Jess C. and Grace (Bale)
Banks Family, L-to-R:
Jess Jr., Grace, Donald J.
Donald J. Banks of Stillwater, OK is a member UGA’s Greatest Generation. Banks received his PHD in Agriculture from the University of Georgia in 1963. He has written of his childhood, teenage and World War II memories in which he gives a graphic picture of the experiences of the Greatest Generation.
We are pleased to share his memories in a series of first person accounts. This is the first installation.
I was born on July 11, 1930 at the Sentinel, Oklahoma hospital and reared on a farm about six miles Northwest of town in the Port School rural community. My first memory of a war was the Russo-Finish war during 1939-40. Knowledge about it was gained mostly from hearing discussions of relatives and by listening to the radio. I was greatly impressed with the Finnish Army military tactics because they used white uniformed skiers, firing machine guns, while skiing down steep mountain slopes to decimate large numbers of Russian soldiers. Russia won the war but not the spirit of the Finnish people. Interestingly, in 1956 while serving in the U.S. Army, I met a former Finnish Army Officer who had fought in that war. He told me of some war experiences and how he had migrated to the United States and why he joined the U. S. Army as a Private. That’s another story.
After the Russo-Finish War ended, besides talking about the economic depression and dust storms, many adult conversations centered on a greater war that was building in Europe. Adolph Hitler, the Dictator of Germany, had developed a superior military organization after WW I and his troops began invading some of the small European countries. I remember listening to news reports about the war on our battery-powered Atwater Kent radio. Our radio had a large horn speaker that emitted lots of static thereby making understandability of voice transmission somewhat difficult. Later we upgraded to a modern Philco radio. Sometimes we tuned to short-wave stations where we heard Hitler speaking to the German people. I couldn’t understand the language but my mother could. Mom’s mother had migrated with her parents from Germany in 1887 and mom had learned to converse in German. The radio became our main source of information about how the European war was progressing. My dad, Jesse C. Banks, a U. S. Navy veteran of WWI, was accidentally killed on October 7, 1936 at the age of 40. That left mom, my brother, Jess, Jr. (age 11), and me (age 6) to run the farm. We were tenant farmers of a quarter-section farm owned by my grandfather, John Harvey Banks, who had farmed it earlier. Our standard of living was very meager. We had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. Mom cooked on a kerosene stove and washed clothes in an engine powered Maytag machine in a wash shed that was remote from the house. Mom heated the laundry water in a large iron kettle over an open fire outdoors. We used kerosene lamps for light at night. Rainwater was our water source. Rain, when it fell, was channeled by roof gutters to a brick and concrete cistern located near an outside corner of the house. We obtained drinking water by using a bucket with a rope and pulley. A coal-burning stove in the living room was our only source of winter heat. The bedrooms were not heated and their doors were kept closed to conserve heat in the living room and kitchen. Going to bed in the winter was a chilling experience.
Our farming enterprise consisted of some dairy and beef cattle, chickens, turkeys, pigs, native pasture (for the cattle), wheat and other small grains and cotton. We had a small alfalfa patch for hay. Wheat was our major grain crop and we often grew around 100 acres. Wheat was generally custom harvested by a combine but oats were often harvested by binder and the grain separated by a stationary thresher. Cotton, which I hated because it was labor intensive, was grown to add some family income during the fall and early winter months. The crop sent lots of farm boys to college. Not by virtue of its income but rather by instilling the idea that anything was better than working in that damned old cotton patch! My cousin, Willard Banks, once stated, “I think I must have been born in a cotton patch, cause that’s where I always was”.
Initially, there was talk among our families and neighbors that the U. S. might become involved in the European conflict but most of our concerns centered on making a living and schoolwork.
