Ralph: Living on the Farm in Mesa

In 1946, when Ralph was 12 years old, Lester and Juanita moved their young family from Lomita, California, back to Mesa, Arizona. Ralph’s three younger half brothers were about ages four and under, with the youngest, Eddie, being about six months old. Lester had bought a farm of 19 acres outside of “town” (Mesa’s population was about 10,000 at the time).(1) 

Half their family’s farm was down in a valley and half on a rocky hill. Lester farmed the valley part, growing mostly hay to feed their family’s farm animals, but they had a vegetable garden as well (including tomatoes and cantaloupe). They also had several hives of bees up on the hill, providing honey for their family and also for sale.

Approximately where Ralph's family's farm was located in Mesa, Arizona, near that red oval. It was between North Alma
School Road and North Country Club Drive, with the housealong the canal and the hill to the south.

There was a small home on the property. It was approximately 500-700 square feet, and only 4 rooms: kitchen, living, two bedrooms with one off of the living room and one off the kitchen, with no hallways. Lester and Juanita and the two youngest brothers (in cribs) slept in one bedroom (off of the living room), with Ralph and the brother just younger than him in the room off of the kitchen.

Ralph's sketch of the farm  house in Mesa

The only glass windows were in the living room and kitchen. The bedrooms had only screened openings covered by a framed canvas that could be opened from the inside.

There was an upright piano in the living room, which they had moved with them from California, but Ralph can't recall anyone ever playing it. 

And in this home there was no indoor plumbing or electricity at the time, but they had some creative solutions to address that.

Running Water in the Kitchen
There was a canal that ran (and still does) north of their property, with a well a half mile down the road that dumped into the canal from a 24-inch pipe. The well was above ground and Ralph would haul water from the well in the canal, 4-5 buckets full each day, in the back of a 1939 Ford Coupe, similar to the one below.

Image Source

To have water more easily accessible in the kitchen, Lester installed a big tank above the house, and they’d pour the buckets of water from the well into that tank so that Juanita would have water in the kitchen. The water was seemingly from a faucet, but it came from the tank on top of their home. For hot water, they’d fill a kettle or pot and heat it on the wood burning stove. 

The kitchen sink and drainboard were under the window, with the wood stove to the left and a table and chairs in the corner by the partition between the living room and kitchen.

Baths and Showers

Image Source: eBay
(Google search: wash tubs for baths vintage)

They initially didn’t have a shower at their little home either; rather, they would take a sponge bath in a basin, usually once a week on Saturday evening. Depending on the season, the basin might be behind the home or moved inside. Grandpa Earl Inglish (Juanita’s father) also offered another option: He worked as an engineer at the Mesa Arizona Temple, and there happened to be a shower in the furnace building, so he would invite the family to come up to bathe.

Then Lester got the idea to build a shower at home. He crafted a wooden frame shower stall, wrapped it with canvas, included a door, and the floor was a wooden pallet so water would run through. This was built on the edge of the yard so the water would runoff down into the brush.

He then took an old wash tub (that held about 5 to 7 gallons) that had a drain on the bottom and set it on top of the shower roof, which was also made from a pallet. 

On the bottom of the tub, they installed a hose fitting with a sprinkler head. They would heat up water in a bucket on the stove, then climb up a ladder and pour it in the tub above the shower. Problem solved! (“Just like uptown,“ Ella said. Lol!)

After some time, the shower was moved into the corner of the bedroom off the kitchen (Ralph's room), with the tub and sprinkler just outside the frame. (See Ralph's sketch, above.)

Washing Clothes

A Maytag washing machine from the 1930s,
similar to what Ralph's family owned
Image Source

On wash day, Ralph's job was to heat up water in a great big steel barrel, then put the water in the tubs and the washing machine. The washing machine was manufactured by Maytag - it was gas powered with a round tub with the agitator, and a wringer that would swing 360 degrees to wring clothes from the washer into rinse tubs, then wring them to dry.

The “dryer” was a 20-foot long clothes line on the east side of the front year. There was grass planted beneath it in clase the clothes dropped to the ground they wouldn’t get dirty.

A Maytag washing machine from the 1930s, similar to what Ralph’s family owned.

The Privy
At this time, the majority of farm houses like theirs had an outdoor privy (outhouse), most of which were built by the Works Projects Administration (WPA).(2) 

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. catalog from 1948
Image Source

They were all built the same, with a slanted roof, the toilet seat on the diagonal, and a vent tube up from the bottom that went to the outside for the vapers to go outside. Like many households at the time, they often used the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. catalog as toilet paper - its paper was thin, like newspaper, not thick and glossy like catalogs today.

Ralph's rendition of a WPA outhouse
and two "nationalities" using it

How would they clean out the outhouse? Well, they didn’t. And there was no service to come around to clean it out either. So after a few years, when waste would get within a couple feet of the surface, they would remove the wooden outhouse from the cement slab base (attached by screws), dig another hole, move the outhouse and cement slab base, and fill in the previous hole with dirt.

Ralph also remembers: While their outhouse had only one hole, some had two to three holes. Their outhouse was painted white on the outside with the inside being bare wood. And the fellow who owned their home before them would chew tobacco while doing his business and spit it on the inside walls of the outhouse. Gross. 

Ralph's hilarious description of the outhouses of his youth

Food Preparation and Preservation
During their first 2-3 years in the home, their family had a wood stove in the kitchen. Ralph was responsible for keeping the wood stocked, which he would chop or collect on their property, and he would also start the fire in the morning.

Image Source

The stove was large, about the size of a loveseat, with the firebox on one end - that’s where you’d put the wood in. And there were great big lids on the stove top with a little metal handle/crank to lift them up and put additional wood in. The hottest part of the stove top was near the firebox; you couldn’t turn the burner down like on today’s stoves but instead you’d move the pots further away from the fire. 

