ISBN: 9781483509914

Special Thanks

I would like to thank Diane Baublits who spent hours proofreading this book, then sending it back. Kathleen Pruett and Donna Miller continued to encourage me to write Father’s story, even when I was ready to give up. Thanks ladies.

Chapter 1-The Early Days

Earnest Dale Hanson, a surviving WWII POW, was born on September 20, 1920 to Charlie and Hattie Hanson on a homestead near the little town of Kim in Southeastern Colorado. “Grandfather Henry Hanson made the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush in a wagon, didn’t get a piece of land in the first run, but was successful on the second. My mother’s family, the Connellys, also homesteaded at the same time in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). It was there that my folks met and were married, receiving a cow for their wedding present.

Shortly thereafter, the Hanson and Connelly families decided to join a wagon train and move to Kim, Colorado, where there was also land to be homesteaded.

My parents, Charlie and Hattie Hanson, making their way home with their wedding present – a cow loaded into their wagon.

My parents in their horse drawn buggy. Elmer Hanson is standing beside them.

My folks travelled in a wagon with a jetty since the jetty portion could be used as a temporary dwelling. The jetty (which was the part of the wagon with the bowed canvas top) fit inside a wagon bed and could be removed when the destination was reached. One of the duties of the women was to collect buffalo chips (dung) so that they would have a source of fuel for cooking the meals. When the wind blew, my mom would put extra heavy pepper into her seasoning so that no one would know the difference between buffalo chip ashes and pepper. Everyone knew what was going on, but it made them feel better to tell themselves that it was only pepper. The trip was made in the summertime, so the lack of wood along the journey wasn’t a factor in fire building for warmth. Dry Buffalo chips were easily collected and didn’t weigh much.

The two families settled (about two miles south of Kim) along the Mesa De Mayo, which formed a horseshoe, giving them a little more moisture from the formation of the land. Each head of household chose his 160 acres (both of my parents filed for 160 acres, so we had 320 acres for our farm) and settled in to make it home. My dad took the jetty out of the wagon and put it on the ground where he and my mother lived during their first year in Colorado. Winters are harsh in Southeastern Colorado. It was a hard time for them dealing with the snow and below zero cold with nothing between them and the weather but wood and canvas. They couldn’t build a fire in the jetty to keep warm so most of their living had to be done outdoors. Without wells, water for livestock and the family had to be hauled in the wagon from Kim, 2.5 miles away. Because of the cold winter, water left overnight often froze and became useless for livestock. Life was difficult for them that first winter.

In the spring, the families started going into the canyons, cutting wood and stone to start building homes. There was sandstone in the canyons that could be broken into building blocks for a house. Dirt was mixed with water to make mud, and then the stones were set in the mud to stop the wind from blowing through. The first home was constructed this way with a dirt floor, no ceiling and a metal roof, but it was a mansion compared to living in the jetty. At the same time the homesteaders were building houses, ground had to be plowed, planted, harvested and threshed.

Picture from 1922 of my sister Doris at 6 months old and me at 2.

My parents’ first child, a son, was stillborn. A second son was born within the year, and then in 1920, I was born, another son. A diphtheria epidemic raged through Kim and my older brother died of it in 1923. In 1925 a diphtheria vaccination was available; I was vaccinated with hope that I wouldn’t contract the disease and die, too. The vaccinations hadn’t been tested very well yet and I had a severe reaction to it, causing me to be mentally slow until somewhere around the age of twelve.

There were three homesteads that made up the 640 acres on our square mile, my parents’ 320 acres, my Uncle Ralph Koonz’ 160 acres, and my Uncle Adolph Hanson’s 160 acres. Eventually my family ended up with all three after they had been “proven up”. Each homesteader had to live on the land, build a home, make improvements, and farm for 5 years before they were eligible to "prove up". A total filing fee of $18 was the only money required. In 1927 we moved to the better house that was on what had been the Koonz's section. It actually had a wooden floor instead of our dirt one. We had a problem with the house, however, a snake had taken up residence under the floor, and he would pop up through a knot hole whenever he wanted to see what was going on in the house. My mom decided one morning that she had had enough of the snake! She pulled up a chair and sat with the .22 single shot, waiting. When it appeared, she took her single shot and killed it – we never had that problem again.

Our second home in Kim, CO. The picture was taken in 1974.

One Sunday my mom decided that we should go to church. We made the 2.5 mile walk to the school house where church was held and, to my surprise, they had a chair there that I decided was just my size. I took possession of the chair and dragged it everywhere I went. At the end of the service, I was told that I had to leave the chair at church. I walked back home with my mother, thinking about the wonderful chair that I had had to leave behind.

Pop went to town two or three times a year for supplies. The trip to town took a week for the round trip. He had the choice of two towns that were large enough to buy supplies to survive until the next trip. Trinidad, CO is the county seat of Las Animas County (in which Kim is located) where he could go to the courthouse to report births as well as buy supplies. I have no birth certificate since Pop didn’t make the 65 mile trip specially to report births. The only document I have is a note from the Kim School stating that I appeared to be about ten years old in 1930. La Junta, CO is the other town where supplies could be bought. Each town had one bad hill between it and Kim. The Kim Hill on the way to La Junta was so steep that on one trip the horses decided they couldn’t pull the wagon, so they went over the side, wagon and all. My dad said they traveled to the bottom, hooked the horses back up, reloaded the wagon and started again on the road at the bottom. The horses made it on the next try. The road to Trinidad’s hill (Frijoles Hill) was so steep that when they had a car, the car had to be backed up the hill or the gasoline wouldn’t run to the motor. The fuel in the old cars was gravity fed. By backing up the hill the fuel ran into the motor, getting us to the top of Frijoles Hill. Owning a car was a great improvement over making the trip with a team and wagon – the trip to either town could be made in one day with the Model T Ford which my father purchased when I was about 7 years old. I decided I could just as easily jump out of the car as I could jump off a wagon. The result was a broken arm. It was 65 miles to see a regular doctor, so my parents took me to the grocery store in Kim to have it set. Doc C, the grocer, set the arm for me. When the army x-rayed the break, they found that he had done a perfect job.