The Johnson Saga by Chester Lafe Johnson

The Johnson Saga by Chester Lafe Johnson

This story spans the time from the late 1800's until the late 1900's. Though most of the time I will try to chronicle almost everything that happened when and where.

The first thing I remember I was with my father and standing me up on the counter, telling the storekeeper, "This is my boy Chester". I was about four years old. This was in the town of Newhall, Iowa. My father Frank worked in a grain elevator for another Jack Johnson (no relative). It went on this way for a few years. One day Jack Johnson said to my father, "How would you like to go on a farm owned by Mrs. Worster? She has a 640 acre farm and is looking for a good partner to run it for her. All the profits will be split two ways?" My father said, "I'll go out and look at it and meet your mother-in-law." So the deal was made and we moved out to the farm. My father hired two men to work - one was named Murphy and the other one was A. Werner. My uncle who was humpback came to work there. He was beat with a club when a boy by his grandfather, which caused him to be humpback.

We planted a hundred acres of oats and planted about 160 acres of corn. We bought about 100 head of cattle and 200 pigs. We raised a lot of chickens. I remember the first day my father showed me how to run a riding cultivator, to go up and down rows of corn to keep the weeds out.

I went to school at Eldorado No. 8 and had to walk about a half mile. I went through eight grades there and got pretty good grades. My teacher was Miss Sims. When the first year crops were ready to harvest, we started to husk corn. We had a wagon with side boards and you threw the corn against the boards so it wouldn't go over the other side. The first year I got so I could husk about 50 bushels a day. The other man did better than I but I was only about 12 years old then. I didn't pick steady as I had to finish school. About the second year there my father decided we would get a corn picker. Three horses pulled it besides two two men on wagon who caught the corn as it came down from the picker. It wore the horses down pulling this rig but we picked about 500 bushels a day, which was much better than we picked by hand. We had calamity hit us during the second year. These pigs we got when we first started out were registed Poland China. When they were grown, we had hog cholera strike the whole herd and they all died but an old boar. this crippled us financially, and Mrs. Worster wanted more and more money to pay off the bills. My dad was sure she was using the money for other things which had nothing to do with the farm. We had been there about nine years when he decided to take his share of the profits and go somewhere else. He looked through the newspaprs and found a farm for rent at New Virginia, Iowa. We shipped our cattle and horses, and Dad and I rode a box car to New Virginia. My mother and sister Francis went by train. After we unloaded the animals we went to the farm which was half a mile from town.

We went to school in New Virginia until I was in the middle of the tenth grade. I heard of a farmer who wanted pickers to get his corn to market as fast as possible. The corn was for a starch factory. He would pay 10 cents a bushel for picking. I knew I could make about $10 a day which was BIG wages in those days.

While in New Virginia I met the editor of the town newspaper, and asked if I would like to go to Osceola with him and meet some nice girls. So that was where I met Elsie Paschall. When I saw her I said to myself, "She is it." We went together a few months and then I proposed. We married a few months later at Chariton on January 1, 1921.

As soon as Elsie and I were settled in, my dad suggested I take a new gasoline route at Slater, Iowa. He had brought a new truck and took over this gasoline station at Lacona, Iowa. I hauled oil for my father's station until they had a new pumping station, then I brought a truck and relayed gas from Lacona to customers at Milo. Elsie and I rented a house in Milo and stayed there for a few years. My father decided to buy a couple of supply tanks and go independent. We bought all our oil from Texaco, and everything was fine until we had a price war., when we made money only from kerosene and cylinder oil.

Betty was born to us September 19, 1921. I can still recall my dad playing with his little grandaughter. He then decided to sell the bulk station and filling station. Buy a car and go to Oregon. So Tillet Torgerson, who had married my sister Frances, had this big Buick and went to Oregon to pick hops at Independence, Oregon. Elsie and I bought a restaurant in Milo. We had another daughter Roberta, who was blonde. Betty was dark haired. After running the restaurant for two years, we sold it and went to Oregon. We bought a Chevy roadster and Elsie's father turned a door around and made a backseat for the girls.

