I went to visit Uncle Dick to see if I could write about his life. He said sure. This is his story:
I'll tell you my whole life story. I was born in Hudsonville Illinois in a small farming community in South East Illinois on a little farm called Walbash river. It was the boundary between Illinois and Indiana. I was born on Oct 25, 1919 right after the end of WWI. My dad was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania where the first oil well was drilled in the United States. He married my mother, Edna Everyingham; a farmers daughter. There was an oilfield in Hudson by Bibiville he went through there to work. He was handsmome and the ladies saw the men working and brought them out some cookies and that’s how they met mother and father. In 1910 oil was discovered in Taft; the Lakeview Gusher. It spewed and blew the derrick apart. It came up like a fountain for 18 straight months. So my dad came out and homesteaded some land here. In order to get land you had to live on it for five years and improve it in order to buy it. He chose the Maricopa flat on Copus Road (section 30 township 12 range 22 I think). My dad thought there would be oil on it but never was any, but it later became good farm land. Now it’s leased for farming. My mother had four kids. George is the oldest and was ten years older than me. Alice was eight years older and Miles was three yrs older than me. Goerge and Alice were born on the Maricopa flats at home with a midwife.
I can't believe the hardship they had out there. They had to haul their water eight miles from Maricopa. I cant believe it, I’ll tell you what. They lived out there for five years to get the title. Once they got the title they moved back to Hudsonville. Life was too tough there. In 1919 I was born I lived in Hudsonville for four years. In 1923 my dad decided to move to Bakersfield, I don’t know what drew him to here. He wasn’t a farmer and Hudsonville was all farming; that didn’t appeal to him. Maybe he thought there were opportunities out her in California, but I don’t know why he chose Bakersfield (instead of the coast). The first house we lived in was on 23rd near Spruce or Elm in Westchester. Then they bought the one on Sunset Ave and that is where I grew up.
