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C LAIRE K INKADE

Claire Kinkade went to high school during the 1920s

and her family was part of World War 1. In her free
time, she took voice lessons and sang in the choir. She
also was a nurses aid for an all state school for the
mentally handicapped.

How did the Great War (WWI) affect your life?

One uncle was gassed, so he suffered the rest of his life. The man I married, Mr. Kinkade, had a brother,
Leroy Kinkade, who was also stationed over there, and he was gassed during the First World War. He
and my uncle both suffered intensely for the rest of their lives from the effects of the gas. Several of the
young men in our community were threatening those who werent going to war and they denounced my
father because he wasnt going to go to war. He told the boys he had to stay home and take care of his
wife and children; he couldnt leave them alone. Well, one morning I heard my mother crying and I woke
up and went into the kitchen where she happened to be sitting at the table. I said What is the matter?
and my father said, Oh, its nothing, its nothing, and my mother said, NO, it is something, go look at
the front porch. So I went out and the front porch was covered with yellow paint and that indicated that
my father was a slacker because he wouldnt go to the First World War. They were called slackers, those
who wouldnt go. Of course, everyone thought it was very patriotic to go to the First World War. Songs
were written about going overseas, and it was a very exciting time. And then, when the war ended, I can
remember going into the little town near where we lived, and they had a bonfire, and they were throwing
in straw hats and were cutting off neck ties from the men who were around celebrating the end of the war.
This was supposed to have been the war to end all wars.

Did you or your family have to make any adjustments after the war?
Well, not really because my father didnt go away and leave us. He had to keep us intact, and my mother
had no way of traveling because then we didnt have a car. Then, it was just horse and wagon, horse and
buggy type thing. The cows had to be milked and the pigs had to be slopped. There were all kinds of farm
chores. Mother couldnt do it because she had babies, so we didnt really have that much of an
adjustment. We just had to pretend that we were isolated.

What was life like in the 20s?

I finished high school at 17 and I taught school. I took a course in summer school, and I got a certificate
to teach school so I taught school in my 17th year, before I was 18 even. Then I went back to summer
school and taught school again. At 19, I went to college for a full year. In 1920, I was going to go back
to school and teach but my father said, I dont want you to go teach school. Youve been trying to do
college work and teach school. You need the rest. I had an aunt out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and she
wanted me to go out and visit her. They had a little boy, and she sent me a ticket for the train. The fall,
when I was 19, I went out to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My uncle said, How would you like me to get
you a job with Armstrong Insulation Company? That was a cork company. They made all kinds of cork
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products, and I thought that would be fun. It would be variety

I went out and the front porch
from teaching, so I stayed out there at the age of 19 and 20. I met
was covered with yellow paint
my husband to be then, and he was an office manager at this
and that indicated that my
company. We went together that next year. In June of 1922, we
were married back in a little town in Missouri where I was born father was a slacker because he
and raised. In the 20s, we were in Pittsburgh with this company,
wouldnt go to the First World
and then he was transferred to Boston, Massachusetts. The War. They were called slackers,
depression hit, and we had to come back to Chicago because he
those who wouldnt go.
lost his job. We came back to Chicago and visited with an uncle
of mine who wanted us to stay with him. But I had two other
uncles who owned an ice cream parlor out in Kansas, and they thought it would be nice if my husband
and I would go out there and run that. During the 20s and 30s, thats what we were doing. I was getting
married and living a new life. I moved from Massachusetts out to Illinois and Kansas.
What did you do for fun in the 20s?
In the 20s, we were married and living in Pittsburgh, and we traveled. He had charge of the New England
territory and so I went with him. I got a job as a nurses aid for an all state school for the mentally
handicapped. We would go down to the corner and get a taco or something because you could get them
for a dime. We would walk and walk and walk, and wed go to parks and movies once in a while. Those
were the fun things we did.

Did you ever participate in a dancing marathon, and, if so, why did people do this?
I never did. I wanted my husband to learn how to dance, because I loved to dance, but he wouldnt. He
wasnt bothered with that, and he wasnt even musical. And he would say, Well, you can go if you want
to, but who wants to go to a dance marathon with nobody? So no, but I was taking voice lessons at that
time, too. I studied voice in Pittsburgh and in Boston, Massachusetts. I also sang in choirs.

What was it like living during the Prohibition, and did you ever go to a speakeasy?
I never went to a speakeasy. None of us were very interested in that kind of thing. There was only a
certain class of people who went to the speakeasies. In Horton, Kansas, they were selling 3.2 beer. Thats
a 3 point alcohol. It was very mild, and some of the boys were sneaking that because it wasnt exactly
prohibition. They didnt want them to drink anything harder than that anyway. Thats all I know about
that.

Do you remember anything about Al Capone, gangsters, and bootlegging?

Yes, he was very active in Chicago. We were in with my uncle in Chicago and read a lot about him. Of
course, Cicero, Illinois was his hang out. He was one of the largest, most renowned criminals at that time
that I knew anything about, but the old boy finally died. He went to jail and died there.

