TASCO -Where I was born and raised
 This is not really a narrative. Let's call it an assortment of memories. It may be somewhat disjointed and an accomplished writer would not be pleased with it. But we are unique. I detest the modern trend to put every one in a special class and fit each person to a mold which some other mortal being has designed. Tasco the old timers will remember when it was called Guy. It was a post office for many years. J.F. Morgan, my father, mentioned the town called Guy in an article published in the Hoxie Sentinel about 1921. He also states that two young women carried mail by saddle horse and Guy was one of their stops. It is situated near a curve in the south fork of the Solomon River. The settlement was far enough from the river that it surely relied on wells for water. Yes, the Solomon was a flowing stream at that time. When we walked to school at Tasco we would often pause to drink from it. We would just lay face down on the sand, put our face in the water and drink like any animal. It was clear and if it was not wholesome then we would probably not have survived. About a half mile upstream from where we crossed was a fork. This is where Sand Creek emptied into it. I was born in a sod house on Sand Creek about one half mile from this fork. At about the age of three I moved, with my parents and siblings to a farm about a half mile south of the Solomon. My old home was visible from the new one. On days when the wind did not pump enough water, I had the job of driving the livestock to water at the creek. Tasco supplied a need in its day. This was especially true after the Union Pacific branch line from Salina came through in the 1890's. Travel was by team or horseback so towns sprang up all over the settled areas. I am sure the settlers were glad that they no longer needed to make the long trip to Lenora or some other supply point on the railroad to the south. There was talk of building a water powered mill on the creek. This would have provided the people with a place to have their grain made into flour. It did not happen. They continued to go to Lenora for this service. You may wonder why they didn't just buy the flour. It really is quite simple when you understand the conditions. The people who first settled here in the very late seventies and later were self sufficient. Today they would probably be called subsistence farmers. It was necessary to grow their own food. If they failed to do so there was a very real threat of little to eat and even starvation during the winter. Picture if you can a winter storm. It is cold. The wind is blowing and it is snowing. The closest place to get food is more than a days ride away. You have no money to buy food even after you get there. There in that little cabin or dugout is a wife and children to feed and there is very little food. An extreme case? Perhaps, but it happened. I believe that this happened many times, even in this area. Even the most careful plans sometimes went wrong. Drouth, hail, insects and the depredations of wild animals took their toll. If the winter food supply was cut short by any reason the settler must find a way to lay in a supply of food for the winter. If they had no money or something to trade the future was grim indeed. You probably have already guessed. Many a homesteader did not survive. They simply left the claim and went back east. I can remember my parents who knew of land that was homesteaded or some one had received a patent on it and simply abandoned it. This land was used for years by someone nearby and no one was very sure who actually owned it. Such were the conditions of the early sixties and even into the seventies on these plains.
Guy or Tasco was never incorporated so it is hard to say when the settlement was started. When I went to grade school in the thirties and twenties its population was around 50 people. It was a divided town. The upper end contained five houses (I think). On one side of the road, shaded by large cottonwood trees, stood a house occupied by Mr. Erve Getz. He ran a general store in the lower end of town. He was either a widower or divorcee. I was never sure. His son Robert lived with him and later managed the store until it was closed in the late forties and he opened one in Hoxie. The Hoxie store is still in business but it is a lot different that the general store in Tasco. As I remember the store in Tasco, it was housed in a two story building perhaps thirty by sixty feet in dimension with a very high ceiling and a huge room upstairs where various items such as hides tanned into leather were stored. If some one needed a piece of leather the clerk merely cut a piece from the hide and sold it. You didn't pick up the item you wanted in those days. The clerk got it and placed it on the counter and wrote it down on your bill. You stayed on one side of the counter and he on the other. You could buy just about anything the family might need from an array of goods that might include a set of harness as well as rivets with which to repair it. Shelves filled with canned food lined the walls. Racks of overalls and bolts of cotton material for making clothes. Men's clothes were usually bought ready made but most women's and children's apparel was made from yard goods bought at the general store. Flour and feed sacks were also made into clothing. When the clothes wore out they were often cut into strips and braided into a long strand. This strand was sewn together, beginning in a very small circle and the sewing was continued and progressed in a circular fashion until the rug was the desired size; perhaps three feet in diameter; perhaps it became an oval shape. It all depended on the ability or desire of the maker. Knitted rugs were also made of this same material. They were a welcome piece of equipment on the old wood floors. I have taken a nap on one many times. When they became dirty they could be washed and hung in the sun to dry. The old store was a gathering place for the men and boys of the community. Women came to buy groceries or do the trading as it was called. I'll get into that later. It was never a place where women went to pass the time. There in the center of the store was a big coal burning (wood or cow chips in the early days) stove with maybe a chair or two, but mostly various boxes, either full or empty, were used as seats. Here the fate of the community and its people was discussed and sometimes influenced. The upstairs part of the building served as a meeting hall and a voting place for Valley Township. Just inside the front door to the right as you entered was a sort of glass front wall. Behind it were cubby holes perhaps four inches square and a foot long with numbers for each one. Here the postmaster placed the mail. You could glance at the box and see if mail was there but you had to ask for it and it was handed to you by the postmaster. Later our farm was served by a rural mail carrier. A description of the store would be incomplete without mentioning the creamery and egg buying station. It was housed in a lean to joining the north side of the building. Here is where that term "trading" takes on a meaning. I can still remember that phrase in common use at the turn of the century and later. It was said that the So and So family did their trading at Tasco, Studley, Quinter or wherever. This was literally true. We milked cows and kept chickens. The milk was ran through a separator and the cream was stored in a can in the coolest place that could be found. About once a week, perhaps oftener in hot weather, the cream and spare eggs went to town and the grocer totaled the bill and the amount of credit the produce supplied. It was indeed fortunate when the produce bought the groceries. In later years cream and egg buying stations became a separate business. Now they also have faded from the local scene.
