Addendum to Grover Lamro Hoopes Autobiography-By John Hoopes
I went from Soda Springs, Idaho to Thatcher for Father’s Day, 2000. Fred and Kris picked me up and took me back, which I appreciated. I took a video camera and a little dictating tape recorder, hoping to get Dad to put more of his life’s story in words. I took the autobiography he wrote a few years ago to jog his memory. This weekend, he said that he wrote that story while working by himself at the inspection station. He had lots of time to think and write, and I think it is great–just needs to be more. I pointed out that 80% of the story is the 5 years of his mission and military service, but he summed up 50 years of family life into less than a page.
On Saturday Fred, who was also with us, and I got Dad to talk with the tape recorder running and we got an entire 60 minute tape. I will transcribe that tape as soon as possible, send it to Dad for editing and then put it in his life’s story. (as of December 2005, I don’t know where that tape is, or even if it can be transcribed.)
On Sunday morning Dad answered Fred’s questions for another hour, with my recorder running. Unfortunately, I didn’t push the tiny “record” button all the way back and so we didn’t get anything on tape. What follows is an attempt to remember what Dad said, type it up with as much detail as possible, send it to him for corrections and editing, and it if is okay, we’ll put this in the story too, unless he wants to re-word it in the first person. (I sent this to Dad, and asked him several times about making changes. He said it was fine and so no changes were made, so I assume it is correct and he has read and approved it.)
BACK HOME IN THATCHER
Dad returned home from the Army on 14 Nov 1945 and married Mother on 5 Dec, two weeks later. In getting settled, they went to the college (Gila College, whose name was later changed to Eastern Arizona Junior College and then to Eastern Arizona College) to see about schooling, using Dad’s GI bill. He was interested in being a pharmacist, like his two uncles, but the requirements for licensure had just changed. You were now required to go to four years of college, and that would have to be in Tucson. Previously, you could become a pharmacist with less training and an apprenticeship. (Dad said that Uncle Glen Hoopes didn’t even graduate from high school. Uncle Nat and Uncle Glen got their pharmacy training in six weeks or so in Denver, Colorado. A family friend, Dr. Platte, was their preceptor and he even had a part interest in the drug store in Thatcher during the early days.)
Dad’s father-in-law, Fred Russell, worked at the State Employment Office in Safford and told him about a job opportunity at the state inspection station at Gripe (also called Solomonsville, Solomonville or Solomon). With Grandpa’s help, Dad immediately got a job as an inspector and started work. Dad also obtained a contract for cleaning the Employment Office in Safford, a job he did before work for about twenty years. Occasionally, mother would fill in and I went and “helped.” This office gave us access to typewriters, which I was allowed to use to type research papers when I was in junior high and the first couple of years of high school, before we invested in a typewriter.
For their wedding present Grandpa and Grandma Hoopes gave the newlyweds a building lot at First Street and Stadium Avenue in Thatcher. This land was adjacent to Dad’s Uncle, Nat’s home, which had been the home of Grandfather George Arthur and Grandmother Charlotte Iris Curtis Hoopes. (George Arthur died when Dad was almost 7 and Iris, as she was called, died when Dad was 16). They were expected to build their home on this land, which had previously been a fruit orchard, with peach, apricot and plum trees. There is still a lonely old plum tree on the west side of the property, which was part of the original orchard–it has refused to die. Under the old plum we had the dog houses and around it Dad built a concrete “fish pond” for Jan’s wedding. We even got a few plums each year from the tree, which was more like a big bush than a tree.
As a wedding present Grandpa and Grandma Russell gave the couple free rent in one of their rental houses, just northwest of their house in Safford.
Dad relied heavily on his father, Grover Hoopes, for the how-to of building a house. Dad had helped his father build their home of adobe bricks at First Street and College Avenue in Thatcher, but that was when he was a young teenager. (They used the lumber from the original house built by Archibald Lamoreaux for the new house–it was during the depression and money was not available.) When they lived at Ft. Grant, Grandpa Grover had instructed the boys in carpentry and building skills, so he was also a knowledgeable teacher.
Dad bought the cement bricks for his house in Safford. Jess Rowley had some role in building them. They had a cement plant and poured the cement material into hand molds and made them similar the way adobe blocks were made, which explains their irregularities. The process of making “cinder blocks” for homes wouldn’t be perfected for years in the Phoenix valley. Dad laid the blocks himself. His father helped him figure out how to leave holes for the windows, doors, etc.
