Blanche
Desaire - Our Saint in Heaven
This story must not go untold. Blanche Desaire was a very devout Catholic. She attended daily mass at St. Joseph's
Catholic Church in Damar, Kansas, and prayed her rosary daily. She was devoted to her patron saint - St. Anne.
Blanche belonged to the St. Anne's women society that washed and ironed alter cloths and priest's vestments, cleaned
and waxed the floors and pews in the beautiful St. Joseph's Catholic Church, and cooked meals for parish family
weddings and funerals.
On July 13, 1966, Blanche got up early on the feast
day of St. Anne. She did not feel well but she would not miss mass on the special feast day of St. Anne. She walked
the city block to the magnificent St. Joseph limestone church and knelt in her hard oak pew on the south side of
the church. She had prayed in that same oaken pew for sixty years since the day she married Maxim. The parishioners
hardly noticed the sick old woman as she knelt and prayed from her frayed prayer book and recited Hail Marys on
her smooth black beaded rosary. She answered the prayers of the priest in Latin and sang the songs of the service.
Finally communion time came and she rose from her pew and seemed to scurry as she shuffled to the communion rail
to receive her last holy communion. She took her Blessed Lord under the presence of bread and wine and returned
to her pew. She suffered silently, as always, in her final moments in the cold, dark, silent church. Then a slight
noise was heard -- Blanche Desaire slumped in her pew and slowly slid down onto the cold, hard marble floor of
the deathly quiet church. She died silently, unnoticed, with a "happy heart" with her Blessed Lord still
on her lips. If there ever was a saint in God's heaven, it has to be Blanche Desaire, my grandmother. God rest
her beautiful soul.
Larry
Desaire
Youngest man on the wheat harvesting crew
In the spring of 1945 George Desaire and his neighbor
Fremont Burton purchased two grain harvesting combines and trucks in order to make money custom harvesting other
farmers' wheat crops. Money earned would be used to pay for the new equipment. They loaded the trucks and headed
south for Texas in June to follow the ripening hard-red winter wheat harvest north as the crop ripened all the
way to the Canadian border.
At three and a half months of age, Larry lay next
to his mother, Amy, as she drove a farm truck heading north toward the Canadian border following this hard working
French Canadian harvesting crew. George had stopped in Kansas on his harvest run to harvest his own wheat crop.
When George and Fremont Burton's wheat was harvested and put in the elevator for storage, they loaded up the trucks,
combines, and their families including a six week old new born baby boy and headed north to finish the harvest
run. I had the distinct privilege of being the youngest "man" on that harvesting crew.
Amy's days were spent trucking grain out of the
wheat fields to local elevators while hauling around a new-born baby boy on her hip as she cooked the meals for
the harvest crew over an open camp-fire. She slept in a canvas Army tent for shelter, keeping her baby warm and
dry during infrequent summer rain and hail storms. Most days in the harvest fields clouds of dust would be flying.
She tried to protect her baby boy from dust storms on the prairie with a wet handkerchief placed over hjis nose
to try to ward off dust pneumonia. Larry became sick after a time on the road and Amy had to find local boarding
houses where she could rent a room for the night. Amy "ram rodded" that harvest crew and a sick baby
boy all the way to within thirty miles of the Canadian border. We stayed on that profitable harvest run until the
winter snows began to fly in late September in North Dakota.
Watching a winter storm approach across the prairie,
Amy turned to George and said,
"Larry's pneumonia is getting worse. It's
time to go home and let Dr. Peterson take over. It's too cold up here for this baby with dust pneumonia. It is
time to go home -- I'll walk if I have to!"
George had pushed the harvest crew and his family
to their physical limits in order to harvest as many wheat acres as possible. He was very reluctant to shut down
the profitable harvest run. Finally George turned to the crew and said, "Boys, our cook is leaving us. That's
it. It's time to go home," as the winter storm approached from the mountains. The tired, wandering French
Canadian harvest crew loaded the equipment and turned south headed back towards their families and homes in Kansas
George
Desaire
A tough man to work for
George Desaire was an organizer who taught other
men how to survive in "tough times". George always hired a large working crew because he knew other families
were short of food during winter as there was few opportunities for men to earn a living during hard times. Money
from wages paid by my father bought groceries and clothing for many French Canadian families in Damar, Kansas during
hard times. George was a tough man to work for -- if you didn't work you walked home! He made sure other men knew
who was responsible for doing the physical labor and he always made sure there was a profit left over for himself,
the man who paid the wages.
George would hire his younger brothers to do the
farm work that he could not get Amy or his oldest son Adrian to do. He paid his brothers' wages in food or commodities
instead of hard cash. He always said if he paid them in cash they would just waste it instead of feeding their
families. He always drove a hard bargain -- he always negotiated a way for the other man to do the dirty work and
the hard labor. When all else failed, he hollered, cussed, and demanded his wife and children do what he did not
want to do himself. "There was never any job too tough for his family to do by themselves," seemed to
be his motto for his family.
