, when I got that rut in that track, I just felt so good. It was a great discovery. Under the tree is a pile of sticks — brush. I spent an hour trying to paint a pile of. sticks, a pile of brush. Well, they turned into mud. So I thought, "What is a pile of sticks? It is one stick on another." Wipe it all off. I make sticks on the ground, and then I cross them with another layer, keep building it up, and I get a pile of brush. Of course all you can see are the ends of all the sticks that I did all the way down. It looked like a pile of brush. So they say you are self-taught. Dr. Aldrich told me in a few days, "Don't ever talk to an artist. They will want to help you. Don't go to any art shows and don't read anything about painting for three years. After three years, you can do all this you want to, but you will be established in your way of painting. If you try to learn rules or talk to anybody you will be painting like you think they tell you to do; but what the public wants is how you paint. They want to know how you look, how you walk, how you react to jokes. You can call it good, bad, or whatever it is. They would rather have a child's painting that is honest than a lesson that the teacher gave the child at school, and look how good they did on the lesson. No, it's the uninhibited freedom they want." All right. I go along painting. A girl came along one day and saw about twenty of my paintings hanging down in the antique shop. She says, "These yours?" I said, "Yes." She says, "They are very good. You know, I might help you a little bit." I didn't think for a little minute. She said, "I'll tell you one thing that might help you: never put anything right in the center of the canvas if it is an important thing." I changed the subject. I said, "By the way, do you raise strawberries? Are you on a ranch?" You know, [after] she left I went around and looked at my paintings. I had not put an important thing in the center of my canvases. Later on, I discovered the word "composition." I thought that was writing something in a copy book at school. Dr. Aldrich had told me that a natural painter is one that has composition, color sense, and different things naturally. He doesn't study it; he has it within him. I thought of an example of that in decorating houses.. I knew very well that Mrs. Blair could take furniture sight unseen — sort of select things, put them in the house — and it seemed harmonious. If you'd take those same pieces and put them in the center of the floor, call in most people (not any fault; people are just that way), probably not one in twenty could take the actual pieces and put them where they should be to make it harmonious. In other words, whoever can has a sense of composition. Anyway, I found out I had not done that. But do you know, to this day every time I lay out a canvas, it says, "Don't put anything important in the center." [tape recorder turned off] We got ahold of a magazine. Art News, or something. Well, there was no instruction, just pictures of paintings. Somebody brought me one. In there [was the] schedule [of] regional and national jury shows [for the year] 19 -so-and-so. Well/ that's something else. Boston is going to have their eighty-seventh annual jury show. Anybody in the nation can send a painting. I get an entry blank from them by mail, crate up one of my paintings, and I send it to Boston. One day a little envelope comes; it says, "Accepted." Eighty-eight paintings out of four thousand, and I'm in the show. I said, "Gee, that's fun." So I go through the book, and I lay out more. As time comes along, I enter thirteen different [shows] before that year is over. Of course, this is before the fire. I'm accepted in the first twelve. [I] even [entered] regional shows, like the southeast United States; or even one — I think it was San Francisco--I sent one out and got in. Yes, I did; I got in the annual of the [M.H.] de Young [Museum]. Several paintings of mine upstairs right now. This sure is fun. I got turned down on the thirteenth, and was I mad. Don't do that to me. These jurors. I told an artist about it and he says, "If you get in one out of thirty or forty, you're to be congratulated." Other things happened; and I'd get publicity locally, of course. I entered two paintings, by the way, in the San Diego fair. I was painting things that I knew wouldn't happen anymore. Not memory; they were a part of me. I began painting the story of Cadmus, Kansas, six miles from the railroad; where I had gone through all that early life. By the way, they are more difficult than anything I have done since. A person who is so glad to get the paint or do something doesn't know anything about its difficulty. He can't imagine there could be anything easy about any of it. I tackled the most complicated things the first three or four years. To me, any of it — why, to even draw a line to the telegraph pole to me would be just as difficult as doing a house with a hundred windows or a man chopping wood. Painting was all alike. I never wanted to be called an artist, and I don't like it yet. I'm not. Anyway, I enter some paintings down there, too. [One was the] arrival at a big picnic that they had at Cadmus. I told you about that. And I did the dinnertime one. I got first and second prize on paintings in a certain category down there in San Diego at the big fair. [tape recorder turned off] That's about the major things that happened in painting prior to the fire. We found out we had a total loss, and we had twenty-five thousand dollars insurance. The youngsters--son-in-law and daughter-—were living over in a bridge house. We decided we must go right ahead with the antique business there; we had it built up. So a couple had built a wonderful, shake-shingle, one-story, big antique house with different rooms, just a block and a half south of us. We could buy the whole property for eighteen thousand dollars. They wanted to get out of it and retire. And we could buy all their merchandise, mostly early American. So we take our insurance and buy the building and stock. We decided to let Sazz and her husband run all of that place down there. [We would] rebuild our refinishing shop down there on the old property and have our pickers in Pennsylvania send whatever they could right away. We had good credit and they did. [They were] constructing tables where they had to make something to please somebody. We'd buy a half a carload of old lumber in Pennsylvania; some of it had been kept in haymows as old as the antique furniture. Of course, we made it by hand then. We did have power i saws, but otherwise where people wanted it and if we couldn't find it, we'd do that. They ran the business down there, the workshop. We decided to move up to Los Angeles, and maybe move the whole thing. So we go over in the [San Fernando] Valley. We thought we had to have a [railroad] spur, because we expected eventually to ship up here. We were going to have a big business. We figured if we could do a hundred a big business. We figured if we could do a hundred thousand dollars worth of antique business down there, ninety miles south of Los Angeles, in a year, why, we could certainly do a quarter of a million up here. That's logic again. So we hunt around and hunt around and we find a spur on a railroad over here. I think it was Union Pacific — they go up the coast at this point — or maybe it was Santa Fe, over in the Valley near Van Nuys. Here on pillars, right on the side of the railroad, is a shed that is fifty feet by two hundred. We can get the lease on it if we will ship our antiques in there; nothing was said about how many cars. Eight was the most we had ever shipped in one year. We get that whole thing for two hundred dollars a month. Therefore, we decide to ship in up here. Bob and Sazz would do the retail down there, and we would move up [with] a man helping us (Chris and his wife; he was a wonderful fellow). He could work, work, work like anybody, and he loved it. He was a good carpenter; he could do anything under Bob's direction. They both worked at it. We get this lease on there; and we ship a carload of stuff in and unload it right off the freight car — no hauling.. So we buy a place over in the Valley, not too far from this, on [Valley] Vista [Boulevard] I think it was. It's just one block this side of Ventura Boulevard, over the mountains here. We buy a place that has about a half an acre. It has a long living room, fifty feet by twenty, with a fireplace in the end. Kind of Spanish — you would walk out into a little patio and into the bedroom. There is a bar built into this big room. We buy that for fifteen thousand. We buy a little cottage with a garden for Chris and his family to move up. They can live over near the workshop, and everybody is happy. We get all that done, and the railroad company says, "You can't have this property because you don't ship enough freight cars." Now that all happened within six months. I believe every time you are stymied on something, accept it if something else can be done. You see, every time I have had a catastrophe happen, it's been the best thing that ever happened to me, like when I went bankrupt after I sold my store in Fort Scott, Kansas, or I would have never been in the advertising business but in the clothing business there maybe. Here we have had this fire down there. We were being jarred. Everything was too comfortable for seven or eight years in Leucadia, just dandy. All the business we could -do, and routine. Also about that time, Chris says, "I can't stand to be up here away from the people I know." He wants to go back down there. He goes back and gets a job somewhere else. We are left with his property. We sold it, I think, at a loss of about three or four hundred dollars — maybe commission — over what we had paid for Chris. We were giving him credit, a bonus, every month so he would eventually own that place. Well, he wanted to be back where the people were. Like the little farmer that went so far from Cadmus: he was going to go abroad, and he came back in about three weeks. We said, "What did you come back for?" "Well, I didn't see anybody I knowed." Well, he came back and didn't go any further. Chris was that way. Now we say, "Well then, we are not supposed to be in business in the Valley." So we come over to Los Angeles to look for a shop. We could have sold it retail off of that platform. We had room for everything — for retail, a couple or three carloads of stuff, refinishing; I had it all working. We come over here, and we find a place on La Cienega [Boulevard], right in the thick of, not so many art galleries, but decorators and all that. Well, we get a building for five hundred a month rent. That's a lot of money if you don't know how much business you are going to do, but we figured this way: we're up here, we can do a quarter of a million; and we have a truck to bring in things from down there. As I say, that was in the beginning. So we decide to find a place to do refinishing. We find a place with a lot of permits right across the street. That's where Chris goes, by the way. We do refinishing over there, but everything is cramped. iSo we finally reverse the whole thing: keep the new place down there; son-in-law and Chris all of them work down there permanently and bring us up a truckload of refinished furniture as fast as they could do it. They would also sell down there. This place at 736 North La Cienega had a lot of room. We even shipped one freight carload in here, We stored it in back, and then as the truck came in with finished things, [they would take] some more things back there. We're doing a good business over there, everything going along fine. [tape recorder turned off] So, the young people were living down there, running that retail [shop], and doing refinishing; and we have this place at 736 [N. La Cienega] with lots of room. We could ship a freight carload [and store it] in the back. They'd come up with refinished things and take back other things. We showed people things in the rough, you see. Shutters — we got indoor shutters. One way to get antiques [from] people in Pennsylvania, ask them if they have something that they don't want. Now if you say, "Do you have any antiques?" they wouldn't even let you in the door. I found that out [when] I was back there a good deal at the time uncovering new leads. I found out Paul Hanley was making shutters out here at a high price, machine-made. And here are these handmade ones back there stacked in the attics. So I'd go [back East], and [there were] two things I could do; I'd say, "Do you have any old bowl and pitcher sets?" (They began to use them in California. Every bedroom had a bowl and pitcher set.) They'd let you in for that and sell something they didn't want up in the attic. We'd buy them for fifty or seventy-five cents a set, beautiful ones. But shutters could be shipped easier, and I got into that. "Do you have any old indoor shutters put up in the attic?" "Why, you want those ? They are old-timey?" I'd buy everything they had at fifteen and twenty-five cents a shutter — handmade panels, sometimes cherry, walnut, pine, tulipwood, oak; and louvers, all handmade. Over a period of time, I expect we shipped two hundred thousand of those. I bought everything, and told the pickers to get them all. We could sell them in the rough. We found out how to refinish them easily by merely soaking them a few minutes in sal soda. They were not heavily painted as a rule. If they were painted, why, then we would have to use tri soda — pure lye almost. We would make vats with that. We sold shutters that we'd [bought for] twenty-five [cents], or seventy-five, maybe, if it was solid walnut or solid cherry or a bigger size. Some would cover whole doors; they had just two tall windows and two big louvers, every style you could think of. I was filling shutter orders over here in La Cienega; we had most of those shipped here. By the way, if they had varnish on them, you could dip them in sal soda for a couple of minutes, turn the hose on them, and they were refinished, you might say, unless you wanted them shellacked. That goes on and on. Paul Hanley is getting five, six and seven dollars. We found an Englishman, a wonderful carpenter, in Santa Monica — Charley. He just loved to work on these things. He would get his pay [hanging shutters]. [Customers] would say, "What about the hang?" Well, they had to be trimmed a little and all that sort of thing. Even the ones they make, you have also to trim a little when you hang them. Well, we turned that over to him. A lot of people did their own; a lot of dealers bought them to resell, even out in Orange County. We were almost in the shutter business up here more than anything else. But it's a wonderful thing to see beauty and labor of the past restored. Down below, they are getting along fine. Fair time comes along up here. I am painting, and people are buying my paintings. By the way, in '54, Fleur Cowles came along; she was then coeditor of Look magazine. [She] came along with the wife of the president of the biggest drugstore in the world. Owl [Drugstore] at La Cienega and Beverly [boulevards]. Anyway, the president of that company — I know him well; I can't think of his name. Well, Fleur Cowles comes in with this friend, the wife of the Owl president. Fleur Cowles buys paintings a little and studies things. She's seen some of my paintings, I guess, in shows, but I don't know. Then there's another woman comes along, the one who wrote the bible on early American painting, Jean Lipman, editor of Art in America. She wrote a book on primitive paintings. I found that before she knew me. She had collected 226 early American primitive paintings. She had them worth plenty before people knew much about such things. She had seen mine, and she said, "Oh, I want that." It was a red, white, and black painting I did of a church and buildings and houser. in Connecticut. Well, she said, "I would buy that, but I promised my husband I would never start modern primitives. Stick to the old. He's fed up. I've got 226 of them." Well, Christmastime comes, and I had asked her a hundred dollars for that when she priced it, not even knowing it was Jean Lipman. I'd have given her one to have her own one, for prestige. Christmastime comes, and she says, "I must have that painting. My husband has agreed that I can buy that one painting if I won't buy any more. Please send it to me." She enclosed a hundred dollar check. She wrote me back later that to this day it is the featured primitive painting that hangs in her living room in their Connecticut home. Well, Fleur Cowles says, "I think I would like to run a story on your paintings." They send photographers and they do pictures of Band Concert — I still have it. Thank goodness I have kept some of the early ones. They did Thinning Beets in Colorado [Sugar Beet Thinning] and Saturday Night in Kansas. Well, I still have Saturday Night in Kansas--now this is 1965--and I have the band concerts here; they are not for sale. Saturday Night in Kansas had been in the Galerie St. Etienne for twelve years in New York. They didn't sell, and they didn't try to sell them, but they are all here now. And only last March somebody contacted Dr. [Otto] Kallir in the gallery back there, and they ran one of my paintings in full color in the March issue of Cosmopolitan this year. A full page in color, and Vincent Price wrote the copy below it. They paid him three hundred dollars to do it. The gallery arranged that. I would have let them do it and paid them myself, but he knew the ropes. This painting that they reproduced in Cosmopolitan was called Downing House, Chester County, Pa. Early stone, and a regular barnyard close in, like the early days. Since then, I have received two letters from Senator Downing of Pennsylvania and his wife [who] want that painting because that is his great-grandfather's homestead. Well, it was out here, and I had a show coming on over at the Sari Heller Gallery. Mrs. Doheny of the Doheny Collection (the street we live on now is Doheny) bought eight or five, and she spent seven thousand five hundred dollars for my paintings. Now I am in that group, the Doheny Collection — great. They are buying paintings. Senator Downing tried to buy the painting from Mrs. Doheny, but she won't sell it even at a profit. Now I have had two letters. Would I please do another one? Well, can you do another one? [tape recorder turned off] We'll drop the painting for a while. I don't think I have said yet that we stole a house in Beverly Hills when we sold our big house with the fifty-foot fireplace. After we paid commission, our profit on that, showing you can't lose money on property in this whole area of Southern California.... (We only lost two or three hundred dollars on the house we bought for Chris. But I don't know how a railroad company could make a deal with you and then say, "Now, get out." It was done by a real estate man; it was done not just by word of mouth, [but with a] contract. Anyway, I'm glad we got out of it. Everything I have been forced to do later on, I was very thankful. Even the fire down there--it was a godsend.) We sell the house over there, and after we pay commission, we get back our fifteen thousand dollars, plus a stove and a refrigerator. We move over here looking for property, but before we move anything, we have thirty days or more escrow. We live in a motel. She picks up a little throwaway paper, and it says there's a place over here on Doheny. It's the place we're in now, three bedrooms upstairs, and you see what it is below; right on Doheny, a block and a half north of Wilshire, a block and a half south of Burton Way, and in Beverly Hills, where they say that a cigarette stub is three inches long. Well, the woman wanted sixteen thousand dollars for it. Now a farmer had come here from Iowa and built this house about forty years ago. It was a farmhouse typical of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska. We loved old-fashioned [houses]. We weren't too excited about the Spanish houses with the arches and all; it didn't have the feeling of Kansas and corn. Anyway, we think sixteen is a little high. Things were pretty tough yet; we were having a kind of recession. We offer fifteen-five, and we get it. All right, we spend a thousand dollars. The kitchen has to have new sinks and that sort of thing; some of the wiring had to be done over. We tore out cupboards (there were built-in cupboards everywhere). Well, we had antique pieces to put in or we didn't want a cupboard. They were torn out; [it was] painted outside and painted in; and the whole thing was about a thousand dollars. It had a good backyard and a garage behind, By the way, right to the side here, at the driveway is this... you could go right out the little hall, and you were on to the steps to step into a buggy. The steps were there. I guess the little garage had been a barn; it had to have been. Spent a thousand dollars. When they go to do the electric wiring and put in a little extra plumbing, the carpenter comes to me and says, "Say, there is something wrong in here. These walls — what is this?" Well, what do you know? To begin with, the studding was only twelve inches apart. Remember, a farmer from Iowa, where they had cyclones, had built it. It was braced from left to right, from the top down [to the bottom], and crisscrossed both ways. Today [studs] are sixteen inches or so [apart] and maybe no bracing, or one here and there. They didn't find one termite in this house. It's got no basement under it, but plenty of space underneath. Didn't find a termite--it's solid as a rock--and when they have an earthquake, you hardly know it if you're in the house. We had new shingles put on, and that was about all. We spent a thousand dollars. We have been offered fifty-five thousand for it after we had lived here for nine or ten years. We don't want to sell it. They want to rezone it. The zoning here now has expired legally, but it still takes 75 percent or so of the people who live here to agree if they rezone. We signed up to permit that. We understand that enough of them won't sign, but we didn't want to stand in the way. And if we sold this, we'd still make a lot of money; but we'd pay some capital gains tax, wouldn't we? But where are we going to buy a house that can suit us anywhere in Southern California for under forty-five or fifty thousand? We signed, but we don't think it's going to go through. We hope it doesn't until we want to move clear out of the whole town. I don't think we do right now.

DIXON

Are they zoning it for multiple dwellings?

BLAIR

That's what they want to do. It would be for where you can put up four or five units, or something like that. Well, let's get back, temporarily at least, to bread baking. Here we are, up here closer to Pomona, but not a whole lot. We've had a fire. My breadpans burned; my recipe was gone; and I want to bake bread in time — not for the San Diego fair, although I might send one down there — but I want to enter eight or nine kinds of bread over in Pomona again. [Bread baking] fits in with painting here at home while we're running the business; I never painted over at the store. By the way, here is something: only people that are busy will paint, only people that are busy will really follow a hobby. What if they have a lot of time? Why, they can always do it. Like when we were in Maryland, we lived about ninety miles from Williamsburg where they restored that whole village. All right, we could have gone anytime in that six months, we could have gone tomorrow, anytime, but we didn't go at all. You don't do it. All right, I want to bake, and I can't remember. I know I put in flour, of course; salt; shortening, a certain amount; and sugar. But how much of each? Oh, if I only could get that recipe. If I knew the names of some of the women who had wanted my recipe. I know the recipe was why I won at the fair. They wanted my recipe for bread. Well, what can I do? I would look in a cookbook, but her recipe was so good; I won all the time. I'm going to have to use a recipe in a cookbook. I look in a cookbook--it's the same thing she told me. Bread is bread; it's how you do it. Well, that's great, so I decide in my painting in here, I will get another perfect-shaped loaf of each one. By the way, heavy bread that has nuts in it maybe and whole wheat aren't so likely to crack out on the sides; white is toughest one. Like Camille says, baking white bread is just as contrary as a woman. She says there's no two alike, By the way, I have just baked 156 loaves to fill a big deep freeze out here. Each one is a mystery. No two batches are alike baked the same day, the same way, because of temperature changes and you just don't know what. So I look, and here's the same thing, the same recipe. I knew appearance [was important], and I wanted a perfect-shaped loaf. I couldn't get a perfect-shaped loaf; they cracked out in spite of anything I did. I did the same as I had before. First thing I call the oven people. The gas people come, "What's wrong? Probably your heat isn't even. You've got to have even heat." They do their stuff; I try another batch; and the same thing: not one perfect-shaped loaf. Then I call the flour people — Pillsbury — and there's a man down there by the name of Mr. Ovland who handles this. He comes down, and he says, "Well, I tell you. I don't see anything wrong with your stove. What's your problem?" I say, "I want a loaf of bread that I can send to the fair that won't crack out on me." So he says, "That's easy. Leave it in the pans an hour and a half; it won't crack out." Now mind you, I'm keeping a log; I have a book. I bake four loaves [at once]. At that time, I was up to five or six batches — each loaf timed by the minute, what happened, and what didn't happen. I do that, and am I so happy! I get four loaves that are perfect in shape. Just think how easy. Oh, I write it down. It's a great discovery. That's about the ninth batch. But it was coarse-grained in the middle, and you never would have got anywhere in the fair. You've got to have a perfect shape, plus fine grain, plus texture. Well, that's out. So I call the domestic science people at UCLA, and then finally the high school. They say, "Well, did you open the oven door?" "Sure, I look at the bread." "Well, try not too." Another one said, "Are your pans too close together?" Every time anybody makes a suggestion.... I'll tell you right now, I baked thirty-five batches day and night to get at least some bread ready to take over to the fair. I kept a log on them; the book is in there. And do you know, in some of that I got a perfect loaf. Oh I'm so good; I write up. This is wonderful; I'm so happy in there. But to prove it, I'd do it again to be sure that is the secret. No perfect loaf. That happened three different times; I got a perfect loaf but didn't know why. Now here's what dawned on me finally, finally, finally: touch. They'd say, "Let it stay an hour in the pans." I really worked it down; I tried it every other way. I knew this: when to put it in the oven must be the thing — I worked that out about the thirtieth batch. When the pans go in the oven, your yeast is working. Kow quickly are you going to kill it? And all that sort of thing. We tried different temperatures and all that. I did away with that rolling; that didn't mean a thing anymore. But I put it in the bread mold pans, and when you touch it, it jumps right back. It doesn't even make a dent. But wait ten minutes, [it jumps back] just a little. Another twenty minutes, thirty — I sat right there with a watch and everything, and it will keep getting softer, softer, softer. And then it's soft. You'd touch it in there, and by golly you'd say it was too long. I put batches in to check that; all would break out. I said I am going to let it go longer and see what happens. You know what happened? I began to notice that after it gets so soft, you touch it in another five minutes, maybe, and it jumps back a little. In another five minutes, it jumps back a little more, and a little more, but it never gets as tight as it did when you first put it in the pan.. In other words, it's a cycle: the yeast working; works itself out apparently; and then the new growth comes on and starts to tighten. On the thirty-sixth batch, I had four loaves, and I put one in real soft that I knew from past experience would break out. I let the others stay at different grades of tightening. Now, mind you, that's a new thing. I come in, and I get two perfect loaves on those that were tightened. But I am afraid of it; this has happened before. But I prove it. Now long after that, an attorney calls up, over in the [San Fernando] Valley, and says, "Say, I've heard about this bread baking of yours." (It would be in the paper that a man had won so-and-so for baking bread; the same old stuff. Women would write for my recipe, and I would say, "Just look in a cookbook." I had been writing them long letters all that time [before] on recipes.) So this lawyer comes over, and I said, "Yes, I'll bake today if you want me to." He comes in with a big briefcase; I thought I was going to be sued or something. He has a banana and a sandwich, and he sits down at the table. Well, I'm ready for him. He said when he'd be, and he was here then. He said, "You go ahead and do it, and I'll make notes on everything you do." So he takes all the notes, eats his banana, drinks some coffee, and stays until the bread comes out. When I went to put the bread in the pans in the oven, I kept emphasizing, "Well, I'm not going to guarantee this, because I'm not sending this to a fair. The bread is just as good — any of it." I think I'm going to try to [test my theory]; the number one loaf and the number three loaf would test all of them on the rebound. Anyway, out of the batch we got two perfectly shaped loaves. It worked. He called up a couple of years later and said, "You know, I sent a loaf of bread to the fair and got second prize." He was so happy. I quit sending [to the fair] after that, and I am going to bring up later why I quit baking. [tape recorder turned off] All the time with this bread baking, we are running a business and baking bread and painting. When you are busy, you get things done. A woman down at Leucadia, a ranch woman, knew about my bread baking. She said, "Do you ever bake any orange bread?" I said, "No, I don't like to venture. I just like to stick to staples." Well, she said, "I have a wonderful one." Down at San Diego, they didn't have any orange-bread classification, but I guess they do have up in Pomona. She gave me the recipe. Let me tell you, I entered a loaf of orange bread over there for eight years in succession and got first prize eight years in succession. I have the ribbons to prove it. There was a book published in Paris called Artists' and Writers' Recipes. The book sells for ten dollars, the [author's] name is Barr, and they heard about it. A couple came over here from Paris and had a show at the [Esther] -Robles [Art Galleries], where I had had a show. So they get the recipe of the orange bread. I was so tired of writing if down for people that I wrote it down in notes: tasted bread; liked same; how I got to baking orange bread; and this and this. Then I gave the recipe and the procedure — how to do it. I wrote it just like a long day-letter telegram, and that's the way they put it in the book. It's funny reading, because there are no sentences, but you get the whole story. They gave me three pages on this orange bread. During this period, I thought, "Well, what are fairs? Fairs are something for people to learn and show; here's a new kind of corn and all that sort of thing. That's what progress is. I decided to experiment with frozen bread, but I didn't have any deep freeze. So I bought one for a hundred dollars secondhand. I thought I would start putting away a loaf of bread. Now mind you, in doing it, I wanted to send the most beautiful of the four loaves, fresh-baked today, and take it over. I decided I'd put away the second-best-looking in a freezer. So I started doing that. The type of bread I used first was white bread. And then people would say, "Well, why don't you try something that has raisins in it. Well, I did; and then I put away a nut [loaf] ; and I put away an orange loaf. But [it was] just on the experimental stage, although I was continuing to send each year my regular bread. We put it away, and I don't know how long I'd let it stay in there or anything about that, but I just [wanted to] see if it freezes. I didn't even know that. Now, since we've put the breads in the freezer, we'll let them stay frozen for a while, and we'll bring painting up. I'm doing folk historicals and all that. But some way, the Smithsonian Institution decided — I got a notice through ,the gallery in New York, from Dr. [Otto] Kallir—they want to send sixty paintings of contemporary American painters i through all the nations in Europe. They had a schedule made, and they appointed a jury of five men, two in Washington, D.C., and three in New York. Dr. Kallir, I think, knew about it. They wanted these five men to pick sixty American paintings to travel for a year — to Manchester, England; to Whitehall, in London; to Spain; Germany; France; Italy, Switzerland — all through the major countries. He had at that time about fifteen or twenty of my paintings, and I told him to enter [them]. They took six of mine; I got 10 percent of the show of American painting with five jury men. I got busy with the Smithsonian, and I found [the tour would begin in] Lucerne, Switzerland; and then they would go to Germany to Berlin and to another town on the coast; and then to Sweden. Here would be the story in the papers written there, not just about my painting; but it said, "If you have not seen this show from America, Smithsonian-sponsored, you get on your hat, get up from the table, ride down and see that show." They were so enthusiastic about it. Now it happened that during that time, I didn't know it, but book publishers, as a result of that [tour], used one of my paintings in a book called Sonntagsmaler. It means "Sunday painters;" I know a little German. (I got tripped up on that in Pennsylvania, too; there are two kinds of German, and they don't like each other's German.) Anyway, from that I am in a five-dollar book and a fifteen-dollar book; the [latter] is called Masters of Naive Painting. Masters--I'm in there. [The show] went all around. Over there was Sir Stephen Tallents; he saw these things, He was a writer; I think I told about him, maybe. Well, he saw my show there, and wrote up one of my paintings. By the way, that was in the show at Whitehall. He called it untutored art. I have a copy here. That's the time I tried to get him to send me names of untrained primitive painters over there. Well, there are none, because they all study art when they are youngsters. Now I'm in these books, and that [show] travels for a year. The group comes back here, and they have the jury go over [the paintings] again. They are going to travel to the museums in America. I get nine of the sixty paintings; it has increased. They are in the museum in San Diego. They traveled all over the nation, and they paid for it. It was up here at Santa Barbara. By the way, in the meantime, I had a one-man show by invitation in the museum in Santa Barbara. That Smithsonian [exhibit] traveled for a year and a half in this nation. It had primitives in there from the Pilgrim century, loaned by museums. Now we have the paintings brought up to approximately that date, probably five years ago, and the bread baking up to about six years ago. Of course, there is some more to be said on both of those things, plus going back to the antiques. I wrote a book on antiques, 79 6 photographs taken by me over a period of time of pieces we owned, with an explanation. Anyone, if they would see this manuscript, could take any American native wood — pine, maple, cherry, tulipwood, red Virginia walnut, any of them — from the Pilgrim century right on up and see, not the exact piece, but by judging according to the things I discovered, the legs on them, the moldings and a few other things.

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 6, 1965

BLAIR

During the time of bread baking I bought what they called a deep freeze then, secondhand. It had a lift lid. I paid a hundred dollars for it and put it out on the back porch, just to have it, because it was the thing to do, I guess. So it occurred to me--I don't know what year; maybe the seventh or eighth year I baked bread for the fair — to put away a loaf of bread, to freeze it a year, to see what would happen to it. Now you don't put away your best loaf when you bake four loaves. You take the best-appearing one and send it to the fair. And then I put the next-best-looking loaf in there and let it stay there. There is one thing certainly wrong with what you call whole wheat bread. If there is whole wheat bread, why do, you ever have to have another one called "100 percent whole wheat?" It ought to be reversed. Whole wheat should be all whole wheat, and then you could say "50 percent whole wheat." But they have it just the other way. If you say whole wheat, in the fair or anywhere, it means about 40 to 50 percent whole wheat and 50 percent or so of white flour. But if it is all whole wheat, then you have to say so. Anyway, I put away what we would call whole wheat, about fifty-fifty. I took it out the next.year and took it over [to the fair]. I didn't enter any [fresh] whole wheat that year, because you can't enter two iloaves in the same class; but I entered orange bread, and nut bread, and all the others. I got a first on this. Well, Time magazine ran a story on it, [and it caused] quite an excitement. Amana heard about it, and their public relations representative, a woman by the name of Jan Victor, called me up. I don't remember who came, but I remember some people came and photographed; and they gave me a big Amana freezer. It's out here on the porch now, six feet high. That was a sensation. It was on television and throughout Europe about a loaf of bread frozen for a year getting first prize at the biggest fair in the world.

DIXON

What did the fair executives say?

BLAIR

Well, they didn't know anything about it. I was over there, and I waited around. You know, you fix your bread in the morning; they judge until noon; and then the fair opens. And nobody is supposed to know what happened. But I took along a loaf of bread on this day and gave it to the woman in charge. I said, "Here is a little card with my address. If you don't mind, [tell me] when the judging is over. I don't want to wait until noon if I can help it." So she put down on this little card, and here is this loaf of whole wheat. She didn't know anything about it being thawed out the night before. So there it is. I go oyer to the press box and tell them. Right away, they send over photographers. They take a picture of the loaf of bread and all that sort of thing. That's that. I was told later, though, that a director in the Standard Brands Corporation was in Paris when this was on television and radio news about a year-old frozen loaf of bread getting first prize. And then a secretary, after the annual meeting in December, after the fairs, called me up and said they discussed it at length, what impact it had had on frozen foods and different things of that kind. Well, we go on now, and right away people said, "Well, how about if it is fruit bread, and you've got nuts in there or raisins or something like that?" Well, I had already started that, anyway, so I put away a loaf of nut bread to freeze for the next year. I take it out, and I take it over, and I get first. Well that's in Time magazine again. Quite a to-do about that. The copy from the newspaper said, "Old Frozen Toast Still Wins," or something like that. Everybody thought it was the same loaf — well, no. They cut it; they pinch it; they smell it; and they touch it — we have gone through this — for grain, texture,.baking and all that. Well, in the meantime, I had always gotten first on my orange bread recipe. I had put away a loaf of that just to try in my mind what [freezing] does to orange bread. I am also entering bread down at the San Diego fair. They have nut loaf and raisin, but they don't have orange. So I take out of my freezer, this next year, a loaf of frozen nut bread (I think), thaw it out the night before, and drive down to San Diego to enter it. It is supposed to be nut bread. I get down there, and it's a loaf of orange bread that I had put away already one year to take over to the [Pomona] fair. Well, it is thawed out, but there is no category for orange bread down there. So I leave that orange bread with my daughter as soon as I find out; I find that out at her home, just a few miles this side of Del Mar, where the fair is. It has been thawed out all night, but I put it in her freezer. Then when I come back, I think I'll leave it there. I tell her to bring it up the first time [she comes up to Los Angeles]. Well, I came on home, and she comes up in a month or so, and thaws it out, of course, before it comes up. I put it in the freezer out here and say, "By golly, it's been a year freezing now by mistake; I am going to leave it another year." Well, the result was, I take it over — it'd been frozen for two years — and I get first on it. I have the ribbons in there. I guess that about tells the bread story. I might bring this deep freeze of T^ana up to date. That was in probably '55, '56, '57, along in there — at the latest, '58. The phone rang just last week, and a woman's voice said, "This is Jan Victor." I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know your name." She said, "You know me. I am the one that brought the cameraman that handled your publicity for Amana. They want me to kind of bring the file up to date." Now she is a public relations woman who represents several people. One of them, by the way, is Paul Masson champagne and wines. She said, "I'd like to come over and bring the file. I have been throwing away a lot of files, and I discovered this one. I said, 'That's about that bread. Maybe Streeter Blair is in town yet.'" She comes over, and right away she says, "Where is your television?" I said, "It's upstairs in the bedroom. We don't look at television except for the Rose Bowl. " But anyway, she goes up there to watch a commercial at twelve o'clock for Paul Masson champagne. So that part is over, and we bring the file up to date. That was a revival just last week of the contact. I am still baking bread. It just happened that I had been baking bread here for a solid week, and I baked about a hundred and twenty loaves of bread. By the way, I have developed a new recipe that people seem to like. Whole wheat bread I like, and I like white bread, but I do [not] like rich coffee rolls in the morning — it's too much. So, being perfectly free — no fairs or anything — I took my whole.wheat (that means ordinarily about half wheat), but I only put in 20 or 25 percent of the whole wheat just to flavor lit. I've done that for years — put in maybe 10 percent, even in my white bread. Not for the fairs; you can't do that. So I used brown sugar instead of white; and I put in a little extra brown sugar, because I don't think the brown sugar on its own has a flavor quite as sweet as the white. Anyway, I put a little extra in. I put in about two level teaspoonsful of nutmeg and about two of cinnamon. That's for four loaves, so it can't be very strong. Well, sir, the result is that whole wheat, with that added, adds just a little tang, even for toast in the morning. I wouldn't want to just eat it as bread, although some people would. It's neither coffee roll — it's not rich — [nor bread]. Some people, if you didn't tell them, they'd eat it just as whole wheat bread. One or two I didn't tell would say, "This has got an extra good flavor." They didn't know whatnot, but that's what it was. [tape recorder turned off] Of course, I had been out of the antique business several years. I had a fire and went ahead and bought a new place, the antique shop on La Cienega. I guess we got clear out of that about ten years ago — I don't remember. But all that time, from the time I first started to collect antiques when I was in advertising — I'm sure I told you; how does anybody know when their antique piece was made, or possibly what style is it, and why the name? I'm sure we covered about studying with Mrs. Leete and all that sort of thing. Well, on that trade, after I got the hang of it, I would judge a piece of American wood. (That's pine, maple, cherry, tulipwood, Virginia walnut, and, of course, later on in the Victorian period, black walnut of the Midwest. The red Virginia walnut of course is more beautiful than what you call mahogany. By the way, mahogany is not the name of a wood at all or the name of a tree; it is a term given to a certain type of hard, colorful wood. I always thought it was a mahogany tree or something. There is no such thing; it is just a name. The red Virginia walnut to me is more beautiful than any mahogany I ever saw. ) Now, I had a big problem learning how to tell a piece of furniture, because in American furniture, very few hired a cabinetmaker who would put in the inlay if there was any, or carving if any, which was never much in American. They just made good old honest furniture. The American cabinet men — just as fine an apprentice as ever came from Europe or anywhere else — took the native.woods. They cut down their trees; they cured [the wood] ; and they made furniture. They made it for friends; and when the people had more money, they would put in the inlay if it ought to have it. Now what's.going to happen? Suppose you have a dressmaker, and they make dresses all the time of the bustle period, say, the Gay Nineties or something. Well, do you think if styles change, that dressmaker is going to continue to make bustles, because that is it? No. These cabinetmakers — they were farmers, and they worked a lot of time in their shop at night-- [were] just wonderful American people who came over here for freedom; and some of them imposed more restrictions on others than they ever had at home. Anyway, they would take the newest thing on a piece of furniture; for instance, the periods went along with Pilgrim furniture as one type of thing. Carver chairs, and all that. By the way, it always surprijres me that some of these earlier chairs had more turnings on them than the latest Victorian spool table or chair that you can think of. Way back — hand-turned with the foot lathe and all that sort of thing. Then you come on up through that into the Georgian and then the Cromwellian periods. I don't mean George in there; I am thinking of Charles. After the Elizabethan period, there was King James and the Jacobean [period] ; and then to the first King Charles, the Cromwellian period; and then the second Charles gets in for a while; and then after him comes...

DIXON

... James..

BLAIR

No, not James. ,

DIXON

Oh, yes. Second Charles; second James.

BLAIR

Yes, that's right. [laughter] That period is very ishort. Maybe you're quoting the Bible.

DIXON

No, no.

BLAIR

That's right, and then you get up into just before Queen Anne.

DIXON

That was William and Mary.

