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My Childhood

Eugene A. Hoffman For some time I have felt that you might be interested in your father’s history. Perhaps knowing my

background will help you to understand me better, and remember me well.

Both my mother and my father came from Iowa farm families who

lived only a few miles apart, in western Clinton County, Iowa. My

mother’s family was a large one, with six girls and one boy. One sister

died at an early age but the others lived long lives, with one still alive

now in the year 2000. On my father’s side there were also several

children but I have lost track of all of them.

My mother and father were both of German backgrounds,

although there may also be some English in the mix. Both were of

second generation immigrants. The Hoffman name is a solid German

name and one which is often a Jewish family name, presumably of

Jews who emigrated from Germany. On my maternal grandmother’s

side the family name was Baker and some of her family emigrated

from England or Scotland.

The Simmons family name was originally Simons, but according

to the story Grandma Simmons told was changed to Simmons from

Simons to avoid confusion with another branch of the family.

My father, Elmar, became a painter, rather than a farmer, and that

was his trade, when he worked. My mother and father were married just

before my father went in the Army in World War I. He served in France

and was injured, but the nature of his injury has always been a mystery.

Whether he was wounded or injured in an accident in France is obscure.

In any event my mother always tended to believe that his later behavior

was due to his injury in France.

When he returned from the Army the couple settled down in the

small Iowa town of Delmar, then about 300 souls in size. I was born there

in 1921, in a house next to the railroad tracks and about a block away

from the Catholic church.

But, my father and mother separated when I was a year and a half

old. The reasons were never explained to me by my mother but I

understood that my father’s heavy

drinking was a principal cause. In any

event he departed, moving to Chicago,

about 135 miles away. This seemed to be the place where many young

people went when they could not make a living on the farm or in the

small towns in Iowa. Before long all of my mother’s sisters and her

brother also settled in Chicago.

With a little child on her hands my mother had a desperate time

finding work and caring for me. This was long before the days of welfare.

She moved to Clinton, Iowa, then a town of about 20,000, and scratched

out a precarious living while she had someone care for me. All of this is

not in my memory bank. I was too young to remember.

Finally, when I was about six years old, she asked my grandparents

to take care of me. So I moved back to the farm in Iowa with my

Grandmother and Grandfather, where I lived for the next five years.

As for my father, I had no contact with him other than an occasional

Christmas present. I can only remember seeing him twice. Once when I

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visited him briefly in Chicago after I returned from the Air Force in World

War II, and last when he lay in his casket in a funeral home in Chicago. He

had been found on the street in a mean section of Chicago’s near West side,

and died in Cook County Hospital.

What can I say about him? My guess is that he suffered from what we

know today as depressions, compounded by alcoholism. No doubt the service

in the terrible trench warfare of World War I aggravated his problems.

I can remember some of my times with my grandparents on the farm, but

the early years are somewhat vague. I spent time roaming the farm, often

with a wonderful dog “Rover,” a mixed collie breed. We were inseparable.

My grandfather’s farm was barely large enough to support us, a total of

180 acres, a good part of which was in rough creeks and woods which could not be cultivated. And the

great depression of the thirties began earlier on the farms in the twenties. Work was hard, income low

and hope in short supply. Of course, as a little boy I did not realize the

difficulties of the times. One comment still sticks in my mind. One of

my aunts saved a letter from my Grandpa which he had sent to one of

them in Chicago thanking her for a small gift of cash. As Grandpa put

it, “Here in Iowa today a dollar looks as big as a horse blanket.”

Grandpa and Grandma were good to this small boy and I grew to

love them dearly. Grandpa was the father I had never known.

I started to attend the small one room school in Riggs Junction, a

two or three family crossroads about two miles from Grandpa’s home.

To get to school, I walked, through the fields in the morning and then

home after school. The walk was about two miles each way.

In the more severe winter months Grandpa and Grandma

arranged for me to spend each week with a couple who lived close to

the school, Joe and Laura Franzen. They were childless and took me in as if I was their child. Usually I

stayed with them in December, January and February but went home on weekends.

In our school we had a hard-working young woman who taught eight grades, from first grade to

eighth. Usually two grades would operate together, 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and so on. When I hear about

our teachers complaining today I recall that school with some irony. This lovely young woman kept

discipline, taught eight grades, and in the winter months got to school early to start a fire in the single

stove to warm the room. She also managed to arrange small plays as entertainment, in which we all

participated. But I must say on recollection that I think I learned more in that

little one room school than in any other period of my life.

And, education meant a great deal to the farmers in Iowa at that time.

