90th Birthday

1920 - 1929

•Graduates from grade school

• Farm life

• First car

1920-1929 World Events

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90th Birthday

President: Woodrow Wilson (1919), Warren G Harding (1920), Calvin Coolidge (1924),H Hoover (1929)Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall, Calvin Coolidge (1920), None (1924), Charles Curtis (1929)Population: 108,538,000 (1920)Postage Stamp: $.02Unemployment: 5.2

•Speakeasies replace saloons as the center of social activity (1920)

•Woman’s suffrage (19th) amendment ratified (1920)

•Vitamin D and E discovered (1920)

•Insulin isolated and used for diabetes treatment (1922)

•First television transmission tube used – in Russia (1923)

•Time magazine debuts (1923)

•Walt Disney creates his first cartoon, Alice’s Wonderland (1924)

•First Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade (1924)

•Adolf Hitler publishes Volume I of Mein Kampf (1925)

•First woman governor in U.S. history Wyoming, Nellie Tayloe Ross (1925)

•Ben-Hur released costing a record-setting $3.95 million dollars (1925)

•First television image transmitted in London (1925)

•Leica markets 35mm camera (1925)

•Auto antifreeze allows people to use cars year-round (1926)

•Knee-length hemlines mark new high (1926)

•Charles Lindbergh makes first solo nonstop transatlantic flight (1927)

•Penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming (1928)

1920-1929 Gladys and Felix

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90th Birthday

Gladys and little brother Felix

Gladys and Felix by the fam ily farm house

Gladys and taller little brother.

Gladys and Felix on the fence around the farm house. Mama would not allow them to go barefoot before June 1.

1920-1929 Graduates Grade 8

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90th Birthday

These are Felix’s 8th grade papers.

1920-1929 Rabbits and School

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90th Birthday

Mama took a picture of Felix leaving for his first day in High School. She used a camera Felix bought and it was lost later in a fire.

These were rabbits Felix raised. He skinned the rabbits and paid the Indians working on the farm 15 cents to tan the hide. A days wage was $1 a day and they paid the Indians 5 cents a sack to pick potatoes and sort them into big and little potatoes – each size in different sacks.

Family farm pictures

1920-1929 Family

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90th Birthday

Gladys, Felix and Earl Rogers that married their sister Ruth.

Peter and Anna with Ruth and seven of Ruth and Earls eight children, taken by the gate in the farm house fence; by Rudolph’s car.

The extended family is growing..

1920-1929 Farm

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90th Birthday

The farm was a 160 acres of semi sub irrigated land that was just big enough to be too small for a viable economic unit. When the American Falls reservoir was built the water table rose and decreased their production.

When Felix was old enough to work off the farm he helped the neighbor harvest corn for $1.00 per day. The neighbor didn’t have any cash to pay him so he gave Felix the stalks for the cows. After a days work Felix loaded the stalks on a wagon and hauled them home – it was his pay for the day.

Peter Hoff with a

shovel and a

canvas irrigation

dam . Anna is

standing by the

farm house.

1920-1929 Farm Chores

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90th Birthday

When Felix was 1 0-1 2 years old one of his daily farm

chores was to pum p water for the dairy cows.

Som etim es he’d pum p until he got tired and then he’d

chase the cows away from the trough. When they cam e

back for a drink Mam a would send him back out to

pum p m ore water.

Farm chores.

On the farm they raised pigs and a calf or two for the family meat supply. They butchered two pigs and stored the pork salted in a barrel. They butchered at least one yearling steer or heifer a year and canned most of it in jars on the kitchen stove. The beef was grass fat, they never fed grain to the beef they ate.

They also raised a garden. The parsnips stayed in the ground all winter and they dug them as they were needed. The carrots were buried in sand, and they canned tomatoes, apples, pears, peas, and other vegetables.

They had a root cellar under the house for cold storage – it took the place of a refrigerator.

They kept some milk from their dairy cows for family use; the rest of the milk was separated (turning the separator by hand) and the cream was sold to the creamery in town.

The jars of family milk was put into a bucket and lowered into the well to keep it cool.

They raised potatoes for a cash crop and stored them in the potato cellar until sold. One year they could not sell their potatoes so they kept them and fed them to the hogs.

The local Indians picked their potatoes. One year a steer bloated and died, they gave it to the Indians; they butchered the steer and dried the meat for their own use.

1920-1929 First Cars

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90th Birthday

This is Felix’s first car. His older brother Rudolph made if for him from spare parts when Felix was 13 years old. It was a Model T Ford; they didn’t have electric starters, you cranked it to get it started. If it was really hard to start Felix would jack up a rear wheel; the wheel turned when he cranked and it helped keep the engine running until it warmed up.

It had a gas pedal and three shifting pedals on the floorboard. You pushed on the left pedal for low gear and let it out for high gear. The center pedal was reverse and the right pedal was the brake; it only had brakes on the rear wheels.

It had two levers just below the steering wheel similar to the turn signal and the automatic gear shift that are in modern cars. The left lever adjusted the spark. You pushed it forward (up) to start the engine, this allowed the piston to reach the top of the cylinder and start down again before the spark ignited the gas to start the engine running.

If you didn’t set the spark lever all the way forward the spark would ignite the gas before the piston reached the top of its stroke in the cylinder and the engine would ‘kick’ backwards jerking the crank out of your hand. From experience you learned not to grasp the crank handle like you hold a hammer handle or a knife. If you had your hand over the crank handle, like you hold a hammer, and the motor backfired (kicked) it felt like your thumb had been ripped from its socket. You soon learned to keep your thumb and all of your fingers on the same side of the crank handle.

The lever on the right was the gas lever. It worked the same as putting your foot on the gas pedal, except you could set the gas lever in any position and it would keep the engine running at that speed. It was sort of a cruise control.

As you started down the road and the engine picked up speed you moved the spark lever back so the gas ignited in the cylinders when the piston was at the top of the top – thereby getting all the power from the ignited fuel.

Model T drivers had an expression for going fast, “I eared her back and let her go.” That meant they would pull both the spark lever and the gas lever all the way back to get the most power and speed from the engine. They would hold the levers with their left hand and steer with their right hand.

1920-1929 First Cars

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90th Birthday

This 1 928 Model A Ford was the first Model

A to com e to Firth, Felix’s hom e town. His

older brother Rudolph bought it new for

$500.00 and he paid cash. Felix went with

him and rode hom e in a new car.

This was a m odern car, it had glass side

windows, a starter so you d idn’t have to

crank it, but there was a place to crank it if

the battery was low. It had m etal spoke

wheels, a heater to keep you warm , and

brakes on all four wheels.

Felix didn’t need a driver’s license, he could drive anywhere. One of the neighbor ladies didn’t care for the way he drove and when she saw him coming she would make all of her children go into the house until he passed.

One day his car died in front of the Cschikof place and he walked home. When he went back a few days later they had striped it for parts for their own cars. That was the end of Felix’s first car.

In the background of the picture (previous page) the black Model T was the family car. Like most farm houses they parked on the side of the house and went in the back door of the house. Anna, Felix’s mother, is standing by the back door.