BLAIR

Yes, a very short period, about four years, we will say. Well, you learn all those things gradually. A lot of people will say, "Oh, that's called a Queen Anne." When you get right down to it, all these things are judged by the feet, or the turnings on legs, or the moldings at the top. After all, it is a piece of furniture; it is a table; it can have butterfly shape or be put up against the wall. I found out that in all this, you judge by the moldings, and you judge by whether it has inlay, maybe, of a certain type. Sheraton didn't have inlay, but Hepplewhite did. Sheraton and Hepplewhite are two years apart — 17 89 and 1791, I think; I guess Hepplewhite [comes] first. You learn this: a leg tapered on four sides would be a Hepplewhite; if that same type of leg is turned, it should be a Sheraton. Now that doesn't mean that way back they didn't turn a leg, but I mean practically plain, and slender. One thing they said of older American furniture: the later, the lighter the weight. I photographed every piece of furniture we shipped from Pennsylvania; I expect altogether it was thirty or forty freight carloads of solid packed unfinished things found by pickers. They helped us find it. If they found a piece they knew was the type we'd buy, they'd put it away; it was sold right then. I know one year, we did ship eight freight carloads, but [usually], in ten years, two or three [a year]. I got a good camera and a magnifying lens, and every time a piece came in that I hadn't gotten [before], I photographed it. I knew that nobody could really tell of the age of their own furniture within ten or twenty years; the styles last. But I did learn this: you've got to judge it by the latest new style on there. If women's bustles didn't have a ribbon on them, and the other time they did, well, the ribbon on the bustle shows the latest thing. These cabinet makers trail just the same way. They'd take the basic thing they had but would add a touch of the new. They didn't have blueprints. For instance, oh chairs, take a Windsor chair. Why, after the bow backs and the looped backs and all that sort of thing, they [become] simpler — straight posts, but still turned, and the little rod that goes through the top pierces the two posts of the back. All right, that's quite detailed, and you have to be careful. Pretty soon, they were still using the posts like that, but they put a rail — not a rod — tJirough there, and [there was] more room to sit in. You had more space. All right, they go along that way, and another fellow says, "Gee, it's easier to put it on the back." In another period, ten or fifteen years later, they chisel in the back and put a couple of screws in, and I mean handmade screws or handmade nails. They kind of morticed it on the back. Then later on, they'd make a little heavier rail, bore little holes, trim down the rods on the side, and put this wider rail [on top]. Those things are all specific and consistent. Then you get into the only original American style of furniture, Duncan Phyfe. Everything else was copied. But Duncan Phyfe, with the peculiar legs and all that you can identify, was an American design. [tape recorder turned off] As a result of all this, I ended up with 796 photographs, from Pilgrim century pieces clear on up to Gay Nineties Victorian chairs, almost strictly machine-made. I ended up with 796 of those pasted in a book, with copy explaning each one and a foreward. Here, for a first time in America, is a book that sticks to early American furniture. You can buy a thirty- or forty-dollar book on antiques; [it would have] the same classical photographs from the museums, generally the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American wing, and three or four pages on [common furniture] in the back. Now [Wallace] Nutting, as we know, was very famous. He dealt strictly with New England furniture, and he was so wrong. He judged just in reverse. The oldest thing is the Queen Anne; it's got a Queen Anne foot. Just that threw him off ten or twenty [years]. But even so, he did a great work, two volumes. [Nutting, Wallace, Furniture Treasury (Framingham, Massachusetts: Old America Co., 1928-33), 3 vol.] I always thought that was the bible, and if I ever got ahold of [one I would be lucky]. You couldn't buy them. They wanted fifty dollars for the two volumes. But I finally got one. Was I disappointed again! Only New England [furniture] — and that wrongly judged.

SCHIPPERS

Would you say how many years he was off again?

BLAIR

Well, I will say styles change about every ten years; so if you are taking a basic thing, and you judge it by the latest thing on there, you are certainly [safe]. Take Queen Anne, for instance: although her reign was about ten or eleven years; at the same time, the style called Queen Anne went on clear up to the first George. What I am getting at is, if you don't judge by the latest thing, you could be ten or twenty years off on your judging. Well, maybe that isn't too important, but it's nice to know if it's what you call a genuine period thing, or if it's one that's not degenerating but gradually changing over into what is going to be a newer style, and which throws you into another period, ten, twenty, or thirty years later. It just happens Hepplewhite and Sheraton came out within two years. By the way, there were no blueprints for any American craftsmen before Chippendale's period. They made their own observations all from pieces seen. I think the first one to ever make any design of a piece of furniture that you could say could be used like a blueprint today.... I can't think of that name; [it was] just before Chippendale. It was a break over between the second Georgian period and into Chippendale. That fellow was the first one, I think, to put down designs that might be sailed--! was going to say flown — to America.

DIXON

How far off was Nutting in his judgments?

BLAIR

He was as far off as the change of styles. A change in style is accepted generally from five to ten or fifteen years [later]. If you find a piece of Chippendale that has turned into an influence of a late Chippendale, cheapening it in the work design because of the influence of a new period, and if that runs ten or twenty years or so, that's how far it would be off. In other words, you cannot judge by the newest indication of [overall style], but by using the new style of part of it. Every new style after Chippendale was something you could make quicker, and a new style [appeared] because of that, not because they saw it in Europe. [For example,] a simpler, easier way to put the rail on the back of a chair. Well, the first ones degenerated a little on to that, and then a whole new style developed. * Anyway, I had that book, and there were 750 pages. I knew at the time I wrote it that if it was published, it would sell as well as the Bible, as long as America, as long as people were concerned about American history. I submit it to a publisher in New York, and they keep it a long time. I get a letter that it has been approved by all the members of their reading staff. They said, however, that to reproduce the plates alone would [cost] twenty-five thousand dollars. But we would put the book out now to our lay readers. Who's that? People who buy antiques and people who sell antiques. Now it came back that they had parsed that, and they would send me a contract to publish this book. The Korean War comes on. I get a letter that says, "[We are] very sorry. The government has rationed paper, and we don't have enough paper here to print what we signed up for. We are in trouble. Sorry." Well, I am used to things not happening. Dr. Aldrich, the one that told me I was a primitive painter, came along and saw it. He was, if not the dean, nearly so, of the history of American civilization; and he saw this. I have the book here right now, page for page. Here are actual pieces. At the beginning, here are chairs, tables, corner cupboards, beds, dishes. You cannot find any antique in America [that is not here]. Call it a corner cupboard — whatever it is and whatever classification — you can turn to a chapter marked "Corner Cupboards." So what do I show? First is a photograph of an original museum piece, probably made in mahogany, and done with all authentic detail. That is the general, and then page after page of all [specific] variations of corner cupboards that I ever found. You won't find one in there that I didn't find — butterfly shelves, all the kinds of different moldings: reeded moldings, concave, convex, hood moldings. (We have a cupboard out here with hood molding. The molding is not put just across the top but on the outside, like a hood on each side and across. You can kind of get in under it a little bit.) Anyway, this professor. Dr. Aldrich, says, "I want to take this down to the University of Miami, Florida, and show it to the students of the American history group." You know what they did? They put that in as course number one, a must course for anyone taking a course in history of American civilization or art. They made a film — more than a film; I don't know what they called it then. But click, click, click — each page and big enough to read! There could be forty or fifty students in there, maybe a hundred, and a screen so big they would throw each page in black and white on it. The course was as many as they could handle in a day until they covered the full book. They made a tape of that and gave me one. Well, I didn't want to spend my time on promotion. I was painting. I loved promotion, but if I got into promoting.... That's it, so I didn't promote it any more. They sent me a tape so I could have it to myself, and they returned the manuscript. They kept their tape.

DIXON

Microfilm.

BLAIR

Microfilm. After so many years, it kicked around here, so I donated it to the Museum [of Science and Technology] in San Diego. I sent down both the microfilm and the manuscript. They said maybe they would get the book published. I expect this was six or eight or ten years ago. Not long ago, Mrs. Blair goes up to this seminar put on by UCLA at the big lake in the hills above San Bernardino.

DIXON

Arrowhead.

BLAIR

Arrowhead. The subject was not Proust, but Gertrude Stein, one of the hobbies of Mrs. Blair. She and my daughter went up, and they even asked her to read. It was Dr. [Robert] Haas from UCLA, who used to buy antiques from us. He came to see us and see the paintings after that contact. I told him about this book, and he said, "Oh, there is nothing else like it. It must be printed." Well, he's handling, and has been all this year, what you call the banqueteers [?], a great deal of that; so he has no time. The manuscript J is here — it's intact — but I am wide open for somebody to take that, split fifty-fifty with me, and see if they can get it published. I have heard there is a foundation that will publish manuscripts not popular at the time, but considered worthwhile. You glimpsed through it the other day. There may be a few mistakes in there, but if so, nobody down at the University of Miami or anyone around here knew it. You always have a few errors or words not used. But in there, there are also stories. It tells about my buying the first Pilgrim table and the big wood lathe, which is at the museum out here now, for fifty-seven cents. So the book is here; I am painting; and there are many other things coming up in the painting. So let's stop for a moment, [tape recorder turned off] While these things were going on — antique books and bread baking and all — of course, I am painting practically all the time. We got rid of all our antiques about nine years ago, and I've had nothing to do but paint since. But you can't paint all the time. There are so many things you have to do: the business side of it; stretching canvases; framing; telephones; letters; and photographs. At least two hours' work indirectly or directly occupy you for every hour you get to paint. Anyway, I am painting all the time, doing the best I can. I am not making any pattern or doing any specific thing; I just paint things that I want to paint. Well, it does turn out, of course, that these things are concerned primarily with life in the period that motor power ended the family farm and even villages. It used to be almost everybody had a horse and buggy and a barn — even in Kansas City. Well, today, you know, it's not that way. Those were the days when a great big white horse would be pulling beer trucks loaded down up a hill in Kansas City, and the horse would slip and fall on the slippery [street]. That was the only power: horsepower, man power, woman power, and boy power (he plowed, too). Now as to paintings, I kept on painting things that I wished to. I think we said my first show was at the University of Kansas. I was delighted. Then after that, the Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa, I believe, wanted it. There I had a one-man show, and a man wrote in from the Galerie St. Etienne, Dr. Kallir; and he said, "I see you are advertising a show by Streeter Blair, primitive, who is good enough to show with [Grandma] Moses." Moses was booked for a one-woman show in the Philbrook, and I, am booked for the same month. The publicity they got up was eastern-western primitives; that's what they called it. The show goes on, and from that [time] Dr. Kallir takes me on to represent me. He had a show, and the only painting he sold was to a company that wanted to make pottery. I forget the name now, but they were going to make pottery. They had me do designs of parts of the different paintings of the farm scenes for whole sets of dishes. Well, I did that and was fairly excited. They bought the painting, which included no rights; but they were to pay royalties. They never did it. I did all my work and sent it back, but I wasn't surprised. Then another group, a Chicago firm, comes along, and they say, "We want these for tile. We want to make fine tile." They selected two paintings to make tile. They selected a Christmas carol scene for one and the Tenant House for the second. By the way, it is hanging right around the corner. I just got it back from New York. Done on a breadboard — I'll explain that later. Those sold and sold. We had our store running at that time and we sold out of them. We got down and reordered, and they said, "We're sorry, but we are sold out." So I wrote in and said, "Do you have any seconds?" They said they would check, and they said, "No, we sold all the seconds." It ends up we do not have a set. Our friends in Malibu own a set; people here the other night, one of them had a set. But those tiles had sold. Anyway, that was that much acceptance. In the meantime, I get into museums--I think today eight. Ozzie and Harriet [Nelson] bought a painting and paid me seven hundred dollars. It was appraised at nine hundred dollars by the Los Angeles County Museum [of Art]. In their high bracket and all, they made money, I think, on donating the painting to the museum. But keep this in mind: a museum does not accept a painting because it's free. It passes first Mr. [James] Elliott — at the present time — who says, "I will recommend it to the board." They have a board of acceptance. You know, any artist could give a painting to a museum and say, "I am in that museum." It has got to be accepted first. Then come [Mr. and Mrs. Howard F.] Michel out here, who donated one to the [Fine Arts Gallery of] San Diego. So I am in two [museums], Los Angeles and down there in San Diego. Well, a fellow who had bought some paintings from me in Omaha when I first started to paint called up one day and said, "You know, we are doing our house Chinese now" (this was seven years ago), "and these early American paintings don't fit in. Would you buy them back?" I said, "I certainly would. I've got a suggestion to you." He was from Omaha, the son of one of the owners of the Nebraska clothing company who bought my Tim magazine that you heard about. Well, he's out there, and he has three paintings, I think. So I said to him, "You can charge it off [on your income tax] if you give one to the Omaha museum." Is it called Joslyn? Anyway, it is a museum of art in Omaha, Nebraska [Joalyn Art Museum]. There is one [painting] called Baking Day, and they saw it on the film last night. Well, he finds out that the museum would like to have that. He had paid mc so much, so I am glad to have that. He donates that. I don't get the painting back, but I am glad to be in that museum. I bought the other two back at what he paid me for them. He thought that was a good investment; he got to use them all these years, got his money back, and went Chinese. So I am in that museum. Then I am invited to have a one-man show in Santa Barbara, There is a painting called Ice Cream [Strawberry] Social [Kansas, 1903] --it was on the film last night — they own that. I can't quite remember who bought that; somebody bought it and donated it. No, I think they bought it themselves. Anyway, I am in that museum. Then there is the Academy [Museum] of Paola, Kansas, a small-town museum connected with the college there. They own two. [tape recorder turned off] The University of Kansas bought two; one is Threshing [in Kansas, 1908], and the other is First Day at KU [Sept. 12, 1863] They bought them. Nobody donated; they bought them outright. I made a reasonable price, of course. I wanted particularly [to have] First Day at KU there. Recently, [I sold] a picture called White Christmas, which Hallmark [Cards, Inc.] is using this coming year, with white turkeys on white snow and a Pennsylvania red barn. He bought that at the Sari Heller [Gallery] just last month. I got word yesterday that he is donating that to Syracuse University. I can't think where else, but there are two or three other museums I am in. This makes at least eight in America so far. All this time. Hallmark have been using my cards. They sold half a million of one card, and they own two of my paintings. You might say that is a museum. They own two, but they are really in their offices. But they pay royalties. You know, when you sell a painting, you don't sell the rights. They own two paintings, and they've used those off and on in different forms: sometimes paper; sometimes gold; sometimes silver; one time five dollars for twenty-five of them in a box — they sold plenty. But they did sell over half a million of a card two years ago. This year, they are featuring White Christmas. That painting is the one that the fellow from New York bought and donated to Syracuse University. Now, Walter Berkowitz in Kansas City bought some paintings, and he donated one to the [William] Rockhill Nelson [Gallery, in Kansas City, Missouri]. There is a museum, I feel, greater than the Los Angeles County [Museum of Art], at least up to the present time, when it was a conglomeration of antiques of everything. The Rockhill Nelson in Kansas City, Missouri, has the reputation (among museums, at least, if not the public) of [being] one of the greatest in America. They own a painting they hung in a room of what they call Midwest painters — [Henry V.] Poor and [George] Bellows, [for example]. So I am in there. Anyway, there are eight or nine museums now; and in the meantime, the Hallmark cards have gone along every year. I would keep sending paintings to a show once in a while, but only locally. I sent one to the de Young Museum in San Francisco; it's hanging upstairs. It's an excerpt from what I call one of my picnic pictures, with the drill team, pitchfork and broom brigade, in Cadmus. That made that jury show. I had a one-man show down in Florida, but I can't think of the name now. In the meantime, I was invited to enter a show of what they called "Man in His Years" at the Baltimore Museum [of Art]. And then that was in their catalogues in Baltimore. Another one was "One Hundred Years of American Painting" — I think at the University of Illinois. There was another show in Iowa, at the Davenport [Municipal Art Gallery]; they called it "American Paintings of Sports." They selected one of my picnic paintings for that show. I suppose that was kind of a sport — big picnic and a lot of fun. So by invitation and all, I have had recognition in a big way. And then along comes a friend. Max Showalter, an actor and composer, who owns some paintings. He lives up here in Hollywood, and he has a home. But he's had trouble paying for it; he's got a million dollars there. He started bringing people down here to buy paintings. Well, he brought David Wayne, who had a beautiful home, I think in Connecticut. Anyway, he was on television about a year and a half ago. The whole television show was in his living room; and right above the mantle was one of my paintings, I think Cow Pasture. He bought two paintings. He was the first one, I think, to ever pay a thousand dollars for one. Then he brings Mel C. Carney, the most successful young banker in America, according to polls. He stuck it out nine years after his father and mother passed on, became a successful banker — first vice-president of First National Bank in Chicago — and when the nine years were up, he was a recognized success. He resigned to write novels and collect art, and he bought a brownstone house in Chicago. He is worth fifty million dollars. All right; he is out here, a friend of Max Showalter. They come down, and I have a painting I don't want to sell, marked two thousand dollars. I guess it's the summer or the fall of my Cow Pasture. The cow pasture at Cadmus was my world, a half-mile long; and I went after the cows until I was fifteen, and all that stuff. Every tree and rock was a friend. Even the briars then were friends, and beautiful. Anyway, I go out to make coffee as usual. I come back, and this fellow, Mel Carney, says, "I want that one and that one." "Oh, I didn't want to sell that." Oh, what will I do? The other one was a snow scene. Well, I looked down, and I realized that two years before, i didn't put "N.F.S." on there (that means "not for sale"); I put two thousand dollars, which meant nobody would buy that. Well, he says he wants that one. I'm not going to say it, but he didn't say anything about price. Did he see that price? Two thousand dollars — he must be crazy. Well, he writes a check out for twenty-four hundred and fifty dollars, and he has that. Later on, I did one called Circle of Fire from Ayn Rand's novel called Anthem, I think. The story is after the atomic war. In that book was one paragraph that I happened to pick up and read. It said everyone had a number. The men worked over here in uniform; the women there, with a hedge between them. If a man and woman looked at each other-- seven years in prison. They were just numbers. But those people, even though they were just numbers, they helped each other a little. If anybody tried to escape — twenty years. If they went into the uncharted forest, [the guards] never followed them; that meant death. Wild animals. There was a fellow in there who, with some others, finds a cave where atomic energy material was prepared before the war. In there, they find the elements. And this fellow happens to be scientist enough to realize that in there are the elements to produce electricity. Well, it's a secret, but he doesn't tell his companions. All the time, through their working days, there is a girl that works on the other side. They glance at each other, and they glance at each other. His idea is humanity. If he can get those elements out of there and [form] a colony or a group that believes in the individuality of man, he's going to risk his life. He decides to go through the uncharted forest, because he will not be followed. He gets his elements; he escapes; and it's a Greek tragedy. (I wrote three Greek plays.) He gets in there and thinks of (what he called) the "Golden Girl." If he goes back he'll be put to death or [receive] twenty years, and she will [too]. What could he do? But he decides to go on, because [there is] death that way, maybe a chance the other [way]. Here comes somebody through the woods; it's the "Golden Girl." In the story, they build a circle of fire, and the couple is in there with the box of elements. Here is a panther, tiger, lion. They are looking; they won't come near the fire. That is in the book, and I do that painting. This Mel Carney wanted it when he was out here a second time. I had sense enough to say I didn't want to sell it [instead of] putting a price. Anyway, I hadn't sold a painting for a long time, and I sent him an air mail, "If you really want the Circle of Fire " (it is quite a large painting, probably forty by fifty) "you can have it for a thousand dollars." This was five years ago. He sent a check by return mail. Now to jump ahead, just two or three weeks ago I am invited to a party on Heather Road up here out of Coldwater Canyon, and what do you suppose it is? Mel Carney's home. I don't think he sold the house, but he moved out here to write novels. I met him at one of my shows at Sari Heller's, and I said, "Well, how is the novel business going?" He says, "You know, I submitted my first novel ten times, and they've rejected it." Here he's worth fifty million bucks. So what? He'd like to have a novel published. Anyway, he has a big party up here and I am invited. Mrs. Blair is going back to Kentucky--! told you about that in the last chapter — going to Kentucky and VPI. She and my daughter Betz just went for a month, and they had the same routine I did, only socially. Now I don't have a car here. I sold my car. I wouldn't drive anyway; I've quit driving. Taxis are cheaper [than a second car]. I can use the regular car any time, but a second car only an hour a week. You get out in this fast traffic — why, you are dizzy. So I have two dear friends. (Oh, yes, dear friends. Oh, that word "friend" — I hate it. It's a goddam fake. A friend is great until you need a dollar or a favor. Don't talk about friends to me; I've had them. I know people I love and love to be with, but don't think that a friend means they are you or half of you.) So I call one woman, and she says, "You're so wonderful. I am free; we have an understanding; just make a date." (I am alone here for thirty days baking bread.) So I call one and say, "You are in the gallery business. How would you like to go up to Mel Carney's party? Millionaire district." "Oh, I would just love to." Well, she gets a sore toe or something, so she can't go. So I called another one, [who said I should call] anytime I need a friend or help, a widow, Mrs. Gerril Budeneux, who went to school with me in Junction City. Not long ago, her cat got on the roof, and she couldn't get it off, so she called Streeter Blair, "Dear friend, come and get the cat." She gave me a wiggly stepladder, and I get up there and risk my life. The cat bites my wrist; it wants to get down. I finally get it and fool it with some liver. I get the two front feet. It gnaws at my wrist, but I get it down and drop it. Old cat, she lands on her feet. That happened just a few weeks ago. So I call her, "Would you like to go up to this Mel Carney the millionaire's party?" "Oh, yes." I said, "Would you please drive me up?" "Where is it?" "It's on Heather Road up in the hills here." "Oh, in the hills of Hollywood. I know people get lost up there if you don't know just exactly where you are going." Five times I tell her I have been on Heather Road out at his place. So I say, "I wouldn't want you to go up there on my account really. I can take a taxi." Here's women for you. Wonderful. You can cut all this out if you want to, but it's true; it's human interest. I go. There are seventy-five couples there. Wonderful. Fourteen-room [house] --fifty-million-dollar guy! — a big place in the mountains, straight up, beautiful at night, a patio behind; no second floor, everything on one floor. Everything you could think of. Behind is a so-called patio, steep, at least two hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, with a little brook of water running. There is a big bar out there with liveried ones. Inside in the main living room is my painting. Cow Pasture, over the big fireplace and at the opposite end, well-lighted, is Circle of Fire. Every room has paintings of different kinds. I meet there people, people, people — you would have thought the party was given for me. I mean that. I felt embarrassed. I wore a white silk suit and looked a little different; I don't like to dress according to the rules, anyway. (I wouldn't know how.) All that evening there are people going around with hors d'oeuvres, wonderful things. Five or six girls in not just white uniforms like in a hospital, but nice. You can't hardly eat one [thing], and here's a girl with something else. You eat all evening. And drinks--a liveried man comes in, "What do you want?" "Well, I really don't need anything, but I'll have a little bourbon and water." You know he brings one, and inside of thirty oi forty minutes, that fellow will come back knowing you and say, "Do you want some more bourbon and water?" I mean this guy... you just couldn't believe it. The Prince of Wales never had anything like that. So I meet people. I am alone, and I came in a taxi. People say, "Say, they say you did these paintings." "Yes, I did." "I didn't think I would ever get to meet you. I have heard so much about who did these paintings from Mel Carney." Down there is the president of the new Columbia Savings and Loan Company building. That night he says, "I want to talk to you. We're building the finest savings and loan building at La Brea and Wilshire that the world has ever seen. We are having a whole floor for art galleries. Would it be possible if we could get some of your paintings to ^how down there?" Well, I said, "If I am properly approached." He said, "What do you mean?" "If you said you wanted them." So anyway, he said now the gallery is being built. And he said, "Would you care if we gave you some publicity, that we are showing them?" I said, "Well, if I don't have to pay for it, I'd love to have it." [laughter] So he said, "My promotion manager will contact you as soon as the gallery is ready for an opening." It was a wonderful evening. I am ready to go. People are beginning to leave, and there were only about thirty couples left. I feel kind of worried, so I walk over to the door. I was going to go, and Mel Carney came by and says, "Say, you're not leaving. There is a party I want you to meet. " He introduced me to a woman.... There was one woman there all evening who wore the biggest hat I ever saw. Nobody else had a hat on. She wore a picture hat and made a picture. It seems her husband had been a great painter and had taught in the schools. The name was [Sol] Schwartz. But I don't know people. I was embarrassed that I didn't know how great her husband was. He had passed on, and she wondered what to do with all the paintings. He was really, I guess, very prominent here. Well, I [asked] her what kind of artist [he was], but she didn't know. If I had known that he was a German Expressionist I would have known who would take those immediately — that's the Galerie St. Etienne, in New York. After that he said, "There's another couple wants to meet you." Here's a young couple that heard I had come in a taxi, and they wanted to take me home. Fine. By the way, I had taken two loaves of bread up there, one for Mel Carney and one for a friend he had brought down here, a woman who'd looked at paintings. You know, after the two loaves of bread got there, I heard them discussing it. You'd have thought somebody had given them a gold brick or better. "What will we do? We ought to serve, but let's keep one." So they open one, cut it in real thin slices, and put it on the table where they had all kinds of things to eat. I didn't see [this] till later. They served you so much during the evening that later on I saw in this dining room a turkey that hadn't had but one slice off of it, a big ham nobody had touched; but here, almost gone, they had taken this loaf of bread of mine that I had just baked, had sliced it thin and cut the [slices] in two on a silver tray. That was the feature of the evening — to eat some homemade bread on that table. This couple said, "We want to drop you off; we are going to Hollywood." Well, the man said, "I think I'll have another drink." He goes outside, and I really want to leave. (I think probably it was the night before I had had this oral history thing, and I wanted to have a little sleep.) Anyway, the girl that was with this fellow didn't like it. She said, "I feel like calling a taxi myself. We started home an hour ago." I said, "Well, I'll go out and speak to him." So I go out and tell him she wants to speak to him. He says, "Fine, fine." He just ordered another drink outside. He's supposed to drive, and I am supposed to ride home with him and this girl. But it turns out that after a while he does come. Here was the position I was in; I came in a taxi. She said, "I think I am going to call a taxi going home." Well, what should I have said? "I'm calling a taxi; you can ride down with me." Well, you can realize what kind of a scandal or something could come in Hollywood on that. I didn't know any of them. The result was he does come, and we go out in his Jaguar. I sit in the back seat; she sits up in the front, and leans back. They don't speak all the way home. But they get this far, and they drop me off. I say, "Come in and have a slice of homemade [bread]. They came in and had homemade bread and butter. They were happy; they went off. [tape recorder turned off] After I was brought home with this couple, I felt I had had a party for myself. Anyway, people who have bought paintings.... Not that one painting I sell is more important, or who bought it. Edgar Cohen owns one up the coast, and I have, oh, so many [others]. I have sold four hundred paintings out of five hundred and twenty-five, not counting any of the little ones. Most of them have been sold right from my own home in a social way. Sari Heller has sold more paintings for me than anyone else. She has the gallery over on Charleville [Boulevard]. I know the directors — [Edward] Dmytryk owns one. (I forget people.) Gardner, an advertising man, David.... Oh, Byron McKinney [?] of the biggest advertising company — four names--in New York. He owns two paintings. Vivian Vance and her husband bought three [paintings] two years ago. For me to try to tell you who has bought paintings... it's just kind of a Hollywood star book in a way. So we go along, and I am still working, still doing farm scenes now. I got away from the folklore into landscapes. Arthur Millier, the great art critic for thirty years of the Los Angeles Times, came to me one day; and he said, "You are going to paint as long as you live." I said, "I hope so." He said, "Most untrained painters record their experiences, and the life they have had. Then they stop. You will paint as long as you live, because you are using space." Well, I thought that would be easy, but I found out not. I was using space; you teach yourself. The first landscape I did is upstairs. It's snow. It's all white; snow is white. Well, snow isn't white, but it was when I [began to] paint. Then later on, I find I can get distance in the snow. I can take one color white and get distance. Distance, closer, bring them on up by experimenting. You feel it; you've seen it and you know. Sometimes snow is yellow, and sometimes lavendar, particularly at night. Anyway, you go along, and you are using space but don't know you are teaching yourself. Instead of folk historicals like band concerts and ice cream socials, I found myself doing one-family farms, which I knew were a thing of the past in America. So I got the idea of contacting the Guggenheim [Foundation]. I thought it would be a good thing for America, through the [United States] Information Service in Washington, to do seven or eight European peasant one-family farms, and about ten American one-family farms in ten different states. I would have a show the Smithsonian [Institution] could certainly send. It would create an understanding, or improve the understanding, between the people that really make a nation — not the rulers or even the poor class. Anyway, Guggenheim turned it down, because they didn't have a classification. That's the easiest way to say no. But I guess they didn't have. In the meantime, I had written to the chambers of commerce of all fifty states, and said, "I am going to do this and this, and I would like to have you send me photographs of early family farms before motor power took over and give me the names of the principal crops of your state." Well, they were all answered. Some said contact the university, like Texas A & M — they come through — and [University of] Virginia. They were all in the file. I would do a series of American paintings. I already had Nebraska, Kansas, and New Hampshire. I looked up the principal crops, and I had shown that. Hay, natural hay, wild hay was the principal crop in New Hampshire — think of that. South Dakota--cattle; they said, "If you show any crops, they are to feed cattle. They had windmills and watering troughs in the praires there a quarter of a mile long. You'd be surprised about California. No one would guess, but the principal crops of a one-family farm before motor power were cotton, barley, and potatoes. Texas was wheat, corn, and what they call sorghum grain. Now that is not to make syrup, but is more like kafir corn and things like that which you grind for feed. I had three or four to start with, and I worked for over a year, but not as serial. I got up to fourteen. Mr. [Irving] Blum of the Ferus Gallery said, "We would like to give you a show." That's the most avant-garde ^ [gallery] on the coast, the whole stable, all of them, ab^* stract and extreme abstracts and action [painting]. "We ought to have the opposite pole of action painting — primitive." He wanted me for a show, so he comes over and says, "Say, what are these?" He had picked out paintings for a show [he was] going to have for Christmas. I said, "Those are state paintings I am working on, a series. I'll have fourteen of them, at least. One-family farms in different states." He says, "I'm not going to tag you with a Christmas show. I'm going to put you in a real show. When will you be finished?" "I don't know. I don't work on a deadline. " It turned out I knew I'd be through before June. I write a letter to Vincent Price and tell him what I'm doing. Would he come down and look at the paintings if he could? I got a letter back from him [in Europe] and it says, "You have interested me greatly. I'd be very interested if this show of yours is what I believe. I am gone for three months in Europe, buying paintings, acting, and one thing and another." So I don't follow it up. I go ahead, and the show is booked for a year ago June at the Ferus Gallery. Vincent Price comes in there, sees it, calls me up and says, "I want to buy that show." Well, they might have paid more, but they offered less under certain conditions with restrictions. They paid fifteen thousand dollars for the show. The condition was, the show is sold traveling for Sears [Roebuck and Co.], and would have to stay intact for twelve months. They agreed to that, so I took the fifteen thousand dollars, and of course I paid the gallery a commission. The show has traveled now for a year. I understand they have sold ten out of the fourteen. They have added another six months traveling. I've got full-page ads in the Chicago Tribune featuring Vincent Price's latest collection for Sears. [tape recorder turned off] When the show opened in Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Price went there, and then he flies to London immediately and is gone twelve weeks. She meets him at the plane when he gets back. On the way home, he is telling her about a reception for me at the Sears store in El Monte [California] I didn't know about this, but he's telling me. He said, "You know, my wife met me at the plane, and she said, "Remember that painting we liked so well at Chicago?' 'We? Which? What happened?' 'I bought it.' 'You bought it? You didn't pay for it, did you?' 'Yes.' 'How?' 'Sears Payment Plan.' By 1978, we will own a Streeter Blair painting. " Here's what happened recently — some other things. A friend of mine in promotions went to New York on a visit. She went to the Metropolitan Museum. Now, it just happens the Metropolitan Museum is flying Vincent Price's painting to Switzerland to have what they call the finest color plates in the world made to reproduce a twenty-five hundred[copy] limited edition series of that painting — 30" x 36" — owned by Vincent Price. That's supposed to be in the works now. I think that covers Vincent Price.

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 13, 1965

BLAIR

Several possibly important details omitted might be caught up here. In March this year, '65, Cosmopolitan ran a full-color [reproduction] of a painting called Downing House, Chester County, Pa. Vincent Price wrote the story underneath. This is a painting done about the third or fourth year that I painted. It has been in a gallery in New York all this time with a few others. I had them all, every painting, sent out here lately. At that time, I had a show on over at the Sari Heller Gallery. The first month was miscellaneous paintings, and the second month more of a historical type. This painting was shown there; and the Doheny collection in Los Angeles bought it and three other paintings. Well, that hadn't anymore been consiammated than I get an airmail [letter] from the New York gallery that Senator Downing of Pennsylvania wanted to buy the painting (he saw it in Cosmopolitan ), because it was his great-grandfather that built these houses and developed that farm in the earlier days. When he found out it was sold, he tried to buy it from the Dohenys. They didn't want to sell it; so now he has written me, would I do another one. Well, that's impossible — to do another one. I could do another painting, let's say, but not that one. It will be the same buildings and all that, but maybe not such elaborate fields. In that one, it shows every detail of the different crops that could have been at that time. Another thing — the Ford Foundation had a show about two years ago, or a year ago, down at the Newport Beach Pavilion Association. (It is an art association down there that puts on paintings in a big pavilion by the sea. They do not try to sell; that is not their thought. It is merely to introduce paintings of what they consider important groups for the people down there. They always get good coverage in the Los Tmgeles Times and in other papers.) Well, I was invited two years ago and took down three paintings they wanted. This show was all-time primitives in America, from the Pilgrim century on. They had paintings loaned by museums all over the nation. Some of them were insured for fifty thousand dollars. They had them on down there and I had my three. When Henry J. Seldis, the representative of the Los Angeles Times, went down there, he featured two paintings in his write-up in the Calendar of the Los Angeles Times. One was of an early Pilgrim painting, and the other one was my Band Concert. In that [article], he made a statement that I was the foremost American painter in the last twenty years. All right. That's just publicity, we'll say. Now then, there was a Ford Foundation show about four years ago, a jury show in a museum in Houston, Texas. That was called "Western Painters." I submitted my big painting, the largest I have ever done, Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas, 1863. [This was a raid] by [William Clarke] Quantrill during the Civil War — I think we covered that. Anyway, he was not a Southern officer, but a highwayman. He had ninety other highwaymen with him; and under the guise of trying to destroy the antislavery hotbed which was Lawrence, Kansas, he assembled his men a mile and a half southeast of Spring Hill (that's where I went through high school) on what was the Newton farm when I was at Spring Hill. At Lawrence, Kansas, they had an outpost of soldiers, but they had all their guns in the shop to be repaired and cleaned. The Hf public thought that Paola, Kansas, just a few miles south of Spring Hill, was what was going to be raided. So Lawrence was unprepared, tnit Paola was [prepared] to a certain extent. But no, they rode all night and arrived at three o'clock in the morning from this Newton farm (where I plowed as a youngster, working summertime out of Spring Hill in vacations out of high school). They arrived in Lawrence, Kansas, in '63, August 23. They killed 14 3 men and burned every building M ;;*. in Lawrence but five. There was no university there yet. The painting I did, which is the largest I ever did, is 6'4" X 10'4". Now, there are only fourteen different incidents that happened that anybody has any record of. You could ask five hundred people to ask questions, and if they are not familiar with whatever the subject is, the five hundred people will not ask over seven or eight different questions. An expert knows two more questions; that's why he is an expert. I read all the books I could from the [Kansas State] Historical Society in Topeka, Kansas, and found out that in all the letters written back East out of Lawrence, Kansas, by the women and the [other survivors], there were only fourteen incidents. Every one is in this big painting. Right now, it's in the Ferus Gallery. There is a movement afoot to try and keep the painting in Los Angeles. It really belongs in Kansas. It has been back there in the university and in the museum in Paola, Kansas, for some time. I had it sent out when I had my show a year ago of one-family farms in America and other scenes. That painting was accepted in. the Ford Foundation show at Houston. It cost me a hundred dollars to send it down there (a crate had to be made) and get it back. I was in the hospital at the time, by the way. I was getting over an operation, and I got news I had been accepted in that show down there. It was Western — no limit — anybody living in the West and painting. I think I got better right away when I found out I was accepted. It was a feature write-up and was given the place of honor in the whole show. They had their own jury. [tape recorder turned off] Naturally, since most of my paintings in earlier times were dealing with country life and small village life in the Midwest as I knew it, but really all over the nation, I started doing one-family farms — actual houses and barns of typical Midwest farms. I had one of Nebraska, and the principal crop was wheat and corn. I had done one of Kansas wheat and nothing else; that was the principal crop. It showed railroad trains and haystacks of that time in there. So I kept working on that. It occurred to me that the Guggenheim Foundation might back up an idea I had. I was thinking in terms of misunderstandings all over the world. The Smithsonian [Institution], as I reported, had sent sixty paintings of American pointers — and I had had six in the show — years before. So I decided to do a series of fifty one-family farms in fifty American states. And then [I would] go to Europe, the Guggenheim would support me — and do a typical one-family farm in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, England, Yugoslavia probably, and Hungary — whatever seemed right. At that time, thinking they would do it, I wrote letters to every chamber of commerce organization in the fifty states and immediately got back photographs, I got wonderful photographs of the architecture and barns and houses and the principal crops. Now, I knew the terrain of nearly all of these, of course not Hawaii or Alaska. I had camped out in many states, so the terrain didn't bother me at all. Here are these photographs, closeups of their principal crops--like in Virginia, you'd be surprised; the principal crop was peanuts and tobacco — and the necessities of life. In California, you'd never guess it. I am talking about one-family farms, not big cattle ranches. The data I got from California was [from the] north where they were one-family farms with barns and houses built a good deal like they did in the East when they came out. The principal crops to be featured were cotton, barley and potatoes. Everybody guesses grapes and oranges or something. You take Arizona; the principal crops are carrots and cotton. Anyway, I kept working on these, but I knew I wasn't going to do any fifty. Guggenheim turned me down and said they had no department for that. Well, that's an easy way to say no. In a while, I had probably nine altogether. I wrote a letter to Vincent Price and told him that maybe this would be a show that ought to travel all over the nation, appealing to country and village people, and in fact, to the nation in general. I thought of the Allstate Insurance Company that's owned by Sears; I thought, "Well, here's a natural." This show could travel and be featured in cities. I got a letter back from London; he was over there buying paintings for Sears Roebuck and also making a show. But later (I have it in here on the wall), he said he was very interested in it, and when he got back he'd like to see it. Now in the meantime, Mr. Blum, Irving Blum, head of the avant-garde gallery in Los Angeles, the Ferus Gallery, came over to ask me for a show. Mind you, this [gallery was] avant-garde; all the artists in his stable are way out and extreme. They get more publicity in New York than any other gallery on the [West] Coast. He came over not knowing about these farm deals, and he was wanting a show for Christmas. The stable had voted to have a primitive untrained painter as a contrast to their way-out, avant-garde type. He was picking out paintings for a Christmas show, and he saw these state paintings. Why, he said, "I'm not going to give you any Christmas show; you've got something there that's America. When will you be through?" I said, "Who knows?" But anyway I was through by May with fourteen [paintings]. Right away, he scheduled this show. During that period he had this big Quantrill's raid painting shipped out from Kansas, where it had been, to feature in another show after my thirty-day show. I think my show was in June. To jump ahead a little: in July, he had a miscellaneous show at this stable and showed my big six-by-ten-foot [painting of] Quantrill's raid. Vincent Price came in to the show, and he bought the whole show for Sears. He paid fifteen thousand dollars. Now, I could have gotten more money, but I wanted that show to travel intact. It's only merchandise, in my mind, to Sears. They can wire for another thousand dozen socks, but they can't wire for another painting. He bought the show, and they had a special case made. It cost two hundred and fifty dollars and would take all fourteen paintings in a slot. The show opened in Chicago, in the main Sears store. [They ran] a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune featuring Vincent Price's latest acquisition, Streeter Blair's one-family-farm paintings. He and his wife were there for the opening, and then immediately he flew to England for twelve weeks, working on a picture. Then the show goes to Cleveland. Then they have a special opening over here in El Monte, at the store there — just my show, nothing else. They invite the press and the writers in for this. They take their big cafeteria room and hang black drapes on the whole area. I think that room was probably thirty by fifty feet or more. Then they put white fabric over the black wherever a painting is going to be hung. Then they hung the painting; By the way, Vincent Price wanted no frames around the paintings but a stripping. So I got genuine walnut stripping with that just as a border. (By the way, Gertrude Stein writes a great deal what a frame could do or not for a painting. She says a painting is one thing, but the picture — these are my words, not hers — can go beyond the painting if it isn't blocked by some big frame. In some cases it needs that big frame.) Well, anyway, when these were all framed, you could see the whole painting and see the picture without any bounds, so to speak. That night, during the reception for the press, he's talking to a group of people, and I am showing a photographer certain things in the painting. Here is the manager of the Sears store, and Vincent Price and I looking at the painting. The shot is made; it came out well. But he's telling a few people about his own personal collection. He said, "You know, I got back from London after the Chicago show, my wife met me at the airport, and said on the way home, 'Honey, I have a surprise for you.' And I said, 'I'm not surprised you have a surprise, but what is it this time?' 'Well,' she says, 'you know that painting that we liked so well in Chicago, in Blair's show, that big one of Pennsylvania American farm combination? Didn't you know we liked it so?' 'Oh, sure.' She says, 'I bought it.' 'You bought it?' 'Yes.' 'Well, you didn't pay for it, did you?' 'Sure.' 'How?' 'Sears Payment Plan.'" Well, he said to the audience, "By 1978 we are going to own a Streeter Blair painting." [tape recorder turned off] This painting that we three were looking at happened to be the one that Vincent Price owned. He didn't know it and I didn't know it. He was telling what I just repeated to four or five people that were coming in, and he just told that as a byline. He didn't know, really, when he got home, that she had bought the painting. He never really had dreamed that she would buy it on the Sears Payment Plan. But that brings up something about the whole plan of merchandising of art that Sears has gone into. They have a man in Chicago that knows where every painting is all the time. Now, what happens to the regular Sears collection from Vincent Price? They call it the Vincent Price Collection, prints and art that he has bought in Europe and all over the nation. It's merchandise to them, and yet it's handled in a very fine way. I met this one man in Chicago, who came to this opening in El Monte. He gets reports every week from the different shows. He may have five different shows traveling in America, Vincent Price collections. Mine traveled alone in most cases. By the way, they could sell, but not deliver, my paintings for twelve months; that's what I wanted, instead of a little more money. I wanted the show intact. At that time, at the third stop, four had been sold, including the big one that Mrs. Price had bought. At the end of a show, they would send in airmail, to the man in Chicago, how many paintings were left and what sold. Here's maybe a certain artist's prints or paintings being shown, we'll say, in Virginia; but up here in Oregon, they didn't sell. One of them booked in the Sports Arena right here in Los Angeles, from Arlington, Virginia.

