Reverand Cline Ziegler Barkey

  Noted events in his life were:

• Physical Description. Light brown hair, fair complexion, heavy build

• My Life. When I was in school, Dad and I usually had five cows each to milk by hand. Once in a while they would have chapped teats and we would have to use kickers on them. We had one that gave so much milk we used a half bushel pail to hold her milk.

I had a very gentle cow in Cottage Hills, Illinois. She lead like a horse, right up beside me. The boys could ride her. She gave a lot of milk, six gallons a day for seven or eight months. Now the dairies have big milkers that pipe the milk into coolers.

What I remember of living in Nebraska:

The foks had a fine rubber tired buggy. Curtains on the sides and front with a place for the lines to come through. It had horse blankets and an oil heater. The roads had three paths or tracks. A team on the wagon used spreaders on the inside checks so the horses could walk in the paths of the wagon wheels. A horse on a buggy had a path between the paths for the wheels. These were sometimes called ruts, as when it was muddy they became deep, or in dry weather they were dusty and become deeper.

Mother had lots of gold fillings. She and I would go to Lincoln in the buggy to get her teeth filled at the dental college. As I remember it was near where the prison is now in south Lincoln. It was 35 miles from Cortland and we were about seven more miles south of Cortland and two miels west. It took us all day to get to Lincoln. We would stay with the Roberts, my mother's grandparents. I recall trying to sit quietly, unnoticed, in that school, while mother agonized in pain. I would think to myself, now if Frank were here he wouldn't let them hurt Belle that way. Until my sister Orpha was born I called my parents by their first names. We would hitch the horse up on the third day and head for home. We traveled on all dirt roads with the three ruts. Mile after mile. The Roberts would send a lunch along or sometimes we would stop in Cortland at the Bonebright store. I always enjoyed stopping there because the groceryman always gave me a nickles worth of chocolate candy drops. Now it would be more than a dollars worth.

About this time, I got a tricycle from Montgomery Wards by mail order. It came to Cortland all crated. Frank and I went in with a load of wheat, corn or oats. We always took something in. We dumped the grain at the elevator and went to the depot and got the tricycle. When we got out on the road home, Frank had hammer and tools and gave me the lines. I am ashamed to say that the horses would have gone home without a driver. I think maily it was to keep me occupied while he put the tricycle together. After a few miles I heard him say, "here Cline, ride it." I rode back and forth in the wagon and the team took us home. Belle said, "How did you learn to ride that tricycle so soon." Really, it pedaled easier in the wagon than it did in the blue grass at home.

The folks helped Uncle Vet get through Cotner Medical College. I found out later that they gave Uncle Vet a check book or access to their bank account. So when he got a break from his books he always came to our house. Frank would borrow a mower from the nieghbors or relatives and we would run two mowers to mow alfalfa. Uncle Vet would hold me on his lap while we mowed. I could take a nap or watch the hay go down.

Uncle Vet taught me to swear in German. He had to take German in school. Now tell me what that had to do with medicine? Also, Uncle Vet would take me along in the buggy while he was courting the girl who became our Aunt Clara. She was always my favorite aunt. I enjoyed this. Wouldn't you like to know what they talked about? She always asked him why I wasn't along, so there were very few times that I didn't get to go. I neglected to say on the swearing, that I practiced on Mother when I got home and she hit the ceiling. Also, Aunt Clara was German and helped Uncle Vet with his German. So it wasn't all.....

I was the youngest of four cousins. Wayne Alvords was the oldest and had a Barkey build, much larger than the other three of us. Next was Leon, Roy Barkey's son. He was a year and a month older than I. Then there was Emmett who was from January to August older than I. We were toghether the most. Leon's mother died at his birth and our Grandma Barkey kept him, so he lived just across the field from us. The Alvords came down from Lincoln, usually with a team and buggy. We four guys would get toghether and our mothers expected us to play together, but Wayne was a city Bully. When he picked on any one of us and pushed us around, we would get him down, three-on-one, and he would go bawling to Aunt Merle. She would come out and try to settle us.

One time I had just gotten a new red wagon. The three of us had been playing until the Alvords appeared. When they arrived the strangest event took place. Leon, Emmett and I hid every toy. The tricyle, wagon, everything was out of sight. Wayne went to his mother, and she and Belle came out. Mother could have skinned me alive. The next day when the Alvords went back to Lincoln, the toys all appeared and as far as I know the folks never did let on that they knew where we put the toys. I don't remember either.

