Jammie Woodall

After I returned home from wheat harvest, I went to work for Browne’s Market and Butcher Shop in El Dorado.  My job included stocking grocery shelves, and sacking and carrying groceries for customers.  Also, on Tuesdays, I worked in the slaughter house. There were four of us slaughtering about twenty hogs and my job was to pick everything up that was on the floor and put them in their designated places. I picked up the hearts, livers, and kidneys then hung them up on hooks and washed them off. That left just the guts on the floor, which I gathered and put into five gallon buckets then carried outside and dumped them into fifty five gallon barrels. Every Tuesday when we butchered hogs there were two couples that would be going thru the gut barrels and cutting out the stomach and what ever else that they could use. The slaughterhouse butchered cattle on Wednesday but I wasn’t involved with that. The store also had a baker and two sweet ladies did the baking. One’s name was Bea Hammaker, but I’m sorry I can not remember the other lady’s name. They made sure I got a warm doughnut when they baked a new batch.

While I worked for Browne’s I had a room at the Butler Hotel, just a half block from where I worked and across the street from the Butler County Courthouse. Pat was living with Marilyn, which was about a mile or so from the hotel. I would walk to her house and back most evenings. Later on, I bought a 1929 Model A Ford which we rode around town in. Pat and I started going steady about December 1954.

I worked for Mr. Joe Browne until the end of February 1954, then my coworker Jerry Hayes and I both joined the Air Force.

Around the last of September or first of October 1954, my friend Eldon said you need to come and meet my girlfriend’s friend in El Dorado, her name is Pat. We went to the El Dorado theater where the girls were after a football game. We started up the stairs to the balcony just as Eldon’s girlfriend Marilyn was coming downstairs and Pat was with her. Pat was in her Pep club uniform, a white blouse with a red vest, black skirt, red sock and a black sock, a pair of black and white saddle oxfords and a very beautiful face. She didn’t know I was going to be there, as she had told Marilyn not to set her up with any more dates, she was capable of getting her own.  I’m glad I didn’t know that, or I may have not gone. I said, “Hello, I’m Jim Woodall, it’s good to meet you”.  After talking for a few minutes, I asked her if she wanted to go on a date. She said yes, and as I write this we have been together over sixty three years.

What a lucky guy I am, also what a lucky bunch of kids and grand kids for Pat saying yes to this bashful country boy.

In 1954, my good friends Johnny Ramp and Eldon Province went to Pond Creek, Oklahoma to go on wheat harvest for Eldon’s cousin, this was the last of May. They needed another combine operator on the crew, so they came back to Latham to see if I wanted to go, which l did. We drove back to Oklahoma and we went to work getting the equipment ready for wheat harvest.

The man we were working for was Omar Skaggs and he had four combines and four trucks as well as a trailer house and a bunk house with metal bunk army cots for the crew. Omar’s wife was our cook and she and Omar stayed in the trailer house. When we were in the fields cutting wheat they would bring our meals to us, otherwise we would eat in the trailer house.

When we moved to another location, we loaded the combines on the trucks and the header of the combines were raised so they would be just a few inches above the cab of the truck. We would load up with combines loaded, a pickup pulling the bunk house and a pickup pulling the trailer house, quite a parade on the road. I was a combine operator but when we were moving I was driving a truck that was loaded and top heavy. When we were not cutting wheat we didn’t get paid but did get room and board. The combine operators were paid 12 dollars a day and the truck drivers were paid 10 dollars a day. Johnny and I were combine operators and Eldon was a truck driver.

We cut Omar’s wheat and some of his friends around the area, then we loaded up and headed to western Kansas. Eldon decided that he didn’t want to go on further so he went back home. We worked our way through Kansas, some of the customers were people Omar had cut for several years. He was always calling ahead, getting more acres as we moved north. We left Kansas and cut into northeast Colorado then into Wyoming and back into Nebraska.  It wasn’t unusual to have a big deer jump up as you were cutting in these areas.

We moved into South Dakota then into North Dakota. Omar always made arraignments to park our bunk house next to a place that had bathroom and bath privileges such as a local hotel. We left the Dakotas and moved into Montana which I thought was a lovely state. The wheat was not ready, but we were at a ranch of twin brothers and they had bailed hay that they need to be brought into the barn so we hauled hay for a couple of days. The school kids that lived in the country made arrangements to stay in town during the winter so they could get to school.

While we were in Montana, Johnny and I drove to see Custer’s last stand. We would try to see things in the area we were working when we could. When we got paid, I would cash my check and send most of it home by money order and mom would put it in the bank. We were at Helena, Montana and near the Canada border around September 10. Johnny was to start his senior year and school had already started, so both of us quit and the crew went on up into Canada. Johnny wanted to hitch hike to Oklahoma with our stuffed duffle bags, I said it’s the train for me so we both rode the train to Ponca City, Oklahoma which is twenty miles back to where Johnny’s car was. We left our heavy bags at the train station and started walking. We walked past other hitch hikers as we walked the 18 miles of the highway, then turned onto a gravel road and walked another mile and caught a ride the last mile. We arrived at the Skaggs farm to find a flat tire on Johnny’s car. We changed the tire and drove twenty miles to the train station to get our luggage then headed back to Kansas. We both were glad we didn’t ride our thumbs from Montana.

My grandfather (my father Earl’s father), Robert Allison Woodall was born in Gladstone, Ill. March 16, 1887. His parents were Robert Allison Woodall, who was born in Yorkshire, England in 1830, and Nancy Francis Schull who was born in Kentucky April 3, 1850. My grandfather went by the name of Bob but I think up until the time he got married he went by the name of Allie. Bob’s father Robert came to America from England in 1860.

Two years before this in 1858 Robert’s mother (name unknown), a sister Mary, a sister Jane, and a brother (name unknown) came to America. Robert’s father stayed in England because it is said he was afraid to cross the ocean. Nancy Francis Schull was the daughter of Phillip Schull. Her family moved from Kentucky in 1860 and settled in Henderson County, Illinois. Robert Allison Woodall and Nancy Francis Schull were married in 1869 at Canton, Ill.

To this union were nine children. Robert died in April, 1899 and Nancy died in 1925 and is buried in Olean, Ill. Robert was a teacher and a farmer but not a very good farmer. Nancy was a quarter Sioux Indian. My uncle Fred (Earls brother) told me he remembers his grandmother (Nancy) coming by train to Kansas for a visit when he was about 6 or 7 years old. She raised so much hell with everyone while there that Bob loaded her up after a few days and sent her home by train. Fred didn’t know why she was on the war path.

My grandfather Bob Woodall came to Conway Springs, Kansas working for farmers during wheat harvest and met his future wife Mary Frances Burnett, daughter of Columbus Burnett and Mahala Pope. Mary was born in Milan, Kansas March 19, 1886 and died at Conway Springs, Kansas on Feb 6, 1960. Bob Woodall was born on March 16, 1887 and died on Feb. 1, 1960 in Conway Springs.

Bob and Mary had four children – Earl Lou Woodall born Oct. 15, 1910 died Oct 21, 1956, Fred born July 15, 1913, Mahalia (May) born Oct. 27, 1920 and Robert Merle born Feb. 21, 1924.