Close by to the north of the store was a lumber yard run by C.D. Cram. Here you could buy lumber, fence posts, barbed wire, nails and other building material. Mr. Crum also ran a grain elevator which stood a bit to the east by the railroad. There was another grain elevator down the track to the northeast of Mr. Cram's. If my life depended on it I could not tell you who owned or operated it. Be it sufficient to say that I believe it was owned by an out of town company. The Union Pacific Depot stood along the tracks between the two elevators. In its heyday the Jitney, a diesel powered, two car, passenger and parcel post carrier made regular daily runs between Salina and Oakley. Westbound it arrived in Tasco at about ten in the morning and once again it stopped at about five o'clock in the evening on the return trip to Salina. It also carried railway express packages. This was really a fast way to transport items too large for parcel post and too small to be handled by heavy freight. The freight trains provided a valuable service. They moved the grain to market and also brought in supplies that were consumed in the community. The last of the big trail herds came through a few miles west of Tasco on the old Ogalallah Trail but when the branch line went through they were only a memory. The market for cattle destined for slaughter was Kansas City. It is interesting to note that the "terminal" market in the early days was always on a water way. K.C., Omaha and Chicago to name a few. Here the packing plants sprang up close to the stock pens. I have shipped cattle into Kansas City just before its swift decline into oblivion. In its heyday, fifteen thousand cattle might be in the yards on any given market day. Tasco also had its stockyards. They stood to the northeast of the depot and grain elevators. I cannot recall ever helping drive cattle to these yards but cattle were often driven by our farm. Their destination was the stock yards and after a train ride the market in Kansas City. I have shipped cattle from the stockyards at Seguin and also Grinnell but the trucks gradually took over and later the stock yards along the railroad were torn down. I have not seen a stock car on the railroad for many years. Not far from the depot was a U.P. Company bungalow where the agent lived. These buildings must have been made from the same blueprint and all railroad buildings were painted yellow. The only agent I remember was a Mr. Blackburn. He kept a few milk goats and always wore a dark uniform coat and trousers with a black visored cap on his head. Farther north east along the edge of town the yellow shacks and tool sheds of the railroad maintenance crew stood. They were commonly referred to as section hands. To my shame, I must admit that they were often considered second class citizens. They seemed to live somewhat apart from the community and they were usually negroes. The reader may abhor the use of that word but that is the way it was. The derogatory term "nigger" was sometimes used but our parents would have none of that. I could never use the word. It just wouldn't come out. Their children attended the Tasco School and I believe that we children accepted them as equals. The first I remember was the Moore family. There were two girls, Ella and Freida and I believe two boys but their names do not come to me. They moved on. Later came the Starr family. I believe they were of American Indian descent. One Starr child is all I remember. His name was Imann. Later a man by the name of J.D. Garner became section foreman. He was a white man and cut a rather dashing figure with his Model A Ford roadster. It was decked out with the latest ornaments that young men used in those days. He later married a girl from a respected family in Hoxie. Her maiden name escapes me. Perhaps the section hand had finally gained a bit of social status. To the south and west of Getz's General Store was a residence occupied by Harmon Getz, his wife, Hazel (she served as midwife and signed an affidavit when I
needed to get a birth certificate before I enlisted in the Navy in 1940) together with their children Fletta, Elton, Harold and Vida Jean. They were all school mates of mine. Harmon operated a garage and repair shop in a building just west and south of his house. He was a brother to Ervin Getz who operated the store. Beginning in the late twenties or perhaps early thirties Harmon Getz became a John Deere dealer. He apparently sometimes took wheat in payment for machinery. I remember a big pile of wheat just across the road from his place. Just south and west of Harmon's garage was a space where some people practiced golf. As I remember, it was quite small. I suspect that some of the balls must have gone out in the grass and fields beyond. Mr. C.D. Crum's residence was joined to this golf course on the south and west. I believe they may have played tennis on that same plot of ground where golf was practiced. To my humble mind the Crum residence was a cut above the average house. They had a piano and the eldest daughter, Margariutte later became an instructor in music. They had two sons Clifford and Fred. Both were school mates of mine. Clifford became a school teacher and I believe that Fred became a dentist (maybe a jeweler) and practiced in Atwood. On to the south and west of the Crum house was another house. Who built it I don't know. I think that from the time I can remember Mr. Crum owned it and rented it to various people. A Potter family lived there for a while. They had some sons but the only one I can call to mind is Clark. I am sure there were others. How the Potter family made a living I do not know. I think he might have been a day laborer. This term merely means that he worked at various odd jobs and never worked at one place very long at a time. The school grounds lay to the south west farther up the slope. The school house was the