Now that little red wagon: Mother had buff Orphington chickens. She liked them because she could set three dozen eggs under those large hens. She would set a bunch of hens at once, so they would all hatch together. I used to pick up the little chickens one or two at a time and bounce them around in that little red wagon until they died. Then I would get another one or two. One day mother heard me crying from the house. I was down to nearly the last chick and all of those hens got me down and were clawing and pecking me. She got a broom and drove the hens off. I always wished she had spanked me rather than the tongue lashing she used to give me every few minutes when she would think of those chicks. I often thought of this when I was asked to speak to a women's meeting in church, but refrained to make the comparison.

Mother used to have trouble keeping me home. She would take a line or hitch strap out of the harness and tie me to a walnut tree in the front yard. Before she would get to the house, I would be loose. One evening after dark, she went to find me. I was slipping from tree to tree ahead of her. Frank came in from the barn with the milk from the cows. I called out, "Frank, Belle can't find me." So I walked in with him. It was safer that way.

Mother belonged to a club which met in the homes. I went very few times. I usually could work my Dad to be with him, but this time they met in our home. I have always been a shy, bashful, farm boy. I don't know what started this, but these women started teasing me and wanted to kiss me. To this day, I don't know what that had to do with quilting, painting chinaware, or knitting. But they pushed and pushed until I went outside and didn't show up until they were all gone. The most persistent one was my mother's Aunt Nettie.

When Orpha was born home life was never the same. A neighbor by the name of Della Keene came in to help mother. She insisted that I say please for anything I wanted at the table. But the thing I hated most was that she insisted that Belle and Frank were now Mama and Papa. I am sure both Orpha and Marian would tell you they never once heard me call or say Mama or Papa. It wasn't until I was nearly through grade school that I could call them Mother and Father. It never seemed right. I didn't recall ever calling them Frank and Belle after that, but I hated her guts. I don't remember who came when Daniel was born. I think Dad may have been in Colorado harvesting.

Before we moved to Colorado, all of the Stanleys were at Uncle Henrys. He was Grandpa Stanleys younger brother. They used to have a game of sitting on the round part of a jug and putting the heel of one foot on the toe of the other foot, and someone would watch the time. Uncle Henry was deaf. All of the men wore suspenders back then, I think even I was wearing some that day. Uncle Clarence Stanley or someone reached down and unbuttoned Uncle Henry's suspenders in the back, very carefully. He was sitting there so proud of his time, but when he got up.... you guessed it, his pants fell clear to the floor. With suspenders, the waist size was not important. The overalls came with long legs, so all they worried about was waist size. Then the legs were cut to length and hemmed up. The extra was used for patching.

The night befoer we left for Colorado we stayed at Uncle Henry's. I had a bed upstairs with Lester and Earl. After I got in bed, they had a pillow fight. I always had a problem with giggling. I made so much noise enjoying the feathers and all, over the bedroom that Aunt Olive heard and came up. She was Grandma's sister and was a real large woman. She settled us down in a hurry.

Getting back to another change brought about with Orpha coming into the family, her first Christmas was very mysterious for me. Santa Claus left some chocolate fudge just like mother made and it was on one of mother's dinner plates. Also, Orpha had a new doll, but the dress was made out of the same material as mothers apron. When I asked mother about it, she got red in the face. Then when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, one Christmas Eve she wanted me to help stuff the stockings. She told me she was concerned the kids at school would make fun of me for not being better acquainted with Santa Claus. I reminded her of the fudge and the clothes on Orpha's doll. She said, "You mean that you have known ever since you were four?" How dumb do mothers think kids are?

When we arrived in Colorado we stayed with Grandpa Stanley from March until Fall. We slept on the floor in the living room where Roland lives. We built the three room house little by little. Lumber was difficult to come by. Sand was plentiful, so we set up forms and mixed the concrete in a mixer. Cement is cool in summer and warm in winter. The walls did sweat, however. We went nearly to Wray, Colorado, for a well digger. We took four horses down to pull it back. We got down about two hundred feet digging the well and the cable broke. So I later dug down six feet and put an old scoop over the hole and filled it up. Then we got a well digger to come in. I think that well pumped just less than five hundred feet.

We built the cistern and dug a line to the house for a pump in the kitchen. The part about that which I despised was that we used a wash tub for the waste water. I can not remember a time when that tub was not full. It always had to be empited. I got old enough that I could take a bucket full of water out and then carry the tub. I watched carefuly as we dug the cellar and formed the top with the vent. In those days many of the houses were dugouts or soddies. Both were very inviting to rats.

