Claire
Kinkade went to high school during the 1920's and her family was part of World
War I. In her free time, she took voice lessons and sang in the
choir. She also was a nurse's aid for all state schools for the mentally
handicapped.
How did the Great War (WWI) affect your life?
One uncle was gassed and so he
suffered the rest of his life. And the man I married, Mr. Kinkade, had a brother
Leroy Kinkade who was also stationed over there, and he was gassed during that
first world war. And he and my uncle both suffered intensely for the rest of
their lives with the effects of the gas. But several of the young men in our
community were threatening those who weren’t going to war and they denounced
my father because he wasn’t going to go to war, he told the boys he had to stay home and take care of his wife and children- he couldn’t leave them
alone. Well, one morning I heard my mother crying and I woke up and went into
the kitchen where she happened to be sitting at the table and I said “What is
the matter?” and my father said, “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing,” and
my mother said, “NO it is something- go look at the front porch.” So I went
out and the front porch was covered with yellow paint and that indicated that my
father was a slacker because he wouldn’t go to the first world war- they were
called slackers, those who wouldn’t go. Of coarse, everyone thought it was very
patriotic to go to the first world war. Songs were written about going overseas,
and it was a very exciting time. And then when the war ended, I can remember
going into the little town near where we lived and they had a bonfire and they
were throwing in straw hats and were cutting off neck ties from the men who were
around celebrating the end of the war. This was supposed to have been the war to
end all wars. I’ve just been listening to a book about the life of
Michelangelo, and the wars- before Christ and since Christ, were all horrible-
just as terrible as they could be, and they didn’t have the weapons that we
have today, or coarse.
Did you or your family have to make any
adjustments after the war?
Well, not really because my father
didn’t go away and leave us. He had to keep us intact and my mother had no way
of traveling because then we didn’t have a car. Then, it was just horse and
wagon, horse and buggy- type thing. The cows
had to be milked and the pigs had to be slopped- all kinds of farm
chores. Mother couldn’t do it because she had babies, so we didn’t really
have that much of an adjustment. We just had to pretend that we were isolated.
What was life like in the 20’s?
Well, I finished high school at 17
and I taught school- I took a course in summer school, and I got a certificate
to teach school so I taught school in my 17th year, before I was 18
even. And then I went back to summer school and taught school again. At 19 I
went to college for a full year- in 1920 I was going to go back to school and
teach but my father said “I don’t want you to go teach school.” He said,
“You’ve been trying to do college work and teach school. You need the
rest.” I had an aunt out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and she wanted me to go
out and visit her. They had a little boy and she sent me a ticket for the train,
and the fall of when I was 19 I went out to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and my
uncle said “How would you like me to get you a job with Armstrong Insulation
Company?” That was a cork company- they made all kinds of cork products and I
thought that would be fun. It would be a variety from teaching, so I stayed out
there at the age of 19 and 20. I met my husband to be then and
he was an office manager at this company. We went together that next year
and in June of 1922, we were married- back in a
little town where I was born and raised in in Missouri. In the 20s we
were with this company and we were in Pittsburgh and then he was transferred to
Boston, Massachusetts. The depression hit and we had to come back to Chicago- he
lost his job. We came back to Chicago and visited with an uncle of mine who
wanted us to stay with him. But IO had two other uncles who owned and ice cream
parlor out in Kansas, and they thought it would be nice if my husband and I
would go out there and run that. During the 20’s and 30’s, that’s what we
were doing- I was getting married and living a new life and moving from
Massachusetts out to Illinois and Kansas.
What did you do for fun in the 20’s?
In the 20’s, we were married and
living in Pittsburgh and we traveled, he had charge of New England territory and
so I went with him. I got a job as a nurses aid for an all state school for the
mentally handicapped, and that was during the twenties. But we would go down to
the corner and get a taco or something because you could get them for a dime. So
we would walk and walk and walk and we’d go to parks and movies once in a
while- those were the fun things we did.
Did you ever participate in a dancing marathon,
and, if so, why did people do this?
I never did. I wanted my husband to
learn how to dance, because I loved to dance. He wouldn’t he wasn’t bothered
with that and he wasn’t even musical. And he would say, “Well, you can go if
you want to.” But who wants to go
to a dance marathon with nobody? So, no, but I was taking voice lessons at that
time, too. I studied voice in Pittsburgh and in Boston, Massachusetts. I also
sang in choirs.
What was it like living during the Prohibition,
and did you ever go to a speakeasy?
I never went to a speakeasy. None of
us were very interested in that kind of thing. There were only a certain class
of people who went to the speakeasies, but in Horton, Kansas, they were selling
3.2 beer. that’s a 3 point alcohol. It was very mild and so some of the boys
were sneaking that because it wasn’t exactly prohibition. They didn’t want
them to drink anything harder than that anyway. That’s all I know about that.
Do you remember anything about Al Capone,
gangsters, and bootlegging?