highest point, so from the school house porch we could look down on the lower and upper part of the town. It was a wood frame building painted white. The back of the building was almost level with the ground but due to the slope, the front of the building opened onto a porch that was high enough so we could stand under its floor. It was a good place to hide when playing hide and seek. I spent eight terms in that little school under the sharp eyes of three different teachers. They were Alice Robinson who grew up on a farm east of Hoxie. One time on a spring school outing we had a picnic at her parents' farm on Sand Creek. Next came Elta Davis. She too was a farm girl who grew up north east of Hoxie. It seems that she and Ross Menneffe were indiscreet and she did not quite finish her term. She and Ross married and later resided in Oakley. I have seen and visited her in later years and I hold her in high regard. A Mrs. Bulah Cressler finished the term. She too was a local resident. I did not care for her. She radiated discipline. Next came a Mrs. Brooks. Her husband was the Hoxie High School principal for a few years. They came here from Nebraska. I liked her. She broadened my horizons. Years passed and with it change. The little one room school had served us well. At one time it was filled with possibly twenty pupils. But the great depression of the thirties and the advanced methods of doing things took their toll. The number of farmsteads declined. People moved away and the number of pupils declined. Ironically this was the time when a new native stone building replaced the little frame structure nestled into the hillside. Oh yes, it was a rather elaborate structure in which to house a country school, but I doubt if it ever housed as many pupils at one time as did the old structure. For some strange reason I am glad that this new building served no part in my grade school years. Perhaps the only reason it was ever built was because times were hard and many families were hard pressed to have enough to eat and keep warm in the winter.
I graduated from that school in nineteen hundred thirty three. In that same year a national program called W.P.A. (works progress administration) came into being. Its purpose was to create jobs for the poor. Local projects were encouraged and the school was built. The federal government paid for the labor. It may even have paid for part of the material. I do not know. That school building is now a private home. "The grass withers and flower fades"; but life goes on. This completes the word picture of the "lower" part of town; but that is not all; now we shall explore the upper part. There was a road along the railroad tracks which connected the two. While almost all of the lower part lay to the north and west of the tracks, the upper part lay on the opposite side. Perhaps I shall draw a map for you. The road leading from Getz's store went east to the elevator operated by Mr. Cram then followed the railroad and made a left turn across the tracks directly south east of the school. This road, after crossing the railroad went in a south easterly direction through the upper part of town. The first building to the east was the Presbyterian Church. It was built in nineteen twenty one. It had a basement for Sunday School classes and the sanctuary up above. Our family attended this church. I think that it was closed and the building sold in the late forties. The school operated a few years longer and it too was closed. There was a dwelling just south of the church. I cannot remember who lived there. Next to it was a small house where a Mrs. Ewers and Miriam (Mamie) Conard lived. My sister Rosa liked to stop and visit Mamie. I believe there was one more small house that was occupied at one time by a Mr. Joe McLain. How he made his living or if he was ever married, I do not know. His hands built some beautiful checkerboard from different colored cedar wood. He also trapped gophers. They brought five cents bounty each at the courthouse. I once took fifty two gopher scalps to Hoxie on a saddle horse. On second thought they must have been worth ten cents because I well remember that I was a rich boy. I came home with five dollars and twenty cents. This was the climax of many hours spent trapping and a round trip saddle horse ride of something like sixteen miles. One more building stood on the corner of the road at the end of the street. It was a big warehouse where Ralph Getz, a brother of Erve and Harmon, stored feed that was for sale. Ralph also ran the cream and egg buying station at the Getz store. In one corner of this building a place was partitioned off into a combination living area and workroom. Here Mr. John Roswell (or maybe Roswall) lived and worked. He was a watch repairman. I can still see him as he would take a small black cylinder about three fourths inch in diameter and an inch or so long, place it to his eye and hold it in place by contracting his eyebrow. This was his magnifying glass and by holding it in this manner he had both hands free to work on a watch. After the road made a bend around the warehouse, just a short distance east was a little shack. This was the home of John "Sweed." His real name was Birdshaw or something real close to that. He wore a snow white full beard, as I remember him. In his working days he was a stonemason and there are probably some old houses or ruins where his hand-shaped stones can still be found. I know of one such stone house that stood neglected on a site a mile of two southeast of town. He was found dead one day and a funeral service was conducted in the church. The preacher talked about the passage of scripture which says that God will come like "a thief in the night." I know, because our teacher dismissed school and we children attended the service. If memory is correct we children and the men who buried him were the only ones present.