After we got to Independence we met all the family and I was made foreman to pick hops for the season. We went to Florence, oregon to live as my father had traded for a lot with two houses on it across the Suislaw River in Glenada. Elsie and I and the girls in one house, and folks, Frances and Tillet in another house. Tillet got a job with a fishing boat, and took to it right awa, as he was Scandinavian. It was in his blood. I fished for a while with the man who ran the post office. We did all right fishing - we caught a ton of fish one night. But I didn't care too much for fishing so my dad and I decided to work in the sawmill in Cushman. My dad talked to the men who had the wood business who were a couple of boozers and not doing well. They offered to sell the business to my dad and he snapped that up quick. About that time a dredgeboat started dredging the river so they bought wood from us. We did really well besides selling wood to people in town. The wood business was rolling along fine until the mill owners went bankrupt and went out of business. Dad traded our two houses in Glenada for wood acreage at North Plains, Oregon. It was 80 acres and well wooded with old growth fir. We made a toad and hauled the wood with horses. We sold the acreage finally to a man who wanted to plant trees there and have a tree farm. We found a new place on a shady brook with lots of timber on it. We built a plank road to get there and got a guy with a sawmill to come in and saw lumber and we were to get so much a thousand for our share. We then built a house in Hillsboro with lumber besides repairing two other houses.

While at Glenada we had another child - our long awaited boy, Ronald Dean Johnson. He was a joy from the time he was born and has always been great. He almost died as the doctor had to row over on March 18, 1932 when he had yellow jaundice.

While I was working getting the gas engine to start for cutting wood I told my two workers on top of the chute to thrown enough wood to saw. I was lubricating oil in the engines when one of the big chunks of wood came down and hit me on the back. It tore a lot of ribs loose besides bruising my back. My dad went up the hill to get Archie Hutchinson to take me to the doctor. When I got there at the office, the doctor said that this was bad. He wrapped me up with tape from my neck to my hips and said all you can do is wait for it to heal. No lifting or hard work or it will never heal. Archie drove the truck and piled wood for about two weeks until my back healed up.

Since we didn't have any more wood to sell and I was hauling my last load of wood, I was wondering what we were going to do next. I was driving down the street in Hillsboro and saw a sign "For Sale" in the window of the bus station. I was curious and went in and talked to the owner. I asked him the price and it seemed a fair price so I said, "Will you help me get started and show me all about the prices of all the tickets?" "Yes," he said, "I will stay a few days. I said you've got a deal." I got in my truck and sold the last load of wood I would ever sell and went home to tell the family. Elsie said, "We don't know anything about selling tickets." I said, "The guy is going to stay for a while and we'll learn."

So we moved from North Plains to the upstairs over the station. We also had a restaurant and we asked Roberta if she wanted to run it. She could have the profits to see her through college. I found out why he wanted to sell - there wasn't too much business for a while and the commissions on sale of tickets only netted us about $125 per month. We sold Oregon Motors and Greyhound tickets and took care of the mail bags which were sent on the Greyhound to Portland. My father moved in from North Plains and took the contract to haul the mailbags from the post office to the station with a hand truck. The day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor was a big surprise to all. The United States declared war at once against Japan. Many navy ships and the army was on the go, and many men were drafted andd many enlisted. Our station had a great increase in business and our commissions increased five-fold.

Elsie had her han ds full figuring out bus fares to many places and scheduled trips for many service men going to camp. Her health started to fail. It was in her throat and she could hardly talk. We finally decided to sell out to a man who wanted to buy it. We got a very good price. After we sold it we went into Portland to live. I asked at the Greyhound station in Portland if they needed anyt help. The superintendent knew me and said if you want a job, be here in the morning and we will hire you. We had a manager by the name of Gustafson who seemed to take a liking to me. So one day he asked, "How would your wife like to come here to work in information?" I said, "I don't know how her throat is getting but I will ask her." She said, "Yes, I will try it." So she came in part-time as a relief girl at the switch board when someone had a vacation. She got along fairly well working part-time. He asked if our daughter Roberta and son Ronald wouldn't like to come and work as we have some openings for both of them in the baggage and express department. So they both came to work during school vacation and worked several months. Elsie worked until 1969 when her throat got so bad the doctor said she should get out of work where she had to talk all the time. Greyhound retired her on a medical pension. It was a good pension. When she passed away in 1983 they sent a sizeable check for funeral expenses.