Before I leave the subject of the shack, one day the school buses got hit with a blizzard soon after noon. Many of the children were put up in the school, but they didn't have that much food on hand. One bus load stayed with us three days. Before night the outhouse blew down. How mother bedded everyone down, I don't remember. The girls may know how she did it. Mother had food in the cellar. As I recall, the phones were out too.

It seemed that we always had hired help around, until later years. Sometimes the harvest help would sleep in the barn in the hay. Dan and I used to sleep in the yard now and then.

The men teachers drove the school busses in my day. One of the school teachers had an appendix operation, so I got to drive his model T bus for 21 days. A snow came and I had to do alot of scooping. The farmers would wait at the road for me to go through first.

Our first tractor was an oil pull rumley, which I've included in the photo album. It was a two cylinder firing on half stroke. It was quite an art to mix the correct amount of water with kerosene to run the engine the best. The carburetor had three parts, gas for starting, kerosene and another for water. I wrecked one of our tractors when a nut came loose on the connecting rod on the piston. I had one plow that was not scouring and I was scraping it with a brick to clean it. With a bang the engine stopped. I crawled under the plow. The engine stopped so suddenly that the fly wheel broke. Part of it went through the roof of the cab and part of the fly wheel landed in the plowing just behind where I was crouched down cleaning the plowsharae. Dad and I together could not lift the wheel piece to load it in the truck. I went and got a team and chain and drug the wheel piece out of the field

• My Life. The bridges in my day were for two horses, a buggy or wagon, so when we changed fields and had to go on the road, the binder's front wheels had to be moved to the binding end so the 7-0 foot binder would go through the opening of the bridges. A seven foot binder might be pulled by three horses, but a four horse team was needed on the nine foot.

On e of the jobs for children was to rake hay. Some rakes were for one horse but ours was for two. One time I had a young team and they ran all day. I couldn't get them to walk. Every time I dumped the rake, off they would go. I was in a half mile field, so I managed to turn them on the run. Dad was not pleased with my poor job. The next day I had an older team and had to straighten the hay all out. There were no brakes on the rake and most of the time I was pulling the rake myself by holding back on the lines. The horses pulled it with their mouths and my arms.

Harvesting was always a busy time and usualy lasted about six weeks. Sometimes we would go around our fields with the mower, let it dry, and then rake it up for hay. Then we would go a few days while the grain was drying, ripening and use the binder. While the straw was still green and the heads well formed, we would use the header. This 14 foot machine would clip only the heads of the grain. It was operated by six men. One man on the header, one on the stack, and two in each header barge. I got the header job when I was 14.

We had an older German war veteran (WWI) working for us. He had worked in a mill in Germany, so he knew how to tie millers' knots. he would fire up his stinking pipe and sit there and keep sacking and tying no matter how fast the tractor went or how heavy the grain. We used 2 1/2 bushel bemes grain sacks.

Frank Armswalt, the sacker, was with us several years. he didn't want his money, he just enjoyed being in the USA. after two years Dad insisted on paying him. He was a real good worker. he later lived at Cambridge, Nebraska, and he would come out to harvest in his covered wagon.

One of the most tiring and longest lasting was picking corn by hand. Dad had grown up in the corn belt. He ran his team and wagon next to the row he was shucking and straddled the second row reaching both ways right and left. He would pick all of the "leaners" on the third row, so his wagon wheel would not knock off the ears. But his overalls wore out fast as the stalks scraped his legs and bib. I was smarter. . . I walked between the two rows and picked the ears on each row. Dad was a clean picker. he never left a single shuck on an ear of corn. When the sheller came along, he always remarked how little chaff and shucks were in our crib. I was not that clean a shucker.

Dad always was proud of shucking a hundred bushels a day in eastern Nebraska. So when I was at Loami, Illinois, I shucked in good corn. I picked 2,200 bushels by elevator weight in twenty days, but I dumped in the elevator and seldom had to scoop. So I am sure Dad was much the better corn husker.

One place in Illinois I had a real good pair of Missouri young mules to shuck with. I would go all day and never speak to them. When I got up to their tails, they would move just the length of the wagon box and then wait. If I reached in the wagon for a swallow of water, and they couldn't hear me throwing ears of corn, they would look around their bridle blinds to see or ask me what the delay was all about. The last time I was on the farm I used a corn picker.

We had no electricity on the farm. We had home made feeders for hogs and live stock. Most everything was by hand. I learned to milk a cow early in life. We had a big white milking Short Horn. They are still a popular breed of cattle. Mother would give me a tea cup and while she and Dad were milking, I would get my cup of milk. This cow was always looking for me. Sometimes she would come up to the gate early and bawl. Mother would hand me a cup and I would slip through the fence, get my milk and she would go back with the herd.

