The Watkins Man

J.R. Watkins Pain Relieving
Liniment, the original first product

     After Mommy and Grammy died, Daddy and Uncle Frank decided to sell the milk cows.  Our weekly income from selling cream stopped.  Until then, Daddy sold the cream at the creamery in town, took the cream check to the IGA grocery store, and bought food and supplies for the coming week.  Daddy could not boil water without burning it so given his limited sense of what was needed for cooking, we sometimes had a humorous variety of things to eat.  But we did have food.

    Daddy had chosen to stay on the farm with us children in order to keep our small family together.  Financially, it probably would have been easier for him to move to town where he could have found a day job.  But he rejected that idea because we children would have been alone at home for long periods of time while he worked.  Alternatively, he could have given us up totally to Mommy's relatives in New England, but he did not want to part with us permanently or to have the three of us split up among relatives.

Our New Car

A 1949 Two-Door Sedan - similar to our "new" car
 which was white and probably had "blackwalls".

     In the 1930s and 1940s. automobiles became the primary means of transportation in the heartland of America. The days of the horse and buggy had passed into history.  We can argue perhaps over horse manure versus gasoline fumes, but the fact was that the automobile, and particularly the truck in farm country, saved valuable time and was much more than a mere convenience.  Motorized vehicles were also a symbol of status and affluence. 

    In the car department, we young Norrises were challenged.  Our family vehicles until about 1952 were a 1939 black Chevy and a Model T Ford truck.  The truck sat discarded in the yard among the