George and Amy Desaire
Tough times bred tough people
Family Memories
George Desaire and Amy Garringer were introduced
to each other by "Dad" Plante, a friend of George from Damar, Kansas. Amy says George was "a good
catch" meaning he was a handsome man. After a short dating period, they decided to get married on Christmas
Eve on December 24, 1931. They eloped to Hill City, Kansas to get the probate judge out of bed in the middle of
the night. After the civil ceremony, they drove back to Amy's parents' home near Webster, Kansas to tell her folks
of the midnight wedding. Amy's mother, Pearl Garringer, lectured the newly married couple until the wee hours of
the morning with a "tongue lashing" because Pearl was dissatisfied because she felt George was a "drunken
Frenchman" and a "damn Catholic". Pearl Garringer was a non-practicing Baptist.
The next morning, Phillip Desaire, George's brother
drove to the Garringer homestead in a Model A Ford and brought the newly married couple to George's parents home
in Damar, Kansas. The wrath of Blanche Desaire was even worse than the wrath of Pearl Garringer! Blanche Desaire
learned George had married outside the Catholic faith by a Justice of the Peace and his new wife was an "outsider".
This term loosely meant anyone other than a French Canadian Catholic.
Later that day Blanche Desaire would visit the
local Catholic parish priest to confess the Desaire family disgrace. The priest decided that George would have
to stand before the communion rail in St. Joseph Catholic Church and beg forgiveness from his Lord and fellow parishioners
for taking a non-Catholic woman for a wife.
I would have loved to have seen my father, standing
before the parish begging forgiveness for his wayward discretions. George, being a shy bashful man at the time,
had a difficult time standing before the community begging forgiveness, but he did and the priest agreed to perform
a second Catholic wedding ceremony in the Church to bless the marriage of George and Amy.
The day of the church blessing of their marriage
ceremony was January 4, 1932. George and Amy wanted to celebrate their wedding with their friends. So they enlisted
the services of a couple local musicians to hold a wedding dance in the Damar town hall. The guests were invited
and the local priest showed up at the celebration telling the friends of the couple that he was "shutting
down the celebration." The friends were told that if they celebrated this event that they may be excommunicated
from the Church. George loaded Amy and his friends into cars and trucks and moved the party to Bogue, Kansas at
the pool hall where an enjoyable evening was continued by all except the parish priest.
"Tough times bred tough people" the saying
goes -- George and Amy were bred from tough stock. Nothing ever came easy for any of the Desaires. George's first
job was laying railroad track as a section hand for the Union Pacific railroad at Zurich, Kansas for $2.50 per
day's wages! This track would lead to a railroad line linking western Kansas farming communities with grain markets
throughout the world through the Chicago Board of Trade. In those early days a railroad was of tremendous value
to a community. It meant that vital supplies could be brought in quickly and cheaply. On the other hand, whatever
products a community might have for sale could be shipped out to markets where these products were needed. No wonder
that states, counties and settled communities offered inducements of great value to railroad companies in an effort
to get them to build railroads where they were desperately needed.
George and Amy's first home was the non-insulated
railroad boxcar with a pot-bellied coal cooking stove. They used discarded wooden orange crates for chairs and
a rough hewn wooden plank nailed to the side of the boxcar for a dining table. Amy gathered white linen flour sacks
and sewed little red hair ribbons on the sacks for a decorative table cloth and curtains for the newly weds' first
home.
Amy was a school teacher in a one room country
school at the time of their marriage. She had graduated from Webster High School in Webster, Kansas at the age
of eighteen. George quit school after the seventh grade because he decided to pick corn rather than face his seventh
grade English comprehensive exams. His family spoke Canadian French in the home and I doubt he could speak English
before he started school.
Amy's teacher encouraged Amy to finish high school
so Amy could become a school teacher. Amy's teacher asked Al Garringer, Amy's father, if Amy could move into the
teacher's home to finish her senior year of high school and take the preparation courses needed to become a school
teacher. After Amy moved in with the teacher, the teacher took Amy to the doctor and Amy was diagnosed with malnutrition
-- she had been starving to death living in her parent's home. Amy was bedridden for several weeks until she gained
enough strength to finish her senior year of high school.
During her previous years of school, Amy remembers
taking gravy or lard sandwiches to school because there was no other food in the house. Many of these "poor
folk" sandwiches were thrown away on the three mile walk to school so fellow students would not ridicule her
when others saw the type of sandwiches she brought to school.
Amy finished her senior year of high school and
was awarded a Kansas State Normal Teaching Certificate to teach school in a one-room country school house. This
teaching certificate was a treasured award for Amy and the Garringer family. Amy was the first of the Garringer
and Livingston families to graduate from high school.
George Desaire began farming when he rented his
mother farm north of Damar, Kansas. Blanche Desaire inherited this farm as a wedding gift from her father Mack
Newell. Amy says, "We began to get a toehold in farming with the help of three of George's little brothers
- Leo, Joseph, and Alfred who worked their little tails off all summer for new school clothes for the fall term.
(Not a very good wage scale but their folks thought that was good enough because "they were learning how to
work". Boy, did they ever learn how to work - with old machinery, and long late hours but it was all in a
long summer's education. I doubt if any kid today could endure the labor those kids put out, without too much complaining.
They stayed at it until the last clod of dirt was turned.
Those were the days! At eight to ten years of age,
my brother Adrain, we called him DD, started driving the tractor and working in the fields. DD and Amy worked in
the fields, did farm chores, drove trucks, plowed acres and acres of wheat land. At ten or eleven years of age,
Phyllis went along as she could drive as well as anyone else. Phyllis could cook almost as well as her mother and
she did most of the housework and cared for Larry. She was a perfect little mother. All in all we were a very,
very busy family.
