Heat Wave

and I sure hope this heat wave isn't leading up to a drought.  Drouth, Gramps used to say.  I wonder what the difference is . . .  well, I went and checked . . . and there is no difference.  Just a preference.

drought (drout) also drouth (drouth) n.

1. A long period of abnormally low rainfall, especially one that adversely affects growing or living conditions.

2. A prolonged dearth or shortage.
I wonder why Gramps pronounced it "drouth".  I suppose that is the way his folks said it.

Anyway, Gramps remembered the drouth of the 1930s.  He remembered the Dust Bowl and The Great Depression.  Gramps always called it "The Great Depression" and not just the Depression.

(This is a photo of Austins during The Great Depression or shortly after.  That is probably my Gramma Austin, there, with three or four of her half grown sons.  There were a few years where there wasn't enough work for the "boys" -- even tho they were hardworkers.  They would cut fire wood all day with an axe, to sell the firewood.  My dad worked in a brickyard a hot Iowa summer or two where you were out in the hot sun, in a kiln or putting bricks in or pulling bricks out of a kiln.  They could hay all day.  They were young, and lean and fit.) 

My Mama, in 1938, said she saw her future husband, Forrest, and his brothers at his folks' house during the day and wondered why they weren't out working at something "useful".  Remind me.  I can expound on this in another post.  Back to the original thought . . .

Gramps always feared another drouth.  I got that fear from him; I inherited it.  When it is rainy and we get lots of rain, I will say "better too much than too little".  I always worry when it starts getting dry and we need rain.  Like now.  I'm worrying that it is not going to rain.  I know from my folks that drought is to be feared. 

In the late 1940s or early 1950s, there was a dry spell.  Gramps was farming and had about 7 children.  I wonder if he got to worrying on how he would support a family of 8 or 9 if there was another Drouth.  We'll never know --  but if he did or he didn't, he did in fact sell the farm and move to town.  He created a junkyard called Austin Auto Parts that supported a family of 11 from 1952 into the mid 1960s. 

There is a family story that Gramps' father, during The Great Depression, bought a barber shop/pool hall.  He was supposed to have said "times won't ever get so bad that men won't play pool".  But times did.  Times got hard and men couldn't pay a barber to cut their hair or to give them a shave with a newly sharpened straight edge razor.  Business dried up -- even at the pool hall.  Eventually, the Austin family couldn't pay the bills and the money wasn't coming in, and they all piled into the old Model A or whatever car they had patched together at the time and rode off into the sunset . . . to another life and career.

They might have went back to Pleasant Township, Union County, Iowa.  Gramps was one of the small boys in this photo, long about that time. 

One of the reoccuring themes during the R. B. Austin family's life and times during the Great Depression was cars breaking down.   Austins were always fixing cars.  Fixing tires.  Austins replacing windows and carboraters and radiators and ty rods and such.  And patching tires.  Tires were prone to blowouts back there in the 1930s and especially used tires and patched tires.  Those Austin boys, Robert, Leonard, Forrest, Ivan and even Jerry could probably change or patch a tire in the dark.  Anyway, seems like the Austins were always looking for used parts and used tires for used cars.  Always. 

(borrowed from the internet)

I wonder if all those times Gramps was under a car on the side of the road or hitching hiking to town to get a new car part was the reason Gramps moved from the farm to the junkyard.

Was he pretty sure that times would never get so bad that folks wouldn't need used cars and used car parts? 

Whatever the reason, Gramps ran what he called the Best Little Junkyard in South West Iowa.  He supported his family and usually paid 2 or 3 local men and 2 or 3 of his sons and for awhile, even his own father, to work in the "yard".   Gramps made a good move at the right time even though the dry spell in the 1950s wasn't as bad as the drouth of the Great Depression. 

Anyway, these kids all thought it was the thing to do!