Person:Aurelia Draper (1)

Washington Co. TX comes from pedigree from Cecil Wariner

491 Lincoln Avenue, Sunnyvale, California July 18, 1931

Dear Josie and Family,

This afternoon as I am not working in the cannery, I will try to answer your letter which we were so very glad to get. You may be moved by now. We received a letter from Bess and the girls a few days ago and she said you were ready to move. I suppose your father will start down there next Monday evening. Of course he will let you know to meet him. He will go to Plainview though I suppose Guss and us will pay his way. There is nothing there for him to do to pass the time and he imagines the water or something doesn't agree with him here. Guss says he is in better health than has been for a long time, but has been taking medicine form a Doctor there. I hate for him to go back to the plains to love on account of the cold weather and the winds but he wants to go. Perhaps he can do enough chores and odd jobs around the place to pay for his keep. We know he is getting old and feeble and is likely to go anytime in one of his cramping spells. But I know you will take good care of him and at your place is more like home to him. He has lived there so long and he would never be satisfied without seeing your new home and work some on it. We thought he should be here with Houston and I but he would not be satisfied.

I am glad you got through with the harvest OK and had a good yield of wheat. But, oh mercy, the price. It surely will go to 5 o.c. again before long. You also had good rains so the ground is in good condition to work. Its funny you didn't get any rain to speak of down at the other place. What will people do sure enough without a feed crop? I feel sure you will manage to make the payments on the place if wheat is cheap. Everything is cheap everywhere. Lots of orchards here will not be picked. Most of the apricots around here, the people dried them. The canneries would not pay 2 cents a pound for them. So they have not run a full day yet. 2 to 4 hours a day is all they get in and the workers can barely live on it. But they are starting on pears and peaches now and it will surely get better. We all hope so at least. Yes it does look hard you have to pay W. F. (?) good wages. When you are losing your lots that house was built on I expect he feels he is not interested in it. They wrote they had moved back to the brick house but that it wasn't theirs any more. Didn't say what rent they were paying. It don't look like they could afford to pay $25 a month. Mildred was working ½ of each day in the laundry. Bessie said Milborn and Bess Jr. had a fuss and he brought her home. So they did not stay and wait on Emma after all. When her babe another girl was born she did not even give me the date nor name. They sure are one quarrelsome family.

So Rilla told off on them. It seems that it's a blessing that she (Rilla) and Robert are afflicted so they cannot travel the same road the others do.

I suppose you have your stock over on the good pasture. Will you move in the house with ?hos (maybe Foster????) and M. B.? You will have to fix the rent house for Exa and Leland I guess. I don't see how farmers afford to hire help at all. I am sending a letter from Myrt so you see they are just living so is Sam's folks. Ellen's men folks were in N. M. working in the harvest. She and Dale with the little ones were holding the fort there. Well it's a good thing some people can get their wheat ground for bread and can have good gardens but they cannot irrigate them everywhere, so they soon give out. Everyone don't can vegetable either. Yes I hope Lorene and Dock pulls through OK with their little family and also Shortie and Myrta Belle.

No Alvah is still in China or somewhere. We have not heard from him for over two months. If Houston knows his address, will send it. Houston quits work at 5 o'clock. He got 2 and ½ days work over there for Milborn (Guss's boy). They are at Santa Clara. Myrtle is working in a cannery at San Jose. They paid Milborn $8. Faye and Ed do not say they want to come back. Times are hard everywhere. He has a job selling candy for a whole sale house in Fort Worth to Denton and G. V. Was barely making expenses Myrt wrote. No Wilmer will not come until next June, Ellen wants to come too. He let the pecan orchard fall through after his failure in a crop there last summer. He was going to let them pay what he had spent there on the bank note of Sams. $200 will finish paying it off. So you see he is still helping them. Yes, Houston is still drawing $4 a day wages and we just about have all paid on the place except what is on the building load. Our radio is paid for too also the vacuum cleaner. Oh I stand the worst in the cannery alright. It is sitting at tables peeling and pitting and coring fruit and we are only 1 ½ blocks from it so can go back and forth OK. Hope you will get to see your father soon and all is well with you.

Mother

Written the day before she died to her daughter Josie.

1. ↑ Gary Hogue.
2. ↑ Gary Hogue.
3. ↑ Gary Hogue.
4. ↑ Gary Hogue.
5.   Genealogy records from Reunion Imported February 1999.
6.   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. International Genealogical Index (R). (Copyright (c) 1980, 1997, data as of February 1997).
7.   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Ancestral File (R). (Copyright (c) 1987, June 1998, data as of 5 January 1998).
8.   Gary Hogue.
9. ↑ with Houston; age 71, married at age 15