Soon thereafter George bought his first homestead.
George and Amy borrowed money from the Farmers State Bank at Bogue, Kansas to purchase their first farm. The Farmers
State Bank still exists today, still providing farm and crop loans to grandsons of my father's generation who till
the soil of Richland Township of Rooks County Kansas. I believe this shows the integrity and the perseverance of
the honest men and women who still inhabit this land. Some wise man once said, "No nation is any stronger
than the men who own and till it's soil."
George and Amy picked a beautiful acreage to build
their legacy. This beautiful farm contained 320 acres of lush, buffalo grass pasture; black fertile topsoil where
my parents raised many profitable wheat crops; and a lush spring fed creek meadow where white-faced Hereford cows
gave birth to energetic baby calves.
George would borrow money to buy a piece of land
by mortgaging the property and giving up title to the ground to the banker if he could not repay the loan. He would
raise one wheat crop and pay off the loan. He then would buy a second piece of land and mortgage all the ground
he owned to the banker until he harvested his next wheat crop to pay off the mortgage. In five years, George and
Amy bought and paid off the mortgages on 880 acres of prime Rooks County Kansas farm ground and built a herd of
100 head of white-faced Hereford cattle. It took five outstanding wheat crops in a row to accomplish this task.
He raised white-faced Hereford cattle, hogs, chickens,
and a milk cow or two to keep the family supplied with milk and fresh cream. Extra cream was sold at the Burton
Creamery in Damar, Kansas or traded for groceries at the General Store. Cattle and hogs were shipped on the railroad
to the cattle yards in Kansas City for slaughter or to local sale barns in the area. Vegetables and wild fruits
picked down by the Solomon River were harvested from the family garden and canned and stored in the family fruit
and storm cellar.
The sturdy three room Desaire farm house still
stands today although the house has been turned into a shelter for black Angus cattle and the home of raccoons,
skunks, pole cats, and prairie rattlers that now roam the farmyard. The tall red milking hay barn that once stored
sweet prairie hay, where milk cows gladly gave up their milk and rich cream has since been demolished by a western
Kansas tornado. The windmill that pumped icey cold water from deep below the prairie sod, still freely cartwheels
in the Kansas breeze bringing cold, clear water to the prairie surface to quench the thirst of all who visit the
well. This amazing water well has never been known to go dry even in the driest years. This well was found by "Dad"
Plante using a forked willow stick cut from the willows growing along the creek in the meadow while witching for
water for the spot to drill the well that would serve the needs of generations to come.
At the time of George's death his land stretched
from what is now the Webster Dam in Rooks County, Kansas; west to the eighty acres of ground that Frank Desaire
homesteaded; northwest to the George Desaire homestead two and a half miles north of Damar; southwest to a quarter
section of ground once farmed by Hobson Desair located west and south of the St. Joseph Church cemetery where George
is laid to rest; and west to another quarter section of ground located southeast of Hill City, Kansas in Graham
County, Kansas.
Six weeks previous to George's death in 1954, he
mortgaged all his farm ground and bought another quarter section of ground from the Howe Luck family west of Bogue,
Kansas. The Luck family agreed to reclaim the property following George's untimely death.
Three children were born into the George and Amy
(Garringer) Desaire family. All were born with the help of a mid-wife attending the births of first Phyllis, then
Adrian, and finally Larry. The nearest doctor was sixteen miles away and the nearest hospital fifty miles away.
It was unthinkable to go to the hospital just to deliver a baby. Old Dr. Peterson, from Plainville, Kansas would
drive his car to the Desaire farmstead and sleep in the car until it was time for his delivery services. With the
help of a mid-wife he would deliver the newborn baby under the light of a coal oil lamp using water boiled over
the pot-bellied heating and cooking stove.
Amy says, "In 1934 my daughter, Phyllis was
born. Her baby days were pure joy to me as I felt like a child with a beautiful baby doll to love and play with.
In 1937 along came DD, the most beautiful baby boy any Mom ever had. There was another blessed surprise in our
family in 1945. Although I had put all my baby clothes in storage and had started thinking of myself as a matron
of 32 years, I started feeling "kinda queesey" in the morning and not very hungry most of the time. Suddenly
it dawned on me, Actually I would swear I was pregnant - and I was! There never could have been a happier family
when Larry came along in March 1945. It took some doing for DD to understand that his Momma was not sick that first
morning after he and Phyllis saw the doctor's car parked in our yard when the school bus carried them to school.
They had spent the night with neighbors while all the excitement at our house of a new born baby was developing.
George drove to school and brought DD and Phyllis back home to greet their new baby brother and the sight of their
little faces is a memory I will never ever forget!"
Life was hard on the Desaire Farm
Life was hard on the Desaire farm. It was not just
luck that raised five outstanding wheat crops in a row. Many men believed it was unusual for a farmer to hit five
good wheat crops in a row. This was the days before intensive crop management techniques that today help farmers
overcome the effects of drought, grasshoppers, and hail from Mother Nature's fury. How did George raise five good
wheat crops in a row? Was it luck or innovation?
George was a gambler and an innovative farmer.
He was one of the first farmers to plant a crop of soybeans in Rooks County Kansas. He was one of the first farmers
to plant lespedeza and clover to enrich and fertilize the soil. This was the first attempt to fertilize the native
sod to increase crop yields. He was one of the first farmers to terrace land to control soil erosion from heavy
rains and high winds.