Al Capone? Yes, he was very active in
Chicago and we were in with my uncle in Chicago and read a lot about him. Of
course, he was Cicero was his hang out. Cicero, IL. He was one of the largest,
most renowned criminals at that time that I knew
anything about. But the old boy finally died. I think he got shot.
When did you get you first radio and what did it
look like?
My first radio? I got my first radio
when we lived in Boston, Massachusetts. “It was very tall and very- it looks
like a tombstone today, some of the
tombstones. It was built in that shape, in the half-circle. We were so excited!
We didn’t have anything to see but we could listen to comics over the radio
and whenever we were with a family or a group of people we would get as close to
the radio as we could because it was sometimes a lot of crackle noises. It
wasn’t very good reception but it was fun. That was my first one. And I
brought it all the way back to Missouri to show my mother and dad and then they
hung around too. It was fun.
In the twenties, jazz came out and that became
pretty popular. Did you have a favorite artist?
Well,
let’s see. Yeah, we had… what’s the fellow’s name? That was in the
parades and sang. I remember my husband courted me with
“Ain’t she sweet, coming down the street. Now I ask you
confidentially, ain’t she sweet?” That was the one he liked and he gave me a
ukulele and I learned to play that. We would pick out all the little songs that
were very popular during that day. Nelson Eddy- I saw him. I went to a parade
and I saw Nelson Eddy and then out in Kansas he was very popular at that time on
the radio. Nelson Eddy and the girl he sang with- they sang the Indian Love
Call- Yes, Janette McDonald. Those were the two that were very popular.
Everybody liked them. We could understand every word they sang, too, by the way-
not today they don’t!
Back a little earlier in the twenties, there were
a couple of presidents during their twenties. What do you remember about their
presidencies?
Well I saw Herbert Hoover and Cal
Coolidge. I went to the parades in Boston. They’re noted for their parades.
They just take every advantage of a holiday to have another parade. But I was
very close to them. Herbert Hoover was noted for his engineering ability and he
did a lot of trying to keep the United States on a self -paying basis. He was
criticized constantly. There was a lot of people against him- especially the
democrats because he was a Republican. They said when he was in office, “If
they let him be president, grass would grow in the streets and there would be
nothing anybody could do- the world would just be in a terrible mess.” Cal Coolidge won. He was the silent
Cal. He didn’t do much talking and he didn’t make speeches but everybody
loved his wife, Grace Coolidge was a wonderful, beautiful, beautiful woman. And
they lived in Massachusetts. Now Herbert Hoover and his wife came from Iowa.
While we were in Horton Kansas, during the latter part of the twenties, Franklin
D. Roosevelt was elected and, of course, he was the longest living President of
all of the presidents- 20 years for him, so that was a long time. That’s when
social security came into existence and the CCC, and he brought the country out
of the depression.
Did you have a favorite President?
Well, I don’t know that I had a
favorite one but I liked Cal Coolidge. I thought he was a pretty decent man, and
he tried to be. You know, its very hard for presidents to remain honest and
apolitical. But Cal Coolidge did as much I think, as anybody I had ever known.
We were never really crazy about Franklin D. Roosevelt- he wasn’t very moral.
But Cal Coolidge was moral, loyal to his wife.
Did you witness any experiences involving the Ku
Klux Klan and, if so, what happened?
That’s a little farther south than
I was. Yes they appeared in Kansas and tried to organize more people. But
that’s mostly in the south. And these were people, or course, that were
anti-blacks, that the Lord made only white people. He didn’t have anything to
do with all these “niggers” as he called them. It was a very racially,
sickening time. They burned churches, houses, anything they could to be mean to
the black people.
How did the
discrimination of blacks influence your society?
Well, I don’t know that I had much
trouble with that. When we were in Massachusetts, in the twenties there, we were
told that you don’t sit down with the black. And I was- we lived near Harvard
square, and there were blacks over there. Some of the blacks had gotten into
college at that time and there had to be a unusually intelligent black person to
pass- nobody paid much attention to them. I didn’t have as much trouble
because- even though we lived in a community in Missouri where blacks were not
allowed to live- in My county Skylark County, Missouri. They could live in
Scotland county which was ten miles southeast of us. My mother and dad , we had
a black mammy, and she would take us for rides in her cart with her horse. She
would hold us on her lap, I can remember that. But she couldn’t eat with us.
My mother would fix her plate of food and put it out on the porch. She had a
chair and a table out there. And mom would fix that and then we would come in
and all my life I kept thinking, “Why do we do this?” There’s something
wrong. Then, when we moved to Massachusetts, I found out that blacks were human
beings- just like everybody else. Of course, when I was in college, we had
blacks there too. I never had the feeling of racial hatred. I’ve seen it,
however, and it wasn’t a very pretty site.
Morally, in the nation during the 1920’s, how do
you think it compared to today?
