My dad wrote this about his dad for the paper:
The year was 1913 when Jim joined the McCown family in Ada, Oklahoma (or rather, Indian Territory, as his father always called it). The family was part of the Scotch Irish immigration. After the Civil War the family had moved around the South. His Grandma was a Cherokee princess who had walked the Trail of Tears. When he contracted polio, she took him out to the reservation for treatment. He did walk, but with a slight hitch in his giddy up. Maybe that came from his bull riding days.
The family suffered through the dust bowl, trying to farm and often failing. Jim and his friend Rob Johnson decided to go to California. They left with a few dollars and an old Chevy with weak brakes. One time they stopped at the top of the long downhill stretch of road outside Lincoln County, New Mexico, Billy-the-Kid Country. Rob got out and walked. Jim rode the car down through town and up the other side. They handled another down stretch by backing down the steep road.
Earlier they had looked ahead and seen tremendous black clouds on the horizon – more dust storms like back home? A few days later, they approached the Rocky Mountains and saw that the dark clouds were really mountains. Back home, Tea Cup Hill was 25 feet high and Tea Kettle Hill was 30 feet high.
Just outside of Needles they were stopped by a California Highway Patrolman who said, ”Boys, by order of good ole Governor Hyrum Johnson we have enough of you Okies here so just turn your rig around and head on back home.” They said, “Yes, Sir.” And headed east until they were out of sight. Then they turned left, looped around Needles to the North, caught Route 66 west of Needles and kept on a coming.
About Barstow, Rob headed down to San Bernardino and Jim headed on into the Central Valley. He learned to eat lettuce picking it in Salinas. He cut wood up above Toll House outside of Fresno on the way to Yosemite. He ended up in Shafter working the front end at the potato shed for Camp, West and Lowe. He took dance lessons so he could go to the company dance – took his teacher to the dance – and married her. He said she married him because he was the only one she could not teach to dance. They started a family. One day the shed foreman, Ted Vignolo, came to him and said, “Jimmie? How would you like to take a cut in pay and move into the office to work on the books?”
Jim accepted. That led to him becoming the first resident of Kern County to earn his CPA designation, only the third CPA in Kern County, and a founder of the Bakersfield Chapter of the California CPA Society.
And all this with only an abbreviated 6th grade education and a few courses at BHS Adult School and Bakersfield College.
1 comment:
That's a great story. Thanks for sharing.
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