George was one of the first farmers in the area
to plant a new variety of hard red winter wheat called Red Chief. It shelled hard but it was a tremendous grain
producer. All the harvested grain was scooped with a shovel by hand from the grain truck into the granary. Wheat
grain was kept for seed to plant the next wheat crop.
Wheat flour ground at the Stockton, Kansas flour
mill was purchased in fifty pound white linen sacks so homemade bread could be baked daily. The white linen sacks
were saved and sewn into shirts for the men folk; skirts, blouses, and dresses for the ladies of the house; or
pillow cases, curtains, or bedspreads for the home on the foot peddle powered Singer sewing machine. Amy was a
very good seamstress and she baked some of the most delicious homemade bread in the territory!
Amy spent her days attending to the family and
doing all the farm chores. She would carry water in five gallon buckets a quarter mile up the hill from the well
in the pasture to water the butcher hogs on the farm. There was no well in the yard and no running water in the
house. Water was caught in an underground cistern where food was lowered in a five gallon bucket on a rope to keep
perishable food from spoiling. She washed and scrubbed clothes by hand on a washboard in the wash house in water
heated over a coal oil fired stove. In the beginning the stove was fired by "cow patties" gathered in
bushel baskets by the children out in the cow pasture. Sometimes corn cobs were burned following corn harvest.
Soap for washing clothes was made from rendering the fat carved from a butcher hog, adding lye to the mix, then
allowing the liquid to cool and dry. It was then cut into bars for personal soap, soap for washing clothes, and
cleaning soap for around the barn and house. Beef and hog tallow were also saved to be rendered for fuel for lamps
and candle making.
With no electricity or running water in the house,
the family toilet was a wooden outhouse located over a hole dug in the back yard. Toilet tissue had not been invented
yet. The pages from a Sears and Roebuck catalog or soft corncobs were used and were thought to work just fine.
Baths were taken once a week whether you needed one or not. Baths were taken sitting in a tin washtub in the visiting
room in front of the heating stove.
There were no power tools on the farm. It took
a lot of sweat, willpower and muscle to get the farm chores done. Cows were milked by hand by bringing the cows
into the barn and catching them in the milking stall. You then squatted down beside the cow on a one-legged milk
stool squeezing the milk bucket between your knees trying to keep the cow from stepping into the milk bucket. One
of the cows favorite tricks was to swish her tail around and slap you up side of the head with her dung soaked
tail. Certain cows were kickers, and chains had to be applied to both back legs to keep them from kicking the milker
and the milk bucket. Of course all the cats on the farm had to gather during milking time to get a squirt of milk
for a reward for catching all the mice and rats on the farm.
The milk was taken to the wash house where the
cream separator was located. You poured the raw milk into the top of the separator and then turned the hand crank.
This spun the milk around separating the milk from the cream. The cream was put into a cream can and delivered
to the Burton Creamery in Damar, Kansas or traded for groceries at the General Store.
All the farm animals were fed by hand every day
come rain or shine. Baby calves born in a Kansas winter blizzard were carried into the farm house to lay in front
of the roaring fire to thaw out! I got my first heifer calf this way. I named her "Frozen Ears" because
she lost her ears to frostbite on a frozen winter night after being born in a snow bank. She later died from a
rattlesnake bite giving birth to her first baby calf. All stories did not have happy endings on the Desaire farm.
Amy worked long hours to keep the hungry men fed
on the farm. During wheat harvest, everyone would be up at the crack of dawn. Amy would be in the kitchen frying
eggs and smoked cured ham from the meat house; flipping hot cakes to be soaked in homemade maple syrup, surrounded
by the smell of steaming hot Folgers coffee brewing in the "never go empty" coffee pot on the stove.
She was used to cooking for six to seven hired men who made up the harvest crew. She would then wash all the dishes
and begin her day by baking homemade bread for the dinner and evening meals.
I can still recall the sights of Amy working the
bread dough with flour up to her armpits and splotches of white dusty flour in her coal raven black hair. The mound
of dough being shaped into loaves was always a sight to behold. Watching the dough rise in the bread pans was very
interesting to a boy too young to attend school with his older brother and sister. She would pop snow white dough
into the oven and an hour later golden brown baked bread would appear with all the aroma of a New York city bakery
in the middle of Amy's simple country kitchen. I will always remember getting the first hot baked roll from the
oven smeared heavy with homemade butter from the butter churn. It doesn't ever get any better than that for a country
boy.
Chickens were hatched from farm eggs. Amy would
capture her oldest setting hens to hatch eggs in old discarded cream cans. A dozen fresh eggs gathered direct from
the hen's nests would be put into old cream cans laid on their sides. An old setting hen would be caught and a
shoestring would be tied to one of her legs to the cream can. Fresh straw would be placed in the cream can and
the eggs arranged in the nest. The hen would then be locked in the cream can except for a short period of time
each day for feed and water. The setting hen had to remain in that cream can until baby chicks broke out of the
eggshells.