DIXON

Then they don't always show them in a Sears store?

BLAIR

Yes, these were always at the Sears store.

DIXON

Well you said the Sports Arena.

BLAIR

Oh, I beg your pardon. That's right, the Sports Arena here had it booked, and my show would have been the feature, plus other paintings. It was to be a big deal here — maybe two or three' traveling shows of his regular collection, plus my show as a feature — and it was booked at the Sports Arena here at Los Angeles. Well, they had such good response on the show, and so much interest in my show in Arlington, that that store manager would not release my show to come to Los Angeles. But he must have some authority, because he defied it. So they had the show here. in the Los Angeles Sports Arena, but my paintings were not there. Any number of people assumed that mine would be there, and I keep hearing about it today.

SCHIPPERS

What do you think of this kind of merchandising?

BLAIR

Well, I really don't have a definite opinion, but there are probably objections in some people's minds. I do know this: I feel that Sears is trading up their label, if that can be done, by showing this art. I think it gives exposure to artists that otherwise might not get a show; although [Vincent Price] does not buy anything that isn't recognized, so I guess that isn't so good. But here is a thought: I can remember that up to a few years ago, when I started painting, I was afraid to go in an art gallery; I was afraid to go in a museum and look at art. I just felt out of place; it was something untouchable. But the American people, on their own, in spite of all that, have become a little art-conscious in the last ten years. I know I never saw an oil painting except by some amateur done in a parlor as a society thing — a pine tree, a deer, a mountain stream, and a waterfall. I think they have brought art in America to the public in a way that they can go in and maybe learn a little. All these paintings that he collects, and prints and all, are authenticated. He told me once that he spent more hours authenticating each piece and getting on the back of.it something that was guaranteed authenticity about it. tl believe it is a good thing for the art world. I understand that they have now hired exclusively the highest-priced designer for dresses in America, and that they will have fur pieces, the finest that money can buy. That's their problem, I do not know what their motive is. I do say this: that art work is still merchandise to the people in Chicago.

DIXON

What about this permanent gallery that they have here?

BLAIR

Here is something odd. Just about four or six weeks ago. Sears opens an art gallery right over on Melrose Place, right across from the Camara Gallery. Melrose Place is a little street that has art galleries and decorator shops. It comes right out into the middle of La Cienega, where the major galleries are. It is only forty steps right down Melrose Place from La Cienega. Here they open and advertise it, "Sears Art Gallery, showing Vincent Price's collection." I am on the street, and I hear a band, a five-piece orchestra or something, out on the street. Everybody rushed down there. I go down, and inside of this gallery it looks like there is not room for anybody to look at a painting. They are packed in there, and Vincent Price is there. He is autographing for people. I remember two or three young women and one young man had a roll of their art work under their arm. They wanted Vincent Price to look at it and maybe buy it. He was nice, and he kept saying, "I can't, I can't." But here's what got me — showing this is still merchandise — here is a counter; on this counter are all the Sears Roebuck catalogs, and right behind the counter are two people taking orders for mail order like the farmers used to do in Kansas. Behind it are some little incoor shutters that they sell for probably ninety-eight cents instead of two dollars and a half. They are doing merchandise business, and here is the other--art. Comedy if you ever saw it, but I don't believe they could ever see the humor in it. It was a typical Sears presentation of art of the world. VVhen the place got full, they stopped the band playing; and when they'd have a little bit of room, they'd play again to keep it packed. That is their permanent art gallery. Now, in there will be pieces just as fine as there are in the traveling shows. I wonder, is art sacred after all? Why should it be? If a person had the money and they had a certain Rembrandt painting, let's say, if they like it in the kitchen or dining room in a millionaire's home, why couldn't they hang it in the kitchen? After all, maybe this is a good thing. I understand that another big chain now is going to get into that.

SCHIPPERS

Could you tell us a little bit about the finances of the thing?

BLAIR

Vincent Price has an unlimited checking account on a bank in Chicago. He can write a check for a hundred thousand dollars, bingo! Ask nobody. Otherwise he won't work with them, if they don't believe in him. He wouldn't do it; he doesn't have to. He's interested in bringing art; he really is. He's a collector himself, and he's interested in doing all this. Right now--I talked to him this morning on the phone — he's in a picture. I wanted to tell him that just right now this painting that his wife bought can be delivered. They are delivering the paintings now that were sold during the first twelve months [of the show] which I demanded. His painting, however, is still in Chicago. A friend of mine is a promoter, a wonderful person — Joanne Gordon, whose husband handles all the big parties for the Hilton Hotel. Sometimes on a weekend, he has to plan detailed parties for society, as high as nine hundred and a thousand people having special parties in the hotel. His wife, Joanne, has kept tab on my work, unknown to me for a long time. She has what she calls contacts in her own home. You pay thirty-three dollars for a couple, and she will present in her home art lectures and slide shows having to do with art. And it is popular. Now it happens that I am booked for September this year. Ed Kienholz, who has become so great now in his construction work, just had a show in a museum in New York, which I haven't had. And Vincent Price is number three on that ten for this year. So... I got lost. [tape recorder turned off] As usual, kind of diverted there. But that painting was delivered to [Price] from Chicago. This friend, Joanne Gordon, spent several weeks visiting her sister in New York and contacting book publishers about my work. When she was back there, she contacted the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She showed color slides — and I wouldn't blame any man listening to her; she is wonderful to be with — and they got interested and said they would make a color print of one of my paintings, a limited edition, high-priced, and to be put for sale in museums all over the world. They picked out, from the color slides she had, the same painting that Vincent Price owns. Imagine this: two men flew from New York to Chicago to see the painting itself. Then they had to get an okay from one man that dovetailed over them, [although] they were final as far as selection goes. They went all the way, had a date at Sears to see this painting, and do you know what happened? When they got to Chicago, the painting is in Kansas City in a Sears show. Well, if that wasn't a hurdle.... They were put out. Two men came special to see it in Chicago. But Joanne Gordon gets in touch with Vincent. I guess Vincent gets on the phone, and he can talk to those fellows pretty straight. He has a checking account unlimited. 'When he bought my show, he sat right out here in the living room and wrote a check for fifteen thousand dollars. I had it photographed, and I've got several copies. He doesn't ask anybody. Any time they got too "merchandisy" — I don't say they would — but got [tied up in] red tape, he just goes right over their heads. They can fire him if they want to; what does he care? So Joanne and Vincent apologize and explain to the fellows in New York. It just happened that three weeks ago, these two men were coming out here on some other business in Los Angeles. Joanne Gordon didn't think that they would even consider it anymore; but you know, they handled it. They went out to Vincent — he got the painting here. He had it flown from Kansas City, made Sears fly it out because of the boner. He had it in his home. These two men come out here. He called me up and said, "Well, I don't know when I'll ever get to have my painting." All that is needed now is the okay of that same one man again to fly this painting to Switzerland, where they claim they can get the finest color work in the world. It may be the printing of the prints; I don't know. I was called up day before yesterday, and they said, "It's on the way to Switzerland." The man in New York from the Graphic Society of the Metropolitan [Museiam of Art] okayed it. So the painting is^ on the way to Switzerland now.

DIXON

You say he wrote a check for fifteen thousand dollars?

BLAIR

Yes. He sat right on this table.

DIXON

That paid you, then, for all the paintings?

BLAIR

The whole show at one time. He just had a regular checkbook, and it said such and such a bank in Chicago, Sears Vincent Price Collection. They keep money in there, I guess. They probably call up every thirty days to see if they've got any money left. He just works that way; he can't afford to work with petty [cash]. And I don't want to intimate that any men who have anything to do with Sears.... They are wonderful; I have met one or two of them. But at the same time, they are all accountable to a board of directors and president of Sears — that great company. But they apparently have elbow room and they go ahead as though that were their business.

SCHIPPERS

Then Sears owns all of those paintings outright.

BLAIR

Outright.

SCHIPPERS

No consignment.

BLAIR

Oh, no, they don't have anything consigned; they own everything that he buys. He pays cash. I expect they have a half a million dollars in there — more, maybe — invested in paintings that are traveling. I guess it has been profitable from the merchandise point of view.

DIXON

After the year was up and the paintings that were sold were delivered, what happened to the rest of the show?.

BLAIR

They are traveling, but not intact. I don't know how they are doing it. They will travel as part...

DIXON

... part of the other groupings?

BLAIR

Yes. My whole show did travel sometimes with his regular collection in the same town, but it was shown separately. It was a feature of his. In the Sears store, you know what they would do? They'd take a shoe department, they'd take, any department, put everything away and lose business for those days. They really showed their things nicely. They are not just put around with washtubs and fan belts. They set aside an area in the store. Over in El Monte, they had a band come right in through the store. During the night, they had moved my paintings over to the store. We are there about ten o'clock, and here comes a three-piece funny band, a clown band, walking in from the sidewalk right into the store to attract attention to my show.

DIXON

Is it a certain class of Sears store that has these? I know they have class A, B, and C stores, for instance. The big ones are like the one here on Olympic [Boulevard], and the one here in Santa Monica. And then they have B stores, which are like the one in Ventura, for instance.

BLAIR

I don't know about that, except [the show] opened in Chicago, then jumped to Cleveland, and then to El Monte over here — which is a press proposition. They do have a fine store there.

DIXON

That would be a B store there.

BLAIR

All right. Then they were in Arlington [Virginia] and Texas and I don't know where all. But they jumped that show in the twelve months that they had to keep my show intact [so that] they got about eighteen shows over the nation.

DIXON

Then they only show them for a week or two.

BLAIR

About ten days to two weeks. Then they have to jump to the next store.

SCHIPPERS

In other words, they are getting both advertisement value out of these shows, and they are getting actual money for the paintings. What sort of percentage do you think they make on the paintings?

BLAIR

I can tell you this right now: they paid me fifteen thousand for fourteen paintings. The cheapest painting in the show is twenty-five hundred, and the top thirty-five hundred. The painting that Vincent Price's wife bought was thirty-five hundred dollars, and two or three more there. So they pay a thousand average, you see; and even if they only got twenty-five hundred, that's a pretty good markup — even for a pair of shoes. I don't think they are losing, money, but I don't think they are making a lot on that because of shipping. But they don't jump them too far. Anyway, I expect that is all taken care of. Here is what I believe they are doing: I think they are trading up. That's the big thing: institutional advertising. Let me tell you something. I know people who never bought a thing in Sears. They do have good merchandise. I had a little funny joke with the manager over at Sears. We had a toilet back here that leaked, and I never could get away from home to get one of these floats. So we were there with the manager of the store one night, and I said, "You know, I feel like one of you people now. I am having a problem. I need to buy something but I haven't been able to get away from home to do it. It has to do with some plumbing — this floater and rod that you have in toilets. I was just wondering if I could get one wholesale off you?" Well, he is a good [sort], and he said, "Now let me tell you. We are having a meeting in the morning. I'll do my best. See me around ten-thirty. I'll bring it up before the board." Well, you can get haywire on some of these things, but they are a wonderful, high-class group of people. They make the public today with this art. You can't just talk price all the time. They are trading up, and I think that is the big value they are getting out of it. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

You have told us how you started on a group of paintings called the one-family farm. Now, looking back over all the paintings you have done, there are other broad classifications. Could you tell us about these different.classifications of paintings?

BLAIR

Yes. What you mentioned first, argroup of one-family farms, is a result of fourteen years of painting before that. This might be what we get at first, what led up to this. I was eager to record the life as it was in America before motor power took over our mode of living, before electric lights, practically, and particularly before automobiles. Not knowing that I was going to paint long, I did want to record certain things — why, I don't know. But I think this: if anybody finds out he can paint (I never dreamed anybody could paint unless he had a halo and a purple robe), why, you're surprised; and so nothing can block you. The fact that you can do a barn and a road through an apple orchard is astounding. That is no more difficult to a beginner with no lessons than to do something with four thousand people. One just takes more time than another. And your people aren't people in your mind. But you can tell what they are doing, and I used to say, "If you can tell what they are doing, I am happy." I remember the first few paintings I did, there was nothing alive in it. I think I told you maybe about a painting of mine that a surgeon bought. It had my first live thing in it — that was a chicken chasing a bumblebee. Did I tell you that? DIXON : No.

BLAIR

Before I go into the detail, you might say I had no plan. I painted whatever seemed to interest me. I was afraid of nothing, because if the first thing I did was any good, the rest couldn't be any worse. I didn't even think of that; I just started painting. I did first naturally do this, without a plan, not a series. By the way, what is a series? I see shows and they call them "series so-and-so." I can't understand how anybody can do series. Here is what I am thinking about. Two years ago I saw — in a good area, on La Cienega — thirty-five paintings, all done of a hair brush and a mirror lying on a dressing table in different positions. I don't understand how poor and starving the guy must be to do those. But that was a vogue for a while, maybe — do one thing thirty times. Well, that was not in any of mine; there was no plan. But it did turn out though, that I, without thinking, did naturally record the things of the social and business life. Fleur Cowles says I have painted the life of the formative period of America. Now that word "formative" means this: do-it-yourself. America is being formed, the basis for what goes on now. We do have the help through power and everything, which is not any longer horsepower, man power, woman power, and boy and girl power. They were the power, just those things right there. The broom is symbolic of about 90 percent of it, and the walking plow is symbolic of the man power and horsepower. Such subjects as this came up first: Christmas carol practice and the community Christmas tree. In our little parlor in Cadmus, my mother played the organ; the farmer boys and girls came; and she taught them to sing. They could go out caroling in a sleigh to certain close-in farms, and that was that. Then another [painting which] came along early was a picnic, the Cadmus grange picnic. I think we covered that; we had three thousand people at a picnic. And then the interior of a grange hall, where there is a dance and an oyster supper going on--did we tell about that painting and what happened and why? There was a program in my mother's mind. My dad ran the grange store, and my mother ran the surrounding territory. [tape interrupted] The boys (have we gone through this?) were leaving the farms to get a dollar a day in Kansas City. Well, it's that program of activity that made Cadmus unusual. Naturally, I was exposed then to something more than just going out and plowing for fifty cents. The things that I was impressed with were the picnics, the band concerts, the band practice, and the oyster supper dance, [when] Roy Payne went away to learn, came back, and knew how to waltz. So there is that pattern. Then historical things come in. For instance, the one of the Downing House which I mentioned a while ago. I branched out away from Cadmus and into certain historical things. I think they were all based on buildings. I had a history where there were pen-and-ink drawings and sometimes [photographs from] early plate cameras, a history of America in pictures. Here is this wonderful farm back in Pennsylvania, the Downing House farm, and the most unusual arrangement of buildings, but convenient, based on weather. That all had to do, of course, with antiques. I had seen a lot of those [farms], but here is a reminder. That's one of the paintings I did breaking away from just the local color of life, business, social life and folk life. I get into some of those. And then I arrive at a point, after about forty-five of what I call the folk histories, where I get to doing some little paintings of an incident. They could have been, but they are not, an enlargement of a larger painting. You see, the beginning primitive painter bases [his composition] not on purpose but on space on the canvas; he is afraid of it. There has got to be something there. So all early paintings [are of] activities. Activity of people and different things is tougher to do than what you can do when you grow up teaching yourself. So I did Weighing the Colt. Here is a colt; for the first time, this young colt has been able to follow the mare mother hitched to the team when they go to the store on Saturday with their produce. They are going to weigh the ;, colt; he is so many weeks or so many months old. Here are farmers sitting around, looking at that colt. They aren't concerned about a horse show. Is he going to make good horsepower? That's the whole thing. They know by looking at that colt. Maybe one of them buys him that day when he is old enough to wean. Anyway, is your horse good, or is he going to be good? That is their power; just like if they ran out of fuel and they couldn't run electric light plants today, where are you going to get it? So those things are covered. I get through with all those, and I do some historicals around. No large paintings-- [perhaps] 30" x 36", maybe the Downing House was 36" x 45". That's pretty good sized, but it's all filled with activity. Now I get down to this: here's a picture, just a broom standing in a corner, symbolic of that life. Here's a man looking at a colt being weighed; over here is a new plow, a walking plow in the field. Red handles — we sold them in the grange store. The man is behind with the lines over his shoulder, over the left shoulder and down under the right arm. Two other farmers have come to look at the new plow. There is a cow looking over the fence, and there is a team of horses in the next pasture. I wanted a name for those. I had the name of folk life and folk paintings, which is old. Everybody has used that, [Pieter] Brueghel and all of them. Arther Millier,.really one of the great jurists and art critics in America — thirty years with the Los Angeles Times — was here (he always gave me good write-ups). I showed him some of these simple ones, and I said, "I wish I had a name for these incidents in folk life." He said, "Say, that's a new thought. Maybe we have to have a new word." Well, I said Fleur Cowles wrote me and said she would try to figure out one. I had many terms I thought would fit but didn't. He said, "Maybe before I leave, it will come to me." Before he went home that night, he said, "I believe I have it — Tfolk moment.'" Now, that's a new art term. You won't hear it used yet. It is not an enlargement of a little incident in a big painting. It is a thing by itself. So I go on painting, and I begin to do some snow scenes. I really ran out [of ideas] in a way — not weary from it, but nothing interested me [anymore] in the folk history, like picnics, band concerts and all these different things. Like First Day at KU ; I did that from a pen-and-ink sketch I found. I never copied a picture. I wouldn't do it, but anyway they didn't have cameras in those days when they had the first building at KU. [The painting] is owned by the University of Kansas now. Architecture was very easy for me. Somebody told me I should have been an architect; well, when K.U.'S FIRST MORNING, SEPT. 12, 1863 I see these big buildings, I am glad I am not. Anyway, I branch over into doing snow scenes and farm landscapes — no thought of any series or anything like that. Arthur Millier came by, maybe a year after this happened, and said, "You are going to paint as long as you live." And I said, "Well, I hope so. What do you mean?" "Most untaught painters quit when they have recorded their folk interests — 'memories,' they call them." He said he was going to write an article on what a great memory I have. I said, "Arthur, I have no memory. Nobody has a memory. Whatever is stored in your subconscious mind impressed you or it wouldn't be there. You don't say, 'I'm going to sit down and remember.'" Well, he did go ahead and write an article. He sent it to the Saturday Evening Post. Of course, they turned it down. Memory! If you aren't impressed, you aren't going to want to paint it. I was impressed by everything. I was impressed too much all through my earlier life, impressed even to where one boy could lie and I couldn't. Clear on down. I record things not from memory; they are part of me. They live with you. They don't end. By the way — enchantment. You say there is something enchanting. When you get there, there is no enchantment. The minute truth and reality come, there is no enchantment. Anyway, he said, "You are going to paint as long as you live, because you are using space." Well, I thought, "Gee, that's wonderful; that's the easiest thing there is." You know what he said? He said, "Most primitives stop. They've painted their so-called memories, and they do not know [what to do]. They have not grown into being able to use space. He says to have an area of spaces in a canvas, to have it be as it should be and become a thing of itself is greater art than filling it full of busyness, of things that happened which make a story. He didn't say this, but I thought the story was why my paintings were accepted. Well, I learned better. Drawing and story have nothing to do with your getting into a jury show. It is the overall effect, the overall quality. I had several letters back and forth with Dr. Kallir. I said, "Why do they say, 'Send these paintings but not the others?'" "Well, they have a quality," he wrote back. And I said, "A quality?" He said, "Yes, an overall quality. The whole painting." So I wrote back again wanting to get this thing straight. I thought then I could sit down and do just what he thought was quality. Well, you don't do any of it on purpose if you are not taught. And I said, "Is it true, then, that the painting has an overall 'quality' quality?" He wrote back and said, "Yes, that is it — whatever it is." [tape recorder turned off] This thing of subject matter, whether you are, in your early painting, filling it with details of things that impressed you, or whether you are using space — here's a thought: higher up on the canvas is further away. Look at a landscape. Well, in this space-use, not always snow scenes — I don't mean that — it could be landscapes, fields, fences, a few trees. A friend said one time that the further away a thing is [the more] you want to grey it. (That's after the three years is up; I could listen to somebody say something and it wouldn't bother me.) Well, grey in Kansas was a color. There was red, white, blue, grey and. yellow. I didn't know he meant that any color has a grey. Dr. Aldrich came along, proud I am using space so much, and he said, "Now you can learn this: every color has another color opposite in the spectrum. They will grey each other. Take lavender and yellow. You can put the highest value of lavender and yellow mixed and bring it on down to the darkest mixture of lavender and yellow. Do a painting in those colors and you could have a night scene that is pure white at the top and black at the bottom — relatively. I didn't use any of that; but at the same time, I found out that higher up on the canvas, my first snow scenes where I used space were just white. Snow is just as white back there as it is down here; you don't think about it. Snow is white. Snow isn't white. Every color is in it. There's lavender in snow; there's yellow in snow; and there's red in snow, depending on the surroundings, light effects, and everything else. By the way, it is interesting to know that an ordinary light like an electrical light (if you can call it a white light) put on a thing shows the color of the thing. But you put a color light on anything, and that thing becomes the color of the light. Well, I happened to kind of know that. Anyway, I found out that I could take my white if I wanted to, in a snow mountain at the back or a field with covered snow and a fence around it and some trees, [and I could add] just a tiny touch of lavender if I wanted to, just a little in the white without any yellow. Even that would grey that snow a little, and that field stayed way back, a lot more distance between that and down in front than where snow was white no matter where it was in the distance. So I began to use that. Now, I think the content of your recording of your so-called memories [on canvas] disappears somewhat. [tape recorder turned off] Now, after I found space--I wasn't conscious I had found space — I just got through with the things that burned me up inside. Before I died, I wanted the life at Cadmus, the culture of their six miles, down in something besides books. So here they tell me I am using space. I didn't decide to use space; it just grew. I just kept on, and then I learned a little bit about greying things. Now I am free, and I can paint anything I want to, such as I paint, such as it is. By the way, this fellow that wrote The Music Man [Meredith Willson] — this fits right in there — I saw him at the [Hollywood] Bowl. He was telling me about when he put his first show. Music Man, in New York, he had his uncle from Iowa. He bought him a dress suit, gave him a box, and said, "Uncle, come in and see my first show." Well, the uncle did, and he sat in the box. He said, "After the show, come up behind the stage and see me." Well, the uncle did. Here is what he is telling the audience in the bowl. The uncle says... what's his first name?

DIXON

Meredith Willson.

BLAIR

He says, "'Meredith, they tell me you wrote the music and the words both?' 'Yes, Uncle.' 'Hmnn. Well, [there's] a lot of it — such as it was. In fact, Meredith, some of it was pretty good — what there was of it.'" Anyway, my paintings--good, bad, or not--I just painted. I did this Quantrill's Raid, and I did the detail and three months' research on Virginia City, [Nevada, 1878]. They had pure silver up there and financed the Civil War. The miners were prospecting, but something kept getting on their boots, and they'd kick it off. They were looking for a vein of silver or something. It was pure silver; there wasn't any soil or stuff mixed in with it. It was a lorg'-.ime before they discovered this stuff was right there. That made Virginia City the wealthiest city in the world for its size. [There was a] hotel there, but no pictures of it [except for] an old camera shot, or a sketch of the International Hotel and a theater which had talent come out from New York. I worked this out by reading in many volumes. [There was a] railroad station down between B and C Streets. The Savage Mill had its offices, where they graded ore, across the tracks from the depot; and the International Hotel was two blocks up, between A and B Streets. Well, I worked from there, and I have the only authentic painting, a large one, probably 72" x 50". And then I did the big Quantrill's Raid. Of course, there was research there; but Lawrence, Kansas, was easy to research in a way. So here I am doing anything I have the desire to paint — that is, in my way. I was going back to detail again, and landscapes. I really love to do landscapes. And then I got to do these family farms. That was a series. A series would be one farm painted over and over and over. But here I am into a cycle of painting. I had already done Kansas and Nebraska, but nothing in California. So I did a historical painting up here of the only covered bridge and a mill, called Knight's Mill and Knight's Ferry in Northern California. Well, that's in New York today, bought by somebody. Then, of course, in these farm paintings, I thought the Guggenheim [Foundation] might finance me; so I did California, of course, along with these other fourteen. Paintings sold all the time, but luckily I kept the black-and-white of them. We had a fire, as I told about in baking bread, and they all burned up, but luckily the paintings didn't. I photographed a lot of them that weren't in galleries yet and hadn't been sold, so I have a color-slide lecture on that, which you know about. Now, here is an odd thing: this painting right up here — carrying in The Yule Log — well, that is a feeling I had one time in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It's a German town, and the Pennsylvania Dutch do keep tradition, carrying in the Yule log. Well that's a flareback that was done years later after choir practice and sleigh rides and picnics and all things at Cadmus. But there I revert from space back to doing a very busy [painting]; but at the same time, carrying in the Yule log, or getting the Yule log at Christmas, was a tradition. Probably they don't think about it today; but at that time, it could have been a Cadmus early folk painting. [tape recorder turned off] Now I am not in a phase; I just [paint] what comes along. I happen to think of New Hampshire hay lands. One of these farm [paintings was in] New Hampshire. The principal crop was natural hay. When you go there in summer or in the winter, in the antique business or whatever, you can feel enchanted almost in any of the hills of Vermont or New Hampshire. You can get into the feeling of Boston, get out in the square and feel like right there you saw the first shots fired around Bunker Hill. So I am free to paint what comes along. Then I find this out: moods come in between the serious paintings, and there is the urge to explore. The other paintings, you see the picture in a way on the canvas — not all the details, but before you ever touch a brush you see it on the canvas. When you are writing, it's all in the mind. You don't see it on the paper before you write it; but [in painting] it's on there. So you follow that as a guide, and it keeps telling you what to do. If you try to go to bed at night having left one limb off a tree that's almost finished, you'll get out of bed, come back, and put that limb on that tree. That tree says, "Finish me." Now, we talked about The Yule Log. I don't like to waste paint; it's precious. You'd be surprised. The head of a match — that much paint — will change the color of a tablespoon full of paint. I am not thinking about costing money. It is waste, and what it can do. What is painting, but color, plus where you use the color? So here is some waste paint, purple; I hate to waste it. I am going to clear this palette and start over on another painting. I'll start in and put that lavender as far as it will go at the top of the canvas. First thing you know it says, "Look, here is a kind of a cloudy sky." Well, then you, automatically almost, if there is some yellow, run it in below. And you don't clean your brush; it mixes. The first thing you know, here you have a sky. By the way. Dr. Aldrich says, "Never use so much sky, unless it's the picture." I used to make my skies down, even in these picnic pictures, and things would go up into it. To me, that was [natural]. He told me once, "Use a little sky at the top." Well, it didn't always work that way; you're using a picture of a sky, that's something else, of course. Anyway, here's some burnt umber; here's some red. You just mix them, you go on, and the first thing you know, you are painting a mood that you have gotten somewhere. Or it tells you there is such a thing that you saw, maybe driving through Kansas or maybe down over a mountain in Pennsylvania. It could be anywhere. Right away, you know there had to be a little farmhouse down there, and certainly these fields in here. You don't paint these fields in; you just come on down with the color, and you let it dry. That sky [will be there] later on, when you think, "Well, I just want to start something. It's a rest; it's play between serious paintings."

SCHIPPERS

Name a couple of your mood paintings.

BLAIR

Mood paintings? One of them was this: it happened to be filled in with white on purpose, and then I put snow in. But the sky suggested it. The title of that is Trees Make a Difference. Just two trees in a snow landscape. Another one is this one right here, called Vermont Birch. Now mind you, as far as the sky went, that was there with no thought. Well, that tells you when you want to play you are free. You don't have to do this or that, and you begin to see a mood there of maybe an evening that's a little cloudy or a little stormy, a little eerie. You don't say it feels eerie; you just do it. You are guided by subconscious mind — well, that's mind. The brush never moves unless mind moves it and moves the hand; the hand never moves of itself.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
SEPTEMBER 3, 1965

SCHIPPERS

Through these sessions, we have at times referred to various criticisms of your paintings. We would like to sort of pull together what your impressions of your critics are and some of the important things they have said about your painting.

BLAIR

Well, I happen to remember the first newspaper clipping that I got. First, I had a show at the University of Kansas, but I don't think the Kansas City Star or Times covered it. But of course, there was favorable comment, like in the P^ magazine. The first show I ever had in New York was prior to the time that I had the one in Philbrook (Dr. Kallir of Galerie St. Etienne wrote in) where I was shown, really a one-man show, with iGrandma] Moses at the same time. "East and West Primitives," they called it. I don't remember any write-ups there. But I must have had this show at Carlbach's 11951], I guess before I even had the KU show, because it couldn't have been any other way. The Carlbach iGallery] is an old-time, good gallery in New York. He particularly deals and is interested in primitive sculpture and things like that. He comes out to work with some of the real top primitive dealers on La Cienega. But I did *Side Two was taped at a later date than the tapes that follow. Tape Number XI, Side One (August 20, 1965) should have followed here to maintain the proper chronological sequence. get about three inches in the New York Times. Of course, I thought that was something to get even mentioned in there. I read it, and I would tell people about it who would come in our antique shop. And they would say, "Well, what did they say?" Well, they used a word in there that I didn't know what it meant. Now I can understand how I didn't know this word, but I thought it sounded very highbrow and must be good. It's a French word, of course; if it had been Latin, I'd have got it. Anyway, I remember they said, "interesting, colorful, and somewhat exciting," some phrases like that. "He seems to favor the colors of the yellows and browns." I thought, "Well, how can you help it when you're doing fall scenes? I don't do it on purpose." That went through my mind. But the word that got me, he said, "He certainly depicts the milieu."

DIXON

M-i-1-i-e-u.

BLAIR

Yes. All right. Well, that to me must be great. I didn't even look it up in the dictionary. I thought that was really great. So I tell these people that came to the antique shop that. They thought that was great, too; they didn't know what it meant. So that was my first, and it was a good write-up in New York for a first-time show. Then Dr. Kallir came along, and he said, "Send me a photograph of every painting, just black-and-white. I can tell just as much from a black-and-white what a painting is as in color." I wrote him and said, "How can you do that?" Well, he said, "Every color has as its result in the photograph a variation from any other." In other words, he could tell the greys, and he knew enough about the subject matter, I guess, [to know it] probably would be a red barn. He went on from there, and we got into a discussion of quality. I wrote and asked him then, "Why do you tell me to send some paintings and others you don't?" He said, "Why, I pick those that have the best painterly quality." Well, he was: on the jury, of five men that picked out the sixty paintings that went for the Smithsonian show all through Europe. He is highly respected. He specializes in German expressionists. He didn't give any criticism; he took me on. Then I get to reading [about] what is primitive, and Jean Lipman came along and bought a painting. She's editor to this day of Art in America, and I found out she collected nothing but primitives, and had for years. She had 226 primitives — must have been worth fortunes. She collected right straight through; I guess she even had [Joseph] Pickett and [John] Kane, and early people like that. Well, she promised her husband she never would buy any modern primitive, meaning today's primitives. (Not that they are different; modern primitives are no different from early primitives if they are honest.) She saw one I had done in red, white, and black of a Connecticut village. It was on her mind. and she told me she wanted to buy it. Almost a year later she was out here with Fleur Cowles, a friend, which led to my three pages in Look magazine when Fleur Cowles was editor there. So she wrote just before Christmas, "My husband said I can buy one modern primitive. I want that red, white, and black. How much is it?" Well, I was flattered and I told her a hundred dollars. She bought it. Then she wrote me and told me several years later even that it was the only primitive painting hanging in her living room. (Her husband must not have liked them or something.) But that was mine. [tape recorder turned off] Fleur Cowles left the United States, and she is married to Mr. [Tom Montague] Meyer, a very important man in London. They have a townhouse out in the country, and they live in Piccadilly in their own place. She writes and writes. She is even a member of NATO. She is recognized all over the world, a wonderful person. So when Jean Lipman turned Art in America into a hardback, she asked Fleur Cowles to write an article "Celebrities Choice" to pick out what she believes were the best three American artists..Well, I am one of the three. That was really [important] to me, but that was not criticism of why a painting is good or anything like that. I did read Jean Lipman's book; she wrote a whole book on primitive paintings. In there, she describes primitive painting as being untrained, and the work is usually, in her mind, symbolic and also idealistic. Well, I understood what she meant by symbolic, to a certain extent. If there ever was a symbolic painting, it was this red, white, and black [painting] of this Connecticut village that she bought. As to idealistic, I think that word.... When I first read that, I thought, "Why, no. I don't see how to apply it." I want to tell you, I believe that applies to my work more than anything I know, if we both have the same thought of what is idealistic. There are words in conversation today about art that use a certain word that I just don't get at all. And there are so many different meanings. But "idealistic" in m^^ mind (I don't know what she meant).... All my red barns or barns look new. They are not; they are ideal types of Pennsylvania barns, and yet not done on purpose. That's the whole thing [running through] this painting discussion. None of the primitive thing is done on purpose. If so, that infers prior knowledge. You can have prior facility and knowledge by painting, painting, painting, and teaching yourself unknowingly. Suppose a boy wants, to see how far he can jump from standing still. He jumps the first time and maybe goes four feet. If he keeps on jumping, he may get on up to seven feet. Well, he is just trying to do his best. He is not saying, "Now I am using past experience -and knowledge to jump seven feet." He just does it and does it better, subconsciously or however you want to say it. [tape recorder turned off] So I suppose that my farm fields are kind of an ideal, ^s we think of that word. They look a little bit like perfect fields. I am not talking about perfect painting, but the kind of a beautiful field you would imagine, maybe. If they are beautiful, they are not done beautiful on purpose; they are done as a colorful field. Like if you're -driving out over the hills in Pennsylvania, and here's farmland, here's some red soil got a lot of iron in it; they've cut the crops, and up comes grass; and other crops are there, maybe alfalfa, [which] blooms in purple, and the greens. They have had rain; everything is fine. So you can say, "Yes, maybe the perfection of a field or something like that is idealistic." But there is one thing that st-umped me. The painting is in there now — that's the Baltimore slums. Now there is the most weather-beaten, dilapidated bunch of brick buildings, 1 have been told by critics [it is] one of the best things I ever did. I got to thinking, "How does that word 'idealistic' apply?" I remember in trying to do a weather-beaten board, I called up Art Gaynes, my friend, and said, "What color do you use on a weather-beaten board?" Now, it happens that before I started painting, we were on a picnic in San Diego County; and the rest of the folks took along some watercolors, and one of the daughters some oil [colors]. By golly, there was a weather-beaten, dilapidated shack right where we were picnicking by the little stream. I had tried my best to get that, and I thought in terms of a color. I ended up with mud and tore the whole thing up; there was no color anywhere in the tube that could show a weather-beaten board. So when I called Art Gaynes, he said every color is in it. I did that Baltimore Slums, and in my mind, I don't know of any painting I have ever seen (this is not boasting; this is just as impersonal as can be) that gives the effect that that group of buildings had in Baltimore. Those boards really look weather-beaten and old to me. What then are they? For this term "idealistic," they are ideal dilapidated boards.