The floor of the house was made from fir tongue and grove flooring, and when it was new it was really quite beautiful, said mother, who used to polish the floor with Johnson’s paste wax. Later wanted it covered with the tendy “wall-to-wall” carpeting. The lumber for the house came from Weyerhaeuser in Oregon, delivered to Brooks Lumber.
The house was originally heated with a little unvented natural gas stove, that sat in the corner of the dining room. Later, they added the gas furnace under the house, with the hole in the floor for the heat to rise from–there wasn’t a fan. The furnace was used to dry clothes in the wintertime, when it wasn’t convenient to put clothes on the line in the back yard to dry. When his children were little, Dad made a wooden cage that sat over the floor grate to keep the kids off its hot surface. It came in handy to hang wet clothes. All members of the family liked that part of the house in the winter, spending a lot of time standing on the grate. Our shoes all had little waffle designs in the soles.
When I was about twelve and still sleeping in the bedroom with Jean, the ducting was installed in the attic. Originally the cooling in the summer time was from a swamp cooler placed in the north east window of the living room, with the hose constantly running on the lawn. I remember drinking the water from the hose, it was remarkably cold and tasted like the cedar shavings it was wetting.
The entire home was built without a power tool of any kind. Hand saws, etc., were used. Grandpa Grover himself built all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, again without a power tool, and on site.
There were no pre-built roof trusses then either. Dad built the first rafter system with his father’s help, then he just duplicated the rafters, with his father helping him figure out how to make the rest of the roof.
Dad’s mother died of heart problems at the age of 53, on 4 July 1947. They still had GA, Jerry and Nel at home. Eight year old Nel went to live with Uncle Glen and Aunt Lavona, leaving Jerry, who was 12 at the time and 17 year old GA, who joined the service. Grandpa Grover asked Dad and Mother and seven month old Johnny to live with him so Mother could take care of the house, which they did. Jean was born while they were living in Grandpa’s house. This put them closer to the house they were building, although they stopped construction for a while after Grandma’s untimely death. All in all, it took three years to build the house from the time they started until they moved in.
The house was built up about three feet off the ground level because flooding was a common occurrence before the diversion dams up at the base of Mt. Graham were built. Uncle Nat’s house had a wall with a place to put boards in the opening for the sidewalk in case of flooding. This house was closer to ground level, so it needed the wall. I remember standing on the front porch of our house on a summer afternoon watching it rain, and then seeing a wall of water come down Stadium Avenue–we were having a flood! Our house had no wall to protect it, so I was afraid we would get water in the house, but fortunately, we didn’t. However, there was quite a bit of mud left on the front lawn. After it dried, Dad used it for fill to make a driveway on the west side of the house. Before that we parked on the east side of the house. He also built a block wall with groves into which boards were slid when a flood was imminent.
When Dad started to build the house he was working at the inspection station. He went to Brooks Lumber Company in Safford to buy the materials for his house. The owner, Paul Brooks, and the other partner, Merle Foutz, married to a distant cousin of Dad’s, must have seen potential in Dad. They asked him if he would like to work for them as their bookkeeper. Dad had no training in bookkeeping, but was interested because they offered him twice the pay he was receiving at the inspection station, a raise from $175 per month to $350. Brooks Lumber Company was able to afford this because of a program that reimbursed them for hiring veterans. Dad took a correspondence course, through the GI Bill, to teach him bookkeeping skills.
While working at Brooks Lumber, Dad was able to buy materials for the house at cost, plus 10%, which was a savings. When it came time to put the windows in the house, he ordered them from a mill in El Paso, Texas. They were wooden window frames without glass. Dad learned to cut glass and then to “glaze” or install glass in windows. He became so good at it that he “moonlighted” by glazing the windows on the houses being built in the Gila Valley. I remember him working evenings on houses; sometimes I even got to go watch. After wooden windows, metal ones that had little hand cranks, became popular. These had to have the glass “glazed” in too. Later came aluminum windows with glass already installed. Many years later Fred and Dad installed double pane aluminum windows in the house in Thatcher. Fred was working on restoring the Williams house in Douglas and he took Dad as a mentor. For pay, Fred bought the new windows and they installed them in the family house.