I suppose he is buried somewhere in the community. The road that wound through town continued past that little shack and ended in a farm yard close to the creek. At one time this was the headquarters of the Charley Currier ranch. I vaguely remember him and my Uncle Charley Morgan was his foreman at one time. This was the home of the Ed Jones family at one time. Two of their children, Bessie and Vernon went to school when I did. One older son, Clarence, still resides in Hoxie. He is a retired farmer who spent his entire life in the area. He married a woman, Muriel Karnes and they farmed north of Studley until he retire a few years ago. Another brother, George grew to manhood on that farm. There was also another brother, Harris who moved to Colorado when he was a young man. The Jones family moved away. I believe the Bank Savings Life Insurance Co. became owners of the land; possibly by foreclosure on a loan. A man by the name of Meisinger came out to manage the farm and an elaborate house was built near the creek where the manager lived. He hired a negro by the name of Dotson who did a lot of the farm work. Meisinger brought in a beautiful matched set of sorrel mules. They were the envy of many a horseflesh lover. They did the farm work with a tractor. It was the first Twin City tractor I ever saw. The Dotson family lived in the community for several years. Their only child, Richard went to school when I did. He graduated from the high school in Hoxie. As I remember it Mrs. Dotson drowned in the old swimming hole just east of the big house on the creek on the old Currier place. Going back to the upper part of town, John Conard's blacksmith shop was on the west side of the street across from the feed warehouse. That shop was a busy place in those days. Plow lays (shares) and lister lays were sharpened there. He also shrunk wagon tires. Now, you may ask what is a wagon tire and why shrink it? Wooden wheeled wagons were still in use. When the wood dried out the tire became loose and would come off the wheel. Shrinking the tire was not difficult. The tire was heated which caused it to expand. One particular spot was heated to a cherry red and a tool was fastened in two places which straddled this. By pulling a lever the two jaws on the tool would come together and force the red hot tire to become slightly smaller in circumference. When the tire cooled on the wheel it would be tight once more. How the tires on the wagons crossing the plains were kept tight is a mystery to me. Some wheels had the tires riveted to the wooden fillows. All buggy wheels that I ever saw were secured in this way. On heavy freight wagons even if the tire was secured by rivets the rim would become loose on the wooden wheel and if allowed to go long enough it weakened the wheel. The only good solution was to shrink the tire. I can recall making temporary repairs; simply hammering the tire back in place and wrapping the tire and fillow with wire. This held the tire in place until the wire that touched the ground wore out. I carried many a plow or lister lay to the blacksmith in a gunny sack tied behind the saddle. It was a fascinating place. Sometimes Mr. Conard would let me crank the blower that supplied air to the forge. There was a line shaft with many pulleys on it that ran along the ceiling of the shop. This shaft was powered by a small gasoline engine. When the shaft was turning, various machines could be operated merely by shifting a belt. With a powered trip hammer he could shape hot iron. A round stone for dressing iron was also there. Various other machines were also powered. He could also weld two pieces of iron together although this process was limited to situations where the two pieces could be heated to the proper temperature and lapped together over the anvil then literally fused together by striking with a hammer. The practiced eye could always see a blacksmith weld. A good one was very satisfactory.
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Mr. and Mrs. Conard lived in a house north of the shop. They had two sons, Ralph and Myron. They were nicknamed High and Bill. They were big men but they showed no interest in the shop. The present highway 24 runs east and west a short distance north of Tasco. A short time before I finished grade school a building, which still stands was erected on the north side of the road. Bill and High operated a small store and filling station in that building. They only operated a few years and then moved away. One last house needs to be mentioned. It was the residence of Mr. Erve Getz and it stood just north of the Conard house on the west side of the street. Mr. Getz, to my way of thinking, was Tasco's leading citizen. His manner was so gruff that many of us kids held him in awe; but I know that he had a heart of gold. Many a family had food on the table and even clothes to wear during those depression years only because he extended them credit. If you expressed it in the venecular of that day, he sold groceries to them "on time." This was Tasco. Dad died in February nineteen thirty seven and we moved away. I must add one more dwelling to the list of homes on the road south of the church. This was home for Ralph and Irma Getz. Its exact location escapes my memory.
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