The first car I remember was Grandpa Stanley's Model T Ford. It had a wooden dash where the coils hung in a box. It was probably a 1912 or 1913 year. A few weeks of this car and Grandpa didn't have a friend in our neighborhood. When Grandpa met or came up behind a team on the road, the model T would not climb the walls in the ruts and the teams, loaded or not, had to give way. He caused many runaways, broken tongues on wagons, and broken shafts on buggies. The model T brakes were not too good and Grandpa used the reverse peddle to stop. You can imagine how I felt riding with Grandpa Stanley since I was the oldest of the Grandchildren. Dad wouldn't ride with him at all in those days, but mother ventured out. A good team could walk nearly as fast as the car would go. Grandpa was fond of the horn on the left side of the car where later the cars had a door. It was a rubber bubble attached to a horn and the horses were frightened by this. Grandpa could talk for hours about the terrible disastrous accidents he caused.

Grandpa Stanley had no formal education. Grandma was a school teacher and taught him to write his name on checks. She used to cry when the checks came in.

In 1914, Dad traded six horses for a Maxwell touring car. It had a clutch and a shift and 30x 3 inch demountable rims with 90 pounds pressure in each tire. It could get up to fifty miles an hour. It had a speedometer. The horn was a little button in the middle of the steering wheel. It used wood alcohol in the radiator in the winter. It had side curtains, a starter and no crank.

The Stanley's and some of the Barkey's had moved to Colorado. So Mother's sister and her husband were with us as we started off for Haxtun. It was some ride. The women wore hats with several hat pins. we had the top dowm. I don't remember of Orpha being along. If she was along, she was just a new baby. We got to Holdrige in the afternoon. As we crossed the railroad track the right front tire went out. What a noise! I was on the door side and fire and dirt flew by and the car jumped around. Dad found a tire and we stayed all night.

By evening the next day, we got to Holyoke. In those days when one got out of those little towns there were choices of what they called "angle roads". There was one to Haxtun and Paoli, but one lead off to the south west. I failed to mention that the Maxwell had battery lights, not magneto lights that got dim when you needed more lights. So we traveled into the night.

When we got near what is now Mylanders, we came to a lagoon. they had evidently had hail and we could hear the coyotes. Uncle Charlie rolled up his pants, took off his shoes and socks, and walked through while trying to feel the tracks in the mud. When he returned he said, "there are tracks on the other side." So while he was still wiping his feet, and digging the mud out from between his toes, the Maxwell began swimming. Aunt Clara and Mother kept saying, "I can't watch. I hope the car doesn't drown out." The old Fords had a low exhaust, but the Maxwell went right through. Dad kept tormenting the women. He said, "You may have to get out and push."

We got to Grandpa Stanley's about midnight, I would guess. It was one of a few places improved in those days. I found a corner and a blanket and went to dreamland.

Soon after our return to Nebraska, Aunt Clara, Mother's sister died. She was 22 months younger than Mother and was the twin of Clarence Stanley. Hers was the first funeral I remember.

I began my formal education in Nebraska. The school was two and a half miles away. Dad was in Colorado planting wheat and Daniel was a baby. The folks had bought a white pony for Mother to drive on the buggy. While she was sacking Orpha and Daniel up, she mentioned that I would be walking with the Smiths. So I sneaked out and started over to the only Smiths I knew, my Dad's cousins. By the time she came out, she saw me crossing the bridge about a half mile south. She trotted the pony and caught me, and we went back the other way. She picked up the Smiths about a mile east of our corner. After school I walked back with them and then made it the rest of the way home all by myself.

I got into a lot of trouble in school. The man teacher was Mr. Rula. The first week he caught some of the older boys chewing tobacco. he took all three of them up to his desk, bent them over and spanked them good. The first graders were right up in front. We could see well and we flinched with every wallop. When we went out for recess, another boy and I didn't come back in. No one came out after us. What a day! Mr. Rula said he heard us in the back of the building, but let us by...

Mother got me a tin lunch pail. Most of the kids just had syrup cans or sacks for lunch pails. Mine had a little holder for pie, and in the top was a little container that would hold about a quart of milk, water or whatever. One warm day in the fall, one of the older boys wanted a drink of water. I wasn't sure I was to let anyone have my lunch. So I stalled. he offered me a nice jelly sandwhich. I had finished my lunch, so I put the sandwich in my bucket, thinking I would eat it on the way home. How did you guess it? I forgot all about the sandwhich. One of Orphas' tasks was to open my lunch pail and make sure I had eaten all of my lunch. She was two years old. As she was nibling on the sandwhich, Mother came in. She asked where Orpha had gotten it. By order of events, I ended up on the red carpet.

