Published in Golden Years April/May issue 1994
written by my aunt Bertha McGhee, Wellsville, Kansas
Memories of the Great Depression
One of my memories of the great depression years was my job teaching at an NYA (National Youth Administration) camp on the grounds of a former country club near Zara, Kansas. We opened in the winter with around 20 girls housed in the club house. Staff were housed there also. These were girls who had dropped out of school-in their teens because they couldn’t afford to attend.
The camp featured a work project and an educational program. The girls worked ˝ day and attended classes ˝ day. Divided into two groups, one group worked in the morning and went to class in the afternoon. While the other group reversed the timing. Their work project was making tennis nets which were sent to recreational projects. Classes were tailored to the level the girls had attained. At least one girl finished 8th grade level and received a diploma so she was eligible for high school credits and became eligible for college.
In the summers the numbers were expanded by adding movable buildings on the grounds when heat was no longer needed. Even on permanent building on the grounds-some distance from the lodge- was put to use. It was a sizeable building with screened-in-porch on two sides large enough to accommodate ten beds. This proved to be a place the girls vied to be assigned to. And I was assigned as counselor there. It gave us some interesting experiences.
There was a small stream we hopped across between us and the lodge. Also the largest burr oak tree I’ve ever seen. Its base had a hole in it large enough for the girls to crawl into it. Its great limbs arched up and out and down creating an outdoor “room” very near the cabin.
One very special 4th of July came while we were there. Some time after we moved into it we began to see granddaddy longlegs on the window ledges and even on our beds. We tried to think how to be rid of them. Fly spray didn’t seem to bother them. Then one of the girls found where they were coming from: the hollow of the big oak tree. They tried taking water from the stream and dashing it on them. It didn’t seem to phase them. It was the 4th of July so we had no work or classes that day. Then one girl said “We could burn them out. Put paper into the hollow and set it on fire.”
One girl ran to ask permission, while the others began gathering papers. The girl came back with the report that “They guessed it would be all right,” so the papers were stuffed in and lighted. It was an effective end to the daddy longlegs but it wasn’t the end of our problems, for soon we saw smoke coming out of the limbs high up in the oak tree. We were dismayed! Then I thought of the club grounds caretaker who lived next to us to the south. We went to him, told him what we had done and asked his advise. How happy we were when he said that if we followed his instruction we would have done the tree a service rather than destruction.
He said we would simply prepare mud and spread it both inside the hollow and up the tree wherever we saw smoke coming out. The mud patches on the outside would stop the circulation of air so the fire and the mud plaster within would help heal the rotting hole. We worked all day. The girls climbed into the tree until every smoking spot was closed with mud and at least for the remaining years we spent at the site the tree showed no ill effects of our project to keep granddaddy longlegs out of our cabin.
So remember, if you need to mend a wound on a tree, you don’t have to have some expensive paste. Common mud-dirt and water mixed to a paste consistency placed over wound worked real well!!