Once incident in particular still sticks in my mind. The school had a School

Board, elected by the farmers in the area. A position on the School Board was

often hotly contested, as I recall well.

My grandfather, always a competitive man, chose to run on the School

Board. The seat was contested. I remember to this day going to the school

when the election was held. 29 people voted. When the votes were counted,

depending on how you counted one ballot, the vote was 14 or my

Grandfather and 15 for his opponent. But one of the ballots counted for his

opponent was clearly questionable, marked in a way that could be for either

person. If it was rejected, the vote was a tie, if for my Grandfather, he would

have been the winner.

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A bitter argument started, ending in several fights. I remember one of

the fights ending with a man being kicked through the school house door,

ending on the steps on his back. Lawsuits followed, with the matter

dragging on for some time, and now I can’t recall how it was finally settled.

In my last couple of years on the farm I ran a trap line. This meant that I

tool steel traps and put them out in an attempt to catch furbearing animals,

like muskrats. A good muskrat skin sold for $2, which in those days was a

princely sum. To stand the cold in the winter and the rigors of running a

trap line, I had a pair of “high top” leather boots. Indeed for a couple of

years these were my only workable shoes. Therein hangs a story.

I caught a skunk in one of my traps. It in attempting to get the skunk

out of the trap the skunk sprayed me. An awful smell. The best cure was to

burn or bury anything you were wearing, but I couldn’t do that since my

“hightops” were my only shoes. So I wore them to school. Needless to say

my teacher was not happy and made me sit as far away from the other kids

as possible. But, there was more to the story. At school we were practicing a

play for the later entertainment of the parents. In this play I was to sing a

song with a girl, the song “Under an Umbrella Built for Two.” Well, when

we practiced the song, the girl held the umbrella out as far as she could to get away from me and my

“hightops.” No wonder I’ve always had an inferiority complex.

Like many other farms during the depression my Grandfather scratched out some extra income—as a

bootlegger. He distilled grain into alcohol and sold it for booze. Alcohol was prohibited by the 18th

Amendment to the Constitution, later repealed in 1933 by the 21st Amendment. While I don’t recall this

episode, Grandma says that once Grandpa was being investigated by the Feds and I went up to one of

them and tried to kick him in the legs, yelling, “You can’t take my Grandpa! You can’t take my Grandpa!”

However, I do remember well where Grandpa kept the still. He had a small wooden structure built at

the end of the hay mow. In it he kept the still, tubing, bottles, etc. With a couple of pitchforks of hay, this

box could be completely covered, and hidden from the hated Feds.

Grandpa was accident prone. He had been run over by a team and wagon on one occasion but

survived with injuries. He had been struck in the shoulder and seriously injured when a hay fork broke

loose in the barn and dropped on him. He had also been seriously injured when he was in a barn when it

was blown down in a cyclone.

There was always a great deal of work on the farm in

the summer months. In the late summer that meantharvesting grain. Oats were the principal grain crop. A

field of oats would be cut by a horse-drawn binder, a

piece of equipment drawn by two horses. The binder cut

the oats and at the same time tied it in bundles that were

dropped on the ground, to be later gathered in “shocks” to

await collection for “threshing.”

On one of those late summer days I went to the field

where Grandpa was cutting oats with the binder. When I

got there, I could see the team standing still in front of the

binder but couldn’t see Grandpa. When I got closer I heard

him call. He was laying on the ground about 50 feet

behind the binder. I ran to where he was and he told me,

“I’ve been run over by the binder. Go and get help.”

I ran to get the nearest farm house, about a quarter of a

mile away, and the farmer and a neighbor ran back with

me to where my Grandpa lay on the ground.

Grandpa tried to explain what happened. Apparently

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he was standing in front of the team when they were spooked by a pheasant flying up.

The team jumped and ran right over Grandpa with the binder. The heavy center wheel

crossed over his legs and stomach, gravely injuring him.

As he lay there on the ground he said, “I brought some water, it’s up there under

that tree in a jug. I need a drink real bad. Go get the water.”

I ran to the tree, but under the tree were two jugs. One held water, the other held oil,

which he brought to the field to lubricate the binder. I grabbed the first one I saw and ran

back to where Grandpa was lying. But I brought the wrong jug, the one with oil.

A man who was there ran back to the tree with me for the water jug. I remember all

of this as if it were yesterday, although now it is nearly 70 years ago. But I’ve always

carried a burden of feeling that I failed Grandpa when he needed me most by bringing the wrong jug.

Grandpa died about 10 days later due to blood poisoning and other complications from the terrible

accident.