Portland cement came into Safford on rail cars and the cement was in bags. The companies sent extra bags because some would invariably break, spilling out onto the railroad car. Dad knew about this because Brooks Lumber Company sold cement. He learned that they needed the rail cars shoveled out, so Dad agreed to do this work if he could have the cement. It is with this cement that Dad then paved the driveway. He went to the hills and got sand from the washes. He borrowed the City of Thatcher’s cement mixer, keeping it at his house for a while, and mixing enough to do a six foot square at a time. That’s why the driveway doesn’t look like it was poured in one pour, it wasn’t. Later, Dad put the carport on over the cement driveway. Grandson, Jason LeBaron helped him do this project.
Dad built the house all by himself, except for the plumbing, electrical work and the plastering. They paid professionals to do this, but Dad served as their helpers, keeping the cost of the work down. Ed Nelson, a distant relative on Mother’s side and hunting friend of Dad’s, did the plumbing. Evans did the electrical work. A man did the plastering for $1,000, which was a healthy sum then. He was very good though, and the plasterer gave Dad the idea of making the ceilings in the living room tapered in from the sides, which Dad did with metal lath. In those days sheet rock, as we use now, was not used. Rock lath, which came in 16 x 48 in. pieces were put over the 2 x 4 walls. Then the plasterer applied the mud by hand with a trowel.
The original roof was natural wooden shingles. Later it was painted silver. For many years the block house was left in its natural gray cement color, before Mother prevailed with paint in a trendy hue. Dad didn’t want to ever paint it, saying it would just have to always be painted after that.
Nearly every fall, when Dad went deer hunting for a week, Mother had some “surprise” for him when he returned. One fall, she decided to separate Jean and I, who were sharing a bedroom. The house only had two bedrooms. She bought a bunk bed at Army surplus and put Fred and I in the “service porch,” as the room was called. We shared the room with the washer (we didn’t yet have a drier) and the water heater. It was a cosy room with its own outside entrance/exit, which was handy for teenagers. Later that fall, Dad built a moveable “wardrobe” for us, as well as a desk. Above the wardrobe was the pantry shelves, which still held cans and bottled food. In the ceiling was the crawl space for the attic, an interesting place to go exploring. In the closet in the west bedroom was the crawl space for under the house. Things were stored there, mostly just under the trap door. There were fun things down there, including Dad’s old Army uniforms, etc. We stored our year’s supply of pecans down there, or in the closet.
When the house was new it was one of the better homes in Thatcher, much better than those of other young married couples.
It wasn’t until many years later that mother decided they needed a fireplace. The Ferrins called and said they were tearing down an old house which had fired red bricks, suitable for a fireplace. Mother got the bricks, brought them home and cleaned them for the fireplace. There was a trend of heating homes with wood so they would be more self-sufficient, so Dad put in a fireplace, with which the house could be heated. He spent quite a bit of time cutting mesquite firewood. He also gathered the trimmings from the pecan orchard and from his own trees for firewood.
FIREARMS
When Dad was about sixteen years old, working at his uncles’s Drug Store in Thatcher, a customer well known to Dad, Clive Beebe, bought a new deer hunting rifle. Dad asked him what he was going to do with his old one and he said he didn’t need it and would sell it for what he paid, $8.00. Dad was making $5 a week at the time, so he bought the gun and still has it. It is a Marlin 30-30. Later, but while still working at the Drug Store, Dad and his mother went in together to buy Grover a new hunting rifle, a 300 Savage (a 30 gauge). It cost $45.00 and was ordered through the Drug Store. Dad inherited this gun from his father and it is favorite for deer hunting. Dad has another rifle, one that he obtained while on his way home from Japan at the end of World War II. They were letting servicemen bring home souvenirs. This was a new Japanese military rifle, with the manufacturing oil, cosmoline, (thick like Vaseline) still on it. When he got it home, Dad took the rifle to a gunsmith in Solomonville and had it re-made into a 30-06.
Dad also has shotguns and pistols. The oldest pistol is a little pearl handled 22, which has an interesting history. When Dad’s great grandmother, Sarah Diantha Gardner Curtis, was living on the ranch in St. David about 1885, bands of renegade Apaches, maybe even Geronimo or Cochise himself, would show up at her door step. She tried to be friendly with the Indians, offering them food–which they sometimes demanded, but she secretly feared them. The Curtis’ had a Chinese (Chinaman) cook who went in to Tucson occasionally for supplies. One time he came back with the little pistol, which he gave to Sadie and which she kept in the pocket of her big apron. She probably didn’t ever brandish it on an Apache, but it was good insurance. It is still in firing condition.