Fried chicken was the harvest crew's favorite noon
time meal. Up to sixteen chickens a day would be eaten by the hungry field hands. After Amy put the bread into
the oven for baking, she would go into the farm yard with her deadly "chicken catching" machine. This
machine was a long stiff "#9" wire with a hook on the end. It was used to snatch the legs of chickens
as they ran in the yard. Many chickens ran for their lives when Amy entered the chicken yard with her chicken snatching
machine! It was my job to keep "rounding up the chickens" to keep them close to Amy so she could snag
them with her "chicken catching" machine.
After snatching the chicken by the leg, their necks
would be wrung. They were dropped in boiling water so feathers could be quickly pulled off. Then they were gutted
and cleaned. The entrails were fed to the surviving chickens and cats. I spent many an hour racing my tricycle
through the chicken yard chasing chickens so that my favorite tomcat, Kitty McGee, the famous mouse catcher on
the Desaire farm would get the choicest morsels of chicken guts. The slowest chickens in the yard got quite a few
broken legs being run over by my tricycle. Maybe this is why Amy was so successful in catching chickens with her
simple chicken catching machine -- I slowed them down so Amy could catch them.
The pieces of fresh chicken were rolled in crackers
or flour and dropped into rendered hot hog lard and fried to a crispy golden brown in Amy's favorite black iron
skillet. She added fluffy mountains of mashed potatoes and browned giblet chicken gravy, fresh homemade golden
brown bread from the oven spread heavy with homemade churned butter. The men washed down this delicious meal with
gallons of iced "sun tea" with ice taken from the ice cellar from ice chopped from the spring fed creek
before the spring ice melt and stored in the ice cave wrapped in blankets and covered with fresh wheat straw from
the harvested fields. Amy would load her "chuck wagon" 1949 Ford and head to the harvest fields to present
the hungry men with a meal that was fit for a king! After all the men were fed, she would gather the dishes and
head home to wash the pots and pans and dinnerware used to prepare and serve the meal. There were no paper plates
in those days and the only automatic dish washing machine in the house was named Amy.
Often a wheat truck would pull into the yard before
she finished washing the dinner dishes. She quickly would run for the granary to shovel the grain from the truck
driven by her son Adrian. He was the twelve year old boy - the designated truck driver. The farm truck would hold
two hundred and fifty bushels of wheat and all of it had to be scooped by hand from the truck into the granary.
I remember one hot July day when I was about four
years of age, George had the harvest crew harvesting a wheat crop on the McCormick's quarter section of land near
what is now the Webster Dam in Rooks County Kansas. A thunderstorm was developing very quickly and lightning soon
struck a tree within a quarter mile of the combine and trucks. Soon baseball size hail began to fall from the storm
cloud. George told me and my brother to get in the farm truck as the combines emptied the harvested grain into
the farm truck. When the truck was loaded with about 250 bushels of wheat, George jumped in and headed the old
red truck towards the farm hoping to drive away from the storm so the wheat would not get wet in the back of the
truck. We headed west on a dirt road hoping to outrun the storm. I remember my brother looking over to the north
side of the road and he asked George, "What is causing all that motion of the trees down there Dad?"
Sure enough it was a Kansas tornado coming out
from the trees straight towards the road we were traveling on. George hit the accelerator and jammed the truck
into second gear for more speed hoping to outrun the tornado! He jammed me down on the floor of the old truck and
told my brother to hold on to the door as we raced the oncoming tornado! The tornado reached the road about the
same time as the truck. The truck shook like a wet dog as the tornado sucked the wheat out of the back of truck
and up into the air in a swirling mess of dirt, grass, weeds, and anything not permanently tied down to the earth.
By the grace of God we survived and George kept his foot to the metal and raced that old red wheat truck for home.
Amy watered the hogs, milked the cows, fed and
watered the chickens and gathered the eggs from the mite infested chicken house. Many times I can remember being
chased from the chicken house by the meanest Red Rock rooster in Rooks County Kansas! This mean old sucker would
fly and land on my shoulder and peck my head! My sister and brother nicknamed me "Pecker head" after
one such vicous attack.
Following the afternoon livestock chores, Amy would
prepare the supper meal by coal oil lantern light, wash the dishes, and finally lay her head to rest at 10:30 PM
after all the daily farm and family chores were done. Even with all the hard labor she performed on the farm, Amy
fondly remembers those "glory days" on the farm building a family legacy. The crippling arthritis she
suffered with in her late years, told another side of the story.
The only vacations ever taken were to Amy's relatives
-- her brother, Charles "Bud" Garringer, and the Alvin and Audrey York family, her sister, in Missouri.
Many times word would come in a letter that the York family's cupboards were bare. George and Amy would load up
the car with sacks of flour and beans, salted cured pork and canned beef, canned fruit and vegetables from the
storm cellar, and quickly drive across Kansas Highway #36 to the state of Missouri or into Nebraska in order to
keep the Alvin York children from starving to death during the winter.
If the trip took place during the fall of the year, we would return to Kansas with baskets of ripe fruit, berries,
and delicious watermelons that would be turned into fruit pies, jellies and jams. These delicacies were stored
in the damp, musty, cobweb infested storm cellar cave. Many a time we captured a large bull snake enjoying the
coolness of the cellar. I was told the snake protected the cellar from rats on the farm.
George Desaire was respected in his community.
He was elected President of the Damar, Kansas School Board in 1945 and was responsible for getting a major addition
built onto the existing school house. He was influential in keeping the St. Joseph nuns as teachers in school.