When did you get your first radio and what did it look like?
I got my first radio when we lived in Boston, Massachusetts. It was very tall. It looks like a tombstone
today. It was built in that shape, a half-circle. We were so excited! We didnt have anything to see, but
we could listen to comics over the radio. Whenever we were with a family or a group of people, we
would get as close to the radio as we could because there were sometimes a lot of crackle noises. It wasnt
very good reception, but it was fun. That was my first one. I brought it all the way back to Missouri to
show my mother and dad, and then they hung around too. It was fun.
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In the twenties, jazz came out and that became pretty popular.
We would go down to the corner
Did you have a favorite artist?
and get a taco or something
I remember my husband courted me with Aint she sweet,
coming down the street. Now I ask you confidentially, aint she because you could ge them for a
sweet? That was the one he liked. He gave me a ukulele, and I dime. We would walk and walk
learned to play that. We would pick out all the little songs that and walk, and wed go to parks
were very popular during that day. Nelson Eddy, I saw him. I
and movies once in a while.
went to a parade and I saw Nelson Eddy. Out in Kansas he was
Those were the fun things we
very popular at that time on the radio. Nelson Eddy and the girl
did.
he sang with, they sang the Indian Love Call. Jeanette
McDonald. Those were the two that were very popular.
Everybody liked them. We could understand every word they sang, too. By the way, you cant do that
today.

There were a couple of presidents during the twenties. What do you remember about their
presidencies?
I saw Herbert Hoover and Cal Coolidge. I went to the parades in Boston. Theyre noted for their parades.
They just took every advantage of a holiday to have another parade. I was very close to them. Herbert
Hoover was noted for his engineering ability, and he did a lot of trying to keep the United States on a self
paying basis. He was criticized constantly. There were a lot of people against him, especially the
Democrats because he was a Republican. When he was in office, they said, If they let him be president,
grass would grow in the streets and there would be nothing anybody could do; the world would just be
in a terrible mess. Cal Coolidge won. He was silent Cal. He didnt do much talking and he didnt make
speeches but everybody loved his wife, Grace Coolidge. She was a wonderful, beautiful, beautiful
woman. They lived in Massachusetts. Now Herbert Hoover and his wife came from Iowa. While we were
in Horton, Kansas, during the latter part of the twenties, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected. Of course,
he was in office the longest as President. That was a long time. Thats when Social Security came into
existence and the CCC, and he brought the country out of the depression.

Did you have a favorite President?

Well, I dont know that I had a favorite one but I liked Cal Coolidge. I thought he was a pretty decent
man, and he tried to be. Its very hard for presidents to remain honest and apolitical. But Cal Coolidge did
as much, I think, as anybody I had ever known. We were never really crazy about Franklin D. Roosevelt,
he wasnt very moral. But Cal Coolidge was moral, loyal to his wife.

Did you witness any experiences involving the Ku Klux Klan and, if so, what happened?
Thats a little farther south than I was. Yes, they appeared in Kansas and tried to organize more people.
But thats mostly in the south. These were people, of course, that were anti-blacks, that said the Lord
made only white people, and that He didnt have anything to do with all these niggers as they called
them. It was a very racially sickening time. They burned churches, houses, anything they could to be
mean to the black people.

How did the discrimination of blacks influence your society?

I dont know that I had much trouble with that. When we were in Massachusetts, in the twenties , we
were told that you dont sit down with the blacks. We lived near Harvard Square, and there were blacks
over there. Some of the blacks had gotten into college at that time, and there had to be a unusually
intelligent black person to pass. Nobody paid much attention to them. I didnt have as much trouble
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because we lived in a community in Missouri where blacks

I got my first radio when we
were not allowed to live, Skylark County, Missouri. They could
live in Scotland County, which was ten miles southeast of us. lived in Boston, Massachusetts.
My mother and dad had a black nanny, and she would take us It was very tall. It looks like a
for rides in her cart with her horse. She would hold us on her tombstone today. It was built in
lap, I can remember that. But she couldnt eat with us. My
that shape, a halfcircle. We
mother would fix her a plate of food and put it out on the porch.
were so excited!
She had a chair and a table out there. Mom would fix that, and
then we would come in and all my life I kept thinking, Why
do we do this? Theres something wrong. Then, when we moved to Massachusetts, I found out that
blacks were human beings just like everybody else. Of course, when I was in college we had blacks there,
too. I never had the feeling of racial hatred. Ive seen it, however, and it wasnt a very pretty sight.