There was also the oven portion of the stove, which was separate space from the firebox, and the heat would radiate around the oven. The oven itself had a thermometer on the front and it kept a pretty even temperature.

Ralph recalls that his mother was really good cooking on a wood stove, making soup, bread, etc., and even rabbit.(3) 

At this time, they also didn’t have a refrigerator, but the iceman delivered 50 pounds of ice twice a week. The ice box was located in the corner of Ralph's bedroom (where the shower would eventually be moved to.)

To keep pans of milk and butter cold, Lester devised another creative solution: He built a wooden-frame cabinet, stapled burlap around it, and they’d pour water on the top and as it ran down the sides, the water would evaporate and it would reduce the temperature significantly, perhaps by 15-20 degrees. 

At some point, Ralph had decided that his mother needed two things and that he could help get those for her: 1) an electric stove, and 2) a refrigerator. So when he was old enough, about age 14 or 15, he went to work at Wright’s Super Market in downtown Mesa making 50 cents an hour. And he subsequently made a deal with his uncle Ray Inglish who owned an appliance store in neighboring Gilbert, AZ -- Inglish Electric. He did it. He bought his mother a stove and a refrigerator, with Uncle Ray signing for him, and Ralph paid him back: $7 a month for the range and an additional $6 a month for the refrigerator. 

Ironically, they got these appliances even before they had electricity wired in their home. They knew that the electricity would soon be available on the outskirts of town, so the appliances sat out behind their home until the electricity was routed to their property.

Churning Butter

Image Source

Using milk from their own cow, Ralph would help his family make butter. Originally they would do so by shaking a 2 quart bottle filled with milk, and they would shake and shake and shake until the butter formed, and the residual liquid left over was the slightly sour buttermilk.

Their family eventually got a butter paddle churn. It was maybe a 2 gallon size glass jar that had little wood paddles inside that were connected to a crank that extended out the top. It was designed so that the milk had to bump around the four corners of the jar. As you turn the crank, the paddles moved the liquid to hit the sides - similar to shaking the bottle but much less labor intensive. 

When using this device you had to be careful of two things: The gears were exposed, so don’t get your fingers caught! Also, don’t turn the crank too quickly, as they would whip the milk rather churn it into butter. 

Antique Butter Churn
Image Source: eBay

Believe it or not, about 15-20 years ago when Ralph and Ella were visiting family in Oklahoma, Ralph was browsing in an antique shop in the city of Jenks and he saw a butter churn just like the one he used as a kid. He thinks that Lester and Juanita paid $4.39 for theirs, having saved up for a couple months. The price at the antique shop? $1600. (Not a typo.)

Pest Control
Each morning it was Ralph's duty to check the scorpion traps. Arizona is known for many scorpions, and Ralph feels they had more than their fair share, both in and around the house! 

Their scorpion "traps" consisted of a 2  x 12  x 24 board placed on the ground, over a slightly dug out area. This would create a cool, damp area, just what the scorpions like. They had four or five such traps places around and under the house. 

Every morning Ralph would find between one and six critters in various sizes, and they didn't move quickly, and were thus easy to smash. 

This arrangement seemed to keep the scorpions out of their house, but not out of Ralph's shoes if left outside. He was stung on the foot on more than one occasion!

Irrigating the Farm
When Lester bought the farm, he unfortunately didn’t have water rights - in other words, the right to make use of water from the canal to irrigate his land. The previous owner had defaulted on his payments, which meant that a subsequent owner would need to pay the debt to reclaim the rights, but in this case it was way too expensive to do so. 

Instead, Lester occasionally made an arrangement with neighbors on the hill to allow their water to overflow and come down the canyon to their property.  He also bought a gas powered pump and pumped water out of the canal. Illegal? Probably so, but nobody complained and he didn’t get caught! He also did drill a well but was never financially able to put a pump in it. 

Arrangements with Neighbors
Across the canal from Ralph’s family’s property was a dairy farm run by a mom and dad and son who was two years ahead of Ralph in high school This farm milked 20-plus cows daily, and Lester had made an agreement with them to purchase milk for 25 cents a bottle. 

To have the milk “delivered,” Lester built a wooden box that held two half-gallon bottles that was attached to a rope and pulley that crossed the canal at the location of the milking barn. When Ralph’s family would send bottles over, the neighboring farm would fill them with fresh, warm milk that they would drink and use on their cereal, and Juanita would also make cottage cheese and butter, the latter for use at home and for sale. 

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Ralph describing how he churned butter as a kid on the farm in Mesa.
Filmed 28 October 2018.

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We live in such luxury now! What will future generations say about our day and age? Ralph points out that these living arrangements were certainly a step back from what they had in California, but as a young kid, he didn't really realize it at the time.

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Would love to add: Photos of the farm and the home. Ralph said he has some!

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Sources and Notes:
From a conversation with Ralph recorded on 13 April 2018, and additional texts sent on 3-5 Sept 2018. Also a video from 28 October 2018.

1. In 1946, I guesstimate that the population of Mesa was about 10,000 persons - I couldn’t find data for 1946 specifically. Per the US Census, the population of Mesa, AZ, in 1940 was 7,224. In 1950, it was 16,790. Quite the population boom in that 10 years! By the time Ralph and Ella married in March 1953, Ralph remembers there were still only 4 stop lights in Mesa.
2. For more information about the Works Projects Administration, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration.
3. Another family story that needs to be written down: The time that Juanita cooked up her grandkids’ pet bunny for dinner. What? Rabbits were for eating, not for pets!