The St. Joseph's nuns brought parochial school education to the parish of Damar in 1904 and stayed until 1977.
The St. Joseph nuns started a convent in Concordia, Kansas in Cloud County Kansas in the late 1880's.
George Desaire, the gamblin' man
George participated in daily poker games at the
Desbien Farm Supply store; big money poker games with wealthy gamblers from Norton, Kansas at the Bogue, Kansas
snooker hall; or at the Bogue Garage that was run by a black man named Huey Green. George also placed large bets
on presidential elections, World Series games, and on local town team baseball games. I have always wondered how
much of the farm ground he accumulated was won in five card draw poker games or on a single throw of the dice in
the hard packed dirt of a back alley in a neighboring town.
My favorite gambling story concerned the Damar
baseball team that George managed and coached. He helped organize the Damar City Baseball Association that developed
the Damar baseball diamond with the first electrically lighted playing field in the area. Electricity was supplied
by the REA. Many baseball games were enjoyed by the community and hundreds of people came to the games for gambling
and recreation purposes.
An important game was coming up with Hill City,
Kansas that had a lot of money riding on the outcome of the game. George bet "the farm" on the hometown
Damar team but hedged his bet by driving to Hays, Kansas to secretly recruit a former major league pitcher named
Vern Leiker to pitch for the Damar team. Everything was kept secret until the night of the game. Vern Leiker arrived
in town a few minutes before the game but he had pitched a nine inning game for Munjor, Kansas that same afternoon.
He was tired and his arm was getting stiff and sore.
George said "a deal was a deal" meaning
a man's word was his bond -- Vern Leiker had agreed to pitch a nine inning game for Damar on this date and he damn
well was gonna head for the mound and fill his end of the bargain! George handed him the baseball and sent him
to the mound. The Damar and Hill City teams battled scoreless inning after inning. Hits were hard to come by as
both pitchers pitched their hearts out. Finally Damar pushed a single run across in the bottom of the eighth inning
with a hit batter, a sacrifice bunt, a sacrifice fly, and a squeeze bunt.
Opening the ninth inning, Hill City loaded the bases on three hard hit line drive singles. George called time out
and slowly walked to the mound to talk with his tiring pitcher. Vern Leiker had pitched 17 innings of baseball
and he was definitely feeling the wear and tear on his body.
pectators saw something exchanged on the mound
between George, the manager and Leiker, the tired pitcher. Leiker looked down at what George handed him. He pulled
down hard on the bill of his baseball cap, tugged at his belt around his waist, and then threw his best fast ball
of the night by the hitter!
"Strike One!" screamed the umpire!
"Strike Two"!
Three Hill City hitters faced the screaming fast
balls of the former major league pitcher and all three men failed! Vern Leiker struck out the side with the bases
loaded -- the Damar town team won the game 1 - 0!
What took place on that pitching mound in the ninth
inning between George the gambler and Leiker the former major league pitcher? The spectators in the stands thought
George had "loaded up the baseball" throwing in a trick baseball. In those days before resin was used
to get a better grip on the ball, many pitchers would secretly conceal the head of a sunflower in their hip pockets
in order to get the stickiness from the plant on their fingers. This gave the pitcher an excellent grip on the
ball for a tremendous curve ball. We have learned none of this was true -- George had simply walked to the mound
and handed his pitcher $300.00 in cash with these instructions -- 'Strike out the side and let's go home!"
Three hundred dollars was a lot of money in the 1940's, but George covered his word to the pitcher with the earnings
he won from the gamblers that backed the losing Hill City team that night.
Gambling Man is shot
I remember George coming home from a gambling escapade
with his plaid Mackinaw jacket soaked with blood, sneaking in the back door waking up Amy and me yelling for us
to get dressed. We needed to leave immediately! We sneaked out the back door like thieves in the middle of the
night! George had cleaned out the gamblers playing five card stud poker. One of them pulled a gun and shot into
the slate on the Bogue pool hall poker table and slate flew through the air and sliced George's arm!
George screamed, "I'm shot!" as he kicked
over the gas lamp, grabbed the money on the table, and dove through the window into the alley, ducking between
the buildings losing the gamblers in the night while leaving a trail of crimson fresh blood in the snow.
In 1953, my sister Phyllis was getting married
and Amy needed money to prepare for the wedding. George never allowed Amy to write any checks nor keep any money
in the house except for the cream check for groceries. So needing money to finance the upcoming wedding, he left
for a three day gambling junket. He returned with pockets full of money filling two gallon fruit jars with $10.00,
$20.00, and $50.00 bills! He hid the money in the fruit cellar for safe keeping fearing the gamblers would return
and rob our family.
George gets one drink he can't handle
This is the one story about George Desaire that
will always be remembered by his family. Our family was living on the Desaire farm two and a half miles north of
Damar, Kansas. He had just returned from a three day drinking and gambling spree late on a Saturday night. He got
up Sunday morning and told me I should get dressed for Church and go sit in the car. I jumped into my clothes and
got into the front seat of the car. I feared if I wasn't sitting in the car when he got ready to leave I would
be left at home by myself.
While sitting in the car I realized I needed to
use the bathroom in the worst way possible. I did not want to leave the car because the out house was way behind
the house. I looked on the bottom of the floorboard of the car and found several empty Seven-up bottles. George
would mix Seven-up and Old Crow whiskey together when he was drinking. What's a five year old scared boy to do,
but use one of the Seven-up bottles to relieve himself in. I placed the half full bottle on the floor of the car.
