| Trona on the Web: The Stevens Family in Trona |
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The following is from my father's autobiography and journal. It explains how our family ended up in Trona. The comments in black italics were written by my sister when she published my parents journal in 1997. I have indicated the comments I added by making them red italics. On April 4th 1925, I joined the Army and served till 1928 (Daddy spent part of that time in Panama.), and then came home and left for Gary, Indiana, looking for work, as there was where my older brother Arthur lived and worked in the steel mills from 1922 till his death in 1941 on Apr 8th. He died of a heart attack. (Arthur died during the Trona strike, so Daddy was able to go back to the funeral and stay a couple of weeks.) I had no luck finding work there so my youngest brother that went with me to Gary, we took off and went to Dwight, Illinois, where my uncle by marriage Allen Wilkey lived, and he helped land us a job on a construction job, building cement highways. We worked there till our work played out, and then we went to work on the farms shucking corn. And then we went back to southern Indiana again. At Princeton I landed a job there for a short time working for the Southern Railroad as a section hand and worked at that a while and got laid off again. So then I went back to Gary, Indiana, and found a job working in the National Tube Mills for about four or five months and the plant shut down, and I was laid off again. And I couldn't find work, so I went back to Princeton once again and worked on a farm again. And then come along the depression and from then on out it was...I couldn't find but only a few odd jobs, and they were far apart. If it hadn't been for my dear old uncle, Ralph Reavis, who still had his job with the Southern shop as a car repairer, helping feed me and my brother Carl, we would of been without a place to stay and without eats. He was a very kind man. I always say that Bud and I didn't miss any meal, but we sure postponed a lot of them. One thing I can say good about that depression, it helped some people that never saved a penny and threw away food and clothes. It sure taught me a lesson that I will never forget. "Save when you have it to save and don't waste anything. There might be another one of those days sometime." I pray never, but the Lord don't want us to waste, and that was one of the ways he had to whip us into knowing. Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8
Last Update:
03/22/2008
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