SCHIPPERS

Why do critics say this Baltimore Slums is one of your best? Do you have any idea?

BLAIR

Well, I tell you, Dr. Aldrich at the University of Miami, Florida, said, "You outdistance yourself in doing [this]" — in his mind this slum section [must have been] anti-typical — "but it had to be in your mind, or you wouldn't have done it that way." They don't tell me why. Martin Lubner teaches at UCLA and has his own art school. We think he is one of the greatest on the coast of coming painters. I say "coming" — he has arrived, but he still has a long way to go yet, because he has the facility and the ability. He said that [painting] is one of the best, and he wishes he could own it. They don't tell me why, and I just don't know. Now, you take Sir Stephen Tallents, the London writer who wrote me up in The Sunday Times. I had written him a letter after reading his articles in The Sunday Times. I [would have] liked to correspond with some primitives in Europe. He said he went to the Manchester Museum, to Whitehall, and all around, and didn't find any but one; and that was done by a man by the name of [Alfred] Wallis, a dead Cornish fisherman. So that solved my wanting to exchange, because there are hardly any primitives in Europe. They have all taken lessons or grown up from childhood in art. So to me, if you watch any of the European or English primitives, you will not find anyone but Wallis. He is a typical and naturally primitive, and as crude and wonderful as [Horace] Pippin. Pippin was a Negro painter of the South. He got so good so quick that anytime he needed money, he sent a painting to New York, and the gallery sent him seven hundred dollars. Well, he couldn't stand that life and didn't live too long. But he, to me, is the purest primitive who never got untaught. He didn't get far enough to be untaught. And Wallis — we found a book, not a large one, of his, where he was in color. He never got to the point of being taught. He still is untaught, but, like they told me when they saw me, [he was] using what they call "space." I didn't know it. I am just going ahead painting and branching out beside stories and folk life. That way, you teach yourself; I painted long enough, you see. I don't think that happened until about seven or eight years ago, where they would say I was going beyond space. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

The way you have just described idealism, does this correspond to the word "abstract" in your mind?

BLAIR

I'm glad you brought it_up. That is one of the three words that Jean Lipman used: idealistic, symbolic, abstract. Now, abstract to me associates with symbolic a little more, and yet idealistic. See. There are those deeper meanings. You can take an ideal thing, and we'll say nothing is perfect, or shouldn't be. But if you lift, the essence out of it, you have abstracted it. That is the abstract of the thing or the meaning which caused you to paint it. One definition of art leaves that out. That is one definition Dr. Aldrich gave me. Another definition, which only comes in this last year's dictionary for the first time, is a definition of fine art where it says, "Fine art is the expression of an unanalyzable creative power." Meaning what? There is no definition; it can't even be analyzed. This brings up this thing we were talking about.

SCHIPPERS

One more question on this: in having read some of these things and descriptions of primitives, did it in any way make you more sensitive or aware of the things you were doing?

BLAIR

Not at all. When I did the dilapidated, worn-out weather-beaten boards, I was still just trying to do weather-beaten boards. Jean Lipman wrote in a book; Fleur Cowles wrote in a book; somebody said this or that; and later on. Dr. Aldrich came through with a letter after he saw some of my paintings in a show somewhere in Florida. He said, "If Brueghel had lived today, he would have painted just like you do." Well, now, these things of analyzing critics or what is criticism, I don't think they go into that. Here is what they consistently have done. All of them say this: I have an unusual color sense and practically perfect natural composition. Now, I don't know whether that is criticizing or analyzing, but anyway, those are the things. I don't believe anybody can give a definition of primitive art any more than they can fine art with the definition we just quoted — unanalyzable. By the way, I have right here copies — photostatic copies--of three what I consider knowledgeable art critics, although they don't call themselves critics: Sir Stephen. Tallents in London; Henry Seldis of the Los A ngeles Times ; and Vincent Price, who buys a million dollars worth of paintings, I guess, for his life work. Here is what he says, "I sincerely believe this collection of paintings by Streeter Blair to be of lasting and historical importance. They represent a labor of love rather than a work project. And of course, it is this quality of love combined with keen memory" (which I don't agree with) "and nostalgia that makes them so universally appealing." Well, now, memory.... I cross that off; they call it that. I say there is no such thing as memory. Memory is only those things you are impressed with. If you aren't impressed very much, you don't have a memory of it — if they call it that. I was easily impressed at the time I was a kid. Everything. I liked ice cream turned in the freezer — a miracle! You put in this and this, and out comes ice cream. I was impressed. In many of my paintings, there is homemade ice cream, or picnics and watermelons. All that [is with] me clear on up to this day. Dr. Aldrich did say "like Brueghel," but he didn't say how Brueghel painted. I don'tthink you can put definitions. Vincent Price goes along a lot more on historical value. Then here's Sir Stephen Tallents. He says, "We have never met, and I have never seen any.of his work in the original; but he has sent me the photograph of a canvas, now hanging over his mantelpiece in California. In this, he has portrayed, with some guidance from a few photographs which I sent him at his request, his idea of an English farm." (He did send me a photograph.) Listen here; he's trying to describe the painting (now here is where the word "idealism" comes in, I guess, but he doesn't say it): "It hais, it is true, better-kept farm buildings, finer wooden fences, trimmer and more fruitful apple trees than most English farms can boast today. The master, who is in colloquy with his cowman, is wearing, if the photograph does not deceive me, a white collar, a black coat and pin-stripe trousers. But let those details pass." I had never been to England. Now, in the photograph he sent me, to me the manager was master; he was important as a bank president. He was the manager of the farm, and the men working were practically in uniform. Now, he describes everything there as done in an idealistic way. I have read that many times, but it didn't tie up until this moment, until Schippers asked me about this word "idealism." We won't go any more. But I know one thing: the rabbit the dog is chasing, to him was a fox. [laughter] There are watermelons in there, but I hear they don't have watermelons in England, due to some reason--rains or something; I don't know what. Well,he has a word for them ["prize-winning pumpkins"]. I don't know what they are, but apparently to him they were something else they raise. But it brings back the old thing — we have an ideal ghost in our minds. And we have an ideal this, an ideal form, an ideal everything which is spiritual. I think really all a painting does is suggest. I really do — all of them. It can't be a photograph. It's not nature; it's not like nature. Even a photograph isn't like nature, but it's nearer, we'll say. Like the time I wrote in my book, "The landscape says, 'Paint my portrait.'" When you paint a portrait, you are not painting a photograph the camera would take. And if the cameraman isn't a genius, it won't even look like the person as we see it. Now, Proust wrote so much about this Albertine gal who just gave him hell all his life. He said we all have ninety-eight persons within ourselves. He got everything settled down so he wasn't worried about Albertine, and number ninety-nine says, "Say, what about Albertine?" It begins all over again. So he said, finally, that to this day, if he had to describe or hold in mind a memory of Albertine's face, all he could think of was that she had a little, tipped-up nose. That's Proust, the greatest analyst that ever lived.

SCHIPPERS

Have some of the criticisms disturbed you?

BLAIR

No. No. I am so glad, I guess, to even get in the paper. There is one fellow — and I can't think of his name — in the local paper. Oh, I know what happens. This is funny. I'll read Henry J. Seldis of the Los Angeles Times first: "For some years now, I have felt that Streeter Blair's painting is among the best primitive paintings that have been produced in the United States." Later on, when there were two hundred primitive paintings shown down at this Pavilion Art Council in Newport Beach — two hundred from the Pilgrims on; they had them shipped from museums — I had three in the show. In that one, Henry Seldis came right out and said that I am the best painter that has come up in twenty years. Now, let those things go on along. After he says that, here's one disturbing [thing]--it didn't disturb me, but I think it is funny. He had an assistant, one that used to be his assistant, who was dean of art over at Occidental College. She got so busy, she couldn't do it; so he had another one (I won't use his name) who has come in during the last year to do write-ups on things that Henry can't go to. Well, this came out, not in the Times, but in a Beverly Hills paper. (To me it's an argument going on between an employer — that's Henry — and a fellow working for him.) Here's what he said: he slapped back at Henry Seldis by saying my primitive paintings are typical primitives-- "I don't see why anybody could say one primitive is better than another." [tape recorder turned off] Henry Seldis mentioned the fact that my historicals are becoming important records of America. By the way, last week I saw a copy of the international New York Times edition. It had on the front page the fact that my painting was the topic of conversation in the dining room of Ambassador [Edwin M.] Martin in Buenos Aires. That painting was owned by the Woodward Foundation and was traveling all over. Somebody sent me a copy of the New York Times, and here a similar write-up in the international [edition] of the Times — all over Europe — gave me that same paragraph. The vanishing of American farms described the subject matter, but he said this: "Despite his attention to meticulous detail, the veteran painter offers a summation and an essence of each place in the canvas dedicated to it." I would say that probably is the deepest analysis, and I don't hardly know yet what it means. But I think he means this: even where I use space on the canvas, it is a summation of what?

DIXON

Whatever you meant to depict.

BLAIR

We will say like the space of a field or sky. Apparently, this is one of the best compliments I ever had, because the space itself is not a picture of some thing. He said it offers a summation, an essence of each place in the canvas dedicated to it. I think that's probably an analysis that shows the greatness, in my mind, of Henry Seldis. Most critics study the overall picture, but here is an analysis of something that isn't. In other words, space. SCHIPPERS : In this reference to detail, what do you think about what they call detail — as opposed to someone, let's say like a Rembrandt, who would convey what an object is through plays of light and show it in a different kind of detail? [tape recorder turned off]

BLAIR

I must say this: I don't think about the detail. My whole thing is: how was it? It is true that when I first started to paint, I asked Dr. Aldrich how to do quickly a blooming apple orchard with pure strokes (I was putting on every blossom), and he said, "I won't tell you. I know I could tell you in five minutes, but I hope you never find out; you are a natural painter." Well, I don't think of detail. I am doing a brick wall; all the bricks are there, and I have got to put in all the bricks. I have just got through this picture for the president of VPI yesterday — a Virginia farm with peanut vines. I raised some peanuts once as a kid. I tell you, all through one's life you can't go through an experience in your early life, in the time you can remember, if you live long enough, you are going to use it later. I don't know too much about peanut raising. Anyway, this field and a man plowing with a mule, cultivating, before motor power, this peanut field and tobacco field. Well, I had a photograph of tobacco which they sent me from VPI, and it had peanut fields and the barns and houses I am using. All right, I am going to put in a peanut field. Do I think that it is detailed? It never entered my mind. The main thought is, "What a lot of work." That's all. I am not conscious of detail being a method of transmitting an image. If I could do it today in light and that sort of thing, I wouldn't want to; I don't know why. To me, it isn't really on purpose; I can't help it. But I do feel a glow all the time, every time I do a farm painting. It is an honest record of things that will be gone for too many. Now there have been seven hundred and fifty thousand one-family farms go out of business instead of the half-million, as Look magazine said about three years ago when I started my farm scenes. By the way, just last week, someone wrote in the London Times that I was becoming known internationally for my recording early American one-family farm scenes. That's what it is, but I had thought of it as my main work. That's just what it is. I told Mrs. Blair a day before this came out in a paper that I really believe I will cut out trying to do any still life. My heart isn't in it, and all the art school students do that, anyway, a thousand times better than I could. I believe, right from now on, that if I do anything, it will be a diversion that comes honestly, or I won't do it. I'll just do farm scenes, winter and summer, of this nation. Of course, that ties right in with historicals of this nation, [such as] this deal up here at Santa Fe doing state historicals, [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

In line with this questioning, how much have you viewed other paintings in your life, famous painters, starting perhaps with the pre-Renaissance painters, and Rembrandt, and Picasso, and so forth? How much did you look at them before you started to paint? And how much have you looked at it since you started to paint?

BLAIR

Well, I would like to answer this with a question I answered myself in my whatnot book. A fellow went to a doctor and said, "Doc, what's the best type of liquor for me to drink when I do drink?" The doctor says, "There isn't any." And then this fellow says, "Well, Doc, what is the least harmful of any of them?" The doctor says, "There isn't any." Now, my answer on that is, I didn't see any paintings before I started to paint. The only paintings I ever saw anywhere, truly — I was in the advertising business, and I hired the poorest artist I could find in the JCansas City Art Institute to do drawings, in my little magazine for boys, that looked like [those of] a boy twelve.years old who couldn't draw. I started him, got him out of the art school, paid him, and he became art director of Topeka Capital. For the last fifteen years, he has been art director of the San Diego Union and Tribune. I stopped him from going ahead and studying art. Now, in my case, the only picture I could ever remember seeing, up to the time I was starting to paint, you might say — a picture that I might remember or know who did it (and I don't know that) — was the one done in the parlors in Kansas, where they had a wonderful brass easel. (We later had them made in Pennsylvania and sold them to people out here as antiques.) There was always a picture of a mountain, a waterfall, a deer, and a pine tree. That's what they all painted. That was dilettante, farmer, parlor-life painting. So I didn't see any paintings. And luckily, when I did start to paint, and I asked Dr. Aldrich to tell me how to do a blooming apple orchard in a hurry, he says, "I won't tell you, and I hope you never find out." He further said, "Don't you dare talk to an artist, or look at any paintings, or read any art magazines for three years. If you learn one rule, so-called, you'll be neither primitive [nor professional]." And I told you in the past about the girl who came by and ,said, "Don't ever put anything important in the middle of a canvas." I never had, but I am conscious of that to this day. Stop it for a second. I lost my thread. [tape recorder turned off] The truth of it is, I can't remember ever seeing [a painting]. I would go into a home; and they had furniture, and they had paintings. I would look at a picture. All right, I looked at a picture. Who did it? To me they were all something of the past that was just as unknown as the pyramids of Egypt. So far as modern painting was concerned, I was conscious of Tony Balcom, who did tin sculpture and had the cover on the old-fashioned Life magazine for a year and a half or two years. I do remember one tin sculpture; out of wire and tin, he made a cowboy riding a horse and throwing a lariat rope over the neck of a calf. To me, that's what he can do, not what I can do. I wasn't conscious. As for Picasso, only because so much is said about him and you see pictures,,! can probably say I think Picasso did that if I looked at paintings today. I could not tell you what Rembrandt did. I have no conception whatsoever of the difference between Van Gogh and Rembrandt, except in my case Rembrandt painted in darker colors and mostly portraits, or something along that line; I don't know. Van Gogh is one of my favorites — not as Van Gogh, but when I see a painting I like, it turns out to be a Van Gogh. I have absolutely no consciousness of any other painter. I couldn't tell you.Martin Lubner's painting over here, one of my best friends, from [Morton] Dimondstein's, his partner. I do admit this: when I am standing in the midst of Lubner's paintings and know they are his, I feel Martin Lubner. If I know I am in the midst of Dimondstein's, I feel the personality of wonderful Dimondstein. I knew [that] Marion Sampler, a color expert down here with Gruen Associates, the architect company, painted. He bought two of my paintings. A colored man — wonderful. When I am in his presence, everything seems calm. I mean it. He has been here a few times, but I haven't seen him for a long time. He makes the jury show at the Los Angeles County Museum. (I made it three times. Mrs. Blair made it one year, and then we haven't submitted any more.) So he has a show. I don't know what he has ever done; I have never seen a sketch or anything of Marion Sampler's. That evening I heard he was in a show, I [decided] to go through all. I didn't know whether it was watercolor, oil, or what he did. I look in one room, no; I didn't see anything that made me think Sampler would have done it. In another room, no; I didn't see anything that made me think Sampler would have done it. In another room, no. Into a watercolor room. I look around; I don't see anything, but if there is anything here he did, it was that one. I walked over there, and his name was on it. I am conscious of that. As Vincent Price.said — he used the word "love" — I think it is interest that you have the urge to record. "Love" may be a good word for it; I don't know. But anyway, that was a surprise. I told him, and he couldn't believe it. I was surprised too. But I am not conscious. I couldn't tell you Van Gogh from — is there a Rouault? I don't even know their names. There's one fellow paints a lot of dancing girls and women in pink dresses, and the wind blowing, and umbrellas on a beach; I don't even know who they are. But I know that they call them modern what?

SCHIPPERS

Impressionism.

BLAIR

Impressionists, yes. I tried and tried to learn what the difference is between an impressionist and an expressionist. All I can remember is I saw some painting of a band concert at night, dark scenes, and I remember somebody told me that was German expressionism. Well, I can't see the difference.

SCHIPPERS

You have made references to people like Brueghel, and you have also made comments that perspective was an invention of the Renaissance. So since you have started painting, your knowledge of the subject of art and the history of art has broadened.

BLAIR

No, not the history of art. No. Well, I will admit [to knowing] the history of primitives. I will admit I can itell Brueghel, I am pretty sure. We went into the home of Jake Zeitlin, the wonderful antique book [dealer], one evening, We dropped in to visit him one evening, and no one was there but a young son. I saw a print on the wall, and I said to the young fellow, "Gee, I like that." He says, "That's a Brueghel." That is the first time I ever heard the word, and I thought, "Gee, I wish I knew art like that kid did." Well, that impressed me, and I'm pretty sure I can tell a Brueghel today. I can tell a Pippin, I think, because of the crudity. I can tell a Wallis because of the crudity, so to speak. And I can tell a Moses. But that's the limit. My world of art — no, it hasn't enlarged at all, [except] in the primitive consciousness. I'll say this to those who do stylized imitation primitives. There's a gal that does them out in New York; it just hurts when I see what she does and what Cramer does today. When they do a stylized primitive, I can spot it. And then perspective and all of that: I remember when I first started to paint, I had Jean Lipman's book [American Primitive Painting], that's true; and I remember I saw a painting of a cart. I don't think I had done a cart with wheels on it, but I did see a farm scene; and here are the cart tracks, going in, and a horse [pulling a cart] going into a barn. That gave me an idea, maybe, of trying to do a cart. I don't know whether it did or not, but I don't think it did. Maybe I was already working on one. I remember when I did decide to do my first wagon tracks with a vehicle involved, I thought how simple that will be. The wagon wheels are that far apart right there, and they are the same width right here. So there is no perspective whatsoever for my wagon tracks. They are just as wide where the wagon is a quarter of a mile away as they are right here. That's truth. In other words, even then, I wasn't influenced by anything but how was it — as was. I thought that all prior art, excepting primitives, had to do with perspective and proportion. Now, distance is something else to me. Distance is greying and getting back. I did teach myself that, after I learned how to grey colors, after three years of not knowing anything. But this thing of consciousness of perspective and proportion, I thought it had always been, if I thought anything about it. And yet common sense would have told me there were no railroad tracks in the medieval ages, so how could there have been perspective? [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

But your involvement as a painter of recent date has brought you into contact with other people in the art world.

BLAIR

I know some painters. I know Lubner; I know probably half a dozen consciously. I might be able to pick the type of work of one or two, but their paintings are no more than their personalities. When I am amidst their paintings at a.show, I know they are Lubner's; I am conscious. I don't go around with any thought of what type of work they do. It isn't that I try not to; I just don't. Now, I don't think I am involved at all. I guess I am a complete hermit in the painting world. I believe that, because everything I do, I couldn't do if I didn't see it on the canvas and have the urge to do it. [John] Altoon is one of my favorite friends, and when I am with him, I can sure tell his paintings from the others. I would say there is more individuality in his work than any of the others. Maybe that isn't fair; but to take and put them all up together, one of each, I believe I might pick an Altoon. When I am painting the thing in my mind, if I have an urge to record, it has to be deep, or I wouldn't be doing it. I never experiment or play. I may take up a new challenge, like doing some still life, like I did candlesticks and other things mixed up on a table as a challenge that appealed to me. But I do not have a consciousness at all about how different people paint or the art world. I couldn't tell a Rembrandt today from some other great painter--da Vinci, we'll say. I know those names. I know I could tell that a Rembrandt wasn't a Picasso, but that's about as far as I could go. Who did cubism? And who did this? I don't know one name. There is absolutely no connection between my world.... Maybe this is an odd thing. Maybe I'm abnormal. I've told you I stood on the sidelines; I couldn't steal a watermelon, and I never worked for anybody. My advertising business was unique, and the antique business was unique. We shipped eight freight carloads; we were the first people to ever ship a freight carload of American antiques into California. We got in on it when it was a natural, and you were [practically] stealing them. I always had to work so hard to build a business, the clothing business, and the advertising. I told my family, "If we ever ship one carload of antiques into California, and we have to say, 'Well, it didn't sell so good; it was too hot, or there was a vacation period'--we are out right then. " And it happened. When it got so the dealers weren't grabbing and stealing carloads of antiques from us (I mean buying; I say stealing, but I don't mean that).... [They were] glad to get them; that was original for anybody to ship a [carload of antiques]. We went into it whole-heartedly, and it was an original idea to specialize in early American [antiques]. When for two years a carload or another carload didn't sell so quickly, we began to apologize — there was a kind of a depression on. We got out of the business right then. What really happened (I didn't know this any more than I knew about painting), people were going in for French and European antiques. Now they are on the, uprise again. Today would be a good day to go into early American furniture. But, where are you going to get it? You'll pay plenty. All you get now is not out of attics but only in estates that are being sold. Now we're clear off the subject.

SCHIPPERS

Which brings up the last very important question on this line: why do you call yourself a painter instead of an artist?

BLAIR

Well, I am going to tell you something. I don't know why. I am a businessman, always have been. And without capital, by gosh. I'm glad of it. What I did had to be worthwhile and correct, regardless of business principles. I knew nothing of principles in business any more than I knew about art. I'm going to diverge here. You may have to remind me; I'm going to tell you this. You won't believe it. The First World War and after, when the government was having trouble financing everything in this town of Fort Scott where I had my clothing business, I was doing a cash business. I would write my creditors who were after me, "I'll either have the money or the merchandise." I thought that was sufficient. Well, they said no; they wanted the money, not the merchandise. I said I was going to have to give people time to buy merchandise. The farmers can't all pay cash; they get a crop but once a year. I developed a plan of what I called "acceptance "--admitting the debt. I had a bunch of cards printed up, no ledgers, no anything. I wasn't going to keep books. I didn't have a bookkeeper, and I didn't have time. If a man came in and bought a pair of overalls and a bunch of shirts, a pair of shoes, or anything, and didn't pay cash, he signed a card right there, "I accept debtor." Or, in other words, "I owe $9.78 as of this date for merchandise." I kept it in a card catalogue, and when they came in, I ran through there to pay. I might run through them once in a while, and if a fellow got behind, I'd send him a statement. I had no bookkeeping. That got into the hands of the retail clothiers. association. They ran a story on it. Now will you believe this? You can just put it down with all the baking powder you want to. I got rid of my clothing store, and I went into Woolf Brothers. I told this fellow who was doing the direct-mail mimeographing for me why it was so hard to sell automobiles. I said, "Why don't they use the system that I use to sell an automobile to a farmer?" They know he is going to pay for it, or the dealers in these towns wouldn't sell it to him. Let him sign that; let the dealer that sold it sign it; let General Motors sign it; and the bank will give the cash tomorrow to the dealer, so he can buy another car from General Motors. (By the way, is Chevrolet a part of General Motors? All right; thank God.) He says, "Say, that's right, isn't it? What if a farmer doesn't pay?" I said, "All right, the bank isn't going to lose. The dealer is there. He and General Motors are going to lose if it's never paid. But if they can sell a thousand cars more in a community because of this, they can afford to lose one once in a while; that is their business." You know what he did? Bliss was his name, in Kansas City, Missouri. I told him that; he got on the train; he went to Chevrolet; and they gave him twenty thousand dollars a year to install what is the General Motors Acceptance Plan today. I never got a dime out of it. Now think of that. I don't know why this ties in with painting, but the point is you do things all the time, not on purpose, but you just do it. Now, what was the question about art that I diverged from?

SCHIPPERS

Why do you call yourself a painter instead of an artist?

BLAIR

All through my life, an artist was only something that wore a purple robe and a beret. They didn't even wear whiskers then. I am a painter, a businessman and a painter. I'm not an artist. That word "artist" means fooling somebody, really. It goes way back to Artemis and all that. Maybe I am a little mixed up in my Latin, but I don't think so. Contrivance, to fool somebody. I don't mean to tie that in with the arts. They don't do a tree; they do the essence of a tree. You are fooled that much. The public that looks at it has its own idea of a tree, sees the tree that is already in the mind suggested by that. When I say contrivance, I don't mean you're cheating somebody. I don't mean that; I mean this: no painting is the thing painted. That's what I am trying to get at. The human mind goes ahead and sees it for what it is. Here is another thing. A real artist to me is sacred, something beyond me. For the last forty years I have depended on Christian Science. I've never told anybody I was a Christian Scientist. Christian Science is a truth — that's all. It never claimed to be anything else. Interpretation of the scriptures — that's all it is. Truth existed before. Mary Baker Eddy's one problem was they wanted to make her a second Jesus. She had to fight that more than she had time to work for the people that she explained truth to, [the truth] that did the healing. I think that entered into it. I have healed people. Did I tell you about this? All right, now we are diverging again. I am on a train from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, coming in on an advertising trip. In the Pullman there is a great commotion. A man, it seems, is very ill, and they are afraid he might pass on. He's got to have a certain medicine, but they don't have it. They stop the train at a little village. They go in, and the drugstore is closed. I hear this, and I go to them and say, "Do you mind if I talk a little?" I got his attention, and I explained the truth of being. It sounds like Christian Science, but I wouldn't desecrate the truth of Christian Science by saying I am one. I haven't joined the church, but it is all I've used in forty years. I went bankrupt; I was ill; I was sick; and I was healed — by truth. I talked to him, and inside of twenty minutes, he went in the diner. I had nothing to do with it; truth of being did it. Would you believe that was about 1932? Four years ago, I got a letter from a woman. She saw my name for having won first prize for a two-year-old loaf of frozen bread in the fair. She said, "There must be only one Streeter Blair. Are you the one? I want to tell you something. After that experience, my husband joined the Christian Science church and became a practitioner. He died just a year ago." I had nothing to do with that. Now, what are we getting away from? I didn't want to be called an artist. It would have been a fake. Real artists have studied; they have gotten a degree; they have done it; and they deserve that. To me, I am a painter and thankful just to be a painter.

SCHIPPERS

Since you have touched on the subject of religion, could you tell us more about your early religious beliefs? And then later, how were you healed?

BLAIR

Christian Science is not a religion. What do you know about that! It is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing but interpretation of the Scriptures. And what are they? Truth. All through the Scriptures is a battle presenting spiritual truth and the mortal concept, which is an illusion. That's why there are two endings to the Book of Job. I never joined a church. I never could stand up with the boys at Cadmus. When an evangelist came by, he'd point at us and say, "If you don't stand up and say you want to be saved, you're going to hell." I couldn't stand up with the boys who stole, lied, cheated and did everything else, who got up and were saved. I couldn't; I burned. I almost broke up a YMCA meeting in Denver when they had a man come in there and start talking to us graduates. [It was] the same thing, a sewer in heaven, and the honey flows in it. Stuff like that. Why, I'm telling you, I got up and said to him, does he think that we came out here to listen to something like that? He pointed a finger and says, "Young man, you'll never come into a meeting that I talk to anymore. Get out of here." I stayed, but the man that had charge of this YMCA camp for the University of Kansas in the Rockies (he became the top YMCA director during World War I all over the world; I'm sorry, I forget his name right now) took me out in the moonlight after that, and we sat by a rock. He said, "I wish to God there was more than one like you in this meeting. That man will never put his foot in this camp again." I taught Sunday school in Baptist church in Sabetha and played trap drums for them in the church when they sang. (They had an orchestra.) I taught in the Congregational and the Methodist [churches] in Fort Scott. They were short on teachers, and I merely read the Bible lesson to them and gave it spiritual interpretation. Mrs. Eddy says the biggest handicap is that you have to talk spirituality with words that have only material meaning. Here's one thought: mind is the only cause or principle of existence. Mortal mind is not bound in matter nor physical form. But she has to use the word "mortal mind." There is no mortal mind. If it is mind, it is immortal. She is handicapped all the way through. Anyway, I ended up bankrupt and sick when I lost my clothing store. I'd never lied; I'd never cheated; I'd never done anything [wrong]. I just couldn't. I couldn't lie about the least thing. It was a handicap. I wish to God I could have lied like the other boys; right now I wish I could have. Mrs. Blair got into [Christian] Science ahead of me. I broke up two Christian Science meetings at KU. They did something wrong. Now, mind you, this is not a religion. A woman in Fort Scott invited people in to discuss Christian Science, the very thing that Mrs. Eddy said, "Don't do. Only those will come that want." I didn't study psychology, but what I got from it at the University of Kansas was the behavior of the human will. What's the human will? It's a counterfeit of God's will. It's an illusion. It is wonderful; it is as near spiritual as we can get; but it is based on mechanical things: past experience, environment, and the urge to do. So I was free; and I found out I was sick, bankrupt, had twenty dollars, had a mother-in-law, two children, and my wife. I did have a job — fifty seven dollars a week at Woolf Brothers. But I was working out my own advertising idea there, as a laboratory, and they knew it. I said, "All right, I'll see what God can do." You can say that, but you've got to demonstrate. So I went right downstairs and bought shirts, ties, and hosiery. I didn't have any money, and I didn't know when I was going to pay for it. Fine. From that time on, money came. The supply is already here; we block it by saying it has to come down that road. You're standing right here; it's forever. There is only one real consciousness in the universe. If there were two consciousnesses, boy, it would have blown up that quick. Two neighbors can't hardly get along four years without something. There's only one mind; that's all that the Bible tells you. Jesus said, "I do nothing. My Father doeth the work." He has already done it — it's mind. You may say, "Well, what was I healed of?" I practically had a nervous breakdown from overwork and traveling. If I ,had known that mind was working all that time when I.traveled, I wouldn't have had any problem. But, no, I_ am idoing it, Streeter Blair. The first thing Mrs. Eddy says [is that] when we become conscious (the ego is the only mind or intelligence), we begin to destroy mortal belief. I am-- e-g-o. In the dictionary, there is egotistical and there is egoism. Egotistical is a human counterfeit of egoism. "I Am" is all there is. That's all God is — forever mind. It takes every human being in the world to represent infinity, God is the only infinite thing and therefore has no limitations. Anyway, I had a nervous breakdown; I couldn't breathe; I thought I was going to die. It had something to do with gas on my stomach. I go to a wonderful practitioner, Mr. [Fred W.] Decker, in San Diego for help. He is still there today. This must have been in '32 or '33. He didn't say, "What's the matter with you?" They know a little lie is as big as a big one and a big lie is still a lie and no bigger than a little one. God's man does not have something wrong with him. Think of it. He treats me. I go ahead. I get, I won't say perfect in health, but I travel and I have my advertising business. Now, Mrs. Eddy says if you are going to really be a top practitioner, you must give up everything else. Well, why don't we? We still love the human, mortal life. I didn't give up everything. I could have been a teacher. I asked Mr. Decker, "Should I join the church?" Think of that. Suppose you go to any other church; they would say, "Oh, come on, right now." You know what he said? "If you should, you'll find yourself a member. Truth is everywhere." I don't join; I have a business, this and this. I don't think why I don't join.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
August 20, 1965

SCHIPPERS

Last time, we ended up talking about large categories of paintings that you have done. One of them, which is a smaller category, are your still lifes. I want to know when you started to do still lifes, and why you started to do it.

BLAIR

I wasn't conscious of when il started, and I didn't decide. In other words, in going along like I have done, you don't decide; you find yourself doing it. I do realize that there were certain flower paintings, and I think it started with a sunflower, the Kansas sunflower, the state flower. They grew wild and probably the large ones are four or five inches across. We found a sunflower out here in the alley, a tame one. Somebody had cut it down; it was about six feet high. About five years ago, I think it was, some of my classmates from the University of Kansas were living out here. The secretary of the alumni here went through the files, I guess, and sent notices to those who were in my class in 1911 — fiftieth-anniversary. So I thought it would be fun to have this sunflower at the entrance. They were going to meet here; they were going to look at my color slides of paintings. So I did this sunflower, and I ran into something that made me realize that nature can outcompute a computer. This was a dried-up sunflower, the body of which was eight or ten inches across, and [it had] the same-sized seeds right in the middle as on the outside. There is a pattern almost like a buzz-saw impression, and yet you can't say there are so many down here, and so many here, and then there is one less. But in working that out, I did do it, [without any] vacant space, with enough seeds in there, with sort of a curved, spoke pattern. In doing that, I got interested pretty much in what you might call still life. Well, then other flowers came in. [tape interrupted] Proust, if I am not mistaken, so many times mentioned the flower that must have been his favorite, called cineraria. Well, somebody said there was some in bloom over in the park in Beverly Hills. We went over there, and I made a little--not a drawing, but [a sketch of] areas where I was surprised to see the outside of each petal in a different color, almost like it had been put on by hand, [as if] the flower had been decorated by somebody. So I got interested and did that as best I could. And then such things as Pennsylvania pottery. We had a few pieces of it here, some of it decorated down in the southern part of Pennsylvania. It was known for that type of decoration, blue decoration on a brown pitcher, with some flowers in it. And I did that [Blue Pitcher]. Then, there was another one that was more green in the clay, in the firing. I did a few flower paintings, but not too many. Then, one evening, there was a party here, and we had pie and coffee around the table. Mrs. Blair had put two candlesticks, and a pewter candlestick, and a little Oriental jar that we've had for years with something in it in the center of the table. It was very beautifully done. When everyone got through with their pie and coffee, everything had been shoved about; and there was a plastic glass, and there was a sugar bowl, and there was a Pennsylvania Dutch flask that developed somewhere in the deal — I guess it had a flower in it. What is composition? When I looked at the way people shoved things around and what was left in the center of the table when they had gone, to me it was interesting. To me, there could be no composition; certainly, it couldn't have been done on purpose. I didn't make a drawing, but I took a piece of paper and made lines: here is the glass; here is the two candlesticks; here is this and that. Then I did that painting. When I got through, somebody came along and said, "Say, that is an unusual composition." I said, "Well, it is not composition consciously; that's just the way it was." The title of that picture is As Was. That's the title of it. Well, then, going up the street with the dog, I see bottlebrush in bloom. I know why the Pennsylvania Dutch, or whoever did it, called it bottlebrush. If you had a big bottle and those blooms in red, if they were made out of bristles or whatever it is, they sure would do it if the bottle was that big. Well, I did that, and I remember I started that after I got out of the hospital, where I had made some drawings in a drawing book. So I finally finished it; it stayed here a long time, and nobody bought it. They didn't even ask the price, [although] some people liked it. One day, the phone rings, and it's the decorator for Ozzie and Harriet [Nelson] — the picture people. For the first time in all these years, Ozzie is going to have his own private office, over on the lot on Las Palmas [Avenue], By the way, they rented one of my paintings, called Sunday Afternoon Company, for nine years now — fifty dollars a year rent. It hangs in the living room of Ozzie and Harriet in their [show]. They could have bought the painting for two hundred and fifty dollars, but instead they've paid nine years now, fifty dollars a year, are still doing it, and still have it. The decorator came over and said, "They like your paintings; they own three or four. And Ozzie said maybe he ought to have one of your paintings in his office. So the decorator comes; his name was John Moore. He came in and looked all around for a painting to hang in Ozzie's office. I thought, "Well, if Ozzie likes the paintings, why doesn't he pick it out?" They use my paintings that they own in full cplor for their Christmas cards (privately, not commercially). So he looked all around, and he picked up the bottlebrush painting. "How much is that?" "Three [hundred] fifty." He said, "All right, I'll take that." Now, why did he pick that? To be sure, he went out to his car and brought in some fabric of the drapes — a certain red. He picked the painting. Bottle-brush, because the red in it was perfect for the drapes to go in Ozzie's office or little studio. Naturally, confidence grows. I heard two women talking, in fact, [one was] the wife of Arthur Millier, the great art critic for the Los Angeles Times. They were here one evening, and this Mrs. Millier — Sarah — said, I'm disgusted with relatives. One of my sisters wanted to go to Mexico to spend the summer. They were going to take along things so they could have a sort of unfurnished apartment. She borrowed my two black skillets, and she hasn't brought them back, even after she got home. It's been three months. There isn't anything I have I wouldn't part with easier than my two black skillets." And Camille, my wife, says, "I am the same way. I have those two black skillets, and I heard somebody else say they wouldn't let their black skillets go out of their house. They had to have those; they could take anything else, but leave the black skillets." So I got our two black skillets, stood them in the bottom of a corner cupboard, and did a painting of that. Well,. I had an arrangement with the Galerie St. Etienne that when I send slides of paintings, he says to send certain paintings, and maybe he returns some. Well, one of the first things he ordered was Two Black Skillets and another one called 209 North Doheny Drive. We had the table all set for some people coming. We had a red tablecloth in the dining room and the windows in back of it. In the middle, we had a pewter teapot or coffee-pot. (There is still an argument as to whether they are teapots or coffeepots. I say they are coffeepots, because the spout is at the top. If it's a teapot, the spout comes out at the bottom.) All right, whatever they are, they are early American pewter. The red tablecloth was on, and the pewter teapot was there in the center — no flowers in yet — and all the plates were around; there were going to be eight people. I did everything — the background, the windows — and I am ready to put the plates around, and I am going to show a table, all set. I think I am. Well, Martin Lubner comes in — the artist that we think so much of here in Los Angeles — and he says, "Say, that painting is wonderful. When did you finish that?" And I said, "Finish it? It isn't finished." "Oh, yes, it is." Well, that pleased me; I didn't want to put all these plates on there. So I stopped on that, and that was one asked to come to New York. I got it back recently. because I am short on paintings, and I have everything back here. I got the Two Black Skillets, the Red Tablecloth, and the 209 North Doheny Drive. So then I think of early America — the walking plow. Here is a broom standing out on our back porch with a dark red wainscot before the windows start, so I do The Old Broom. I didn't have to look at it much; I was raised with a partly worn-out broom. The yarn, so to speak, or thread that goes around the top of the straws to hold them together, makes about three strands--green, yellow, and orange. I did that, and I had it in here one day; and this man who has gone over so great in construction, Kienholz--he's been shown now, I think, at a show at a museum in New York — came down and saw the broom. And he went over, took his thumb and fingernail, and tried to pick the yarn off the painting. To him, everything is construction; he thinks that way. He couldn't believe it when he saw this realistic yarn or thread which bound the broomstraws together. Since then, I haven't really had any desire to do still life. I mentioned a moment ago, thinking of early American times, that the broom is symbolic, to me, of the home. The walking plow and the broom are, to me, the basis of this nation's livelihood. Man power, horsepower, woman power, black skillets — all those are symbolic. By the way, up till a few years ago, this was the top civilization that all the centuries of civilization had produced. That comes right into the country store. What was cheese? Cheese was cheese. Sure, fifteen, twenty pounds in a circle covered with gauze, and over it a handmade cover with screen wire to keep the flies off it in the little store. Crackers were crackers — no packaged goods. You'd say, "I want a half a pound, or a dime's worth, of cheese, and I want a pound of crackers." Crackers were crackers. Whoever heard of Uneeda Biscuits? It's hard to believe that in 1900, in this country, in this nation.... Now, that's sixty-five years ago; that's only a short while ago. But to the young person, sixty-five years ago is as far away in conception as the medieval ages, or all eternity, as far as they are concerned. But to me, it was only yesterday. I can remember when Uneeda Biscuits came in, that was the first time crackers were put in a package. But were they three inches square, [like the ones] that came in a big, lightweight wooden box that would be bigger than four lemon crates, full of crackers? Crackers were crackers. But here comes something called Uneeda Biscuits. Trademarks were just beginning to come in. This all ties in with the broom and walking plow. This was a part of it, just as you had to put a bridle on a horse and hitch him up before he could pull a plow. A farmer would come in and say, "Ed, give me a nickel's worth of cheese and throw in a few crackers." And then later on, he would say, "Ed, give me a few more crackers." That was lunch. We seldom had bananas, but they were not [sold] by the pound — so much a dozen. So it paid to come early, while the big ones were still on there, and get your dozen. No such things as packaged beans.... Whoever heard of Grape Nuts? When Grape Nuts came out, we're getting into a period in America which I'd say was the beginning of trademark merchandise. So here's Uneeda Biscuits; they didn't call them crackers, but they were just small crackers. Cheese was cheese; beans were beans, but they said lima or navy. Sugar was by the pound — no packaged goods whatever on the shelves except soda. Arm and...

