Shocking feed in the 40s

By Cassey Wade Perkins, age 81

Cassey Wade Perkins, age 16, with his first registered bull “Irish Domino”. Circa 1940

courtesy photo


In July 1940, my aunt who lived in Bovina, Texas came to Oklahoma to visit our family. She talked my older sister Melba and me into coming back home with her to Bovina for a visit. I had heard a lot about the Plains of Texas—that the land was as level as a floor and that there were very few trees except for planted ones. So I wanted to see it; and I found it to be that way mostly.

I visited a few days but, at 16 years of age, I wanted to work to buy my first car. Jobs were scarce in Oklahoma then and you would do well to get 50 cents a day if work was available. I worked a few days for their near neighbor, Mr. Richards, for $1 per day [day meant sunup to sundown or about 12 hours], plowing with a one-way plow on an old John Deere Model D on steel wheels with a kerosene burner. The flywheel slung oil so they had a gunnysack up there to keep the oil out of your eyes. That was not good.

Mr. Richards was sick or something at that time and he had me to hand-roll lots of cigarettes for him. After I moved to Texas, I drove a truck for Mr. Richard’s son Cash and hauled shocked feed bundles to Bob Pringle’s Feed Yard east of Bovina from Progress, Texas a very small town near Muleshoe.

My next job was for A. G. White driving a Moline Tractor pulling a broadcast binder to cut Hi-Gear feed. We would bind some and then stack it into shocks. When laying off an area to cut a load, the binder would dump bundles of feed onto areas that weren’t cut. Later we would have to stop and move bundles out of the way at each dump row.

Then they would shock the feed to dry. The tractor driver had to do all the moving of the bundles while the binder man sat on his seat. My binder driver once waited for me to move bundles and hollered, “Rattlesnake!” That scared me to no end and I told him if he ever did that again, he could have both jobs! We both (me and the binder man) were living with the Whites and did morning and nighttime chores as well as binding the feed. I don’t remember what I made at this job, but it also was better wages than in Oklahoma. [Mr. White lived to be over 100 years old and Mother and Daddy visited him at Prairie Acres. Mother baked him a cake for his 100th birthday.]

The next job I got was working for Billie Sudderth who lived southwest of Bovina. I lived with them and they treated me really well. I got $15 per week for 6 long days plowing with a one-way plow on an Oliver 70 tractor on steel. The Sudderths were nearly always gone somewhere on a Saturday evening and when I got in from work, there was a note on the table which said, “Cass, if there is not enough to eat on this table, get into the ice box; and if you want to, take the old truck and go to town.” My $15 check was also on the table.

His wife, Oberetta, brought me lots of good lunches in the field to eat and never rushed me to eat it. Glenden was their only child then and he was a dandy little boy. I later worked for J. D. Stevens also cutting feed with a broadcast binder, but I really enjoyed working for the Sudderths in 1940. In 1953, my niece LaRita was hit by a car in Bovina on Highway 60 and Mr. Sudderth brought her to Parmer County Community Hospital. I don’t know for sure, but she may have already been dead. The Sudderths were good people. [Mrs. Sudderth passed away recently but Daddy also visited with her before she died.]

Well, in six weeks or so, I got a few dollars made and had already decided to go back to Oklahoma on the bus. The ticket was $9 plus tax. I went to Shawnee, Oklahoma and found a good 1930 Model A Ford Coupe for $40—back then you could get a new title where and when you bought the car. When I got that done with the taxes and all, I didn’t have any money to run it on! I hadn’t thought about that enough at the time, nor did I have a job—just a few friends to help me buy gas at 9 cents a gallon—the cheapest I ever saw it.

NOTE:

The High Plains of Texas—the generous people and the abundance of the land all must have made a good impression on Daddy. He brought his new bride here on the day they got married back in Oklahoma on August 24, 1950 and has made it his home ever since.