One day after school, one of the older boys told me he would take me one mile toward home on the handle bars of his bike. I accepted with pleasure. We got about a half mile from the school and he hit a rut or something and I swung my foot into the wheel. It threw us off and I lost the heel of one shoe. I didn't think to look for the heel, and went limping home. Another scholding. Mother seldom spanked, but she could sure scold (for weeks).

After Dad came back from Colorado, he borrowed a horse from the neighbor and shucked the corn with the horse and the pony. On my way home from school one evening, I could hear the ears hitting the bangboard, so I got the bright idea of cutting through the corn field and coming home with Dad. Nebraska corn grew tall. the ears were about head high on me. I got lost and couldn't hear Dad, so I followed the rows to the end of the field. Then I came in down the road like I was supposed to, but about an hour late. My shoes were dusty. I had corn tassels all over me....Red carpet time!!!

• My Life. Dad was always proud of his horses. He began with a team, Nell and Pet. They were Percherons that were dark black. Pet was the mother of a colt named Bird. I have seen Dad use Pet and Nell to back the sheller into the runway of the corn crib, by standing off to the side or standing inside the crib calling "gee" and "Haw" to back them into place to shell corn. he never had to touch the lines. They were so gentle and both of them looked after me. They had a lot of patience. Dad could leave them standing until he told them to move.

Dad bought a horse from Sye Jones that we called Bill. Bill had been stunned by lightning or something. Every time it got stormy, he headed for the barn. Later when I got to working in the field, Dad always saw that I had Bill in my team. If a storm came up, he would stick his nose in the air and take machinery, team and all to the barn. Dad traded a sow and pigs for a smaller sorrel from Sye and we named her Pet.

When Bird was two, Dad broke her to drive on the buggy and used her when courting Mother. Bird become the old faithful. We used her to break the colts. She would push the colts around when we turned at the end of the field. If they didn't walk to suit us we would say, "Bird", and she would grab an ear and put the colt in place with a bloodied ear. We all liked Bird. When I was too small to get on her for a ride, she would put her head down and I would lean over her neck or straddle her neck and she would help me on. Sometimes I could crawl up on a fence and get on. She was so wide my feet and legs stuck straight out. It was a half mile to the mail box, but she would take me all the way and back again. We lived about ten and a half miles from Haxtun. I would haul wheat into town in short days and Bird would be in the team. I could wrap the lines around the post on the front of the wagon and curl up in a blanket. When the team stopped I knew I was home. Bird lived to be eighteen years old.

We moved to Colorado in March of 1917. I walked across the pasture to Uncle Clith's and went to school another mile with Ruth and Emmett. Daniel had double pneumonia, Orpha and Dan had meaasles, so we were quarantined and I flunked first grade. AFter we moved into the shack, I had another two and a half mile walk, and took first grade again. The school was called Hill Top.

In 1919, we were again living in Highland Center near Cortland, Nebraska where I completed 2nd grade through 10th grade. The parent/teachers meetings could be interesting. One time the county superintendent, Riffenburg was invited to speak. He started out by saying that his speech would be like the girls dresses, long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting. When we got home, I asked Dad what he meant. I didn't get an answer until I got married. In those days even the farm kids had to depend on neighbors or bullies to get information...

At Highland Center we lined up outside to march into school each morning. Emmett played the triangle. One day he missed and the principal called on me. Emmett was only a few months older, but he started school when he was five and I spent two years in the first grade, so he was two ahead of me. I was sort of his shadow, younger brother. At school he had his buddies and I had a different bunch of friends. However, we were together nearly every day. He rode a bike to school and I rode my old pony.

We didn't see much of Wayne and Leon after we moved to Colorado. We always got along well together. . . I dont' remember us ever tangling. Leon broke his leg at school near Paoli and was in the hospital in Colorado Springs for the longest time. Wayne didn't have much in common with us. The biggest shock of my life was when Emmett died with flu. I became a loner. That summer I gave up. Edward Clutter held a revival meeting in the school for several weeks. Over seventy of us came to know the Lord as Savior. I didn't do much about it, however. We had a Sunday school, and now and then a preaching service.