Well,
there were people who thought dancing is a sin- that was when we had the jazz
and it was fun to dance. I liked to dance because I was very musical. I had a
lot of fun with it- I danced with boys in college and high school a little bit,
but not very much. That was also 3.2 beer- the women began to smoke, for one
thing, and the men were drinking stronger liquor. They’d sneak it in so it was
against the law, but they did it anyway. They said women were beginning to wear
shorter dresses and show more of their legs- which was very unusual. And wearing
more lipstick and smoking cigarettes. And then they had the burlesque shows that
showed more and more of their anatomy.
We just had a lot of fun. We had the
ouji board that was fun- telling fortunes. We never smoked, and we never drank.
But we had parties and we’d have soda and lemonade more then anything else but
coca cola was coming in at that time so people would take coca cola. One of the
things when we were in Kansas, I remember going over to the table to serve a
group of young people and they were giggling pretty much out of their heads and
I was trying to figure out what was wrong and my husband said, “Well, they’d
just put aspirin in the coke.” So that made them get pretty high. So that was
an exciting time for them.
Flappers wore shorter skirts and
saddle shoes and that was more the time when the women were starting to smoke.
During the 1920’s there was the Red Scare, the
threat of Communism- did that affect you?
No, that didn’t affect me but it
was a scary thing. Because everybody made a big thing out of it, you know. Just
like today, the bird flu is scaring everybody to death right now, and its blown
way out of proportion. We didn’t have any Communists around where I lived or I
never came in contact with any of them. So I don’t know an awful lot about it.
Did your family ever invest any money in the stock
market?
We invested money in United Fruit
Company. And we thought that was going to be just great, but when the depression
hit us right full hilt, we lost everything we had. So we had to start all over
again. And when we got to Kansas, this would be about 24 or 25 somewhere in
there, we just had to start all over again and save money. That was the big
thing for us. The thing that
happened when the Depression hit, in the 20’s, men who had large jobs with a
lot of money and lost everything they had- they were jumping out of windows, and
killing themselves or shooting themselves or doing all kinds of things because
they had nothing left. There was just absolutely nothing. Eggs and groceries
were very expensive just before the depression. Like, the eggs would be 78 cents a dozen in Boston and when we got back to Chicago ,
they’d dropped to 25 cents a dozen. So things just plummeted. The men who had
these big companies and big businesses folded, and that’s just all there was
to it. Everybody was out of work.
My husband worked at Goldblats, in Chicago for 12 dollars a day. And we
were thrilled to death to have it.
My uncle gave me ten dollars a week to feed the three of us, and I had enough
money left at the end of the week to by a pair of hose , and toothpaste or
toothbrush, or some face powder- things like that.
When did you get your first automobile, And what
was it like?
The first one we bought was when we
were in Kansas and it was a one-seater.
It had a top and it had a shelf
below the roof. The seat in between where I could fit our son- he was three
years old. We would put him in the back and make a little pallet for him. And
that was our first car. I think we paid $125 for it.
Is there anything else about the 1920’s that you
remember?
Well, It’s a good time to be alive.
It didn’t cost a lot, and we had plenty of things to do. The movies were
clean, music was clean, and we spent a lot of time with out friends. You just
learn to do things for yourself. There was a lot of emphasis on reading, and
reading good books and education. That was another thing that came into bloom.
More and more young people were
going to college- coming out as engineers and companies were looking for them-
hunting for the best of sons or daughters- mostly sons, of course. Women were
still in the secretarial kind of era. They weren’t CEOs like they are today,
and there weren’t many lawyers, you wouldn’t find that. You found mostly
women who went into teaching who went into to teaching and who went into be
nurses.
A loaf of bread, if you waited ‘til
about 9:00 at night, it would be about 10 cents a loaf. I f I wanted to by some
hamburger, I’d wait ‘til it was
ready to close because there was no
refrigeration- they had ice boxes and icemen who came and filled your box with
ice, but we didn’t have the
refrigeration. And if you waited long enough at night, you got 3 pounds of
hamburger for 15 cents. And they had beans,
and I’d cook up a big pot of navy beans on Saturday. For me, to think about
having navy beans soup on any day but Saturday- I just can’ even imagine.
Soup- bean soup, and I’d make corn bread. Those were the cheapest things we
could do. Then I’d have a salad or maybe coleslaw or something like that. I
was working and then sometimes I would work on Saturday at the grocery store-
right across the street from where we had this Smiley’s ice cream parlor. And
I’d get a dollar and a half a day. I would save up a dollar and a half a week.
I would run over to the dry goods store and buy myself a dress. And I bought a
beautiful navy blue- almost royal blue with little white dots all over it and
Georgian sleeves, that was real thin sleeves, so I was really proud of that.
Things were very different. The only people who really had any money were
teachers. They had a contract so
they could teach school.
And it was just a great time to be
alive.
Oral
History Project 