SCHIPPERS

... Hammer.

BLAIR

Arm and Hammer. That was a trademark. One of the first trademarks was, "It hasn't scratched yet," with a picture of a little chicken just out of an eggshell. That was the trademark of Bon Ami. Lydia Pinkham compound was known, of course. That was in the period when any advertising, like something for your hair, showed a bald head before and after. Before, he was bald-headed, but he used this, and he got a big head of hair. That was the beginning of advertising trademarks. People didn't know Grape Nuts. I can remember the blacksmith at Cadmus wondering what's it made out of. He said, "Oh, I think they save all their grape seeds and grind them up and do something with them." They thought Grape Nuts was something like that. Now, when it came to tools, farmers had really a little sense of humor. We sold hammers, saws, shovels, pitchforks, spades, poles, and sledgehammers. A man would come in and buy a sledgehammer, and the farmer would [ask], later on when something was new, "What brand was it?" We'd say, "Armstrong." Armstrong was the great trademark that was applied to everything that wasn't copyrighted. [That was when] the country people and the town people of America got conscious of trademarks. Until then, you'd sell a man a sledgehammer, or you'd sell him a scythe out of the country store. Nothing in packages. Nails, of course, never were; beans were not; sugar was not. Every morning in the country store, we would have to fill up [bags of sugar]. They generally bought twenty pounds of sugar for a dollar; if they wanted less, it was special. Flour was sacked, of course.

SCHIPPERS

This awareness of objects as objects, or of cheese as cheese: did this influence your painting in any way?

BLAIR

No. No person that isn't trained can paint anything if he doesn't know how it's made. I had an experience with a contractor, talking about painting. He said, "How does a chimney go up to the roof [in a painting]?" He said he had only worked in blueprints. A primitive painter can't ipaint space or use it like a trained painter, who can show a few bricks or shading and you see a brick wall. The primitive puts in every brick. You can't paint primitive at all if you haven't observed and maybe gone through the experience of building some of the things that you paint. You can't do it if you don't know the details of structures. I couldn't touch a brush to do a fence if I hadn't builded fences. You observe, but you don't know you are observing. In the first stages, you can only paint your experiences. As you go along and use space, you get out of that, and you can be influenced by color and [other] things. To me, red was red; blue was blue; and grey was grey. I didn't know there was a red grey and a green grey, as we have said before. I had this experience with these cinerarias. I said, "Now, that's an unusual color; I'm going to get the exact color." So I mixed up some paints and kept trying, and I put it on the petal until I couldn't see it any more. But the minute I put it on the canvas, it was some other color, because it's the color beside it that determines what you see with your own eyes. But this still life loosened up color; I'll say that.

SCHIPPERS

Did you think of your still life as enlargements of detail in your paintings? You have already said that primitives paint a lot of little paintings in one big painting. Or did you think of your still lifes as canvases in and of themselves?

BLAIR

No, there was no influence at all, because if I am painting a picnic picture or a band concert, the whole thing is in the picture. I see it on the canvas, more or less. Now, here I am doing the flowers; I don't think I'm doing it big, because that's all that is going to be there. I select something that at the moment seems to [be right]. It's true that a primitive's subject matter tells a story; each thing in there is a separate incident. That was best brought out by Dr. Aldrich when he was up here, when he used to take a little picture frame, maybe ten by fourteen, go and hold it over my big paintings, and say, "Why don't you do that? There's a painting by itself." In doing those paintings, the canvas was of a certain size and proportions. In other words, a bandstand is going to be bigger than a refreshment stand, and a barrel is going to be bigger than a bucket. You are doing individual paintings; but at the same time, you are completing an overall concept of the painting. When still life came in, you're not thinking.that you are doing an. excerpt from a big painting, but if those cinerarias had been in a big painting, they undoubtedly would not have been as large. They would have been guided subconsciously by proportion, So I don't see any connection there. But I'll say this: the detail doing a barrel and putting every stave, and the hoops around, and all that sort of thing, and putting every brick undoubtedly made it easier (after I got rid of the problem of the color of the flower) [to make] one leaf overlap another. That is always something touchy at first. Shingles overlap, but you can do them in a hurry. But making a flower overlap, or a rose petal — that was a new challenge that still lifes opened up. In the sunflower, which is probably one of the first things I did, the yellow petals around this big seed center overlap. Now, how do you overlap? The paint's the same. You grey the color of the yellow. I was looking at something this morning, a flower there in the vase. There were four or five colors of red, just due to shadows or something. But this petal behind looks darker than the one in front of it. Well, it isn't; you can lay them right out, and they are just the same. But when you put a material thing of one color in front of another material thing, why, the [darker] one looks behind the other. You can reverse it and put the light color in the back and the dark color in front, and the first thing you know, you have a half of a rose petal in front of another one.

SCHIPPERS

You said you don't want to do still lifes any more, Any particular reason?

BLAIR

Well, perhaps the only reason is this, and this may sound lazy-like: to begin with, still life never has interested me too much because of the fact that I have gone to shows; and here is somebody who will do thirty paintings, all on one subject. I don't know whether that is an influence or not. I love nature as a whole. I wouldn't want to paint just one tree, for instance, although I did do it once; people liked it, and it sold. I love the outdoors, nature; a still life to me is something indoors. I did a couch with a dog on it once. I did it as a challenge, but that was no fun. I think I feel freedom when I am doing things outdoors, or if I am doing something where I want to pull over an idea. I enjoy doing anything that you can look at, so to speak, in nature, or what has been placed in nature. I did a prairie scene of a sun going down over prairie grass. That was bought by the Hirshhorn Collection. And there was another one that showed a moon or sun going down at a little different time in the day, and all the colors showed up. There was a whole field of flowers. Every grass blooms and has its own little butter flower if it's wild grass. If there's been a crop there, and they've taken off hay, then they come up and they have their color. I enjoyed thoroughly doing the expanse of that field, with the sun setting, making a reflection through the center. But not a still life. In other words, I wouldn't be interested at all in taking one of those grasses and doing the little bud. And yet, I could probably get more interested in doing an enlargement of a single little bud or bloom (people don't even know grass blooms) than trying to do a beautiful rose.

SCHIPPERS

Now we are going to talk about the development of your color in the best way we can.

BLAIR

As I said before, red was red; blue was blue; green was green; grey was grey; and all that. I was painting along in what you'd call pure colors. Those picnic pictures that you see in there were practically done in pure color, probably done the first year I painted. The band had grey trousers — that's the color grey — and the red coats were red, and that was that. After I had painted about three years. Dr. Aldrich came along and said, "Well, I think you are safe enough now that I can give you a limited palette." I said, "What is that?" I thought he meant something to put paint on. He said, "Just come in here. Let's take all the different yellows you have, from the lightest yellow clear down to raw vimber, which is the darkest yellow. Let's take the lightest lavender, put some white in it, and make it as light as you can. Put some white in the lightest yellow and make it as light as you can, but keep it on the yellow and lavender side. Now come on down to the darkest pure lavender you can get, and even put a little black in it, and get it down so it's still purple but darker. We'll make left and right down the row, each graded down so they sort of balance. That's a limited palette." In other words, just taking two colors. "Now," he said, "you can paint a picture if you want to, using the lightest yellow and the lightest lavender you have here. Mix them, and you'll get what would be a white in this picture — that's evenly mixed now. Use that mixture clear on down and mix it to the lowest ones, and that will be black in your picture. You can paint a whole picture in that limited palette of different gradations. If you want to emphasize the purple, leave more of that in and just put a little of the yellow in it. That will grey it somewhat." I might be a little nonprofessional in that, but that is exactly what he told me as I understood it. It's true; you leave out all other color, no matter what your background would be for a picture, why, then you have a limited palette. And honestly, the lowest color will look black; it won't look purple. And the lightest color will look white compared to the others. After the picnic pictures and those early ones where blue was blue and so forth, I learned to grey. I also automatically knew that complementary colors emphasize, and if you mix them together, each one greys the other. So as time goes along, I started to do this Mahatanga Valley (a valley in Pennsylvania, named after an Indian) in fall. Well, I already had my concept of fall coloring. Naturally, I suppose--but not consciously — I start out at the top (that's going to be further away) and I grey my colors. I have yellows and oranges and greens, but I muted them after learning that you could grey one color with a little of the complementary color mixed in it. I am very conscious of the fact that I think I have learned to get distance now by greying colors. I painted a while; the color began to look muted; and I kind of liked it. Of course, my background was already in and dry, but that had nothing to do with it. It was practically all trees. The further down I get on the painting, the more I begin to emphasize one color over another, [until] I get down into the foreground, where we have straw stacks and some corn. If you look at it right now, the cornfield and straw stacks are all the lightest things in the whole picture except for the lakes at the top, which show through. That may have broken a rule about having lighter value for the lakes, but I think not; I think a professional might do it on purpose. Water would show up in the distance with light reflecting. If I would stand on a mountain, here is dark green all around; but down there is some water, and you are going to see it. All right, I go through that and do that painting. Then, after twelve years, the three picnics come back from New York; and when I see them, I believe I must unteach myself a little bit. Look at the sharp color and the clear presentation of the individual activity. How I happened to use a grey-green or grey background in the forest, I don't know. But anyway, the backgrounds in those [picnic paintings] were light and the colors pure. Right at that time, I had started to work on Chautauqua Assembly. I didn't think I had any more subjects I wanted to record in the historical folk life. Now the question is, did that change my coloring in Chautauqua ? I don't think so. I'll tell you why. I'll admit this: after I finished that, I thought some day I [would] do a painting or whatever it could be, [perhaps] a little farm scene, and do it in true color more like I did these — just to see if I can, or see if I could unteach myself, which maybe I shouldn't. It would be an experiment. Here is what happened on Chautauqua. There are four hundred tents (not in what I show) at this Chautauqua assembly; there is this big building in the distance, a river and prairie beyond. This forest grove was selected by the state of Kansas to be the most beautiful grove in Kansas, at Osage [City], sixteen miles from where I was raised (and which I never heard of when I was there as a kid). But I have to show these four hundred tents. I don't know how many tents I have shown, but there are about five or six rows clear across the painting. All have to be in white. About five years ago, I did a painting called White Christinas, where I put about a hundred and fifty white turkeys on snow. Well, there was a challenge--same thing. A farmer could bring his family, rent a tent for a week, and maybe bring their cow. They'd live right there, and the farmer next to them did the milking. Then the next week, he'd go back and milk for the other fellow and do the chores, and the other family would come. So I wanted to show the great thing of this idea of four hundred tents put up to take care of people. Four hundred times five is two thousand. A lot of other people came; there would be six and seven thousand people come to the Chautauqua assembly when the talent came out from the East. Well, when I got through with the background, the greens were in there, the river, the buildings; the tents were up; but there were no trees yet, no detail. I think that in the struggle to not let the whites steal the whole show, I went back and greyed some of the whites. These trees — elm, oak (there is, I think, over on the other side, some sycamore) — are typical eastern Kansas trees. As I remember, I was not thinking of painting in any pure color. I merely wanted to have the detail I put in there be distinct so you could see it. There's a red tree that goes up through the tents. It was getting near fall, and I remember I was delighted when I found out that there always is one tree that is frostbitten quicker; and the soil is different; and it turns color in the fall quicker than the others. I didn't want to put all green leaves; I wanted the tents to show. I don't think I was conscious at all of going back to pure color. But I did have to struggle to get those trees to start on green, go up to a big area of white, then some lower green in the distance, then up through the river and clear up into the sky, and [still] have the whole tree show. It was just a challenge to do it. In summarizing that, it goes back to the old rule, the only rule I ever had in p-ainting: how was it? I struggled to get trees of a certain color. I probably remixed the greens a little, and maybe the tree trunks. When I could find a color that would show all the way up to these different colors, that was my guidance. It was not [my intention] to paint in pure color, but the picture made me do it. I honestly believe when you first start the picture, from the first dot you put on, [it] tells you what to do next. That's the way I feel about it. I was not trying to paint in purer color; you see, there's browns, greens, oranges, blues, whites, and two or three greens. I have to use one color right straight through on the trees. When it came to people, they could wear any color; that didn't bother me. I could put anything, because I was painting what color of shirt they probably would have worn. It was not conscious at all, except what would show.

SCHIPPERS

You have done one recently called.... What's that called?

BLAIR

It's just called California. California scenery.

SCHIPPERS

All right. Describe the subject.

BLAIR

A photographer at the Los Angeles Times, plus an advertising woman, Jo Ella York, took a trip for some story; and they came back with a color photograph of this scene, showing mountains, sky, fields, a river, a lot of geese, pumpkins down in front, and it showed Jo Ella feeding the geese. All but one have come out of the water; they are lined up like at a table at a cafeteria. For over a year, Jo Ella would call up and say, "Have you done anything on my pumpkin and geese picture?" Well, no, I hadn't. But after I did Chautauqua, and after I got the paintings back from New York showing more pure color, I felt in the mood to do this. I was conscious of the fact that I was not going to be afraid of color. I never was afraid of it, but I was going to see on purpose what purer colors than I had been using would do. So although it is not the reddest sky, there is more fire in it, and I have a red sky. But it could happen in California, [although] not in Kansas so much. Then I have the dark blue mountains, and I have a very light green field, and I have the water very, very dark. Why? Well, at that time, I am thinking in terms of white geese on it. And then the picture itself is an evening scene; the water didn't reflect much light. Then I come down into the pumpkins. I'll admit that in that picture I felt freer to use purer color than I had, and the influence was getting these things back from New York. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

We were talking about the pumpkin and geese painting, and we made the comment that in some ways the color and something else about the painting looks more like your mood paintings — where you put on color and the painting told you what to do--than it does like some of the other paintings you have done that you had planned and knew exactly what you wanted to do from the start.

BLAIR

That's very odd. The one up there over the mantel was done after a lot of snow scenes. In the snow scenes was space--a little lavender here and a little lavender there--and I'd get distance. I think I was conscious of the fact that instead of doing just detail (it is mostly trees and little cabins and lakes), I think I was influenced there to try to [paint] in field colors, because that is New Hampshire. The principal crop is wild hay; and after the hay is cut, the natural grass comes up and blooms. I was conscious of the fact that in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and other places, you'll see an unusual color field right in the middle of other fields, depending what was planted there before and what the wild nature is. I think I was very conscious to do the whole picture distant — nothing close down in front. I notice now the green in front is greyed a little, although it is a lighter green than anywhere else. In that painting, I was trying to mute down in my mind, to get distance, to grey colors, and yet use unusually brilliant colors, like the red field there. That was an influence, maybe, from the distance effect I had stumbled on to, where I used monotone with a little lavender or a little tiny bit of yellow in my snow scenes, which people say look way off. Getting down to the mood picture, which is primarily based on lavenders and yellows, the picture told me what to do. I started out with waste paint at the top, and that gave me a thought of evening. It comes on down with a little red lavender — but delicately in the sky--bring it on down.... By the way, fields sometimes almost reflect the color of the sky. That is more of a monotone, and yet not really that, but it is muted. Over here, when you say that the red, the dark blue, the white, the orange, and the green associate in color more with the mood [painting] than with.the other, I believe that was an accident. I knew that it was showing late afternoon or early evening. I started out with a red sky which you wouldn't see in the middle of the day. I wanted distance — I have that dark blue way back — and here is this problem: I put in my distant blue mountains, and they are greyed. But right down here, halfway through the painting, with green between them, I come to what's got to be dark water. It can't be light blue. I had a fight with myself; and if you'll notice, there's a distance in the color. The water does look bluer, much bluer than the mountains made up of the same paints, but greyed in the back. I was trying to hit a late afternoon mood, as well as just the picture. Now, whether that answers anything, I don't know.

SCHIPPERS

Did this discovery of greying colors coincide with your discovery of space?

BLAIR

I see that as a good question that should have been answered even if it hadn't been asked. Discovery of color relationship in the greys came first. The minute that happened, I could take fields and grey them to get distance. Along that same time was the period when I started using what we call space, like the field of just one color that Hirshhorn bought. I can see that the idea of greying colors to give distance made it much easier for me in the major and later snow scenes which followed. Those are space pictures. We call them primarily snow scenes, but this is a space picture mostly, the one over the mantel. At the very time that I did any snow scenes, Martin and Jeri Wise came out, associated with the city in some way. And they said, "Why, you can paint snow scenes with your eyes shut." That was just at the time that I had first learned that I could grey snow and get distance with snow just the same as I could with the fields.

SCHIPPERS

But this discovery of color and space did not necessarily coincide with the subject matter of your painting? The changes in the large categories?

BLAIR

No, it didn't coincide with that, except to this extent. Take Virginia City — that large one with nothing but rolling hills and brush in the back — no doubt about it; I got distance in that historical because of this experience in greying colors. I've had people come in and say they had been up there, and those hills still don't have trees on them; they cut them all down for the mines and wood. It didn't change buildings or any of that sort of thing, but wherever landscape appears, yes, I would say that it changed that. You take Quantrill's Raid — of course, that has nothing to do with it. But if you look at the picnic pictures, there is no such thing as distance due to color. They are all flat painted. By the way, the first snow scene I ever did is.hanging upstairs. It's all white, just as white ten miles back as right down in front. This use of greying color and that sort of thing came right then, and I use it right up to this date. That's why I said maybe I should un teach myself when I got these early ones back from New York.

SCHIPPERS

Did this discovery of space and color liberate you somewhat in the kind of subjects you could handle?

BLAIR

No, none whatsoever. I never was conscious that I was liberated. It didn't liberate me at all, because the majority of the important big landscapes were done after all of this. I automatically used it, but I am not saying now the challenge was easier. Right now, if I started painting, it would be hard for me not to mix some colors and start at the top of the canvas, which is going to be in the distance. By the way, I did not make a painting busy in my folk painting or history to fill up space. The whole thing was a story. Never did I put anything in, when I was doing those historicals, to fill space. In fact, in the picnics, so many things were going on that I was almost short of space. But still there would be a field you might call space, but the field had to be there — it was Kansas, and the picnic was right in the farm community with fields all around it., At no time did I ever put in a story in the story-period (I call those my folk paintings); never did I use any [outside] material whatsoever. In other words, the early primitive painter does his so-called memories; I would say they are impressions. They are not memories; they are part of you forever. He does that, and he has a hard time having canvas enough to tell all the things that could be in there. By the way, there is a connection with primitive furniture. I was asked a question by a couple of artists just this week (they were interested in antiques), "What's the connection between a primitive piece of furniture and a primitive painter?" Well, I said, "There's a lot of difference." One of them said, "Well, isn't all early American furniture primitive?" I said, "No. They were done by apprenticed cabinetmakers, a lot of them from Europe in the early days. He was a farmer, but he still was a cabinetmaker. He made his own butter paddle, but there was a decoration on it. They were apprenticed men, as fine cabinetmakers as they ever had in Europe, but they didn't put all the carving and inlay in it, necessarily." They couldn't understand why, then, the early American furniture was not primitive, but could have the finest workmanship. By the way, the ugliest period of all in America — Empire, right after Napoleon — had the finest cabinetwork the world ever knew on the ugliest furniture ever produced. But they were following the style of heavy European Napoleonic furniture, which was based on camp furniture for Napoleon and his group. They thought that an early American cabinetmaker would have taught himself, you see, like a primitive painter would gradually teach himself unknowingly. Then they asked, "Is there primitive furniture?" I said, "Yes, I have the best example existent today." Here is the difference: a primitive painter, the first painting he does is his best. He doesn't know he's primitive. He grows and educates himself, and so he is all one continuation, self-taught. Now, the furniture man was an apprentice for maybe seven years, a young man working nights maybe in the wintertime with someone, and he turns out to be a professional. We don't have the inlay and carving and a lot of the designs here that they have in Europe; but it was native wood furniture, and the idea was to have furniture. But it was fine; it's in the finest museums. I have upstairs a candlestand [from] about the Georgian period, or Queen Anne, or a little before that — around 1700. Remember, the only light then was a grease lamp where a rag stuck out of a metal thing. The Romans before had a pottery thing where they would light a rag and let it burn grease, just lard almost, and that was their smoky light. Abraham Lincoln did all of his reading before the fireplace and candlelight. Then candles come in, and right after that [came] whale oil. Whale oil was an improvement; they could ;put that in a glass container, with a twisted wick--in other words, what we call a lamp. That's a great improvement over a candle. It burned a long time, and there is no dripping. Camphine comes along around about 1820 or '30. They didn't have coal oil until 1857. But camphine was made out of a volatile mixture, probably based on oil of some kind [oil of turpentine and alcohol]. When you find a camphine lamp, it's got two burners at an angle; you know that used camphine. When whale oil went out and camphine came in, people got rid of the little containers that held the wicks of the whale oil and put in the double, so you can't judge the lamp itself by what is on top. That was progress. Going back to the candlestand. Here is a farmer--here is anybody — he wants a candlestand. He knew that the fine candlestands were dish-topped, carved out of one piece of wood, and nice and level; and they had pie-crust tops, hand-carved, made out of red Virginia walnut or pine or anything. They sawed underneath, what they called a birdcage. On the whole thing is a base [with] three legs. It could have been a spade foot, could have been a Queen Anne, it could have been a mule foot, or it could have been a pad foot. A work of art. But here is the countryman. I have it upstairs. He made a candlestand himself. It is a piece of a log, just cut. He bored a hole, put a stick up, and then he put a little four-by-four or five-by-five square on the top of that stick, and up there goes four little prongs which come into the top, and there is your little birdcage. It's upstairs. I got it in Pennsylvania by accident. It had been in a museum. I found a museum book with the same one in it; the sawraarks and everything around the base are right there in the photograph. So there is a primitive piece of furniture. That fellow did not keep on and teach himself; he just made his piece of furniture. No turnings, a drawknife for the stem. So there is the difference. That is a primitive piece of furniture. If he wanted to go ahead and be a cabinetmaker, he would have become an apprentice. So there is the difference. There is no such thing as primitive American furniture, compared to a self-taught primitive painter.

SCHIPPERS

This is back to the space and color development again: as you changed your subject matter from historical folks, and you started to move into landscapes, did this force you to teach yourself more about space and order?

BLAIR

No, not at all. Nothing forced me — nothing. You don't know you're doing it. I didn't know I was doing it until Arthur Millier came by (which we have mentioned). [He also told me] I have naturally a sense of composition and color. Maybe that's because my mother was a dressmaker and made the wedding gowns and all the fine clothes for the women of Cadmus, the farmer women [who were] better dressed than [others] six miles away on a railroad [in Parker, Kansas] No, there was no connection at all. Never once was I conscious that I was learning or teaching myself. But I do know this: in the subconscious mind, I learned the greying of colors. Of course, they come up and influence what you do--but not consciously. You are not conscious of anything when the brush moves but the fact that it is going where you want to go. If noise interrupts, the brush stops; the hand doesn't do it. Undoubtedly, the influence is there, but not consciously.

SCHIPPERS

Is there a correlation between the change of subject matter and the discovery of these two very important facets of painting in your development?

BLAIR

Absolutely none whatsoever, no connection whatsoever. I went into landscapes unknowingly. The first landscapes you would see were up and down — flat. I had run out of things I desired to record; there were about forty-five folk subjects. I was satisfied with the picnics, the band concerts, the dances, the weighing of the colt, the lemonade, and all those different things, threshers and threshing machines. I just wanted to paint and kept on painting. When I changed into landscapes, maybe this was the thought: I was kind of glad I don't have something gnawing at me of the subject matter of folk life that wanted to get recorded. They seemed to want to get recorded. I do remember this: I felt free. My God! I can paint anything I want to now. Landscapes had said to me, "Please paint my portrait." My cow pasture — the one thing I was wanting to record — came late; it was not folk life. I went out with the cows to this cow pasture at age fifteen. That [painting] was way later than all these serious band concerts, Sunday afternoon company, and all that sort of thing. I guess my very nature was to record the east Kansas creek and small river life in landscapes, but I never got to that until [later].. I thought I was through, and then came this Chautauqua Assembly. I was kind of sorry to give in to it and go back to [folk life painting] ; but I wanted, and I did. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

There is another development, and this is what we would call the eye level of the painting. In some of your paintings, you're standing way up high and looking down into them; and some of them you're standing low and looking up into them; and some of them you're looking straight into. Can you explain why this change?

BLAIR

Yes. The typical characteristic of all primitive painters is a bird's-eye view; they always show the rooftops. Every now and then, you run against a subject like in Quantrill's Raid or Eisenhower Farm [Gettysburg, Pa.], where you are down here with the gardens and all and there're mountains high in the distance. It took me a long time to figure out whether you are looking down on a barn or looking up at a three-story barn. I finally discovered by looking at buildings that if I stand in front or to one side, [I should] show both the side and front. By the way, one of the most famous primitives in the Metropolitan Museum shows the front of the house and each end, because you paint what you know is there, rather than what you see. In looking up at the Eisenhower barn on the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg, I learned this: the highest point is going to be right up in front — the peak. Further away (from my point of view), it comes down. In my first [paintings], the top of the barn roof would have been a straight line, parallel right with the bottom of the canvas. I went out and looked at buildings: where must that line go to make it look so you are looking up at it? Bring it down; and then the next line, which is the eave, will run down a little. The top one comes down faster along the eave, and then the bottom of the barn is practically on your eye level. So that did enter into it. When you get into landscapes.... If you'll look at that landscape, you'll have the effect that you're looking up at them. But if you will look closely, you will still see the top of every one of those different mountain hills that comes down. I'm still doing both; I'm showing the top of it, which you would see if you were looking down on it, but you wouldn't see the other side of the ridge of each one. But I still show the top, probably flattened out a little and lightened a little. You automatically know that the highest thing is going to be a little lighter than what comes down further in the mountains. Same way with a building: the top ridge of the roof of a building, even though you are looking up at it, I guess I automatically got the habit of making the top part of the roof just a little bit lighter than down here, where the light doesn't hit, along the eave. So they say all primitives paint with a bird's-eye point of view, yet I think I combine the two, showing the top as though you could be looking down on it, but I also paint more at eye level. That South Dakota painting looks like a straight-on, not a high, point of view. If you will notice, the further back the village goes — lots of buildings — the less shows. Maybe that was accidental, but I had a specific photograph taken in 1878 to show the buildings. I wanted to show them all. If in the early stages I had made each building one beyond the other, showing a little cut off at the bottom, I would have run out of canvas. So here, automatically, without knowing it, I must show at least a rooftop. There's a school, two churches, carriage houses, all in compact order, but mind you, all this is not done on purpose. I was trying to show all the buildings and not run out of sky or prairie beyond, which was very important. So what do you do? I cut down on space to show the roof and less of the side, but you can still tell what building it is. If there is a cupola or something on it, that helps you. Automatically, I guess, without thinking, you get a point of view that looks like you are looking at the village instead of down on it. That is something I had never thought of. Dr. Aldrich was here three days ago. He saw that South Dakota painting. Here's prairie beyond the village, and sky. Then a railroad comes down; and way in the distance, just coming over the horizon, I show a little engine pulling a mixed train. You can just see the sides of the car; the whole thing isn't over two or three inches long. Now, listen to this — showing you how people judge paintings: Dr. Aldrich said, "You did a great thing when you broke that skyline with whatever that is that goes up into the skyline." Mind you, not a tree in that picture, not a tree in the prairie. You know what it was? I didn't break the skyline on purpose. I put the little train in. It came over the horizon and broke the skyline from left to right on a forty-four-inch painting. To him, I did a great thing. No. I did it unconsciously, because the train had to be coming. A woman is waiting down here at the depot, and she had to get on.

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 20, 1965

SCHIPPERS

When did you find a need to start looking at buildings? When you first started, you painted from what you knew and remembered.

BLAIR

Well, in the beginning, you are so eager, and a building is a building. You are doing a building, and you are doing another building; and that's a picture there, and over here is a picture of this building. You are not thinking of that building as a relationship of a barn to a house, or a barn to a fence, or anything else. And you paint it, the old self-imposed rule: how was it? I have an illustration of that perfect answer. We built a barn.... [telephone interrupts tape]

SCHIPPERS

You have an illustration of that perfect answer. You built a barn.

BLAIR

Yes, down on the ranch in El Cajon. Now, mind you, the fellow who built the barn one day was sitting out on the corral fence looking at the roof. He was not looking straight on at the roof from the side; he was looking at an angle. In other words, he was sitting on a fence looking at the top of the barn roof, and he sat and sat. I went out to him, and I said, "What's the trouble?" And he said. "There's something wrong with that roof." Now, imagine this — a builder. I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "It.runs down in the back." He's sitting at an angle looking at the front of the barn, and he was sighting down the side. He knew, just like I knew when I first painted. I remember the first drawing of anything I did, years before I started painting. We built a Pilgrim-century house in West Los Angeles with an unusual roof, six baths and six fireplaces; that one we told about. I decide one day I am going to try to do a drawing of that and send it to my daughter in the East. I go up in the orchard, and I get where I can see one end of the house and then all along the roof. There is one thing I know: I know that the top of the roof and the eaves down here are parallel. I know that. So I made my drawing with parallel lines because they are parallel. Then I come to the front, and I do that. When I get that drawing done, there is the craziest house you ever saw. I hadn't considered railroad tracks or anything. I thought that I knew the roof line, the eaves, and the top were parallel; and that I could be sure that that much of my drawing would be correct. I remember I was certainly puzzled when I realized that I was looking at the front end and down to the rear. Of course, you've got your railroad-track perspective coming in there. Well, that was my first awakening. Now, here, a few years later, we built this barn. Here is this fellow that built the barn. He was about ready to go up there with a hammer and saw or something, and I don't know what [he wanted to do]. But he was certainly worried. He was doing the same thing I was, looking at the front of the barn. If he'd been looking [down] from a balloon, why, the further away from the front that the barn went, the higher it would raise the other way. But here he is looking up at the barn, and he couldn't figure out how his measurements could be so wrong that the top of the roof of the barn sloped down toward the back. He was not conscious in any way of perspective. Naturally, as you go along and (unknowingly) teach yourself, you are glad when you can do a painting of the front of a building and look down one side and have it look that way, like it would to the eye. There is one thing I was wrong [about]. I used to say I had only had one question to answer myself: how was it? The first few paintings, I knew that the slope of the roof at the back had to be the same number of inches (down to the half -inch, for a good carpenter) as it would in front, and I did them that way. But they looked what they call "primitive" in people's minds. They accepted the subject matter; they accepted the color; they accepted the composition. That's primitive; that's the way they paint. Now, the painter Wallis, from England, was about the only [English] natural primitive known in the last many years, because they all studied in schools. When he painted, he was determined always to show an automobile, or a sleigh coming around a corner in a snow scene, on the side. He still has to show the whole side of the automobile and the front; he can't foreshorten, in other words. Foreshortening was something you stumble onto. You don't know you are foreshortening, but I did do it in a painting that is in the San Diego County museum, called Christmas Eve '49, from a pen sketch I found in a book in New York. Here is a man riding a horse down the street away from your point of view. Well, I can remember how happy I was when I got to looking at something, like the side of an automobile. You see very little, just the end and a little down the side. So here is the rear of a horse and the rear of a man, and just a little [of the side] of the horse; you see one ear and the side of a head. In that painting, it was almost perfectly foreshortened as far as I would know; looking at a horse going away from you, that's all you would see. So you stumble onto those things, and you teach yourself unknowingly. Naturally, after I found [this] out, if I'm looking at a barn — but a little bit lower than the top of the roof — I slope down the top. No rule how much; just as soon as I do it, I can see I've got distance alongside the barn as well as the front of the barn. Yesterday I was laying out a painting for the president of the University of Virginia, the same subject matter that he saw once in one of the fourteen state one-family-farm paintings. I saw something was wrong with the white house in there. I couldn't figure it out, and I got to looking at it; and I am looking at the corner of the house, down one side and across the front. Do you know, down the side it was right (here is a certain distance; you just guess at it; you kind of draw it out; you don't measure anything); and here is the corner. It's long down that side, not so high down at the far end, but the front of the house looks so bad. I got to looking and I saw this: the further from the corner across the front of the house you went, to the other side, the wider it got. Well, the paint was still moist. I just took some kleenex, dipped it in paint thinner, and I just started in at the corner, shot up about a half-inch, and took off and narrowed the distant view of the front end. It looked just fine. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

I would like to know a little bit more about Dr. Aldrich--his influences on you — and also the things you have said about resisting advice from people.