I bought a Ford Roadster to drive to Haxtun to finish high school. The folks had a 1920 Model T Ford sedan. I got the Roadster in 1928. I don't recall of the folks ever driving that old Ford after I got mine. There were six of us and no way could we all ride in it at once. I paid $575 cash for that car. I caused a lot of tension in the family when I took the car to Fort Collins where I attended the Agriculture and Mining College. In nearly every letter, the folks would ask if I was using the car or needed it. When i couldn't go back to college in 1932 because of rust in my wheat that haravest, I sold the car to the folks for $140, so that I could go back to college the second semester. They wanted it so Orpha and Dan could drive to school. So I got rid of that sore spot.

I was trying to get the farm work done so I could get away. I was picking corn on the east quarter of the land at Highland Center and came through a patch of pig weeds in a straw stack bed in the corn field. I got weed seed, dust and burrs down my back and in my clothes. When I got through it, I dropped on my knees and said, "Lord, don't you have something else for me?" In a few weeks I had a letter from Uncle Ed saying he would be in Chicago the last of January and he asked if I wanted to meet him. I mentioned this to Uncle Vet and he told me he would help me. Uncle Vet also mentioned the Alliance school in St. Paul. I didn't even tell Grandpa and Grandma Stanley goodbye. I was on my way. It was January 1932.

Dad took me to Yuma to catch the train to Chicago. When I left home to go to Fort Collins to college, it was quite an adventure. But Chicago was different. About daylight, I got to the Union Station in Chicago and took a cab to Moody. Later in the day, I met Uncle Ed. He went back with me to the Institute, got me entered without a pastoral reference, and the farm boy was in the big city all by himself. It was like being in church all the time for the first few days.

The first Sunday I went with studetns to moody Church. The teacher of the Sunday School class called on me to pray at the beginning of the class. I had never prayed in public, and not much in private. . . One of my classes was personal evangelism, I was in misery, so I stayed by and told Professor Foster my dilemma. He led me to assurance of Salvation. My devotional life began that day, and the Lord has meant so much to me since. I enjoyed the classes, fellowship, dusting chairs in the dining room, and the activities.

I discarded my pride and went to the placement bureau and got on at Thompsons Cafeteria chain. There I learned what fast food tasted like.

It wasn't until my senior term that I met Ruth. On the August break, several of us rented an apartment while our rooms at Moody were being repainted. My comrades felt it was time I was breaking loose, so they arranged a blind date for me. They had their dates over and we had an evening of it...

I was in a 'picklement', if I didn't ask Ruth for another date, what would she think? If I did ask her for another date, at Moody about two dates and they bought rings, etc... I wasn't ready for that, so after several weeks I sent a note over to her office. She was working in one of the offices at Moody. I gave the note to a fellow from Guatemala. So we began seeing each other, even went wading in Lake Michigan early in the morning with her friends. Neither of us could swim. I had passed the entrance swimming at Aggies in Fort Collins, but I wasn't confident in water.

In the fall Ruth went back to Indianapolis and to college. She come up to Chicago and worked during her vacation from school and we got more serious in our friendship. I should mention that she invited me to Indianpolis for Thanksgiving. you will like this,....I arrived by Monon train about ten in the evening. Ruth, her folks and her Aunt Iona came to meet me. They lived way out on the east side of Indianpolis on DeQuincy Street. It seemed like a long ride. When we got there, Ruth's Dad took me upstairs and showed me the room and my bed. He said, Ed would be in later. Then her father left. He didn't tell me to come back down or anything, so I went to bed. The next morning when I woke up, Ed was there, so we went down, shaved and got ready for breakfast. Later on in the day, Ruth and I took a walk, and she told me her Dad told her she might as well go to bed that I was not coming back down. So I eased up...We went to a little church, walking distance, for a Thanksgiving service, then the next day I headed back to Chicago...What a relief!!!

• My Life. I finished Moody in the spring of 1935. I mentioned my first experience of pulbic prayer. Possibly because I was older than some students at Moody and not married, I was pushed into responsible leadership in our practical work assignments. My second term, I was made assistant group leader of a group of students to go to the home for the blind. Part of my job was to work out the services . . music, testimonies, speakers. I got along well with it until Marian Campbell sat with me one day on the street car going out and said, "Cline, when are you going to speak?" She was graduating and going to the mission field. there were only three boys on the team and all of these women. the women enjoyed a turn at speaking, as some of the leaders didn't give them anymore to do than sing, or give testimony. The group leader never said anything, so I thought I was getting by good. But now I knew I had to get at it. I had not had any preching classes at that time. So I had to sweat.