Morally, in the nation during the 1920s, how do you think it compared to today?
Well, there were people who thought dancing was a sin. That was when we had the jazz and it was fun
to dance. I liked to dance because I was very musical. I had a lot of fun with it. I danced with boys in
college and high school a little bit, but not very much. There was also 3.2 beer, the women began to
smoke, and the men were drinking stronger liquor. Theyd sneak it in; it was against the law, but they did
it anyway. They said women were beginning to wear shorter dresses and show more of their legs which
was very unusual, and wearing more lipstick and smoking cigarettes. Then they had the burlesque shows
that showed more and more of their anatomy.
We just had a lot of fun. We had the ouija board; that was fun telling fortunes. We never smoked, and we
never drank. We had parties and wed have soda and lemonade more than anything else. Coca Cola was
coming in at that time so people would take Coca Cola. One of the things I remember when we were in
Kansas was going over to the table to serve a group of young people. They were giggling pretty much
out of their heads, and I was trying to figure out what was wrong. My husband said, Well, theyd just
put aspirin in the coke. So that made them get pretty high. So that was an exciting time for them.
Flappers wore shorter skirts and saddle shoes, and that was more the time when the women were starting
to smoke.

During the 1920s there was the Red Scare, the threat of Communism, did that affect you?
No, that didnt affect me, but it was a scary thing because everybody made a big thing out of it. Just like
today, the bird flu is scaring everybody to death right now, and its blown way out of proportion. We
didnt have any Communists around where I lived, or I never came in contact with any of them. I dont
know an awful lot about it.

Did your family ever invest any money in the stock market?
We invested money in United Fruit Company. We thought that was going to be just great, but when the
depression hit us, we lost everything we had. We had to start all over again. When we got to Kansas, this
would be about 24 or 25, somewhere in there, we just had to start all over again and save money. That
was the big thing for us. The thing that happened when the Depression hit in the 20s, was men who had
large jobs with a lot of money who lost everything they had, were jumping out of windows, killing
themselves, shooting themselves, or doing all kinds of things because they had nothing left. There was
just absolutely nothing. Eggs and groceries were very expensive just before the depression. Eggs would
be 78 cents a dozen in Boston, and when we got back to Chicago theyd dropped to 25 cents a dozen. So
things just plummeted. The men who had these big companies and big businesses folded, and thats just
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all there was to it. Everybody was out of work. My husband

worked at Goldblats in Chicago for 12 dollars a day, and we
were thrilled to death to have it. My uncle gave me ten dollars
a week to feed the three of us. I had enough money left at the
end of the week to buy a pair of hose, toothpaste or toothbrush,
or some face powder, things like that.

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It was a very racially sickening

time. They burned churches,
houses, anything they could to
be mean to the black people.

When did you get your first automobile, and what was it like?
The first one we bought when we were in Kansas, was a one-seater. It had a top, and a shelf below the
roof. The seat in between was where I could fit our son; he was three years old. We would put him in the
back and make a little pallet for him. That was our first car. We paid $125 for it.

Is there anything else about the 1920s that you remember?

Well, it was a good time to be alive. It didnt cost a lot, and we had plenty of things to do. The movies
were clean, music was clean, and we spent a lot of time without friends. You just learned to do things for
yourself. There was a lot of emphasis on reading, and reading good books, and education. That was
another thing that came into bloom; more and more young people were going to college and coming out
as engineers. Companies were looking for them- hunting for the best of sons or daughters. Mostly sons,
of course. Women were still in the secretarial kind of era. They werent CEOs like they are today, and
there werent many lawyers- you wouldnt find that. You found mostly women who went into teaching
and who went to be nurses. A loaf of bread, if you waited til about 9:00 at night, it would be about 10
cents a loaf. If I wanted to buy some hamburger, Id wait til it was ready to close because there was no
refrigeration. They had ice boxes and icemen who came and filled your box with ice, but we didnt have
the refrigeration. And if you waited long enough at night, you got 3 pounds of hamburger for 15 cents.
They had beans too, and Id cook up a big pot of navy beans on Saturday. For me, to think about having
navy bean soup on any day but Saturday- I just cant even imagine. Soup- bean soup, and Id make corn
bread. Those were the cheapest things we could do. Then Id have a salad or maybe coleslaw or
something like that. I was working and then sometimes I would work on Saturday at the grocery storeright across the street from where we had this Smileys ice cream parlor. And Id get a dollar and a half
a day. I would save up a dollar and a half a week. I would run over to the dry goods store and buy myself
a dress. I bought a beautiful navy blue, almost royal blue, dress with little white dots all over it and
Georgian sleeves, that was real thin sleeves, so I was really proud of that. Things were very different. The
only people who really had any money were teachers. They had a contract so they could teach school.
It was just a great time to be alive.

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My mother and dad had a

black nanny, and she would take
us for rides in her cart with her
horse. She would hold us on
her lap, I can remember that.
But she couldnt eat with us.
My mother would fix her a plate
of food and put it out on the
porch. She had a chair and a
table out there. Mom would fix
that, and then we would come in
and all my life I kept thinking,
Why do we do this? Theres
something wrong.

Claire Kinkade is 100 years old and lives in Tudor

Oaks Retirement Home, in Hales Corners, Wisconsin.
She enjoys playing the organ, listening to talking
books, and volunteering. In the twenties, and
throughout her life, she enjoyed directing choirs and
coaching choral groups as well as playing the piano
and organ.

Kinkade, Claire

2007 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications