Month: September 2019

On our move to Idaho we moved into the black building behind the car. Please don’t ask what kind of car as I do not know. The black house or tar paper shack, which is what it was, is where we lived when we first moved to Idaho. It was a 12ft x 12ft one room shack. I don’t remember how long we lived there but I can remember us kids sleeping in the car as we had no beds.

I wrote before that grandfather had said we could have land on his farm for a house. It ended up being a quarter of acre. My parents purchased a Sears Home. I assume you don’t know what a Sear Home was. After WWII, Sears sold homes that would be shipped in stick form to your location and you would assemble them from their plans. Father, his brother Harold, and a friend built it on nights and weekends. The house was 20ft x 20ft and had a kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms. There was no bathroom, no running water, and no electricity. Looking at the pictures there are no steps to the front door as we did not open it so we could have more room in the living room. This almost became fatal as we had a fire in the kitchen one night and had to scramble to get that door open to escape. Luckily there was not much damaged to the house.

I live there from age three until I was nine. My father was a truck driver and was never home. My mother worked at seasonal job, working in farm fields and the Simplots food processing plant. Us boys were left to ourselves and being out in the country we played cowboys and indians quite a bit. We also got to go to three or four vacation bible schools in the summer. They would pick us up on a bus and bring us home. One of the best things we got to do was go to the Saturday afternoon matinee movies. Every Saturday the movie theater would show cartoons and two western movies. It cost 10 cents to get in and you could get a all day sucker for a nickle. I think mother just wanted sometime for herself.

I might note my father and my grandfather new wife never got along. In the six years we lived there I can only remember being in grandfather house once. We were not allowed to go over there. Anyway grandfather wife talked him into moving to Arkansas. He sold the farm and we had to move. We lost everything concerning the house.

This project is the idea of my daughter, Rhonda Wood, and it is hard to know where to begin and what to write.

I think we should start with a little family history.

My grandparents on my father side were Dexter and Ann (Blair) Sissel. They lived in the Hurdland, Missouri and grandfather was a farmer and part time car mechanic. My grandmother died before I was born so I have no memories of her. Grandfather remarried and with his new wife, Almira, moved to Nampa, Idaho in the early forties.

My grandparents on my mother side were Zora and LaVade (Sparks) Smith. They lived in Graysville Missouri area and moved to Ottumwa, Iowa in thirties for grandfather to work at the Morrell meat packing plant. This was a great improvement over working in the coal mines where he worked before.

My parents John Howard and Ola Fairl (Smith) Sissel met while they both lived in Missouri. Father was a truck driver delivering coal and ice. Mother was a waitress and they met at her job. They were married and move to Ottumwa, Iowa and he worked a Morrell for a few years, but was forced to leave because of health reasons. They decided to move to Idaho to be near grandfather Sissel. He had purchased a ten acres farm and said he would give my father a half acre to build a home. Ten acres doesn’t sound like much by today standards, but it was a nice size family farm at that time.