I tried to find something that would neither infer any thought of blindness nor make them self conscious. I thought of Moses and the burning bush. . . but he stopped to look back on the bush. I thought of the brass serpent in the wilderness, but the ones who saw it were healed of their snake bites. What can one say to blind people? The parables of the blind receiving sight wouldn't do. I was puzzled and I sweat some more. Some how I came across Isaiah 42:16; "...I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known; I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them." I dwelt on, 'not forsake them."

For many years I opened a church ministry with Psalms 23 and also closed with it when I was leaving. I believe it was the sermon I used the last Sunday at Cottage Hills, Illinois, and the first Sunday at LaJunta, Colorado. After the service in LaJunta, one of the ladies, upon leaving, congratualted me on the sermon. Unfortunately, Dave and Dick were standing next to me at the door and one of them told the lady that they had heard the same sermon last Sunday.

After we were married, we both wanted more schooling. At that time the General Association of Regular Baptist had only two schools. Johnson City, New York and a new seminary in Los Angeles under Dr. Mathews. Because of Ruth's two aunts in California, Aunt Myrtle Said and Aunt Bessie Lynch and also because neither of us had been west, we went for it. I missed the four seasons, however. Also, I found it difficult to get a job and go to school.

We lasted one year in school, but two blessings came out of it all. By January 1, 1939, we were called to Bethany Union Church as student pastor at 4422 Triggs Street. It had an apartment in the rear. We soon had a notice that we needed to hook up to the city sewer, so I had to dig the trench from the back of the lot to the street with a certain slope. Then we hired a plumber to lay the tile and hook up the line. It cost $75. The women in the hurch wanted to go up and down the main street to collect bean money for a church chili supper to raise the money. We proposed that we announce the need for a few weeks...the ditch ws hard digging. So we did this, and brought in nearly $100.

When we found that Dave was on the way, I went to Swift and Company to do vein pumping again. After school was out we found a little house in Huntington Park, got furniture together, and began getting more settled. Gradma King inspected everything thoroughly when she came out to be with us at the time Dave was born. He was nearly a month late by all the calculations.

During the depression and during my studies at Moody I got on with a chain restaurant, Thompsons. At the school, I earned money by dusting the chairs in the dining room every morning. The men had a section and the women had another section. Only on Monday evening could they sit together. At the restaurant I bussed tables. The first day I spilt catsup on a business man, but they didn't even bawl me out. Later on I got into Carson, Perie and Scott dining area, but I didn't care for that setup and hours, so I got on at Madel Bros. I made $48.00 a month, got two meals a day, and still dusted the chairs. My expenses at school were around $25.00 a month.

After we were married, I went into Thompson restaurant again as a dish washer, and ended up as a fry cook in a few weeks, making $11.00 a week and meals. The rescue mission I volunteered at kicked on that because I wasn't with the transients enough. I told Ruth we needed to do something. We found an apartment near Real Silk Hosiery where she was doing office work, and on September 3, 1937 we were married. I had saved enough to buy tickets to Louisville, Kentucky. After one week in the apartment, we found a better one and moved into it. About a week later, I was helping a black man carry in a tray of pies for dinner and the manager was holding the door for us. But he let loose the door and we spilled about a dozen pies in the door way. The manager said, "You fellows will have to pay for the pies.". I said, "You were the one who let the door loose." He insisted that he was reporting us to the supervisor, so I took off my white jacket and walked out. I got a job at the Kingan's meat Packing House in a few days and ended up learning to pump veins.

We moved to a nice apartment in the same block as Ruth's folks (too close really.) By the next summer we were both ready to leave Indianapolis. However, when the war broke out; we went back to Indianapolis, again. I went back to the same meat packing house and they put me back to work.

A year later we went to Loami, Illinois as our first full time pastorate. They told me they paid twenty five dollars a week and expected us to live on it. One of the older men had a truck and hauled coal from Springfield and I shoveled it for him. So I had work. Nearly every Sunday the car would be so full of farm produce that all of my family had to walk home or wait for me to unload and come back if it was raining. The people were so good to us. We built an addition on the church, put in a new baptistry, etc. We were there three years.

At Cottage Hills we ran into everything. No house to live in. The church rented one, but it was full of bedbugs, the basement flooded and Ruth got sciatic rheumatism. It was terrible. The owner sold the house. We moved down by the railroad tracks in a house that a woman had built out of pasteboard boxes. Finally, the church took a year to build a parsonage at a cost of $5,000. We were there possibly two years more before going to Colorado. We had a lot of support from outside the church. I picked corn for a Lutheran family, roofed, bailed hay, etc. We had the feed for the cow given to us.