Dad got into the car, looked at the Seven-up bottle standing on the floor, and decided it was a mixed drink in
a bottle he had mixed the night before. He tipped the bottle to his lips and chugged hard on the foul contents
of the bottle! He coughed, gagged, and spit while Amy pounded him on his back while he tried to "get his wind".
He just about died.
Health Problems
Amy got cancer in the late 1940's. After she returned
from the hospital, we moved into the town of Damar, Kansas. Hobson Desair, George's first cousin, had built a new
home just west of the house that my Great-grandfather, Frank Desaire had built.
Moving into the town of Damar, Kansas brought new
technology to the Desaire household -- the telephone, electricity, natural gas heating, refrigeration, television,
and in-door plumbing. A bathroom with a tub replaced the out-house and a tin tub in the middle of the floor. I
can recall seeing the streets of the town being torn up while laboring men laid the tile for the sewer system.
Those ditches looked so deep to a small boy playing on the top of the mounds of dirt that ran down the middle of
every street in town.
The first time I saw the indoor toilet as we called
it, I asked Mom, "What's that white paper wrapped around an axle doing in the toilet?" I had never seen
toilet paper. We had survived quite nicely on the farm using pages of the Sears and Roebuck catalog.
Our new home had three bedrooms, a bath, a living
room, a kitchen, and a washroom. On the farm George and Amy slept in one room and we three children slept in another
room. Now brothers and sisters had separate rooms. My brother and I slept in a single bed in the south bedroom.
At times it was so cold in that room that frost would form on top of the blankets during the night from our breathing.
The linoleum on the floor would hold frost until 9:00 AM. When your bare feet hit that floor, you got dressed in
a hurry I can assure you.
Little furry critters shared our bedroom with us.
Many a night we would lay in bed very, very still waiting for Mother Mouse to hop on the bed with her family of
young ones. We would lay perfectly still until she jumped on the top of the blankets then we would see how high
we could kick her toward the ceiling. My brother enjoyed this game -- I was scared to death!
We lived in this house until Dad died. George's
lifestyle was one that seemed to encourage heart trouble. He was a heavy set man carrying up to 250 pounds on his
5'8" frame. His friends called him "Heavy" because of his size and shape. He ate fried meats all
his life and demanded that his family eat at least an egg every day for breakfast. He smoked Lucky Strike, Camel,
or Phillip Morris cigarettes all his life. He learned to roll his own cigarettes using Prince Albert tobacco under
his mother's kitchen table before he started elementary school.
He died of a heart attack in St. Anthony's hospital
in Hays, Kansas in November of 1954 at the age of forty-six. He suffered from heart trouble, high blood pressure,
and sugar diabetes while taking daily insulin shots for several years before he died.
Amy Garringer
Desaire
The School Teacher
Amy was a school teacher in a one room country
school at the time of their marriage. She had graduated from Webster High School in Webster, Kansas at the age
of eighteen. George quit school after the seventh grade because he decided to pick corn rather than face his seventh
grade English comprehensive exams. His family spoke Canadian French in the home and I doubt he could speak English
before he started school.
Amy's teacher encouraged Amy to finish high school
so Amy could become a school teacher. Amy's teacher asked Al Garringer, Amy's father, if Amy could move into the
teacher's home to finish her senior year of high school and take the preparation courses needed to become a school
teacher. After Amy moved in with the teacher, the teacher took Amy to the doctor and Amy was diagnosed with malnutrition
-- she had been starving to death living in her parent's home. Amy was bedridden for several weeks until she gained
enough strength to finish her senior year of high school.
During her previous years of school, Amy remembers
taking gravy or lard sandwiches to school because there was no other food in the house. Many of these "poor
folk" sandwiches were thrown away on the three mile walk to school so fellow students would not ridicule her
when others saw the type of sandwiches she brought to school.
Amy finished her senior year of high school and
was awarded a Kansas State Normal Teaching Certificate to teach school in a one-room country school house. This
teaching certificate was a treasured award for Amy and the Garringer family. Amy was the first of the Garringer
and Livingston families to graduate from high school.
Amy Desaire
Born in a sharecroppers shack in Oklahoma
"To all my grand kids, greatgrand kids, and
greatgreatgrand kids. (Gee! That's quite a menagerie!!!) This is a composit of the years and years that I have
lived. Some years were tough--some were better and some I wouldn't trade for all the gold in the world.
I was born in northwest Oklahoma (Beaver County, Oklahoma). My folks were poor - but so was everyone else in those
days. My folks had three babies in five years so you can imagine - three babies in diapers at one time. The diapers
were cloth, the three cornered kind - held up with three big safety pins.(How would you young mothers like to do
the washing of cloth diapers for three babies every day?)
At the age of four, I fell in love with the young male school teacher who taught at the neighborhood school and
he tied his horse in our barn. I decided I would be a school teacher, "Just like Fay" - a dream that
stayed with me until my school years were completed.
I took the teacher's exams at seventeen (17) years of age and was on my way on September 3rd, 1931. I was hired
to teach in a rural school, with about eight to ten (8-10) students strung out in eight (8) grades - one or two
(1 or 3) kids to a class - imagine that.