BLAIR

When I first started to paint, I was in Leucadia down there, ninety miles south of Los Angeles. I was putting apple blossoms — I had painted a few paintings for myself — on an apple orchard. That's when Dr. Aldrich comes along. I'll tell you who he was. He had a house in Encinitas, just a mile from Leucadia. We had our antique store there, and I was starting to paint upstairs in an apartment over it. He was not dean, but professor of the history of American art and archaeology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He came along to look at antiques and heard I was upstairs. I had baked a little bread, and he came up. He bought, generally, linens and things like that — very fine. He seems to know everything about everything. That's when I asked him how I could paint a blooming apple orchard with a few [strokes]. He said, "Yes, I could tell you; I hope you don't know; I won't tell you; I hope you never find out." And then I said to him, "Why?" "If you learn a little of the rules, but don't learn them all, you're nothing. You are a natural primitive painter." He emphasized the word "natural"--not stylized. He said, "Don't let any artist talk to you; don't look at any art magazines; and don't go to any art shows for three years. After three years, you can't be hurt. If you learn one thing within that period, you may be nothing. Everybody, all the trained ones, will want to help you." I think I told where a girl came along one day and saw some paintings I had hanging; and she said, "Oh, maybe it's ,a good idea for you to know — don't ever put an important thing in the center of a painting." I stopped her and isaid, "By the way, what time are the strawberries getting ripe?" Well, she left. I went around to look at my paintings after she was there, and I had never put an important thing in the middle of the canvas. But to this day, every time I lay out a painting, that thing jumps up and tells me that. After three years, I had no exposure whatsoever to anybody's work of art; a picture was just a picture. That's the time he said, "Now, I think you are far enough along that I can show you the limited palette." Since then, he has never given me any help except this: about five years ago, he made this remark (this had to do with composition, I guess), "Unless you are making a feature of the sky, use as little sky, at the top of your painting, as you must." This probably happened six years ago, and if you look at some of my earlier paintings--look at some of the picnics — there is a lot of space there for sky. But if you look right up here at these paintings, probably four inches of sky instead of ten or eight or ten; that influence came in. He made a criticism just the other day of something. Criticism means analyze; it doesn't mean complain. See, he can't hurt me now (in his own mind), and no one else can. I am just in a rut — my way, thank goodness — and that's the way I am going to paint. I can listen to what people say. But he gave some.... Well, look at this picture up here with the pink background. That was just a play picture. I have a church, a fence or two, a blooming apple orchard, and then a rock this side of the apple tree. Then there is a lamb and a sheep, and there's a dog. Well, that was a play picture. He said, "You should take out the dog for sure. And why not take out the sheep and lamb? You'd have a better painting. You've got your experimental pink-red sky clear on down, and a red background. It would be a better painting if you just had the apple tree and the church." Well, first of all, I thought, "Gee, I'll do that." But there is where the story comes in. Ordinarily, my composition would have been better than that; I grant that. I did first the church, and then I did the apple tree. I remember somebody came along and said, "Do you ever do any sheep?" I know somebody said that. Well, I don't think I had. But right away, I saw what a wonderful thought [it was] The whole painting is symbolic; sheep and a dog that protects the sheep. I should have made another painting of that. I put them in there (it doesn't bother me); and the title of the painting now is Innocence and Safety. The dog represents both. All right. Now, there are many people that don't know anything and are not conscious of [composition]. They see a picture, and they like it. They like the story. I have had two or three people say that they wished they could afford to buy that. Well, all right, that's the way ,1 did it. I am going to leave the dog in there, and I am going to leave the sheep in there. I see one thing wrong right now, and I did before. That is this: that rock over in the right corner is greyed down. It is not as white as it should be, because it tries to get behind the apple tree. The apple tree is almost pure white blooms, although I've never used pure white entirely. There is a bird in a bush and the rock; and going up and looking at it, you don't see it. At a distance, you see the church; it does stay back from the apple tree because it's a greyer white. The apple tree is the strongest white in there. I could take a brush, lighten up the rock, lighten up the sheep then--have to do it, too. Dr. Aldrich did tell me this: "Don't ever change one thing in a painting unless you are going to change all of it." Right there is a good example. If I change the rock — I've got to make it lighter to stay in front of the apple tree — I am going to have to change the sheep and the lamb whiter to make them stay in front of the rock. And then the dog may be all right to stay back there, if he is far enough back; or I may have to grey him to put him back further, or lighten him up to bring him forward. By the way, this brings up something. I had a big argument with a fine man who manages Duncan Vail, an artist. He didn't understand me, as usual, and I didn't understand him. I didn't know what the word "value" meant. I did learn automatically that the lighter a thing is, the more forward it comes; the greyer it is, [the more it goes] back. But I found something else that bothered me. I discovered that a very dark blue could stand in front of something white and still stay forward. So I went over to this fellow one day, and I asked him, "Listen, does value determine distance and greys and things?" He said, "No, colors decide it." I said, "I know all that, but what about intensity?" Well, he didn't [understand] — he probably was thinking in terms of value — but finally we agreed. You can have a low, dark blue; you can have a low, dark green (if it is pure, intense green). You can have that; you can put it beside a white piece; and it will stay right there. But in the beginning of this thing of value, I was assuming that anything darker than anything light would stay back or try to get back. So we did find this out. You can take a small light value — like the moon, or the sun, or a part of a sailing vessel — have a whole big canvas; and it will balance all the rest you've got on the whole canvas if it has more light value or if you can make it in an intense dark color. A bird flying, a big bird, can balance everything else on the canvas, even if there was inches and inches of space around this one thing. That was a stepping stone which I found out was happening; I would have a dark intense red here, and it didn't try to get behind something which was much higher in value--in other words, lighter. That puzzled me until finally, after this discussion, Rusty — as we call him, a wonderful fellow managing Duncan Vail — said, "Yes, you can do it. A low-value, intense, pure color can balance the whitest thing you can put on somewhere else.

SCHIPPERS

Is Dr. Aldrich the only person who has had an influence on you as far as telling you things?

BLAIR

Yes. He has never told me anything but that I must not learn until after three years, showed me the limited palette, and made the suggestion about the sky. The one thing of teaching was the limited palette, and that was after three years. I was puzzled the first time I went over to a show of Dimondstein on La Cienega. I said, "You have done Something" (this goes right back to what Rusty and I worked out) "I can't believe. You have something white here, and you've got something darker right here in front of it; but the white stays back, and this red doesn't jump forward and try to steal the show. How do you do that?" I thought it was a miracle. He says, "What a color does depends on the color beside it." That was his way of saying "intensity versus value." No one has attempted in any way to give me any advide at all about anything else; but if they did, it didn't bother me. Dr. Aldrich will criticize a painting more this way when he comes up. I have a painting here of Morocco, a village of all cement buildings — all monotone — and down in front, I have a market scene of people. When he saw that, he said, "You went five or ten years ahead of yourself when you did that monotone of these hundreds of [buildings] " (a distant view of this village in Morocco with a religious building in the center), "but with your market people you've stayed right where you are." In other words, my people never improve much. As I think I have told somebody, I didn't know people had necks or hips until about eight years ago in my paintings. All I tried to do, or expected to be able to do, was to tell what they were doing. I have a painting of Virginia City that has got over four hundred people in it. Nobody ever criticized that. The first twelve out of thirteen paintings I sent to jury shows over the nation, I was never judged down on people drawing or anything like that. They evidently judge you on composition, coloring, and the overall quality of the painting.

SCHIPPERS

One of your first paintings, -which you said was on glass, is of a man and some houses, and the man is bigger than the house. When did you learn that you had to start relating the sizes of objects?

BLAIR

Well, I'll put it this way: in primitives you don't learn it, and you don't have to. But that's an exaggeration. It was probably one of the very first eight or ten I ever did. I remember now, I did a barn, I did a carriage house, and I did a house. Well, I look at that thing today, and I can't believe it. When I was doing the carriage house... I don't know what made me do it, but it doesn't compare with the barn. You couldn't believe it was anything but a little outhouse or something. But it did have the architecture of a carriage house. Of course the man is there, and he is going hunting or something. There was a case of one of the very, very early ones, when I was just putting down subject matter. The odd thing about it is, they say it has composition. I placed them in such a way that it made a picture — -not consciously, but it did. To this day, when I see that, I realize I could absolutely not have known that there was a barn or a house there when I painted the carriage house. The man was the last thing put in. If a man is going hunting with a gun, you are going to paint a man going hunting with a gun. This is probably the best illustration you have picked out of my first primitive things. Look at my Christmas Carol Practice. Right down in front is a fellow that is not over three inches high, and yet back of him is somebody--no bigger man — maybe six inches [high]. Each thing was one, one, one, one. No relationship whatsoever. That accounts for that. Now then, did I learn? No. By the way, proportion and perspective were medieval inventions. They were never in your early primitives. The Italian primitives were the greatest. Importance was the only thing. That's the only explanation I can have for this one you mentioned; the carriage house in that painting was not important. The man going hunting was important; he's bigger than the house. That is pure primitive. Let me tell you: distance, perspective, and proportion were not at all in the early masterpieces. That came in as a new hobby for the medievals, and they taught it. I might say for a little bit of humor that the only reason they didn't have perspective [was that] railroad tracks weren't made until about 1800. You would think something like that could have given them the idea of perspective. When painting primitives, the size is based on importance. But where does your composition come in? You wouldn't want to put it right under the carriage house. That's a natural thing; you can't teach it, in my mind. You can't teach people to arrange furniture in a room; some can do it and some can't. All right. I think maybe we can close right there. This thing of perspective and proportion enters into primitives in no way. But you do, automatically as you go along, subconsciously teach yourself. Maybe if a thing isn't important enough to put in there, you won't do it. So you won't have a little tiny carriage house--who knows?

SCHIPPERS

So even though you say perspective and proportion were medieval inventions, you yourself came around to use these devices in part. Why did you start doing that?

BLAIR

Well, I didn't start on purpose. Now, I want to say this: the word pe rspec tive does not apply in this question. It is distance. If you will look at any picture I have, you will not find perspective. You will find proportion. Each thing still has its attempt [to be] in line with something else, but it is not the perspective; it is really distance. Even the rows of buildings in Virginia City — you won't find one building there probably in real perspective with another one. You'll find distance, and that's done by size, so to speak. Yet if you look at the theater building up to the left in that painting, that's an important building. [I was] painting a theater building; [I had] forgotten about the others. Surely it is smaller than the big International Hotel, but there are other saloons and cafes down in the front part of the picture that are no bigger than the opera house up there. Importance enters into it. I can't really explain how, at the same time, one does that and keeps composition. So far as the difference between primitive painting, when each thing is a separate little picture, that still maintains in a way. But it is true that after you have painted about four hundred numbered paintings (I'm on about five hundred and thirty now; I don't count little ones at all), why, you do find out that you have learned something unknowingly. So when I start painting now, I realize that I can look at the canvas (I do now, longer than I ever did before), and I will see everything in there, of the major things. You don't know about any details that might come up. So maybe that has an influence on the fact that when you're seeing these things, as what's most important (these are the major things, not details of these things or details of something else [which] might be in there, like a pump or a rabbit or something that fills in the story), you do--automatically, as you practically suggested — see the whole thing, rather than start out [looking] unknowingly at the canvas. You know you are going to put a grain store here, and a church here, and over here is going to be a news store, and over there is going to be a threshing machine. I am very sure that in those earlier paintings, all I was conscious of was what I was going to have in the painting, but not where. I believe that answers some of it. Therefore, the composition in the beginning was a subconscious accident (because I did have it, or I would never have gotten in those shows). Undoubtedly, today I see proportion (which I call distance, rather than perspective) before I ever start thinking that "Over here is going to be this," and something about its size. Maybe that determines the area I give the first [building], the old grange store.

SCHIPPERS

In other words, you are thinking of the whole canvas?

BLAIR

That's right; and therefore, automatically, unknowingly, you see where the different things are going to be, based somewhat on their importance, which means proportion again. It goes back to the same principle, but you're self-educated to the point that you see the whole canvas now. In the beginning, you start out and you put the store here, the church here, the house here. Well, something guided you naturally for the composition, or it wouldn't have been a painting. But there is where you get tripped up. When I started this one you mentioned on glass, I knew there had to be a carriage house in there. I wouldn't be surprised if I had the barn and the house and the man going hunting when I [found I had] left out the carriage house. In those days, I did the barn; I'd do a house; but when I'm doing the carriage house, I am not thinking of the barn, except it's close to it and it's going to be where you could use it. But later on, now, I see the whole painting.

SCHIPPERS

Is this thinking in terms of the whole painting now mostly motivated by your desire to paint things "how it was?" Or is it motivated by how you want that canvas to look?

BLAIR

Strictly on how it was. I am not thinking of how the canvas is going to look at all. I am not thinking of a completed painting. I am merely seeing on the canvas things in importance, which means proportion or size, and there is no thought of how good the painting is going to be or anything about it. The whole thought in my mind is to get it down there. I still ask myself, "How was it?" If this red house is further back than the one up in front that's red, then the learning of greying comes in, of course. But I don't put a red house there because there's a blue one here or a green one here. Everything is still based on "how was it?"

SCHIPPERS

Does this also apply to your use of color? Or do you actually get pleased with the look of one color?

BLAIR

Oh, here you brought up something to note in my recent paintings. Pink, green, and yellow were the grange colors. Well, I used those, and they looked nice to me. That's probably why the grangers selected them. Pink, green, and yellow. I went to a show, and the backdrops were pink, green, and lavender. It struck me wonderful. It was a big backdrop, because it was a big stage of a film theater. ,Now, right up there, those little houses hidden behind the hill, let me see.... [goes over to painting] I know (there is lavender in there. Look, I have a pinkish red, a yellow, but no green. But look at the lavender; I know that there would not have been a lavender house in there. But that stuck with me, and I have used it in several pictures.

SCHIPPERS

That was in the New Hampshire Hay Lands.

BLAIR

Since I saw the backdrop and freedom of color — putting lavender with green — I did one large painting,. say 20" X 28", where there is a proliferation of houses. One house is the first one; and then the family gets bigger, and they build on another one; then they get prosperous and build on another. I used pink, green, and lavender for those three colors — no reason at all. In the earlier days, I would have said the Pennsylvania Dutch wouldn't have done that. It would have been this, this, or this. However, there is an angle there; the Pennsylvania Dutch painted things nearly every year if they could. They paid not too much attention [to color]; if they had paint left in this color, it went on next year. I have seen combinations of colors in Pennsylvania that you'd say didn't follow anything; they just happened to have that paint, or it was available. They weren't thinking particularly of how artistic it would be; they just painted that color. Some wonderful results come — in other words, freedom. Nature has it all the way through. But when — instead of pink, green, and yellow — I saw pink, green, and lavender, I was freer with color than I had been. That's been about four years ago. I have been freer with color ever since that, but not knowingly. You just do it. That's the way you experiment or teach yourself.

SCHIPPERS

But anyhow, color and the relationships of color please you. It's not always just trying to make it look exactly how it was.

BLAIR

No. At first, that was the only thing I knew — "how was it?" I have had freedom in color for the last five or six years. I had a snow scene in a show over here, and it was quite large and expensive. One fellow said, "You know, if it was snowing in that picture, I'd buy it." I said, "I'll make it snow there for you for fifty bucks." Well, that was something you do or not do; but when it comes to color change, since that time, why, a lot of it has just been freedom, regardless of how I knew it was or might be. And yet, you can drive around this town and you can see a group of houses. The different minds that decide what color to paint those houses may use the very same colors that I have thought were very daring to put together on a canvas. The neighbor painted his house. Maybe the next one paints another color, and the neighbor doesn't like that; but they have nothing to say about it. This brown house we're in — I'm not so sure but what the people next door wish we hadn't painted it that color. But this brown against white over here and some other color on the right, if you look at all three of them, it might be the backdrop for a scene. If you want to experiment and be devilish and daring, try it in a painting.

SCHIPPERS

Does the same apply in some of your landscapes? Maybe every tree isn't exactly where it was. Did you do it because it pleased you to see it that way on the painting?

BLAIR

No. I am very conscious of forests and groves. You can have a whole forest of elm trees, you can have a forest of hickory trees, or anything you want or wish, and they will not be [the same color]. Light effect has something to do with it. But the age of the tree and the minerals of the soil where those roots went will determine a lot of coloring. I know that in any forest there are a few trees that stand out, that you can see clear through a hundred yards back in there. So I couldn't paint a forest all with the same color. I am gladly careless with a little color — some green left where I put on a green leaf or something, and I am going to put it into a dark brown. I don't care what comes out; you can't name any color on a tree that isn't in the bark somewhere on some tree. You can't make a mistake on a tree. You can't put a limb on a tree, but what nature will have done it before you did. What determines the direction of every limb and branch? Light — struggling ,to get to the light. Then they stop growing, and they don't grow any further for awhile. But another one grows behind it, to get ahead of it, to get up into the light; so you can't make a mistake. But one thing that artists overlook. They'll do tree trunks, and they don't know this: every time one branch grows out of a trunk, or every time a branch grows out of a limb, beyond that the limb is smaller. Well, that's just something of people seeing when they look. That's what hurts me on stylized primitives. They do things, and they show they don't even know how a sleigh was made. They don't know how shaves go on a buggy. They don't know any of that stuff, but they fake along. And people see, and they say they are primitives. They are fake, stylized primitives done by trained artists who don't even know that if one branch grows out of a tree, the trunk has got to be smaller above that. It's got to be.

SCHIPPERS

You told me once how you did that with your paint brush, what you do at the time you add a branch.

BLAIR

Every time I put a branch on, you can't make the top smaller, you've got to make it bigger below. That's the way the tree grows. In other words, here's three feet of natural-shaped trunk. Put a big branch out, and then I've got to come down again below that and enlarge that,. because right above it would be the same-size trunk when you first put the trunk in. I might taper it a little. But the minute I go up another inch or two and a branch goes out the other side, I have to come down to the next branch and make it look bigger, and then below that, because there are two branches off the tree. People say all the time that my trees are the best thing I do. Well, they see trees, but they don't know why they are that way. You have to know these things.

SCHIPPERS

When you are painting, even though you are always doing things as the thing was, have you ever left things out or added things to improve the composition of the painting as you see it?

BLAIR

If I were real honest, which I try to be, generally I would say yes. I do this: I put in what I think is going to be the painting. You know what happens to the painting? It says, "This thing here steals the show." Another portion will say, "Look how hungry I am; I'm vacant. I don't have anything; give me something." [I don't] say what it takes to make a composition, never, never, never! It just tells me. But the painting tells me there must be something up there. All right, I could put in another tree. I could put in a man with a gun, a little one maybe, or I could put in a snow fence. It's very odd you should mention that. That painting there is a perfect example; it was all finished.

SCHIPPERS

What's the name of it?

BLAIR

It's called Hope the Milking Is Done. The old folks are coming home in the sleigh in the evening, and they hopa the boys have milked. I knew there would be a bridge, a stream, and all that. I had certain trees in; I had the buildings; and I knew I was going to have the snow fence. Now, I'll admit, if I had put a tree there, I couldn't have had the snow fence. I mean, that is the picture that you see in the beginning. But you get through with it, and you say, "Here is a weak spot; here is one right here." Those are two old, dried-up, frozen rosebushes. I generally have a rosebush or shrub in the yard around a house, kind of a symbolic thing to put in. But where I put those two was determined by where the rows were and where the path down to the spring house was. To put them in at all, something says, "We're weak in here." The picture says, "What's the matter? This is bad." It's an odd thing. Dr. Aldrich, as I told you, was just here. He looked at that painting and said, "You know, you would have a masterpiece if you were to leave everything out of the picture that's in there — all the trees, all the fences — and take this top lake, bring it down big, and make it a dominant feature. That blue there and this blue down here is the most striking blue I have ever seen in a painting. That's masterful." It's just blue to me. I don't take him as an authority on that. He's great in seeing what could be done, and I don't mean to say he isn't ,an authority. But I mean, the fact that he said that I would have a great painting if that blue came down there — well, he probably has his reasons, which I don't know. But the fact that you just picked that up as an example, as one where what trees went where, never entered my mind at all until the buildings were all in. As to where and all that, I didn't see that in the picture. I saw the important things — the subject matter, the real original things.

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 27, 1965

SCHIPPERS

This is an addition to a question I asked earlier about broad subject categories for your paintings. The other night, I saw some slides that included The Earth Is Round, Circle of Fire, and [others]. I wonder if you would explain how you would type these kinds of paintings. Would you call them symbolic? Or would you call them theme paintings, or what?

BLAIR

Well let's keep in mind this: a primitive painter, a natural painter, knows no rules; he knows no such thing as design on purpose. Whatever happens is done just like he would walk down the street. He would walk his way; he wouldn't walk like somebody else. Now, as to these different ones, I realize that after the.y are done, someone can come along and classify them into this or that category. They were not done with that thought whatsoever. It set me to thinking that what causes one to paint one thing or another — who can explain it? Something happens, or you read something, and you begin to feel i't fits into something you would like to record. So far as Earth is Round is concerned, that's a case of a general thought I have had all through the last few years. So many people take things for granted just as they are; they don't see beneath the surface. So we say the.earth is round — we learned that — and we say Magellan proved it. But at the same time, in carpenter work, in antique work, in building, everybody uses a level. You could take a level thirty-six inches [long] clear around the world, and the level would say this is level. You could build a table; but after all, when you get all through with it, it is perfectly a circle. [My] thought was to emphasize truth compared to illusion, or what we accept as truth and is truth as long as you are dealing with a ten-foot, or a thirty-foot, or maybe a hundred-foot table. How can anything be level at every point all around the earth? And yet it's a perfect sphere. So that was done, but not to do variety or anything else. Now then, you take Circle of Fire. Ayn Rand had a lot of publicity, did lectures, and I think she did this book called Anthem. That was the life of people, supposedly, after an atomic war. People were regimented, and the women worked in the fields. They had numbers, and so did the men, with a hedge fence between [them], according to her description. They couldn't speak to each other without a seven-year sentence. They were just individuals. Her whole Anthem I think was based on the fact of the search for. people who still held on to the fact that a man was a man and an individual was an individual. And so it happened that in the book, a man, a scientist, and some others discovered a cavern in which atomic equipment had been produced. He got together enough of the elements in a box to produce electricity. (Whatever that could be, I don't know. It could have been certain acids maybe or wires or metals.) And he decided to escape. If you escape from that place, they will follow you, and it is twenty years or death. But if you went in the uncharted forest, they didn't follow you, because that meant death. The uncharted forest was full of wild animals. It seems that he and a certain woman across, [the fence] had at least noticed each other; and even that would have been a penalty, supposedly, even though they had never talked. He gets the elements of the box, and he is thinking only of finding a place on earth again where there could be the individual, like in the United States, we hope. He got into the midst of this forest and realized that what he called the Golden Girl was left behind. That makes a Greek tragedy; either way you turn seems tragic. Go back — death; go ahead — not death, but the Golden Girl [remains]. It turns out in the story that she is discovered following him. He has the elements in the box, and that night they built a circle of fire to keep wild animals away. Reading that paragraph, or that page, in Ayn Rand's novel, I thought that would be a chance to do a night scene. I have done two or three night scenes, several of them. I saw in my mind not just a story, but — I'll admit this — a picture of wild animals. The challenge was to make it a deep uncharted forest with practically no life. I must say this: the background was based on green. All backgrounds of mine go in first, and dry before I put in any detail. When I got all the trees in, I knew some of the trees would be on the purple side in the distance, and some maybe a little green. When I got through, I didn't know what background I had, particularly toward the fore part of the background of the forest. The greens in that really surprised me. I have taken a leaf of a certain green I want to do, and the one way certain for me to get that particular green is to mix up paints and keep putting it on the leaf until I can't see the paint. All right. I did that. I put it on the canvas, and it wasn't that color at all. I didn't know why, but I was told later why. You never know what color is going to be on a painting until you know what colors are there beside it. You put red and green together, well, it will be a different green and a different red. Together, the light rays mix, and it becomes a purple to a certain extent. You can't identify the red on the palette with the one on the canvas, nor the green either, until they are oh there. You can't identify it as being the same green. Now another one is one that I do call symbolic; I think Saga was the title. It occurred to me, in this push-button age, [to do a symbolic painting of] America's formative period. Fleur Cowles calls it America's formative period, but one might think that all of it since the Pilgrim century is America's formative period. But it wasn't really an America, I would say, until after Teddy Roosevelt talked nice and carried a big stick. From about 1900 on was when America was really recognized in the world as a power that could not be monkeyed with or disputed. He certainly did it. He was in the cavalry in the war over Cuba with Spain, and he was under a general. Teddy was down there with his cavalry to do things, and all of a sudden, a certain time comes. The general had issued an order they were going to do certain things, but he hadn't given any order to do them. First thing you know, somJebody says, "There goes Teddy." And the general says, "There goes hell." All right, we're off the subject, but anyway Fleur Cowles calls it America's formative period; and in that [painting], I thought about what really was this country: the church, the school, a home, a plow, a pig, a horse, a chicken, a dog, a cat, a barn, a hoe, a toy gun, a toy, a doll, and children. Well, I put them in there just to cover those things. You might call it a sort of a compendium. but it was done with the thought to record the basic things that everyone had in this country at that time. It didn't make any difference whether they lived in a village or not; they still had a cow in the village, and some of them had cows and horses in the city. When I got through with that, to me it was a saga, a kind of a record. Well, it really wasn't. It was really kind of symbolic, the whole thing. The first time I ever heard that word connected with primitive painting was when I read Jean Lipman's book. She is America's authority on primitive paintings. She owns 226 primitive ones, but she owns one of mine, and it hangs in her living room in Connecticut. She used the word in trying to describe primitive painting as being symbolic and abstract and terms like that. But the word symbolic stuck in there, and I believe that painting turned up. But it was not designed to be symbolic. What was another painting? Or did that cover them? SCHIPPERS Oh, the ones withr religious subjects.

BLAIR

Well, back in Pennsylvania, when we were in the antique business, I was bidding on some big books. This was an illustrated Bible, I thought, and I guess that's what it is. It's a book about six inches thick, leather-bound, and all that sort of thing. When I bought it — I bought it probably for a dollar — an Amish man came around, and he said. "May I open that?" And I said, "Certainly, look at it." He looked at it for a while and he says, "I thought maybe I wanted to buy it off you." I said, "Well, it's a Bible, isn't it?" And he said, "Well, it's a Bible, but it isn't just that; it's about the Bible." There were many illustrations, but I didn't get anything there, [although] I thought for a time I'd do a set of religious subjects. I thought it would be an interesting field. I did one where the Israelites were spying, and the woman kept the spies in the loft of her home. She said there was no one up there; and then, as these police left, in the night here are these two spies coming down the red cord from the hayloft. I did that, and a person bought that. Then I got as far as Numbers 22:22, the story about the dumbness of this... was it Rahab?* [tape recorder turned off] Anyway, it seemed very interesting to me to record in a painting, if I could, the story of where the Israelites again are taking their territory under God's guidance. It was territory originally, I guess, that Lot owned along with Abraham, and [Balaam] represented those that did not follow the Israelite understanding. So the picture is this: envoys come from a territory where they know the Israelites are going to go through eventually; and they come to this priest or prophet — anyway, a servant of the Israelites — and they say, "Come over *It was Balaam — Ed. 711 and pray for us and curse your people. We'll do this and that." Well, it kind of appealed to him, but he didn't get the full import. So he asked God what to do, and God says, "Don't go." Well, they come back again, and they tell him. Then he goes to ask God again according to the Bible, "What shall I do?" God says, "Go with them, but say what I tell you to say." So he gets a mule. He has two or three footmen; he is going along; and all of a sudden, the mule shies. He doesn't know why. The mule backs and backs into a wall around a grape vineyard and hurts the foot of this representative. Finally, he beats the mule some more, and the mule says, "What have I done? I've carried you. I've done this; I've done that, and now you beat me. Why?" Right then, the angel that the dumb mule saw — but this prejudiced, dumb priest, or whatever you want to call him, didn't see — speaks and says, "If the mule had not been smarter than you, I would have killed you." Well, he woke up to the fact then that he was being presented with the truth. That was the picture shown, where the angel's in front and the mule's backing, and those footmen were guarding. As far as doing that painting Circle of Fire, there was no plan, no anything — you just find yourself doing it. It's all based on this, though, as Arthur Millier, the art critic of the Los Angeles Times, told me: He said most primitive painters stop as soon as [they have] recorded [their] memories. Well, I said you record impressions if you're going to paint. I just got over into other subject matter; I had covered most of my thoughts that had to do with early American life or Midwest formative-period life, and I still wanted to paint. I just found myself doing landscapes, snow scenes, and farm scenes. I didn't do that on purpose, but just to keep on painting. But I did stop; several of them did. I think Wallis was one. There were very few who went beyond; I think Grandma Moses really didn't paint anything at all, perhaps, but the life of the time. She didn't do landscapes. I wrote in my little book, "The landscape said to me, 'Paint my portrait.'" There is a same feeling within me of wanting to paint somebody fishing on a creek with a cork, or someone building a fire to make apple butter or making apple butter; it's all the same motive, something that I would like to record, whether it is an experience or a mood that you carried with you. Camping out, to me, was always a great thing, a great joy; I have camped out in thirty-eight states. So still there was no pattern, no "Now I have done my folk life I am going to do landscapes and keep on painting." It just happens. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

I was just saying that this led into the next question, which is that you have done several paintings that are contemporary siobjects, such as After the Rain, The Valley at Night, The Freeway, Cocktail Party, and some others.

BLAIR

Well, let's follow the same thought. What comes into one's mind, of course, is based on past experience plus environment; there's no question about that. The Valley is a night scene. At that moment in time, we had moved up to Los Angeles from down south. We were in the antique business here, and I was painting. Every night, we drove the Sepulveda road, through a tunnel, and as you came out of the tunnel, you looked down on the [San Fernando] Valley over here. At that time, around fifteen years ago, it was not settled like it is now. But every street was full of cars going this way. Going to the left, you'd see the red lights, and if they were going to the right, even in two lanes passing each other, you'd see the headlights coming from one side and the red lights, the tail lights, going the other way. And it changed right in the middle of your point of view. Then there were a few towns over there that had colorful lights. Well, I was free. I was not burning up to get. things recorded, like oyster suppers, dance picnics, band concerts, weighing the colt, and all those things I had to do. I was free. I was so impressed with that. I didn't sit there and make any sketches, but we would be driving home in the evening from over on this side, from our antique shop, and there.would be that thing. It made a definite impression. Well, first, never making any sketches, I did what I thought was this painting. When I got through, it looked too black; it looked — I don't know what. There were mountains over in the background, the whole valley, practically every road. It showed Van Nuys, and it showed the different settlements that were in there. I was very much disappointed in it. I did have the urge to record that. I just found myself wanting to. All right. That painting dried for some time, and I didn't like it. It didn't have any feeling. A friend of mine, Wendell Smith, was a commercial artist. who did some other work connected with the San Diego Tribune and with the Union. In my book, it tells about how I brought him on a trip to California from Topeka; he did the first art work drawings for my magazine for boys, Tim's official magazine. Wendell came up one day, and he said, "Say, I am having a lot of fun — freedom in painting." He was in business handling a lot of the advertising and art work for the two papers in San Diego. He said, "It's just great sometimes to just kind of close your eyes and just do something and see what happens with a paint brush." Well, here is a painting that I have done — this night scene — and I don't like it. I'm disappointed. Well, I said, "I'm going to have some fun. I am just going to imagine now that it's the Fourth of July and there's a skyrocket going up. I'm just going to dip my brush in some red paint, and I'm just going to come down, whoeee, right down through the painting." I did. I got a thrill out of it. Well, then I thought it still isn't anything, and I tried it again on three or four places on this painting. I had really a sensation of freedom, just to see what happens. And you'd be surprised. The brush made a twist here, does that, and maybe in a case or two the paint was kind of mixed on the brush, but I didn't care. Just a child playing. I looked at that, and I thought, "Well, I'm going to wipe that off and do something else on there for fun. I get some paint thinner (I don't use turpentine), and I wipe this all off. When I got through with that, I had the most beautiful night painting I had ever done. It put a film of something over there. These colors gave glows here; it purpled something, although I don't think purple was in it. Maybe some red went on some dark blue mountains — I don't know. The color slide you saw of that was after I had wiped this off to do some more play work. It struck me; so I let it dry, and that's the painting, [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

There are some more contemporary subjects you have done, like After the Rain and Cocktail Party and the woman with the umbrella (I don't know the name of that). And of course, you have explained that these come out of your impressions, but I... ?

BLAIR

Well, I tell you, that is in a period of almost rest: nothing burning, nothing particularly saying, "Do this." Paintings tell you to do them. You start on them, and they say, "Keep on; build a fence now." Really, it urges you to go ahead. I'm doing one right now, a one-family farm in Virginia, for the president of VPI — a Virginia farm, peanuts, tobacco, tobacco barns, hay barn, unusual haystacks and all that. I did one which was in the Vincent Price Collection, and when the show of Sears was in Arlington, the president of VPI was up there and it was sold. He could have bought it, but at a high price, from Sears. It had been sold. For over a year, he's been wanting me to do one. I have a colored photograph of the [first] one, but I don't have the painting. But as a guidance, I'm following that. I got my original material from Dr. [Wilson B.] Bell at VPI, in the agriculture department, who sent me photographs of haystacks and barns and things and the crops of peanuts and tobacco from which I did the original. Nothing was begging to be done at the time you mentioned, I'm free. Well, one day, I am standing out on the porch. There is a rain going on, and I see going down the street an umbrella. Under it, I know, is a woman. She has on pink shorts that come down about halfway to her knees, black stockings; and a green blouse showed between the umbrella and the pink shorts. That was so vivid that I did that. Just like I do a play picture. It just happens in my mind. It wasn't done like you study and look at a model. It so impressed me that I don't believe I did it when I see it. An attorney, Ed Rose, who handles contracts for picture people, bought it the first time he saw it. I didn't have it a week. Those are what I call play pictures, experimental, or whatever, just free. Nothing begging to be done. I hadn't yet started the series. I had two or three farm paintings done with the principal crops of Kansas and Nebraska, but as a series, no. [Later] I got the idea of doing a series of one-family farms in many states in the nation, which [led] up to the series of fourteen paintings which Vincent Price bought. Every now and then, something impresses you, and you are still free. If there had been anything wanting to be recorded particularly, I don't think these would have happened. Another one is the Cocktail Party. A gal has had too much to drink. She is holding her glass, and she is sitting in a chair with her legs crossed, practically exposing all her undergarments. I have seen it happen, where somebody will go up and say, "You've had too much to drink. Are you all right?" Well, anyway, the title of this is I'm Fine. Apparently, some friend has come up. She sees she is being kind of uncouth, or whatever you want to call it, and she says to her, "Are you all right?" — meaning, "Have you had too much to drink?" This gal says, "I'm fine." Well, that was that. It wasn't done as a cartoon; it was a bit of life. Now, there was another one you mentioned.

SCHIPPERS

The freeway [painting].

BLAIR

I read in the papers and read in the papers and drove through it. A freeway was going through Orange County, and they were pulling out hundred and hundreds of acres of wonderful oranges to put in these tract houses. Right away, I thought of early California, and yet not as early as the original ranches where the Mexicans owned fifty and sixty thousand acres. But these wonderful orange groves — here they're pulling those out by the roots and burning the wood to build tract houses, everybody coming to Southern California, it seems. That struck me as historical; that I did on purpose. It appealed to me. I drove through there several times, but not to get data. I did drive through again before I started painting. I just happened to be going down to Leucadia or San Diego, and here was this winding serpent. Over in the corners of sections of land will be a few orange trees. Maybe some fellow has an acre or two acres yet; I don't know what. I did notice that the houses.... Oh, they were advertised as being individual, each house individual, only six feet apart. The individuality: they were painted different colors; and some had a porch on one side and some on the other. So you had an individual, personalized home. Well, all of that struck me that I didn't have to have much detail to do about five hundred of those tract houses, and I'd be living up to the advertising if I didn't change anything but put the chimney on one end instead of the other. I would be true to the historical thought of what is happening to the orange groves. So I did that and called it Oranges Versus Housing, implying a battle content.

SCHIPPERS

In one more, you tried your hand at a portrait of Stephen Collins.

BLAIR

No, Stephen Tallents.

SCHIPPERS

Could you tell me about it?

BLAIR

Yes. It is quite a story. I wasn't conscious when I did that that I was doing a portrait. I was trying to do a picture of Stephen Tallents. I wasn't thinking in terms of, "Now I am going to do a portrait." All the way through in my life — and I think it's true with all honest, untrained, untutored primitives (call them natural painters). I haven't been conscious of anything when I make a change from one thing to another. We were living in Leucadia. I still was partly in advertising, and we were in the antique business, but I had started to paint, too. For some reason, I decided to subscribe to the London Sunday Times, coming every week by air. Well, I thumb through it, and there were art things in there. They gave a kind of a picture of Europe. It was after the war, and rationing was on; but every other week was an article in there by a Sir Stephen Tallents. I discovered that he owned St. John's Jerusalem, a castle with a moat around it and a drawbridge. It was a hospital in the medieval wars; it was a hospital in all wars. His family owned it, and he is living there. He is writing these articles. One of them said something like this, "Now is the time in September to get the chimney sweeped. Have your chimneys cleaned so your draft will be good in the fireplaces in the winter. And by all means, have an old chair or a stump of wood by your fireplace on which you can set your coffee cup when you make your coffee over the fireplace." Well, right away; I said "There is a soul." I told many people I can reraember a cup of coffee and a sandwich with something unexpected and unplanned. Whether in the woods or in a home, I remember [this] more than any banquet I attended in my life. So I wrote him a letter and told him how much I cared for that. I was painting, and I sent him some photographs of American farms. Well, typically English — or we'll say any type where they have a love of their traditions — he writes me a letter and says, "I was very interested in seeing the farms of America. We have some good farms in England, too, and enclosed is a picture of one." Here's an eight-by-ten photograph of an English farm. There is a manager, apparently, who is dressed in uniform. The workmen are almost in [uniform also]. You might say so are the Americans; they all wear overalls, or did. But these workmen were something else. It showed the crops; many, many buildings; the house, barns, spring-house, and everything. At the same time, there was organized respect, you might say, to the people working on the farm. Immediately, I thought, "Well, here is something for me to do." Maybe that had something to do with my series years later — in fact, about four years ago — where I decided that I'd like to do a typical one-family farm of each nation in Europe, and travel with American farms sent out by the Smithsonian. I still think it's a good idea. I applied to Guggenheim for some help (I could have financed it, but I wanted the prestige) ; and the Guggenheim said it was a very good idea, but they had no fund for that. Fleur Cowles got busy. She said she would get behind the State Department; it would be a great thing. My theory on that was to get understanding between middle-class people, the foundations that really produce the food, one-family farms. I still think if I had five of our farms here and one each in France, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and Germany, I just know that if they traveled through Europe in museums, it would be a great peacemaking thing. Understanding. I had six paintings in the show sent out by Smithsonian years ago; I had 10 percent of it. It was a jury show picked out by the Smithsonian to travel through Europe and all the major museums. I had six out of the sixty paintings. But what did the jury pick? One of the six paintings was a Hollywood Christmas-tree lot — pink, green, and yellow Christmas trees in Hollywood. They didn't put in there anything that gave information, [although] that was what the show was supposed to be. Information on what? How Americans paint. I remember one of the write-ups was in Norway, and I got a copy of it. A newspaper representative went down to see this sixty-painting show, and he started out his comment on it, "Close up your doors, put on your bonnets, and go down and see this show."* Band Concert was in it. There was a farm. Downing House, in Pennsylvania, which the Doheny Collection people bought just this last sixty days. I've had that painting all the time in New York. Thank goodness it wasn't sold. That was a typical American farm. * Morgenposten, Oslo, March 29, 19 55. "Men and women get out of your homes and see this wonderful and entertaining exhibit." I did this painting of the English farm. In the meantime I sent Sir Stephen two pounds of popcorn, a ham, bacon; I sent him things that are rationed over there. And Christmas is coming. I got letters from him saying "how wonderful." He mentioned particularly the bacon and different things, but also the popcorn; Christmas was coming, and they could pop corn over the fireplace. I sent him a photograph, a black-and-white, of this English farm. I got a letter back saying he was delighted with it, and that this eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of this painting was in his study where he did his writing, on the fireplace mantel. It was a feature of his studio. He wrote an article in the London Sunday Times — I have a copy of it here — entitled "Art Untutored." That's the English version. In the meantime, I had written him to please give me the names of some English primitive painters. I would like to exchange photographs with them and see what type of things the English primitive painters paint. He wrote back and said, "I went to Manchester; I am going through the different museums here; and I do not find any primitive painter but one." [telephone interrupts tape] "I only found the works of one primitive, a dead Cornish fisherman by the name of Wallis. Now here is an odd thing: we had never heard of him; but within sixty days of that time, we were browsing around some bookstore, and here is a book of Wallis's paintings. [They were] very, very primitive, and he painted on cardboard, up by the sea somewhere. He never himself thought he was anything, particularly; he just did it as a hobby. That's the only one. Then I got to chinking why: because they teach art instruction all through England for years and years. There is no such thing possible as a true, natural, primitive painter. The French likewise, but what do they do? The French say, "Well, I am going to do a series in the primitive." Oh, how that hurts. The public doesn't know any different. You can tell them; they are cartoons just like you would call [the work of] anybody in America that does stylized primitives. They exaggerate--we went through all that. Where a primitive tries to make a tablecloth lie on the ground and does his best, they make wallpaper out of it; it makes a cartoon. These French painters — they call them French primitives — my God, they are all the same buildings and the same streets. They have no imagination. They do something to sell in America because it's French. Well, that's their business. [tape recorder turned off] About the time that "Art Untutored" article by Sir Stephen Tallents.., , By the way, he sees it through his eyes. I have a dog chasing a rabbit; well, to him a dog is chasing a fox. That's the way he describes the.painting in this article that he writes. It probably was a funny rabbit or a funny fox. Watermelons they don't :have, I'm told, but there was a watermelon patch, and he had something else for that. I don't know what, but he describes it in detail. It seems there was a line drawing or something like that in an issue of the London Sunday Times. He lives in this castle, with a fireplace seat and a drawbridge; and I learned from him in a letter that as long as he or any of his family lives there, the state, the government, will support it, provided every Wednesday afternoon the public can go through it under guides. That was his life. It happened that he was a close friend of Fleur Cowles, of all people — Fleur Cowles, the former editor of Look magazine, who gave me the three pages in '54 or '56. In the meantime, she has married this Meyer [Tom Montague Meyer] with a big townhouse in Picadilly and a country house. A close friend of Sir Stephen Tallents. Fleur Cowles and I write often (she is the one who wants to write the preface to my book on the formative period in America) ; and there it shows again: there must be just one mind in the world. It can't be two; the second mind has to be an imitation, because of all the millions of people, there's Fleur Cowles and Sir Stephen Tallents, and here this thing happened with me. But I do a portrait of him, the very best I can [from] this sketch that I saw in the paper. It showed to me — why, that fellow could be a woodchopper up here in Portland, Oregon, in the wintertime. He is strenuous looking, and he is wearing rough, good corduroy clothes maybe. I did another picture of his studio; he sent me a picture of it. He had a horse or two on his table for paperweights and things like that. I don't know where that picture got to, but this portrait I still have. I wasn't doing it as a portrait in my mind, but I know this: I got the sturdiness of his being, his dress, his freedom of his eyes that are a little bit piercing. I felt that from the pen-and-ink sketch I saw. I have never shown it anywhere; I have just put it away, thinking, "Well, it's just something I did." Maybe now it becomes important; he died about two years ago.