Grandpa’s farm was mortgaged to the hilt. With his death, Grandma was forced to see what little was

left to pay his hospital and funeral expenses.

Mother found a small house to rent in Clinton and after the sale Grandma,

Mother and I moved into the house. For the first two years we had a fourth, my

Great Grandmother, Helen Baker. The house was about a thousand square feet in

size, two bedrooms, a small dining area, living room and kitchen, with one bath.

Four generations lived there together, until Grandma Baker died, as I recall in the

second year after Grandpa was killed. She died peacefully at home. She was

sitting dead in her chair when I came home from school with Grandma Simmons

crying beside her.

While I never remember being hungry, we were very, very poor. My mother

worked two jobs. For several years as a barmaid, something she hated, and on

weekends as a waitress. From time to time the girls in Chicago would send mother

some money to help support Grandma Simmons. For a time mother had another

woman and her child also living with us to help pay expenses. How we all fit in this tiny little house was

a miracle. When I think back on those days I begin to appreciate my mother very much. She had a very

difficult life, most of it devoted to keeping me, and yes, her mother.

The rock which mother held on to was her strong faith in the Catholic church. She never missed Mass

and I know gave a small portion of her meager income to the church. When I moved to Clinton, she had

me enrolled in the Sacred Heart Catholic school which I attended

for three years before High School.

In the area where we lived there were many other families

with children—all poor. We were on the edge of a small black

section, although Negroes were scattered throughout Clinton,

without regard to any social segregation. We all played together,

went to school together and grew up as kids without any overt

prejudice.

There was one great equalizer—we were all very, very poor. I

remember some of the special indications of poverty in those days.

When your shoes wore a hole in the sole you bought a cheap

rubber sole which was glued on the leather sole. It lasted for a

month or two and then you glued on another one. One of my jobs

was to go to the bakery and buy returned loaves of bread, brought

back as stale from grocers, and sold for a few cents a loaf.

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About two blocks away from our house was a junk

yard. We gathered scrap metal, when we could find it,

and carted it down to the junk yard to sell for a few

cents. As we left the junk yard we would often go out

through another entrance, some distance from the office,

and when no one was watching throw some pieces of

junk back into our wagon, returning a few days later to

sell the junk man back his own junk.

I scratched around to try to find some small job to

make a little money. One was a paper route with one of

the more obscure papers, hence not very profitable, but I

gave it up after a year or so when many of the customers

failed to pay. Then I found another job, while I was in

High School, working at the theater, assisting the janitor

in cleaning up after the Friday and Saturday night films.

For this he gave me the munificent sum of 50¢. That’s right, fifty cents! Ah, but I got a pass to the movies

and saw every one that came for free!

One particular event still sticks in my mind. I always wanted a bicycle, but mother couldn’t afford to

buy me one. However, in those days the merchants gave you a ticket with purchases and once a year they

would hold a drawing downtown with an array of gifts if you held the lucky winning number from one

of the merchant’s tickets which were numbered like a lottery ticket. I had a handful of these tickets and

attended the drawing one night. Low and behold, I had a winning ticket for a bicycle. However, the tires

had not been inflated properly and I almost ruined it by riding it home with nearly flat tires. But this was

cured and I had a bicycle!!!

As a small boy in Clinton, there were, however, many good things. We all learned to skate. First with

clamp-on ice skates and later I managed to get a pair of shoe skates. Hockey became my game. I was too

small to play football, too short to play basketball and too poor to learn how to golf. But, hockey, that was

another matter. I became a good and tough hockey player, spending much of my time in the winter in my

skates and on the ice.

The summer months for the first few years found me back on the farm. Mother arranged for me to

spend the summers with Joe and Laura Franzen, a couple who lived near us when Grandpa had his farm.

In fact they took my dog Rover when we left the farm and moved to Clinton.

Joe and Laura became my second parents and Joe my substitute father. They moved to another farm

near Charlotte, Iowa, and I spent three summers with them. Since

they had no children of their own they treated me as an adopted

child, at least for the summers. One of the things we did, sometimes

on weekends in the Fall was to hunt coons. Joe had a particularly

good coon dog, called “Lead.” We would follow the dogs at night,

when you hunt coons. I learned to tell where the dogs were in the

chase by the sound of the hounds. A special call when they were on

the trail of the coon and then a still different howl or bark when

they finally had the coon treed. It was exciting for a small boy and I

still seem to remember in my dreams the sound of “Old Lead”

baying after the coons.

I came to love both of them and particularly Joe as a second

father. But, this too came to a sad and early end. In the winter of

1936, Joe became ill and died after only a few weeks. Once again I

had lost a father.