In August of 1931 I met a fantastic, handsome frenchman from Damar, Kansas. He was twenty-two (22) years old, olive
complexion, blue eyees you could drown in and coal black hair - Wow!
On Christmas Eve we eloped to Hill City, Kansas. Got the Justice of the Peace out of bed and I became Mrs. George
Desaire - with no ring, no wedding gown, and no money! Between us we had $67.00 in our pockets.
I started my year of teaching with high hopes - but to my dismay the school board decided they didn't want a married
teacher - and out I went. (In those days all you had to do was complain to the County Superintendent of Schools
about anything - especially if there was some other teacher in the neighborhood hunting for a teaching job. Believe
me there was a shortage of teaching jobs in the 1930s.)
So here we newlyweds were, without jobs, scratching our heads, wondering what to do. It all came to a happy conclusion
when George got a job as a section hand on the railroad in Zurich, Kansas. He started working hard labor on the
railroad for $2.50 per day! We lived in a boxcar on the railroad line. George worked on the railroad until his
mother Blanche Desaire rented her farm to him to farm.
We moved to Damar, Kansas, fixed up a house nearby and in 1934 my daughter Phyllis, your mother, your grandmother,
your greatgrandmother was born. Her baby days were pure joy to me as I felt like a child with a beautiful baby
doll to love and play with.
We went through the dust storm era (the Dirty 30s). The government paid us for three of our four cows (one cow
starved to death since there was no crops and no feed for the cows). The government made jobs for men and women
to build roads, to build parks, ponds, lakes, etc. etc. etc. These jobs gave us just enough money to have something
to eat. The government furnished us with canned meat, butter, dried fruit, flour, and we got by, until it finally
started to rain and then the duststorm days in the 1930s were done.
We began to get a toehold in farming with the help of three of George's little brothers who worked their little
tails off all summer for new school clothes for the fall term. (Not a very good wage scale but their folks felt
that was good enough since they were "learning how to work". Boy, did they ever learn how to work, with
old machinery, and long late hours but it was all in a summer's education. I doubt if any kid today could endure
the labor those kids put out, without too much complaining they stayed at it until the last clod of dirt was turned.
Years later they laughed about the things that happened and were as proud of Phyllis, DD, and Larry as they were
of their own children.
In 1937 along came uncle DD, the most beautiful baby boy any Mom ever had. Oh yes, there was another blessed surprise
in our family in 1945. Although I had put all my baby clothes in storage and had started thinking of myself as
a matron of 32 years, I started feeling "kinda queesey" in the morning and not very hungry most of the
time. Suddenly, it dawned on me that "Actually I'd swear I am pregnant" - and I was!
There never could have been a happier family when Uncle Larry came along. It took some doing for Uncle DD to understand
that his Moma wasn't sick that first morning after he and Phyllis say the doctor's car parked in our yard when
the school bus carried them to school. They had spent the night with friends while all the excitement at our house
was going on. George drove to school and brough DD and Phyllis back home to greet their new baby brother and the
sight of their little faces is a memory I will never forget.
Larry was a good baby, Phyllis took charge of him and did just like she does so well today with every new baby
that comes into her life. She was a perfect little mother. I nursed Larry but she took care of almost everything
else.
There are many many stories of Phyllis, DD, and Larry's childhood that you will have to wait and read later as
this is getting pretty long.
Our family began to prosper. Our kids grew up. At the age of 8-10 Uncle DD started driving the tractor, working
in the fields. At 10 or 11 Phyllis could cook almost as well as her Mom and did most of the housework and cared
for Larry.
Those were the days! DD and I worked in the fields, did farm chores, drove trucks, plowed acres and acres of wheat
land. Sometimes Phyllis went along as she could drive as well as anyone else. All in all we were a very, very busy
family in those days.
Our farm acreage grew. George would find land for sale, borrow money from the Farmers State Bank of Bogue, Kansas
to buy it, put all the income from the land on the debt and pay off the debt the first year. Then came another
year of hard work for all of us. We fed cattle, slopped hogs, raised chickens, hauled out manure from the chicken
house, etc. etc. etc.
There was a lot of alcoholism in the Desaire family. I put up with a lot of drinking and gambling. I have fought
alcohol all my life and thank God I feel it is a thing of the past for my immediate family. I sincerely hope that
none of you younger generation is stupid enough to think you are big enough to handle drinking. You aren't, sooner
or later it will get you. There is nothing smart or funny about being drunk.
Phyllis, DD, and Larry lost their Dad in 1954 while we were living in Damar, Kansas. We had moved to town when
I became ill with cancer and George with diabetes and heart failure.
There are many more stories I could tell of Phyllis and Everett's wedding, DD going into the military service at
17 years old, and of Larry's keen ability as a baseball pitcher - our years together were fun! There are good and
bad memories for my kids but all in all we did all right. Their families have grown up and have given me such a
feeling of satisfaction when I start counting my many grandkids, greatgrand kids, and greatgreatgrand kids. Wow!!!!!!!!!!!
What a bunch!!!!!!!!
Perhaps later, I'll do another chapter or two of this saga. Larry, I hope you can read this. I have decided to
give you this much now. Later I will write of incidents that they might enjoy so it won't be too long and maybe
more interesting to the greatgrand children. I used to love to write and do, yet., but my writing is getting worse
and my eye sight also. Maybe after my eye surgery I can do better. Bye Mima