SCHIPPERS

This leads to another question on the lines we have been talking. You often refer to your paintings as serious paintings and not serious. I wonder what you mean by that.

BLAIR

That is a good question. Sari Heller, running the art gallery that represents me here now, did a wonderful job of selling Sari Heller is Hungarian, and she said things for a while before I knew her too well, that made me angry on the moment. And yet she tells the people that I am this and I am that, and that I represent America in my paintings. She sells. She has sold more paintings in sixty days than all the rest of the galleries anywhere ever sold in fifteen years. She calls me on the phone not long ago and says, "Why don't you do some more quality paintings?" I tell you, I felt so disturbed — quality. "Do you think I dash something off? Do you think I don't do my best?" I just gave her hell over the phone, almost. She kept it up and said, "No, you are not doing quality paintings." Do you know what she meant? She meant important subjects from the point of view of folk life and things like that. She wasn't talking about the quality of painting. Now, you just ask me the difference between paintings that are done seriously and not seriously. I have used that word or something like that. I mean this: as to subject matter, if I was just going to do one checker, I would have to be serious in the doing of it. She used the word "quality" instead of "important." I was greatly disturbed. And I have been using the words "serious" and "not serious," which is the same thing. I am talking about what I call important subject matter based on folk history or something of that type. I don't call my landscapes important paintings relative to the folk life. Those I call serious paintings. I am saying that it's a major painting maybe in its attempt to portray a certain folding of mountains in Vermont. But you take the girl walking down the street with the umbrella, or the boy after the rain going home barefoot in the mud — those are almost play pictures compared to what I call major, serious subject paintings. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

Could you give me an idea of how much time you spend on canvases? Some of them must go faster; some of them take longer.

BLAIR

You know, we are going to answer two questions there, because you will ask the next one right after this. We'll answer this at the same time. I can only paint on a dry background. Modern painters, they daub in this and that, but if you watch their colors, they're sleazy; they don't get pure color. When I say "pure color," I don't mean just as it comes out of the tube; [I mean] clean color. But they still get the effect. I don't criticize anybody; that's none of my business. But the point is this: first I do a background; and that background, if it is a major painting, may dry — not because it wouldn't dry in three or four days, but other things come in. While it's drying, I start something else. You take Virginia City. I had to read books and authenticate the streets and the buildings. There were no pictures, except some old plate camera shots like the hotel and some of the mines, I read seven or eight books. It was a large canvas. I knew the terrain of Nevada pretty well, and I read in there that all the timber had been taken off to shore up the mines and for fuel. I read off and on for three or four months before I touched a brush and then I put the background in. -'And then I'm doing other things. Some people say if you paint three hours a day, it's a day's work. Sometimes I have painted six or seven, including at night. Other times, I would do some little painting just for fun. I call it kind of recess — but serious; let's keep that word. I am on the fifteenth year, and I don't count any paintings that are smaller than nine-by-twelve or ten-by-fourteen. I have done probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty five-by-sevens and four-by-sixes; they've got just as much work in them,. and they are just as complete (they are not sketches) as a big painting. But they do go fast with a dry background. I may put a background in. For several little snow scenes, I put in a sky and the snow and all that, let it dry; and then maybe in an hour or hour and a half, I can put in several rooftops, a sled being pulled by a horse, a tree and a rock, and a bird sitting in a branch. And there is a complete little picture. It's relaxation, but it's serious. Last night, I put numbers on those that are in work. That includes three that are in work. Virginia is one, and one is a sun setting over a purple prairie in the evening. I put on number 529. Those are major paintings that have a number, and that's in fifteen years. Well, I can't believe I ever did thirty major paintings a year. A five-by-seven or five-by-eight with the same subject matter is a lot less work, but I don't know why, I haven't any idea how much time [I spend], but I know I have never done a painting complete (outside of a five-by-seven) that was ever finished inside of two weeks. But I'm running three or four at a time now.

SCHIPPERS

Do you schedule yourself when you work?

BLAIR

No, I had that up with a postman who came [with a] delivery through my studio which I have over there. He parked for an hour down below, and he came in. He found out I was painting and said, "Say, how many hours a day do you work?" I said, "I don't know. I'm here generally from nine-thirty to three-thirty or four." He said, "Don't you keep any [time]? How do you know how [much] to charge for your painting?" I said, "Listen, nobody knows what you can get." Well, he says, "What about when you work on Saturdays? Do you count overtime?" I said, "Listen, did you hear what I said? I don't know. You just paint when you can. You want to paint, you may put it off, you may take a nap, maybe somebody will come in. You paint all you can. The painting begs you to go ahead and work. And the biggest trouble is to pick up the brush and start. Then you get carried along." Anyway, we talked for a long time,. and he said, "How much is that painting over there? It isn't finished." "No," I said, "it's a background." Well, he says, "It isn't finished, is it? What's going to be in there?" And I said, "It's going to be a farm scene." He says, "How long have you worked on that?" Well, we talked, I think, for an hour — his lunch hour. And the last thing he said when he left, "What bothers me is how you know what to charge. "

SCHIPPERS

My next question is how did you learn to use the tools of your craft — the brush, the paints, the canvas?

BLAIR

When I first started to paint, my friend Arthur Gaynes encouraged me to start. He was the one that was originally a commercial artist and then vice-president of the big Lion Clothing Company in San Diego. He came up to paint with me one day. He always had a lot of paraphernalia. He loved gadgets. He sat there for two hours and didn't do a thing while I was painting a farm scene. He turned to me and said, "How are you doing?" I said, "Fine." Well, he said, "I can't do a thing." I said, "Why not?" "I can't paint fine art. Get me some spark plugs and a fanbelt and I will just go right to town." He was that kind of a humorist. But he did tell me what few tubes of paint to get first — major colors--and some brushes. In the type of work I did, the smaller the brush, the easier. I remember for a long time I would buy double-aught water-color brushes, with about six hairs left in them because I was doing detail. I didn't know how to use the point of a round sable brush. Well, I get up to where I could use a number aught and then a number one. I find out these brushes do have points on them after all. If you just touch it right, when you pull it across the paint and kind of twirl it, you will have a point there. If I'm painting the side of a barn in a picture, we'll say, and no weather-boarding in there yet, or boarding up and down, I may use a number eight or ten brush to fill that in; and if it's pretty good dize, I might even use a twelve or fourteen bristle. But I finish it as I go, and I am through with that side of the barn. Then, later. on, I go to put in the weatherboarding lines or up and down — board and batten or whatever it is — why, I'll drop back to a seven brush. I can get enough paint on that to make two lines right straight down if it's an up-and-down board and have plenty of paint on there. Now, the palette. About the time that I started painting, or I guess before, they had these tear-off sheets of palette instead of a big piece of glass or a board and a big gob of paint on it. I see painters today painting; they have a palette of about twelve-by-eighteen or larger, and kind of like volcanoes on them; hard paint on the out side, and in the middle is soft, and they keep adding those colors. I just can't [do that]. I clean a palette after every picture, and I don't throw the paint away. I daub it on a canvas I think I'm going to use. From that, comes up the question of brushes. You just have different things you learn. You find out that you can use a little bigger brush, or you need this. Then, when they wear out and the point is gone, I am stuck on those small ones. But I can still use them to fill in flat areas where a fine line isn't needed. I met Fleur Cowles at her show about six years ago, when we went back there. She did flower painting; everything she does has flowers. You can see a picture of a sea and a ship, and on the sails will be flowers. She has a sellout every time she has a show. No big paintings. She said to me, "Do you use a number-five brush a great deal?" And I said, "Yes, I do." She did, and she is doing that detail work. That's easier than taking a big brush that's got a fine point if you want to work it. But if you get a gob of paint in there that builds up, you get where you don't have a fine [point]. That's a battle I have all the time, right to this day. They are not all alike; some of these brushes are not perfect. They don't have a really fine point. You are lucky to get one out of three. But anyway, I have learned how to dip them in water, like they do over at Duncan Vail's. Water is the best thing to dip a brush in. Water must be heavier than oil. Dip it in water and shake it, and if there's a point there, it's going to be as small as it can be. Tnen canvas. First things I painted on.... We had been buying antiques in Pennsylvania, and here and there I'd buy a little oil painting some aimateur had done but nobody had bought. I kind of liked them, and I'd paint over them to start. And then I found out I could buy some canvases already stretched down in San Diego and in La Jolla. I'd buy three or four. Then I find a place in Laguna [Beach], where there is a young woman who ran an art store, and she would stretch any size I wanted. So I would call her up and give her the size; she would stretch them for me on canvas stretchers and send them down by bus. I would know what bus, and I would meet it in Leucadia on the corner and get thera. I painted one on wood (it's hanging in there now), a Pennsylvania Dutch pie board with a morticed end to keep it from warping where you could roll out pies. (When I bake pies today I wish it was still a pie board.) But it has a painting on it which I did the first year, called The Tenant House. It was used on tile by a company; they reproduced a tile in color. They all sold out, and we don't even have one, [although] some friends have them. I [also] did one on glass; that's upstairs. That's before I get into canvas. Finally, there's a fellow in La Jolla, and he stretches canvases for me. That goes along until I move up here, and I find out I can easily stretch my own. There's a direct way to do it. You get your four stretchers, and you get them at right angles by leaning them against the wall. Every corner has got to be a right angle, or you are going to have trouble with your canvas getting it into a frame. So I get my stretchers first; I line them up, all ready, and get a roll of canvas. I lay them down and run a line clear around each one. Then take the narrow (one end is the narrow) and put a staple in it. These stapling machines! Instead of driving tacks in — click, and it's stapled. I told this fellow down in La Jolla about that. I heard about that before we moved up here. "Oh," he says, "I'll never use anything but tacks." "Why not?" He said, "Those staples will rust out." Oh, he's an old German-type fellow — doomp dum, doomp dum — you know, and that's the way they were going to do it. If a canvas has been in a frame six months, and you take it out, you don't need any staples. It's molded. But I got myself a stapler, and I can stretch perfect canvases now. I stretched one 6'4" x 10'4" for Quantrill's Raid. Here is something you brought out: how much do you paint? I tell you: you get your brushes; you get your things; you get an easel; you get a place; you get everything arranged; you get rid of odds and ends in your mind; and you sit down to paint. You've got to stretch canvas, and you've got to do this. I do a bunch of them at a time, not knowing what is going to be on there. Later on, each canvas tells me what to put on there, you might say, as to size. Getting the stretchers — people will go into these art stores and pick twenty-one [-inch stretchers], look at them, and put them back in twenty-two. The clerks aren't too particular. Then you have paints. You are out of this color; you get that and you get that. You have express — somebody buys a painting. All right, you have to get stuff and tie it up carefully, call express, and they come after it. Then you do this, you do that. It interrupts an hour, because you know they're coming; you can't paint just before somebody is going to come or right afterward. You have to take black-and-white pictures, for a record. They can burn up, so you have a color-slide camera. Now you are going to take pictures of what you have done. Then you take them over to the camera exchange or wherever, and they are going to send them to Kodak. Then they are going to come back; then they are going to call you; then you are going after them. Let me tell you something: you do four hours of actual manual work. You can't imagine. Then you order frames over the phone, but you go down to ;get them or you wait a week. I'll buy a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty dollars worth of frames or more at a time, anticipating what I am going to need. But I always get my frames first, because I like to look at a painting in a frame even though it is only started. Why? To see what's happening. Sometimes it should be a very narrow frame — in fact, just a lathe — because that painting needs to get out of the frame. There are other paintings that need a frame, that want to stay in there; you want to keep them in there. The picture is far different from a painting. If the picture wants to get out of the frame, let it get out; put a narrow frame on it. You won't believe this, but I am sure that all the details would keep the average person busy three days a week. Putting underground on a canvas. I don't mean the background of your painting, but to take the canvas and cover it with paint for an vindercoat. Particularly I like to do it in a grey, because then I can tell what white is. If you're going to paint white on a white canvas, you don't know what value your white is. Rubber-based paint dries in twenty or thirty minutes. Take white of that, put a little raw umber or any neutral color in it, and paint it. Walking around and getting to where you could do that will kill an hour. I don't believe I get to paint one hour for every three hours of actual mechanical things, including Lenc'Jng to all of those things, and killing the inspiration to paint, and getting back to painting again. [tape recorder turned off] Ever since I started painting, people have said, "Do you do any watercolors?" "No." "Do you do anything with the spatula?" "No." "Well, did you ever try gouache?" "No." Then they say, "Did you ever mix your own colors?" "No." "Why?" Why do people want to know? "Oh, you ought to do that." Why? The people that say that--just see how much they get done. Why do we have the wonderful paint you can buy in a tube? I thank God every time I want a mars yellow or anything, and I can go and get it. Do you think the masters mixed their colors in the early days, and ground all this stuff of soil, and hunted, in order to do a stunt? They couldn't go to Grumbacher's or anyplace and get [supplies which are] much finer than they ever had. One fellow was very famous and is teaching out here because he said, "Don't ever use any umbers." He made every student throw away burnt umber and raw umber. He was identified then; he must be great! The old masters ground their colors because they had to. You can buy finer paint today. The chemists know today exactly what was in their paints. There's no secret, no secret at all. Go back to antiques. For years, the pottery makers and china makers in England tried to find [the secret] of what they called bone china.

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 27, 1965

BLAIR

The English were making bone china out of ground glass and that sort of thing, because they didn't know how the Chinese made their china. They knew it was a secret. A German potter later on discovered it when he was riding a horse in the rain and clay stuck to the horse's foot like never before. He got down and decided he would try to find what it was, and it was pure kaolin. That's all. There was no secret to the Chinese china. Now, the same way, there were no secrets in the old masters' pigments, or what they did, or the medium they used. But somehow today, if you haven't ground your own pigments or something, well, somebody else does. It's a stunt; that's all. You can talk about it. Maybe then some people will think you are great. They might even do good paintings. Now, as to oil. I always heard of turpentine and linseed oil. Well, I tried turpentine, but turpentine makes your paint so thin. All you need is a drop or two of some thinner if you want to use anything. You don't need anything in linseed oil. Now linseed oil is sun-dried to clear it and [remove] anything that could affect color. Today, they probably have artificial light to do it much quicker. So I have always used linseed oil, but no turpentine, ever. A lot of people in art classes just paint, and turpentine is the only thing they use. Well, their paintings are sleazy. That's all right. I use as heavy a paint as I can, and I dip my brush in a little jar of linseed oil with some varnish in it. For a while, they said to make it dry quicker, put in japan drier. Well, I did for a long time, but I found out that a little varnish, just about 10 percent of... Cl forget the name; barmar or [Valspar], anybody that paints knows that). I have a jar in there. It's a varnish so thin you paint over a night scene and give it a gloss. I did that on my Band Concert, and I think I did it on the nightclub painting I did. It kind of helps show the color underneath. About 10 percent of that and regular sun-dried linseed oil is all the medium I ever use. I clean my brush in paint thinner. And the people want to know "Did you ever try coconut oil?" Why try it? I am just not interested. Maybe I'm dumb; maybe I'm narrow-minded; but at the same time, I call all those_ things stunts. I don't believe that any fellow who ground his own pigment ever gained anything at all, "Now, in his mind, if he is happy, that is his business.

SCHIPPERS

OK, but I still have to ask you why you haven't done watercolors, why you haven't done gouaches, and why you have stuck with oil?

BLAIR

Two reasons: one is that I'm too busy doing my paintings that want to be done in oil; and the other is I don't give a Goddamn about any of the rest of it. I just don't care; I have no incentive whatsoever. By the way, people don't know that I go down and jump in the ocean at four o'clock every morning. All through my life for the last fifteen years, I have jumped into the Pacific Ocean at four o'clock in the morning every morning. Now, I can't prove it. Why? Nobody is ever there to see me. Well, I have no more desire to do that--which is a lie — than to try watercolor. Why? I am full of things I want to record. True, I get lazy and shy at doing them. I've had the background drying five months for this Virginia painting, but I only got into it last week and I'm happy in it. I got word yesterday that it looks like a definite thing I am to do about thirty-five feet of the history of New Mexico on canvas to be pasted on the walls of the new capitol building or governor's mansion for twenty-five thousand dollars. They've got four thousand artists up there. I should be thinking about tiddledywinks with watercolor? I tried a watercolor once on a camp trip before I ever painted. It ended up mud, but that was all. I'm not interested in watercolor at all. Now, there is a question that you haven't asked. [tape recorder turned off] Well, as to watercolors, I don't like them to begin with. To me, they are all weak. They are not firm; they don't have substance, to me. Pretty, yes; but to me, if I owned a watercolor painting, I don't care what it was worth, I wouldn't feel like I owned a genuine thing. I don't know why. That's just within me; I have no reason. Maybe it's an inheritance. But to me, an oil painting is — after all, I believe in the art world — the medium for recording paintings. I have no desire to experiment. But you mention this about watercolors. I think it takes more talent to do watercolors than oil painting — I'll be honest with you — but that isn't the reason I don't try it. If I did watercolors, I think I would put watercolor on there so thick — I just couldn't paint any other way — that I might just as well use [oil] paint. I have seen watercolors I couldn't tell from [oil] paintings. I would have to ask somebody; they apparently had used thick watercolor. [tape recorder turned off] The one time that I did try [watercolor] on a camping trip, before I ever started painting (the rest of the family were doing little watercolors), I tried one, and it ended up mud, because I found this out: the minute you put something on a watercolor paper, it's there. You can't paint over it; you can't rub it out; you can't do this; you can't do that. You have to begin all over. But that is not the reason. I don't have any desire to do watercolors. But I might sometime, if I get painted out of things I want to record, although I don't think so. I might not paint at all, but I wouldn't go to watercolors just because I happened to have the time. I do think it takes more skill, more facility, to do a watercolor than an oil painting. I can paint over; I can wipe off; I can do anything I want to. Believe it or not, yesterday I had a good experience with that. On the tobacco barns on the Virginia painting, I had the shingles all in, doors, windows, weatherboarding, board and batten — complete. There is to be a fence just above those clear across the picture. All right, I am very careful. I hold one hand over the other so I don't touch [the picture] ; I get my fence along, get over here; and it goes right by two haystacks. I feel so good! I look down, and here is brown, red, and blue on this hand. I look; all the shingles on the two tobacco barns, all the windows, all the doors on the upper half-stories — smeared. I wipe the whole thing off, everything except the lower half of the buildings. I felt sick. All that waste. I said, "What have I got to offer but patience?" So I started to do them all over, and today you will never know there was anything mistaken or corrected at that point. As to watercolor skill, I think it's wonderful. I know one of the great watercolor teachers comes out here every year, for the last fifteen years to Laguna or someplace, and teaches watercolor. He's a New Yorker. I couldn't give his name right now, but I have been in his studio when he was out here one summer. This gets away from the subject, but it's painting like your teacher. They had an art show in New York in a big gallery. Anybody could submit paintings. The jury hung about sixty-five paintings. This instructor got a notice of a reject; they didn't take his. Well, he felt kind of upset. But he goes to the show. He goes in the door and looks, and there's his painting right down at the far end of the building. "Oh, wonderful, they made a mistake. They sent me a rejection and I have been accepted." He looked at it, and it was signed by one of his students. He had taught his students so thoroughly that they painted the subjects just exactly like he did. They got ahold of this subject by a student of this fellow first/ and the jury accepted it. When it came to him, it was a turndown because it was a duplicate. The student who did that was so good, he will never know for several years how he would paint. And yet that's what the people want to know: how do you paint? Not your professor. That's not criticism; that is just truth. But that fellow, because he could paint as good as his professor, has facility; and he can go places. Here's another incident. The color expert for Victor Gruen--an enormous big architectural [firm] with offices here, in New York, and everywhere — flies all over the nation to determine interior colors for buildings they do. I knew he painted watercolors, and he bought one or two of my paintings. In the presence of that fellow, I felt peace immediately. He's a very peaceful, fine person. There was a show on at the Los Angeles County Museum [of Art] about four years ago, and I heard he was accepted. I didn't know whether it was a watercolor or what at that time, or even what he painted, but I knew he painted. I decided I would form a little experience. They say that the painting reflects the person. I knew the man, but I never saw a painting he did, although he bought two of my paintings. They have different rooms down there, rooms for oils, for watercolors, and for sculpture. I start in on one room; I stand and look all around; and I say, just for fun, I will play a game with myself. He had a painting in here somewhere, a work of art. Anything in this room doesn't look like the fellow (his name was Marion Sampler).. All right. I go in the next room, stand around there, look; and no, it doesn't look like Marion Sampler's mood, what I feel in his presence. Into a third room — same thing. Go into the fourth room. I'm not sure, but if there's any painting in this room that he did, it's that one. His name is on it. It was a watercolor. Now, that proved to me that people who paint honestly their own way put part of themselves [in their work], just like they walk differently, they look differently, they handle a cigarette differently. That's the individuality. There's no two people identical; and therefore, their painting is going to be individual if it hasn't been (I won't use the word "spoiled") stymied during the period of instruction. When they get through, they have got facility. Like I told the classes down at VPI, I am limited. But these people that do study, when they get to painting using their instruction as facility and not rules, why, then the public will go for their paintings.

SCHIPPERS

This is a question regarding how you apply the paint to the canvas. On your Road to Kansas City and your Purple Prairie, you get a lot of texture. I know that texture is sometimes dictated by the object itself, by a tree or snow. But how aware are you of texture? How did you work out your brush stroke?

BLAIR

Well, in my mind, I have done no texture on purpose as texture. There's only one rule that I ever had for myself: "How was it?" The first wheat painting I did was individual strokes. It's upstairs. In that, it showed what could have been wild grass, just growing thick. Dr. Aldrich said, "Don't ever sell it; it's one of the nicest things." But to me, it still wasn't wheat; the color was bad. I know in the wheat fields, it's drilled; they don't broadcast it by hand anymore. It's drilled; about every four inches apart is a row of wheat seed. You get that wave after wave in the wind blowing, of course, and it changes it all. You can tell it's been drilled, but you don't have to know that. There is what I call a texture, there on the canvas. The question to me is how to get that texture and make it look like a wheat field. It could be barley or anything at that stage, anything that's drilled except for corn, but that's a different thing. I realized that there are two things in that texture: the drilled effect of this enormous wheat field; and its color. Wherever the actual row is, the tops are going to be lighter; the higher up, the lighter. But between the half-inch or inch of that row and the next row that you see, looking down on a field from above, it's going to be darker; that's shadow in there. But I don't think in terms of shadows. The effect to me was to get the color — light and dark, light and dark — and the texture. So I just experimented. First, I painted my dark color on — the shadows between those little rows of drill — almost pure mars yellow, maybe with a little white in it or a little light yellow. I put it on pretty thick, thicker than I would if it were just painting, like the side of a barn or the side of a house. I go over the whole canvas that way. Then I go over it with a large sable brush to smooth it down. I like to work on a smooth surface. So I put this on thick except where there is going to be a railroad, down through the wheat field, we'll say. I leave that space open for detail. I let it stand a few hours, maybe a couple of days. And then I take, a short (I don't know why, but ingenuity enters into everything, of course), small, partly worn-out bristle brush. (I never use a bristle brush at all except for undercoats where I've got big areas.) I even take out some of the bristles, shave them down until they're pretty thin, just a center row, and I cut it off short — a rigid thing. I dip it in a lighter yellow mixed with some of that mars yellow (which is the dark yellow, but not dark like raw umber, the lowest yellow). I dipped it in the palette — not just dipped it, but I pulled a little onto this little brush. This isn't going to be stippled, although you could stipple it — just jab, jab, jab. So, what do I do? I start down at the front; I reach over and pull over some of the dark paint in a little row, lick, lick, lick, left to right. The [light yellow] on my brush is going to show on the very top of the actual paint that is raised. Then I dip it in some more, maybe twice during that period. If I don't hook on to the same point where it's got more paint, [OK], wheat's that way too. The drilled seeds are not just in one little tiny row. Start another, pull it up, pull it up, clear on until I get to the back. When I got through it looked to me, as near as I could do, like a drilled, growing wheat field. It was not done for texture. "How was it" — that's the only rule I ever had. I think I told you [about] the broom I did. I put my yarn, colored thread along the top of the broom — generally red or yellow, or a combination of greens — to hold the straws in place. They'd go clear through and tie on the other side. Yet this fellow, a wonderful constructionist in art, Ed Kienhblz, came down and tried to pick those yarn threads off the broom; he thought in terms of collage. Well, I didn't put those threads in there trying to make them look like that; I didn't fill them up with thick paint. It just happened that the coloring I got, with what was underneath and the darker broom, raised that color so he tried to pick it off. I was not trying to do yarn or thread as texture. ,Even in the broomstraws, each one drawn individually, I am not thinking of texture; I am thinking of broomstraw, broorastraw, broomstraw. You can do those things and name them after they're done. Nobody told me to paint my background and let it dry. I was just teaching myself by experiment. I found out I [lost] time if I had to dip a brush and clean it every time I dipped it in paint, because I was painting on wet paint and it picked up some of the background that I didn't want in the so-called subject matter. (I don't like to use the word "design." That infers something done on purpose. I never design on purpose.) So you teach yourself, and that's the way I arrived at the wheat. [tape recorder turned off] As far as doing anything like that on purpose, it applies to color [too]. Nearly all the art critics say I have a natural color sense and composition. That's good; that means you didn't do it on purpose. But here's a rule about color with me. Same thing as structure. All I ask myself is, "how was it?" I am not designing anything. The barn was there; the house was here (or it ought to be). Color, the same thing. . The first time I had a show in New York City, the Carlbach Gallery, I think it is — really a great gallery back there — gave me my first show. Thirty-five paintings. And they were my early ones — picnics, farm scenes and all that sort of thing. I had only painted about a year and a half. I had had a show at KU, and then they borrowed it from the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. I get my first write-up in a paper, the New York Times. It was probably about five inches. They go over hundreds and hundreds of.galleries, and I was lucky to get an inch. In this is a comment, "This painter has two things: he has color sense and he has composition. Perhaps he could improve somewhat in his technique." (Well, I should think so; I was very primitive at that time.) But that was not a criticism; it was true. But here's the thing that shows you what very, very few art critics and very few people know. They still think that an untaught, natural painter is still following rules, or something that has nothing to do with his painting. He just walks naturally. Nobody taught him to walk. I remember not too many years ago there was a fad to teach girls to walk. Walk.... My gosh! They would all be alike. Dr. [James] Naismith, who invented basketball, was athletic director at the University of Kansas the four years I was there. He gave us a lecture on how to walk. Do you know what he said? Learn to walk toe first, then heel. Well, I tried that a few times, and I've tried it up to this day every once in a while; and I have to be stepping on ants carefully with my toes that way. Was that a fad with Dr. Naismith? I don't know. Here's what this art critic said in the final sentence. "This artist favors yellows, browns, and some reds." [He] implied that a primitive painter or any painter is seeing in terms of color schemes, or what is his favorite color. There is only one question: "How was it? What color was it?" It happened that those paintings were fall scenes, picnics in the f all--natural. Did I say, "Oh, I am going to do this painting in yellows, browns, and reds?" No, but that's what the critic implied. Take chimneys: every house that has a brick chimney is one of two colors, red or yellow. There are red bricks, and there are yellow bricks. But think of this: that critic could just as well have said, with just as much sense, "He paints all his chimneys red merely because he likes red." That's exactly what he said about my color, "He likes brown." Which way was it? If you are painting fall scenes, are you going to use bright greens and everything like spring? If you are going to paint a snow scene, are you going to [say], "This time I'll have purple snow?" I think of Arcadia Manor, that big painting that is upstairs, forty-five-room Arcadia Manor, outside of Frederick, Maryland, built by an Englishman with yellow brick from England, [brought] over here as ship ballast. He built the forty-five-room house for his bride, who didn't come. It was a hospital in the Revolutionary War and again in the Civil War. We stayed there; it was an inn, with the same people owning it clear on down to [the present day]. That painting was in the show, and according to this critic, "He likes yellow, so he makes a yellow-brick building." The bricks were yellow. There were some brick houses in Pennsylvania, and they'll have a yellow-brick chimney. So what? The only question as to color, all the way through in my mind, has been, "What color was it?" If it was that color and that siabject matter, that's what you're painting. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

When you start on a canvas, there is an overall color coordination that you achieve. Would you introduce a shocking color that seemed to be out of the palette, so to speak, for that canvas?

BLAIR

Let me tell you this: there cannot be an overall coordination of color in a canvas if you are honest. If you are painting something that existed, there is no overall. it's there. It was nature or it was the way the people built the house. I've done a village or two based on some experience I saw in Pennsylvania, and you would see a black house trimmed in white. The only one in the [town]. They did that in Vermont sometimes; sometimes [there was] a white house trimmed in black, with black shutters. Well, if that destroyed any color coordination with the rest of the town, I would leave it there, because that wasn't the purpose; it was that way to me. Now I did Fall Pasture, and it's true, there is one very red tree in the middle of it, so to speak. Very red. That happens. You can drive over a hill in mountainous country in the fall; winter is coming on, and you can see greens here, dull greens and yellows. And somewhere, sticking up, is the reddest thing you ever saw in your life. I would put it in the painting that way. In other words, the primitive painter is not conscious of coordination of color yet; I don't believe he is. But he follows what? A rule subconsciously, undoubtedly. I don't mean a rule, but an instinct of harmony. If you are doing a bunch of trees that border on purples and reds and some dull greens yet, why, certainly, the picture will tell you. Suppose there are going to be some reds over here in a tree. If you dip your brush accidentally into light cadmium red, when the rest of the reds in the picture are deep or medium cadmium, you know what will happen? You are not thinking in terms of color coordination. Maybe this is a good point; when you look at that painting, it says, "Why, that red steals the show." Can't look at anything else. You have destroyed harmony or something, yes. So what will you do? You won't wipe it off. If it's a detail like leaves in a spot that does that, you'll dip it into some deep red instead of medium and carefully go over those red places and then it behaves along with the rest. The picture tells me. I think we all have a natural sense of harmony and unity. But it was not done to keep in accord with a color scheme or a color family or anything like that throughout the picture.

SCHIPPERS

But the final appearance of the canvas...

BLAIR

That's right.

SCHIPPERS

... tells you?

BLAIR

I have gone back when a painting was framed and said, "I can't see anything but that too-bright green spot up there." If I can, I leave it in the frame. The picture tells me. It's an odd thing; I wasn't conscious of color. harmony as a whole. I was just conscious of trying to put how it was.

SCHIPPERS

In your mood paintings, those are more dictated by your palette, aren^t they?

BLAIR

No, not consciously; you're right, but not consciously. I guess that's the whole thing. I have my sky in there, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I could dip my brush into some raw umber and make dirt ground maybe. I could, if I had been thinking in terms of a farm. To me, raw umber is just dirt color, and to me it's beautiful. But I couldn't have put pure raw umber right below that sky. Suppose I had decided to have a plowed field or something. No. A sense of harmony would have made me put in there something to weaken the darkness and the richness of pure raw umber. Raw umber is a little yellow, and I would have probably put some purple in that and maybe a little white. I might have had a field I could show as a plowed or unplanted field. In that case, yes, but I contend the picture tells you what to do. [tape recorder turned off] When you say, "How was it?" That is your subject matter, and it's a colorful subject matter. When the picture tells you what to do, I mean this: the picture will tell you--or the painting will tell you--that that part of your "how was it?" steals the attention, takes the attention from the overall. It also says there's nothing over here. That's telling you what to do, to put something there. Without knowing it, you've been told by your instinct or something that you have an overbalance. You don't have hairmony; you don't have unity. That spot is crying. It's telling you, "Put something here on me"; that's the whole picture saying that. But then what you put there, whatever you do, you will say, "Well, how was it?" There could be an evergreen, and then it tells you what color the evergreen was. Well, if it's a snow scene, those greens will still be there; and although they call them evergreen, they are going to have a purplish cast. You have a limb out, and you know it's going to be a reddish. dark red color showing through the bark and all that. But if it's springtime or summer, and you are doing a pine tree (I am talking about the star pine where you really see the separate branches), why, you'll make the little needles going up; and then right on the top of them, the ends will be even a lighter green than anywhere else. That's where I say, "How was it?" The picture telling you what to do is the other. There is a difference between planning as you go, where the picture directs you once you've started. This mood painting started out with a kind of yellow, purple, grey sky. I didn't know, when I was that far, what was going to be below. It could have been maybe a red barn, but something said, "Go on." So I did a field there, bordering on the purple green a little bit to give some distance. I didn't know at that time what other fields would be there. But that is suggested by the first one, and then the next one suggests the third one. [tape interrupted] There is an odd thing. You mentioned this mood painting again, and I just said I think that it's planned as it goes. But that isn't really planning; maybe it is an unfoldment. Here is the unusual difference between that and a really planned painting in subject matter, [such as] Teddy Roosevelt talking on the Fourth of July [Teddy Roosevelt, Paola, Kansas, July the Fourth, 1900] — that is a really planned one. Now, here is the difference on this other: this mood picture and some like that are not based on any planning at all; you've got some waste paint on your palette and you want to get [rid of it]. You don't want to waste it. So undoubtedly this yellow and purple mixture was two or three daubs of odds and ends. I make a few strokes, and right away it says "dull grey, lavender yellow sky. " From then on, you are going to plan something, but you don't plan the whole picture. I have a feeling now that tells me something. So I do the top field. I even may put the little trees that border it on the back going on up into the sky. I purposefully make them a more greyish purple or a neutral so they won't be just green trees or just trees without leaves. When that field mat is in, a suggestion comes, and you realize that you're on the way to showing a landscape of fields. Maybe later on, you'll add a little cottage or something and a barn. That planning is one type, based almost on the freedom of experiment when you take your waste paint and you want to do something with it. That I can't explain. In the major paintings, the ones that we call important (folk life), I have a specific thing to record in practically--I won't say in every detail--every component part. They all have to be in there. In this Teddy Roosevelt painting, I knew this: there was a town and a town square, and I knew I was going to show that unusual Victorian-type church. I knew there were going to be refreshment stands; there were going to be trees; there was going to be a bandstand; and there was going to be a popcorn wagon. There were going to be people eating watermelons somewhere. They were going to have homemade ice cream on the tables where they could serve it, and there was going to be free ice water. I don't have to think of all those things, because that's a part of it, because the minute you say "picnic" in the Midwest in my day, it meant most of those things. But I do know that there is going to be a fellow showing off his fine horse, riding around. Every little town had one. Anyway, you know it's going to be a square. And in the stages of development, as we saw in slides on that Teddy Roosevelt [painting], I made the square. and I showed a street to the right. I knew all these things were going to be there, but when I put the bandstand where it ought to be (over there is the refreshment stand; down here is a tree and free ice water; and over there is a popcorn wagon; and there's a church, and behind it a building), I found out that I could not show all the square. On the right-hand side, that street had to come out; we don't have our homemade ice cream tables in there yet. If you'll notice in the different stages of that, I finally painted out that street. Everything is there, but we didn't have to show all four sides of the square. Nobody knows how far it goes to the right. There is where you practically see on the canvas all these things that must be on there, or you wouldn't paint the picture.

SCHIPPERS

Also on that canvas, you show these stages just as you handled your backup. You painted the benches first, and then you put the people on them.