LaJunta was a disappointment to me. I thought we could make it work, but Peterson, the former pastor ruided it with his jealousy. Out of it we did see a young man who has done very well in the ministry at Indianapolis, and Alene who has been in Africa and is nearly ready to retire, also Corky who went to Moody and married and went to Tiwan or somewhere near there. But it was while in LaJunta that Ruth lost her health. It began with migraine headaches and then her heart. In Englewood, I could have janitored at the schools, but I wanted more schooling so I went to the locker plant and to seminary. But we had to buy a house to have a place to live. It was too expensive for us, with Ruths doctor bills. So I got a real estate license, a life insurance license and roofed two summers. It was rough. Oh yes, I did give in and janitor for a while in Fort Collins at the junior high and at the college.

Youth Camps always were scheduled during the harvest when I was young, so I never got to go, so when I could, I took my boys. We had two summers of good camps at Buelah, Colorado, west of Pueblo. In both of the Dakotas we had good camps and in Minnesota. I went to the Pastors camp at the Conference camp in Northern Minnesota. I was assigned a bed in the pastor's cabin, so I went in and went to bed. The other pastors were having a committee meeting in another building. I had the lights off. Soon I heard female voices. I recognized them. They had flash lights and were looking for a certain cot. It was on beyond mine. When they got back there, before they could say anything or do anything, I set up and said, "Could I help you gals?" They scrambled out of there in a hurry. The next morning at breakfast, I heard them talking at the next table. " I would sure like to know who was in that cabin."

One time at high school camp in South Dakota, the camp director was giving all of us a bad time. He wore false teeth, so one of the pastors went to the store and bought blue cheese. We tied it to the springs in his cot. We accused him of having only one pair of scoks and maybe he should wash them out. He kept looking around. I asked him if he soaked his teeth last night. He woke up in the night still looking for the source of the smell. We suggested he go take a shower. We asked him if his sheets were stained...I think some soft hearted pastor finally told him.

In another camp in south Dakotas we had a young pastor in his first church. He was very mischievous. At noon meal one day two of us saw him head for the pastors cabin, so we followed. He crawled through the cubby hole in the ceiling. When he got back far enough we shut the hole up and went outside to listen. We had cut off his light and also his air. Soon he began calling for help. His voice kept getting weaker and weaker. We went in and uncovered the hole and let him out. He never bothered the cabin agian. There always has to be one...

Add on by Debbie:

Grandpa never lost his sense of humor even when he was in his 90's. He was always a rascal.

• life: Stan Barkey's Memories. There had been a long standing tradition on Halloween for young men to tip over outhouses. Apparently Dad's Uncle Clith was tired of dealing with this, so he decided to sit inside the outhouse with his shotgun and wait for the pranksters in hopes of catching them in the act.
Dad and one of his cousins or buddies strung a rope between the saddle horns of their saddles and rode their horses up behind Clith's outhouse. When they tipped it over on it's door, Clith's shotgun went off blowing a big hole in the roof. Since he couldn't get out the door, Clith had to crawl out through the hole in his outhouse. I don't know if he ever found out who had tipped the outhouse on him, but you can see where some of us get our tendencies toward pranks.
Here is another story that should be checked with Dave and Dick for authenticity.
When we were in Cottage Hills, Illinois, one Sunday evening, Dave, Dick and I were sitting on the front pew while Paul was a baby being held by Mom a couple of rows back. In the middle of Dad's sermon, we boys got to swinging our legs back and forth and bumping each other.
Without a word, Dad came down from the pulpit, spanked Dave, spanked Dick and I was bawling before he even got to me.
Then he went back to the pulpit and continued on with the sermon without any comment on the object lesson he had just given.
Can you imagine the other kids in the congregation wondering if they would be next? He might have scared a few adults as well. No one remembers the scripture or the message from the sermon, but fifty plus years later, I still remember not to kick anyone during the sermon.

Cline married Ruth Eleanor King, daughter of William Clarence King and Martha Burnetta (Nettie) Bush, on 3 Sep 1937 in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana. (Ruth Eleanor King was born on 12 Jul 1910 in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana and died on 19 Aug 1983 in San Jose, California.)

Cline next married Dorothy Sacket on 18 Jun 1985 in San Jose, California. (Dorothy Sacket died in Dec 2000 in San Jose, California.)

  Marriage Notes:

Cline met Dorothy Sacket on a flight back to California after visiting family in Colorado.