My father, Peter Willard
Voran, was born on a farm in 1923 in Castleton Township, Reno county. He was named Peter after his paternal grandfather who died when his father was only 7 years old.
Grandpa Carl, Aunt Helen, Dad, Aunt Millie, Grandma Martha
He had 2 older sisters and 2
younger sisters; Helen, Mildred, Mary and Betty. His mother says that he didn’t begin to speak
until he about 2 years old.
He was sometimes called Petey,
but they often just called him Boy. His
mother had wanted to name him Willard
but Grandpa Carl didn’t like that name.
She still called him Willard, not Peter, but he wouldn’t answer to that
name, so she began to call him “Boy.”
And that became his nickname.
Grandpa Carl was very strict. He had a razor strap that he used. It was often used on him because he teased his sisters and because he did not do what he was told to
do. However, Dad remembers
getting it a couple of times when he didn’t deserve it and blamed the sisters for lying about something he did. At dinner time, he sat on his father’s right
side. He says he would get his ear
pulled for being naughty. Pretty soon
they noticed one ear getting longer so they set him on the other side.
They moved to Pretty Prairie
for a couple of years to help out an uncle at the hardware store and this is
where my dad first attended school. (below front right)
During the war, Germans were
hated and my Aunt Millie remembers having tomatoes thrown at them. Our relatives spoke German, having immigrated from Prussia in 1874. Grandpa Carl said it was time to learn
the English language and speak it in the home.
Their house was a one story
home with 3 bedrooms on the main floor.
He slept in the basement. They
didn’t have a bathroom. The toilet was
outside and it was really cold in the winter.
They kept their house warm with a coal furnace. They used kerosene lights and candles, then
gas carbide for lighting the home. When
he was in high school, they finally got electricity.
They had 8 cattle to milk and
they butchered chickens daily. Dad learned to drive the tractor really young. They had lots of chores. They milked the cows, morning and
evening. All the children would milk the
cows together. They had to clean the
chicken house every Saturday. They mowed
the lawn and pulled weeds in the summer.
And they had to take turns doing the dishes. He did not enjoy doing the dishes. He
remembers hiding once in a while to get away from doing things.
A funny side note to that: when he attended Shalom Church, he and mom served on the kitchen committee and Dad did many dishes!! And he did the dishes for Mom regularly too!
A funny side note to that: when he attended Shalom Church, he and mom served on the kitchen committee and Dad did many dishes!! And he did the dishes for Mom regularly too!
Grandpa Carl always told him to clean up his
dish whether he liked it or not. He
learned to like most anything, except cabbage.
A favorite dish was his mother’s Russian beet borscht made with red beets, green beans and potatoes.
Saturday was clean the house,
polish the shoes for church, and take a bath day. They took a bath in a tin tub in the
kitchen.
Growing up, my dad played with
lots of cousins who lived in the Arlington and Pretty Prairie area. They
enjoyed roller skating at the community rink or on the ponds in the area. In the summer they would swim in the rivers
and ponds around the area. They enjoyed
hide and seek, hide the hankie, andi over and many games. They made many make believe toys and played
with sling shots. He got his first
bicycle in the 7th grade.
There was no tv but he
remembers when they got their first radio.
Their favorite program was Fibber Magee and Mollie, the Long Ranger,
Jack Armstrong and the All – American Boy.
They had lots of cats and dogs
and a pony for a while. One dog got run
over by a car. Another time a neighbor
came over and claimed that their dog was killing his sheep so he shot him,
right there in the front yard.
During the depression they got 5 cents to
spend. They were told not to spend it
all in one place so they would buy candy for a penny or penny pencils. They could buy an ice-cream cone for 5 cents,
bubblegum was a penny. Candy bars were 3
for 10 cents. They would save their
money and go to the movies for 10 cents, or to the Fox theatre in Hutch for 25
cents. There were 4 movie houses in
Hutch at that time. They enjoyed cowboy
movies and the cartoons too.
Besides farming, they had a mechanic shop and their own Texaco station right there on the farm. Dad often would deliver gas to farms when he turned 17. Even the girls would help pump gas. They gave that up at the start of WW2. There was too much bookwork, but they always did keep the repair shop.
Another time, he broke his collar bone when he fell out of a tree.
When he was 12, he was fixing the catwalk across 2 tanks (gasoline and kerosene) and his mother called them in for dinner. The walkway was 16 feet high and he stepped too far and it pitched and he fell and broke his front teeth. He was crying and they asked what the matter was and he told them “Now I won’t be pretty anymore!”
We always enjoyed it when he
would stick out his false 2 front teeth.
In the 7th & 8th
grade, his school teacher, Miss Davis, had them memorize lots of Bible verses
and he often won those contests. He won
this picture of Christ with one Bible memory contest.
Before Miss Davis left the
school, she told my dad that one day he would be a preacher. In a way, he told us, that was one of the
best things she ever said, since he ended up one! But at that time he didn’t want to be a
preacher so he didn’t want to get too serious about church.
But he
knew a lot about the Bible and his Sunday School teacher also told him that one
day he would be a preacher. No, No, he
wanted to be a farmer. He resisted
making a decision for the Lord. In high
school, there was a preacher who came to the Castleton church and he talked to
them. He had a real impact on my dad. But when the war broke out that
preacher went to war.
In high school, he attended
Castleton High school. My husband's mother also attended the same school and
is on the far left. Incidentally, they even had a couple of
dates!
My dad was a good student, making very good
grades. He enjoyed writing poetry, as
did his sisters. He continued to write
humorous poetry for much of his life.
My father had a farm
deferment and worked 5 years during the war, running the farm until the war was
over. His father was very sick at that
time so he did most of the work. He did
some work in the fields and at harvest time for others. The first money he earned was $3 a week. Later as he grew older, he made $1 a day!
During the war, they would hire
on German POWs to help with the farm work.
The Germans were probably quite happy with their internment and having
to help out on this family farm where the family spoke German and fed them
German food. We are pretty sure the
American POWs were not treated quite as nicely! Dad recalls however, that one POW hung himself in the barn.
Dad enjoyed driving his
cars. He learned to drive from his
father when he was 9 years old so that he could help out on the farm. In all he had 12 cars in his life, which
included 4 or 5 in Japan. His first car
was a model A Ford 1928 that he really enjoyed!
He really banged around in it.
Then he got a 1934 Olds Coupe!
After high school, Dad was in
a car accident. He was going with a
Stucky girl and was coming home from her place and hit a gas truck. He was thrown onto the road. A farmer who saw the accident
began to run to it. The car was
beginning to tip and fall on my dad, but someone in white pushed the car so it
wouldn’t roll over. When the farmer got
there, this person had disappeared. Dad's life was spared. He was unconscious from Sunday through
Wednesday.
His arm
had been broken in the accident and they needed to set it. They bolted it together in a fixed position
so it would never move again. They had
it set in a way that he would be able to still milk the cows and carry the
bucket of milk. This happened during the
war. Each day, he began to pick up
buckets of sand and slowly got the arm to move and after a long time, he was
able to move that arm up and down.
After the war, the Castelton
pastor came back and he told them the importance of being yielded to
Christ. As my dad was driving home that
night, he pulled over and cried his eyes out.
He made the decision to follow Christ.
He drove home and woke up the parents and told them what he had done and
that he wanted to become a preacher. He
had led a wild life and his father drove to Kingman to tell the pastor of
Peter’s decision. My father was told
he should attend Grace Bible Institute in Omaha, Nebraska. He was 23 years old.