BLAIR

That's an odd thing. I have Teddy Roosevelt and the band on there now, but no audience. The people are just beginning to come. The whole group is the important thing. (There are those at the ice cream tables who wouldn't listen to anybody. I think one fellow even is eating a watermelon.) Well, I know [I have] to show people intently interested. I know that benches are what you sit on. Those are all made for the day; they're not up there all the time, unless there is going to be a band concert in some town every week. They have benches there. But even at a big picnic, they had benches for the speaker. Here you have a hexagon bandstand in the Middle West, although I didn't think [about it] ; I just drew a bandstand, and automatically it becomes a hexagon. The audience has to get all on one side, of course. I put benches for people to sit on. The left one is almost facing the left sixth of the hexagon. Those benches right in front are parallel with that, and the ones on the right are parallel with the third hexagon on the front to the right that goes back. Teddy is going to stand, of course, in the middle of the one that's nearest the people. He's got people left and right, and that's the way the handstand's seating arrangement was made. I was not conscious of the fact that all those benches were going to be covered up when I got my people on them. I wasn't thinking that far ahead yet. The benches are there. Why couldn't I have just painted the people? I don't think there's over five inches in the whole thing of any type of bench edge which shows after I got the people on. Well, you say, maybe it was guidance, so your people would look in rows like that, not just a motley mass. No, it wasn't guidance; I could have taken a line and drawn those and then put the rear end of each one sitting on the line. I don't know why, but that to me would be more work. That wasn't the reason; that's wrong. I won't say it didn't seem honest, but it just didn't seem real. I couldn't make people sitting on a line. Maybe that was it. I had the same thing the first time I did watermelons; I painted the wagon box complete, and inside you could look down and see the narrow boards in the bottom of the wagon box. Then I would fill it with watermelons, one row; then I put another row on top; then another one; and fewer at the top. When you get through, you just see the ends of about fifteen watermelons, and I expect I painted sixty complete. Now, I didn't put the stripes, maybe, on the lower ones, but these were striped melons, as you see on the top ones. I think it's the lack of knowing the facility to create the effect that you are going to have; you have to build it. There is a good word; I have used it many times. I build everything. I have to build the house; I can't just do a picture of a house.

SCHIPPERS

You built the houses in Quantrill's Raid, and then you set them on fire?

BLAIR

That's right; I built them. I don't say to be honest, but it's the only way it's real to me. I have helped build houses. I have carried mortar; I have even laid brick. I laid brick sidewalk for people when I was a youngster. To me, building is a joy. It becomes real, and if that makes it real, maybe that's one reason my paintings look real to people. I don't know, but it wasn't done on purpose — just the way I do it.

SCHIPPERS

Besides needing to build each thing in the painting, is this also related to the way a primitive artist paints? In other words, he paints a thing at once. When he paints a house in a painting, he is thinking of only of painting that house.

BLAIR

That's right.

SCHIPPERS

Does this explain why you had to paint the benches before you put people on them?

BLAIR

I believe, in a way, it does. It explains it after it's done; it couldn't have been explained before. When I'm doing the subject matter in a painting, I see all of it there, generally the important things. You decide the first thing — in this case, the bandstand — [will be here]; and over here is going to be a refreshment stand and all that. You place it. But the minute you place it and start it, you are doing that refreshment stand; but you are not doing it in relationship to the bandstand. You're doing ijt, but — here's the main thing — you're not doing it as a separate painting. They say that a primitive painter's subject matter is made up of a lot of small paintings. After it's done, you can see the subject, because each thing is important or you wouldn't do it. In Man up on a Mountain with Dog and Gun, you're painting him, but not in relationship to anything else down here. You are doing the man ahd the dog as a painting, but not as a separate painting. It's already a part of the pre-scene division on the canvas. The minute I started the bandstand, I saw the benches. I knew that was part of it. I go ahead and build the benches, and maybe it was guidance so that people would be in rows, but I don't think so. Maybe it's dumb. I was trying to think, if I was going to do that picture again today, I would practically have to do the benches, but not as complete as I did. I would not have to show the supports, because the people in front are going to fill them. I don't believe I could start in. I just couldn't; I don't have the facility, the training, or whatever it is to paint these people in those three parts of the hexagon arrangement in rows. I just could not do that if I didn't have something there that I could see as a bench. Then I can put the guy sitting on it. I need that foundation; that's building maybe. In that very painting of Teddy Roosevelt, I got back to a certain point, and I thought I was going to have to wipe out the back row. I'll tell you why. Back of the people who are listening, seated, there are always, at a picnic, a man and a woman, generally one of them holding a baby. They wanted to hear, but they can't get a seat. There are some others stopped for a minute, and I think there are some boys chasing one another; he's got some firecrackers or a flag. It's a wonder they don't run down the aisle, but they keep them out. All that activity goes on behind the seated audience. That's part of the major thing, but [I was] not conscious [of it] when I first laid it out. I thought I didn't have room enough to put those people that are standing behind, maybe talking, maybe interrupting. But they are there in the center of what is considered important that day. It tells you, and you are forced to make changes, but it still is builded right straight through. Almost like if you say a fellow is going to show a house, if he painted the inside first and showed the floor; and yet you're not going to see nothing but the outside of the house. One's as ridiculous as another. But I don't have the facility to paint what you are just going to see finally; I have to build it up. I don't believe I could paint a wagonload of watermelons and see a wagonload of watermelons, if all I saw, all I painted, was the outside. I think I see clearer if I think I see a whole wagon-load of watermelons.

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE
SEPTEMBER 10, 1965

BLAIR

So far as Bible reading is concerned, I don't think we had a Bible in our home. No objection to it, we just didn't have it. But there was a book there on freedom of thought, or something like that, that my dad had. He had never joined a church, and I don't know that my mother had. After all, they grew up on a prairie, and they came right into [a village] six miles from a railroad. That's the nearest they were living to a town, you might say, except Dad's home was seven miles from Fort Scott. Anyway, my dad didn't believe what the evangelists and the preachers taught: that you'd go to hell if you played cards on Sunday and things like that. That was the main judgment they had. My dad was a poet, and if ever anybody believed in truth and goodness and all, it was my dad and mother. His poems reflect that. For instance, one of his poems was "What Killed Bill Williams?" The neighbors were supposed to be church members and pray. He knew, and I knew as a kid, that the man who prayed the loudest in church on Sunday beat and cussed his horse because it wouldn't pull. One -experience, he said, "You're the Goddamnedest animal that God Almighty ever stretched a hide over." You see. those were the comparisons of what was religion and what isn't. There was no reading of science of mind or anything like that, at least in our area. I go into the University of Kansas, you might say, out of high school in a town of seven hundred. Sure I went to Sunday school, but I didn't enjoy it, and I really learned my conjugations in Latin during the preacher's sermon. To me they were so unreasonable.... Still that one thought: you stand up and you! 11 be saved; no matter what you've done, your sins are forgiven. That didn't go for me. The other boys stood up and were saved; they could steal, lie and all that, and I couldn't. Then in the university, I think I mentioned the fact that when they had a YMCA assembly out in the Rocky Mountains, out at Denver, they had just the same kind of man who talked about religion in the YMCA out there. He came through with the same thing, and I interrupted and asked a question. Did he know there were two ends to the Book of Job and all that sort of thing (which I had read in a little pamphlet at KU through the YMCA)? I practically broke up the meeting, and they said they'd never have him again, although he cursed me out, practically. Through the university, I was so busy and all this that I didn't do anything else. I had to make up a year of high school, specialized in Latin, make my way through, and all that. All right, we go on through, get into business, and I end up sick and bankrupt after I had been in business. I had been as near a saint as anybody could be, I guess, and I was kind of ashamed of it. That's the time I revolted and said, "All right, I have done everything that even the preachers said, and I end up bankrupt and sick with my mother-in-law, two youngsters, and a wife." From that time on, I let mind work-- truth. I broke up a couple of Christian Science meetings where I was full of psychology and the people had no right to (according to Mrs. Eddy) call in and discuss Christian Science. I was talking in my language, and she was talking in hers. There are two meanings to every statement in the Bible: spiritual and material. The material is the mortal concept of the spiritual, but they take it literally. The preachers, and so many of them, absolutely take it literally, instead of the spiritual meaning. I was healed of an ulcer with that, not knowing of an ulcer — perfectly; they have photographs of it. I never joined the church, but I knew this: I knew that medicine and things had no power except in the belief that you have in them. That is true, and that belief is real. It is truth until we find out it is a belief. There can't be a false belief unless there is a true belief. There cannot be in the world anything by itself. An error cannot be an error unless there is a correct answer. So we are living in a world, as I learned in those days, where we're in a beautiful concept, looking at the spiritual truth of being almost through smoke-colored glasses. Some are rose-colored glasses. There is_ a truth behind everything we do. Eternal, mind — there couldn't be two minds in the world, because neither one would be infinite; and the universe never would have existed, as far as that goes. In other words, there can't be a counterfeit unless there is an original. We are living in counterfeits because we see it every day. They've learned now that matter has no real material substance; it's all energy, clear down to the atomic elements that are broken up. The physical scientists about 1911 came through with the great discovery — the same thing that Mrs. Eddy wrote in 1868 or whenever it was.* It's right there in black and white. That's not a religion. That's what hurts Christian Science. It's not a religion; it's just simply the interpretation of the Scriptures, and that's all it is. No preacher is allowed, and no one dares offer an opinion. It's all right there. People stand up and tell of the healing on Wednesday nights; but can you believe, in some of those things, some people pray for an automobile! Well, they got an automobile, but, my gosh, what did they need *Eddy, Mary Baker, Science and Health, 1875. to do? What is prayer? Knowing the truth, its supply is infinite. God didn't have to make a supply. Every real thing that there is, is infinite. That's all there is. There is no such thing as lack. There is neither lack nor abundance. You have everything; that's creation. Now, as to reading the Bible, I read it three times a few years ago — naturally, from a spiritual point of view. There's two or three things in there I may have mentioned. There's not but one ending [to the Book of Job] in the original manuscripts. Job, with all of his suffering, lost everything; but he stuck to it and stuck to it. His neighbors gave him counsel; and he stuck to the belief, and knew God. That was the end. He had no material dependence or beliefs then, just like Esau, who walked with God and was no more. He was, in that moment, spiritual, divine mind. Daniel and Isaiah even: the story in there is so definite. Is it Isaiah that comes on down if it wasn't Daniel? But Isaiah, he's the one that disappeared in the cloud?

SCHIPPERS

Elijah was taken off to heaven in a fiery chariot.

BLAIR

That's right. The point was, the other one [Elisha] wanted to know when he could be that way. I think he said, "Not until you can see me do this." ["... if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so."] That was the problem. In other words, when you rise high enough in your understanding, you can feel and see the spiritual — not a spirit — the spiritual, truthful mind, the existence of me doing that. Then you will be that. He attained that, if I am not mistaken. Anyway, in the two endings of the Book of Job, they put another ending in there. People couldn't comprehend that so-called false belief, when Adam and Eve dreamed. What did the Bible say at the end of the second verse of the second chapter? Creation was perfect. Good. There was no moon; there was no sun; there was light perfect; but a fog comes. Then we get into the Adam dream. What does the word "Adam" mean? It means "a dam," two words, damming up the truth. That is the deep meaning of Adam. It's not a play on words. We say, "Where did this Adam dream come from?" It didn't come. It's a dream. It is not reality. It's an illusion, and all of its conditions are illusions. You can't have a counterfeit without a real thing. They did write a second ending to the Book of Job that gives him back his horses and his farm and all. If Job rose to the spiritual point, he already had everything again. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

Do you see any relationship between your philosophy of truth and your philosophy of life and your paintings?

BLAIR

I think it's all based on one principle. I made my own way, what I wanted to do. I had patience; and I wasn't particularly conscious, surely not in the early days, that mind was going to have me paint, or anything like that, or even study Latin. But I always felt this: if there was a problem that couldn't be solved in arithmetic, I didn't want any help. Sometimes I'd work for weeks on it. I don't know why. But there was an element there, one truth: I didn't want to be a copycat. I didn't want help. When it came to painting, I didn't decide I was painting. I was painting before I knew it. So we tie the two together, maybe. It's just the one thing of wanting to do something and wanting to do it by myself without help. Until you asked the question, I never thought of it. Within me was truth, I guess; a fact of whatever we are; mind wanting to express itself. I hadn't learned, and I had no opportunity to depend on anybody else. When you go through the University of Kansas, make up a year of high school, specialize in the classics with Greek and Latin, run boarding clubs and wait on tables, and do all of this on twenty-five dollars and some drums, I don't think you are depending on anybody else. I don't think it ever occurred to me, if I wanted to paint, for instance, that I could get any help. I didn't even know about such things. I would say it's just one phase of a person's character or nature. I'm not bragging about it; I might have been better off in some other ways. But I think it was just the same element that made me do things through life that caused me to paint.

SCHIPPERS

How about the statement that your paintings have this abstract quality or this ideal quality? Like a tree; isn't that truth? Do you see any relationship there?

BLAIR

I don't see relationships any more than I do about teaching and learning. But I tell you what I think is the answer which you have uncovered. I wouldn't have painted at all if I hadn't been impressed by things. I don't have to go and look at a tree, although I have done it, and once in a while, I'll see an unbelievable form on a tree. To me, I have an ideal tree. By the way, I remember the first time I ever heard a Christian Science lecturer. I was skeptical, and I went to him and said, "Are you trying to take away the trees from me?" He said, "Young man, you have never seen a tree yet. There is an original tree more beautiful [than any you have seen]. Like snowf lakes, there are no two alike. If you see a beautiful tree now, you haven't seen anything until you can see it." But not like the botanist sees it. Do you know a botanist can't see a tree? He goes up to the material; he sees the cambium layer, the medulary rays, and all that. He sees the leaves cooking chlorophyll in the sun. But he doesn't see a tree. So I would say the relationship of the trees is the same as buildings or all the different crops and things, whatever I paint as a materiality. I believe that they are ideal trees. I go out sometimes, and I have had a tree in a certain form; and later on, I see it in the woods. I have some sketches that will prove that in my book. I saw some trees down there at Warner Hot Springs around the pool. Been there before the Indians ever fought for the springs. So, yes, there is a relationship between trees and between loving to make thousands of little wheat [stalks] in little rows that have been drilled coming up on a plowed field. I did that. I planted it, and I saw it come up. I did it then for the money, but to see that soil turn over under a plow was pleasing. I could mesmerize myself watching it. No two clouds in the whole field of eighty acres could be alike.

DIXON

I'd like to ask a question. You say that your father and your mother didn't believe in stylized teachings of any particular church, and you didn't have a Bible or anything like that in your house. VThy then did you go to Sunday school? Why did you have to go to Sunday school?

BLAIR

In those days, one reason was, it was the thing to do. I went and was janitor of the church, and I got a nickel for cleaning all the lamps, forty-eight of them — fill them with coal oil, clean them on a ladder — and build fires in two big stoves. But I still had the fear. Although I couldn't believe what the preacher said, I still ; believed that I was doing something I felt I ought to do — to go to Sunday school. That's just about as far as it went. I had a fear, maybe, not to [go]; maybe I was wrong. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

The question we have often asked but haven't put on tape yet is why you think other people are attracted to your paintings?

BLAIR

Before I was attracted to the first one I ever painted, Pennsylvania Barn, some woman was attracted and paid twenty-five dollars for it. The fact is, I have sold over four hundred and twenty-five paintings out of five hundred and thirty. And I wish that I had some of them back. But why do they do that? I think there's an answer there. I don't like the word "nostalgia" too much. You know, they say most primitive painters paint just memories, nostalgia, and then quit. Arthur -Millier and those said that I am going to paint forever because I have gone over into space. Then Henry Seldis capped it when he said, "In the use of space, Blair can take that space and it fulfills its province, its obligation in the canvas, completely." Even space, like a plain white streak — not even as a snowdrift, just as snow — is still textured, is still detailed and telling you something. We can think in terms of nostalgia, but why do people buy them? I think it's this: I think there is a craving [for what] has been. I started painting before I was ever conscious of action in modern painting, where they paint subconscious things, not a picture of something. I think that this country, not too many years ago (it seems short to me; my life seems very short, as long as it has been), [people] still liked pictures of something. I wonder why the cave men scratched paintings. By the way, the definition of art is the expression of an unanalyzable creative power; that's the only true definition of the fine arts. So people buy these paintings, and they become conversation pieces. I had a woman come in here when I had my fourteen paintings for Vincent Price, and you know what she said? "Why, I lived right up there. I used to run down there and wade and swim in that pond. I think that in people's minds, my paintings don't leave much to the imagination. I do, but not relatively. A trained painter can make a few strokes honestly and have a brick wall. I have seen them. To me they are illustrations. They belong in a storybook or in a magazine article, And yet I couldn't to that. I put in all the things that I am impressed by. Rather than thinking of nostalgia or remembering back, I like to feel that those people were impressed just the same as I am. They were impressed with a brick wall or a stone wall that you could catch a rabbit in, or here's a stone fell off. They were impressed by.seeing plants come up, and trees at one time have blossoms and then fruit, and then how beautifully black in the snow. They are impressions. I think the people who buy my paintings were impressed like I was, but didn't paint, [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

But you did say that people who have never lived on farms or ever seen these things are often impressed with them, too. What is your explanation for that?

BLAIR

That is a question I hadn't quite thought of. Mrs. [Gerald] Labiner liked a painting of the Santa Monica beach out here, which is no different now, on a Sunday or at Christmas day. People are still at the beach on Christmas day. Naturally, people who come out from Chicago and Kansas City are impressed. Well, that's why I painted that — the unusual thing there — years ago now. She comes along and says she has always lived here and likes that painting, but you should see it today. She is getting the same thought, maybe; she likes to see a record of something that probably meant more to her as a youngster here than right now. But she is [also] buying the one over the mantel of colorful plain fields. New Hampshire Hay Lands. Now, let's get down to instinct. It occurred to me yesterday, as I was eating a fried mushroom. They say it's protein; whether it is or not, I don't know. But do you know, people talk about eating flesh? But no, they're not; they're eating vegetables right straight through. There is not a thing on earth — oil, coal, everything — that isn't vegetation over the centuries. So they say they eat meat. They are not eating meat; they are still eating a form of vegetation, and the mushrooms prove it. Now, what does this have to do with the painting? That instinct of the earthy earth that produces; even though a farmer says he farms, and would laugh because a boy goes to college to learn how to farm, to me, it goes right back to the earthy thing that makes the crops grow. And spring comes, but what is that but mind? We're no different in the spring than any other time. We may wear different clothes or something, but basically, we go right back to the simplest thing. What we call the earth is the major counterfeit of the spiritual compound idea — mind — of the universe and people, She can like that, if she has an instinct, maybe, to like something pretty. She doesn't have to be educated in it. But she wouldn't buy it on account of beauty. It tells her a story that she has never relived. She never has lived and probably never will, but maybe through books, hearing people talk, or on a vacation somewhere. I think it's a record of something they were impressed with and liked to see in print. Is that answer any good? [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

Do you think that the mood that you can create in your paintings has appealed to people? For example, in The Stage Is Coming, the feeling of anticipation and the feeling of isolation of that particular farmhouse and barn [are expressed].

BLAIR

Well, I have never seen that place, and I have never seen the house. But you talk about a mood in that. There was never any mood in that on purpose. It's just the way it was. I see now a basic thing. We used to drive from Cadmus all day to make thirty miles in a horse and buggy over prairie. When first I was old enough to go — three, four, or five years old — I could remember we'd go along with no fences for miles in there before we'd get to Grandpa's blacksmith shop. Uphill and downhill. I knew the feeling of the prairie. It was so different from Cadmus, where there were fences around farms for a few miles, and crossroads. Another time I went out and spent a few weeks in Colorado with some pioneering people. from western Kansas. They got through with one farm around Spring Hill, Kansas, and when the son got back from school to take over, the old folks went out and homesteaded another hundred and sixty acres, with a pond on it. When I was principal of the high school in Sabetha, [I was] just a few miles from where the stage scene was, the Hook [House] Inn, where they could see the stage coming over the hill, and then they could start mashing potatoes, making cake and fixing chicken. The minute they were told that, they knew they had an hour and a half to get dinner ready before the stage would get there. I do know that territory — I have ridden on the trains near St. Joe, and I've driven from St. Joe to Sabetha--but not a specific place or a specific mile. I think, again, it's the things that have impressed me in the past and come out and given me a title. I didn't even know what the Hook House Inn looked like. But I knew they had a cellar; I knew they had sweet corn; I knew they had a barn. And I knew Kansas r barns. So, after all, maybe there is that symbolic thing again. We have our ideal barns and houses and all that. There was no intention, but when you're doing a thing like that — a stage coming over the hill and people getting ready to cook — why, I think it's practically basic in our ideal ghost, so to speak, of what that represents. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

We've got lots about you as a man, but one would get the impression you lived in isolation, without a family. We'd like to hear a little bit about that.

BLAIR

Well, I think we've mentioned that at the time I went bankrupt, I had a mother -in-law, a wife, and two youngsters. There was, as we called her then, Betsy Lynette, the oldest daughter. (I had to put a mythological name in there, tying in with mythological learning.) We call her Betz now, and some call her Lynette, but the little great-granddaughter Kristan calls her Net. So that's the span; there are great-grandchildren today. Sazz — her name was Babette until she changed it, but at school, at the University of Arizona at ITucfeon, it turned out to be Sazette, and then Sazz. Now, it happens that I'm going to take Sazette, the second daughter, first. She had a sense of getting down to facts better than we did. When she was only twelve or fourteen years old, we'd be enthused about some big deal or something. She would listen, make one statement, and we'd just cross it all off. She went on through the University of Arizona at Tucson. She was a good horsewoman, and she belonged to the girls' jumping class and all that sort of thing. She graduated with honors in fine arts. But I want to tell you one thing: she couldn't have selected anything better, as it turned out. She married a fellow who belonged to the cavalry. Bob Wigely (thfey had a ROTC cavalry over there). Ke was to be an engirleer. World War II came along, and it took those youngsters. He was in the old horse cavalry, and they took them up into Oregon for training to send than into the war. They mechanized the cavalry. Bob transferred right now and began all over to be a flier. He went into flying, and he flew approximately fifty missions in Italy. He flew twenty-six without a vacation, never lost a man. He was supposed to have, then, three months off to do another twenty-four, but they called him back in thirty-five days. He flew them and came through the same way. That's Bob.

DIXON

Were they married before the war?

BLAIR

I don't think so. Isn't that odd? We were in the antique business at that time, of course, and he was going ahead in school to a certain extent. No, they weren't married before. I'm vague on that. It must have been afterwards. [Correct date is 1943.] Anyway, he came home safely, and they -were in the antique business with us. He did wonderful designing — not creating, but taking old pieces that were so rare you couldn't find them anymore unless you paid a fortune. With his architecture somewhat connected with engineering, he could take old wood (sometimes we'd find a whole big truckload of old wood that had been up in the haymow for seventy-five years); and for people that really wanted to pay the price and get a piece of furniture like a C?ueen Anne or something, he could make than. He had the wood to do it with. Of course you couldn't put the patina on. Anyway, we went along that way, partners, and we got out of the antique business when we sold out. In the meantime, when we quit the antique business, he became a broker, went to a broker company and was good. He had a sense of handling people and almost anticipating stocks going up and dovm. They were divorced three or four years ago and our daughter Sazz then [was left] with two children, Ann and Steve, wonderful youngsters. At tha-t time, so much of his side of the life was spent that he had a heart attack and was in a hospital. Well, he got out, and then he went up to live with his father in Oroville. In the meantime, she went to work for the State of California, the government, in employment, down here in San Diego County. In no time at all, she is promoted quickly. They take examinations, verbal and written, and they have to know the purposes of all this. She was commended time and again for having a common-sense attitude to applying what the government was saying it was trying to do. Take this problem of having help from Mexico up in here, and rehabilitation — all these things come right into her job. Well, she's gone right ahead in five years. She started that (I guess, before they were divorced) at Oceanside; and only recently, she passed number five or number four of what they call "rating." Right today, she is qualified by her own work and understanding to take charge of an office as manager. They are using her to train others, not just the beginners, but to give advanced training to those who have already been. And she is getting paid very well. In the meantime. Bob died about two months ago. They don't know whether it was heart trouble that he had or not. But that was that. Like all of us, I can shed a tear when I think of that Bob flying those planes and all. I tell you I wouldn't blame him or any of the other boys for anything that happened after they go through all that. Anyway, that brings her up to date. Now Betz is a way off to one side compared to the rest of us. She lives in the present. She could be a Christian Science teacher, but she is into the philosophies of life — Zen and all of them, instant theater, where you go on the stage, you don't know what you're going to do; you just put everything else out of your thought and let subconscious take over. Maybe there is a stepladder, and over here is a pumpkin, and maybe up there is a piece of a bicycle. She can go on that instant theater stage, and first thing you know, she is doing something. She can surrender and forget everything. She lives in the present. She has a son and two daughters: Sammy; Melinda; and "young Camille, " as we call her, named after Mrs. Blair. She raised those youngsters the same way. She didn't worry. She still lived in the present, but I want to tell you something: never one of the three has had a sick day in their lives. Those three youngsters are great. "Young Camille," we call her, but she's the oldest of the three. Betz married Sam Bertolet, an ensign in the Navy. He went right straight up; the Second World War came on, and they were in China. She and young Camille — at that time the only born — escaped on a government boat and all that sort of thing. Sam was great, and they depended on him. He was the one that had to be the judge of captains at a certain time when they had this contest. Did I tell you about that? They have some sort of a motorboat or sailing vessel on the big battleships, and Sam was judge of what they call "fouls" on these different captains. He had to call one on his own captain, and he did. He was afraid, but the captain practically gave him a promotion because he was that honest. Anyway, Sam was great, and they were in Brazil; they were in Japan; they were just all over — a traveling life. Then they located in Washington, and he's amongst high-ups, almost a captain. I'm. not sure, but maybe he wasn't. He takes an illness which turns out to be cancer. Sam was one of the twelve people during World War II that knew certain things. Here's the way we've learned it. There's a banquet for these twelve men in Washington and their wives. Betz is there, and she's sitting by one. She says, "What do you do?" He said, "My job is to see that everybody has a good time." Well, Betz kind of believed it; she didn't know what the meeting was about (it's wonderful how she can be herself and seldom does anything ever get under her skin). She asked Sam that night. But he said, "Don't you know? Everything America knows — the brass, the president — is in the minds of just twelve of us. We know what they are going to do tomorrow. Do you think he could tell you what he is doing?" Well, that was that. Sam was that much respected. He was in what you call "information" or something like that. Melinda was the second daughter. She's more the student type. She has no particular inclination except in acting. She went to school in Germany, and she was good at it. She doesn't take life too seriously. She went to the University of Kansas and got into dramatics there at the university. They have the greatest theaters — actual theaters — running all the time. She made leads right straight along, got good write-ups in the papers. Then she got married, and that didn't work out. So she's on her own now, and still goes to school some; but she is making her way, and is a wonderful, wonderful person. She has common sense, maybe, between what Camille and I may have and [what] Sazz has. But she has talents. And Sammy comes along; he is now about six-feet-two. He played with toys until he was about five-feet; he couldn't stop. Sammy now is going to college, just got out of high school, barely. He is eligible to go to the Navy, to Annapolis, but we are not so sure it's going to take with him. But you can't tell; he's very young yet to be six-foot-two. I don't know how old he is, but he's just out of high school. Betz has just written a book of poems, and she does sculpture and painting. She is free; she is original; and she can work all night. She can start in on something in the evening and work until three o'clock in the morning; she is that way. Well, if she does, she won't get up in the morning so early to get breakfast. By the way, after Sam passed on, she married George Wooliver, a very fine person who is an executive, not a top one, but a real practical executive that has charge, you might say, to keep the accounts happy. George is just the type. He is a Canadian and he is practical. But if Betz works till three o'clock on sculpturing, she doesn't get up till noon, if she doesn't want to. George and Sammy get up, and they get along fine. After all, they are individuals, and that's the biggest thing to do. Betz is her individual self, and George has to be. It's more or less in all of our family, and yet we all take the responsibilities. And this Betz with her book of poems-- they are almost too deep for me to read. Sam finally joined the [Christian] Science church. Betz had gone through it. The day he passed on, they had a good visit in the evening in the hospital. They were both so knowing that you just open a door and go into another room. You don't die. I happen to know this: there was a banker laid away by doctors in Kansas City. One of them was a student of Mrs. Eddy. Everyone says they are Christian Scientists — that's fine — but I'm talking about those that really demonstrate the truth. You can't do that and run a business; you've got to be ijt, like Jesus. That's what he was. Whatever happened, this banker was brought back to life. And he said, "What did you bother me for? I was about to close the biggest deal of my life." That happened in Kansas City; there's a record of it. But I am not getting into Science; I am not a one. Betz has taken hold of that and she uses it. And you'll never see a better behaved, better self-sufficient, healthy, wealthy group than her three children. Young Camille now has two, little Kristan, who calls Betz "Net." Then there is another little girl, that looks at you with great surprise, and smiled at me first time I saw her. That youngster is going to be raised by young Camille about like Lynette raised young Camille. Young Camille is an artist and a model, and she does her thing; so it's going on. The other day, Mrs. Blair was out to Betz's home here in West Los Angeles, and in comes young Camille with Kristan. (I guess she's four years old. She was born the same day we got our dog as a puppy. I remember something about the dog, but not the great-granddaughters.) Her mother had brought her over to leave her there with Betz. Well, they hadn't been there long when little Kristan points to her mother and says, "You go home; you go on home." And then she goes to Camille and says, "You go home; you go on home." Well, what was it? She has a wonderful time when she is alone with Net. [tape recorder turned off] Mrs. Blair is the original, so to speak, of the attitude toward life that Lynette is. And it's a good thing, because I thought life was responsibility, which I always had and all that. You do that; you do that; and I think I would be running a small clothing store in Fort Scott, Kansas, today if it wasn't for the courage of Camille, Mrs. Blair. She never had any fear. And my, she did take [to Christian] Science; she could be a practitioner. She went through class, so to speak. But bankruptcy didn't bother me; and the fire that burned us up didn't bother me. She has courage, and she also has great imagination. She was excellent in instant theater, where there is a group organized by King and his wife Rachel who happened to be back in Italy or France when the first thought of instant theater came out. People cannot get it in their mind; they think if you go to pantomime, you must decide — you don't. Anyone who has ever been an actress or an actor flopped into it — immediately. There is none of that. You go on the stage and just follow, and then the next one comes on. They don't know what they are going to wear, what the others are wearing, and they don't know what the stage setting is when they go on. Camille was excellent in that, and so was Lynette. They could dismiss the daily items of living. as Gertrude Stein mentions sometimes. When I had painted about two years, Camille and I take a little vacation up to [Mt.] Palomar in the pines up there, in the cabin. I'm painting, and I practically make Mrs. Blair sit down and do a painting. She'd never had any lessons or anything like that either. She starts painting things she knows. She shows a house, a stream, a horse going to go across the creek, and a man driving a cow. And I want to tell you, it's the most primitive thing you ever saw. I still have it, but she was on her way. Then she started working, working, working. I had some influence on her. She entered a show about eight years ago in the Los Angeles County Museum, a big annual where they get three or four thousand paintings and hang a hundred. I had gotten in a couple of times. By gosh, I enter one the next year, and I don't get in; but she enters her first one and gets in with a [painting] called Ice-Cream Social. I had done Ice Cream Social. This is her version of it. She goes on that way, and she finally has a show in a suburb of Chicago, and at a big department store in Cincinnati. Then she starts studying some — drawing and all that — with Martin Lubner and Dimondstein in their new school of art a few years ago. She doesn't stay put. I stayed put, but Camille, when she is through with something, she is through with it. Still, she's around where. I am, but she went into drawing, then she started.doing watercolor some, and then next is collage with colored tissue paper. She has done imaginative things in tissue paper — faces and all. She does it, and it looks like oil paint. Then she got into construction and sculpture, and she has done some beautiful sculpture. Just this week, she signed up with Dimondstein. Dimondstein and Lubner both went to Italy for a year or so. Dimondstein, who was a painter, found out he couldn't paint over there, for some reason. It didn't go good with him, so he started in with sculpture using the old-fashioned method of [lost] wax. He made wax forms, and in Italy you can get them turned into bronze [castings] very cheap. In this country, it is terribly expensive. He came back and had a show, over on La Cienega, of his sculpture — wonderful things, we think. So he has opened up a class in that. Before that, he and Lubner were teaching painting together in a studio. Lubner, a graduate of UCLA with a master's degree, has been at it for years. But Dimondstein has gone into sculpture and teaching the [lost] wax method. She enrolled in that this week. It's a hundred and thirty-two dollars for eighteen times, three hours once a week. But [you can] work as many hours as you want up there with the facilities. So now she is doing wax. The first thing she is working on is an angel in wax. She will do several what they call drawings, making them just out of wax. The wax is hard, you know; and it will stay put; the sun doesn't bother it. She is into that now. And she is wonderful.

DIXON

She likes to dance too, doesn't she?

BLAIR

No, that's the daughter. I forgot about Lynette. Lynette was a dancer, and she was on a circuit one time between Frisco and down here before she started to paint or anything. She was only about sixteen. She never quite finished high school. Just kept on going, you know. But you'd never know it. She has read more than I have. She can talk anybody down if they want to get into philosophy and things like that. But Betz was a wonderful dancer. She is to this day. She and Camille went on this tour that I took where I went back to Virginia and Pippa Passes. They took the same trip and were entertained just the same as I was. But we thought we might move back there. In Pippa Passes, they go to a seminar — folk dancing right there in those hills; folk dancing, music, poetry, and dramatics. They went there for the course that runs all summer..They went up in the mountains to show them some kind of swimming where you go under. Only a few people dare teach it, maybe four in America. I don't know what it is — underwater swimming with some kind of a capsule. Betz and Camille were invited to go along, and they went. Of course, they just went in swimming. But a big storm came up, a big thunderstorm, and it was cold. And all of them in one truck; I think there were twelve in a pickup truck. Mrs. Blair has more pep than anybody I know. To me she's just a.... What do you call these things, B's and C's? People take them for health daily.

DIXON

Vitamins?

BLAIR

Yes, I think she is a vitamin factory herself. Well, after all that cold and wet, they go down; and when they get down into Pippa Passes, it's getting dark. They hadn't had anything to eat, and here are some boys playing guitar down on the one road that goes through Pippa Passes, on what they call the campus, this little village here. The minute the truck got there, they unloaded them. School is out, but three or four of those college boys are still there playing guitar. Betz gets out and dances for an hour right on the highway. I'm afraid she's that kind. I'm glad you brought up dancing. [tape interrupted]

DIXON

You were saying that Camille was a vitamin factory. I think she's the original perpetual motion machine.

BLAIR

I think so. By the way, she's had trouble with hearing. Her mother had it bad. But Camille now has found a doctor that says he will bring it back. She has to use some little earplugs you don't notice. And she has diabetes, and she has had it four or five years. The first doctor was giving her too much, and she had to drink orange juice or something. She found a doctor who had it himself. Dr. Smith, downtown. She takes one little shot in the morning, and I'm telling you, she can go then all day and all night. She can eat bread, and the only thing she has to avoid is extra sweet things. It's a wonderful thing what they have done with that. So she has that problem. She was in a wreck here. She was driving up on the freeway just two years ago in our Buick, and a car started whirling in front of her. She swerved to the right to keep from running into it. (It was stopped because a truck was stopped.) Some car hit her car on the right, knocked her. over onto the main freeway, and the car was damaged so [much] we got thirty-two dollars for it. But she came out alive. The report was that this patient — the number-one driver — was unusually alert. That's what the police said. She was knocked senseless, brought into a hospital and was there for ten days, with stitches and everything. She's got the truth, but she doesn't talk about it. She knows this is hard. This is what Peter and some of them wrestled over. Jesus taught them; and I can't do it, but there's a protection there because anything contrary to truth is not true. It's a bad dream. There are those few in the world who have done it. I don't say that she protected herself. but automatically, you can't help it when something happens and you know the truth of being. She was thrown out there, and why no other car didn't come and run over her in the high-speed lane I don't know, and she doesn't know either. But that didn't faze her. She came to, and they were cutting her clothes off of her to sew up stitches; and she argued with them right up on the table out of the ambulance She was arguing with them to not cut that any more. Of course, that brings things down pretty well to date. There's a lot of things happened, of course, [that we've] probably overlooked. [tape recorder turned off]

SCHIPPERS

When were you born?

BLAIR

July sixteenth, 1888, they tell me.

SCHIPPERS

When was your wife born?

BLAIR

Six years [after] that, in July. My birthday is July sixteenth, and hers is the seventh of July. About '93, yes, 1893.

SCHIPPERS

Even though you haven't seen our final product or the final typescript, we'd like to ask you what you think of oral history so far.

BLAIR

Did you say world history or oral?

SCHIPPERS

Oral.

BLAIR

Well, my answer is something like this; Back in Cadmus, I was about twelve when this Hosey, this little colored boy, drove a mule through the snow and the mud in winter and summer, from La Cygne, seven miles to Cadmus, to Parker five miles, and then back, every day. Well, they felt sorry for the mule, and a bunch of them around Dad's store (Hosey brought the mail into the store; there was a little post office in the store at that time) bought a good, nice, warm blanket to put on his mule. The farmers were around. Hosey just stands, just stands and looks and looks. And Theodore says, "Why don't you say something, Hosey?" He says, "I can't say nothing for looking at the horse blanket." And I feel almost that way. I wake up and I say I can't believe what I've been telling and whatever my life is. This thought came to me: the crickets out here rub two wings together all night long. Is that unusual to them? No. Doors can be closed, and I can hear them with that rhythm all the night through. A dog scratches and has his life; that's not unusual. I just feel almost like that. My life to me isn't unusual, although people say it is. It's an odd thing: when I dictated this story as best I could before this, not knowing this was going to happen, I left out so many things that you people have picked up. But maybe that was a rehearsal. Now you talk about divine mind and guidance — I am not superstitious at all. But why in all these years did I spend close to six hundred dollars getting seven copies made and paying four dollars an hour to typists for four hundred and fifty pages of the very thing that you have done within three weeks? I think life unfolds. And this [happens] to me. I'm not proud; I am still looking at the horse blanket. I can't believe it has happened to me. But what I wrote in this book first is nothing compared to what Schippers and you, Liz, have brought out. Looking at the story impersonally, you have brought out the things honestly that I have wished time and again that I could have put in the book when I wrote it.