CHAPTER 4
Mom and Dad
My father Wilson Bryan Diven was the son of Wilson Lee Diven and Ida Smith and he was born on October 4, 1907. My mother Gladys Berline Peterson was the daughter of William Roy Peterson and Cordelia Maxey Peterson and she was born on December 18, 1907. Mom and Dad were married August 26, 1928. They have three sons. Myself, William Lee Diven born December 19, 1931. I was followed by Jackie Smith Diven who was born January 4, 1936 and he died January 19,1936 just a few days after his birth. He was followed by James Louis Diven who was born July 9, 1940.
Wilson Bryan Diven 3 month old
This is a photograph of Dad and some of his brothers and sister who attended Stony Point School. This photograph was probably taken in about 1913. You will notice our last name is spelled "Divens". Dad is in the third row and is third from the left. He is the boy with the cubby face. In the fourth row fifth from the left is Dad's brother Smith Diven. In the fifth row sixth from the left is Dad's Sister Eula Diven and next to the teacher at the end of the row in a suit coat is Dad's brother Charley Diven. The Stony Point school is basically a few miles west of Johnson, Arkansas . The school building is no longer there. I can not be positive about this but before Dad's father got into the caning business he was described as a successful farmer and I believe his farm would have been west of Johnson and near the Stony Point school and that would account for why his children attended there.
Wilson Bryan Diven Age and Location Unknown but I assume it was on Granddad Diven's farm. Notice Dad is bare foot and check out that car.
I recently came across the following photographs of Dad leaning up against a giant bolder and sitting on another taken in 1928 at the Rock quirey in Marble City, Oklahoma. I have no idea what he was doing over there. These are very old photographs and I am not sure where I got them and honestly did not know I had them but I am glad I now have them. Marble City is roughly 80 miles south west from Johnson, Arkansas and is north west of Fort Smith Arkansas so it will forever be a mystery what he was doing there, who he was with and who had a camera to take the photograph. Mom and Dad were married August 26, 1928 so I don't know if they might have been there on a honeymoon trip or not.
Wilson Bryan Diven, 1928 at Marble City, Oklahoma
Wilson Bryan Diven, 1928 at Marble City, Oklahoma
Very Handsome Young Man.
Marriage License Wilson Bryan Diven and Gladys Berline Peterson. It is interestig it shows Mom's residence as Springdale, Arkansas. I do not know every place the Petersons (Mom's Dad & Mom) lived but I would not have suspected they lived in Springdale. In talking to some of my relatives I have learned that mother's parents lived near the Stoney Point School which also would have had a Springdale address. They apparently moved from the Springdale address to a farm east of Fayetteville, Arkansas on highway 16 where they lived for years before moving to Johnson to the house my brother now lives in..
My Father Wilson Bryan Diven. You Rarely saw Dad in any Clothing Other Than Overalls which were his work cloths.
Gladys Berline Peterson Diven standing beside Wilson Bryan Diven holding James Louis Diven. Bobby my dog sitting in lower left. They are standing in front of a 1941 Chevrolet. This photograph was taken by me and it was in November or December 1941. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor Dad sold this car because he said there was going to be a long war and everything would be rationed and if we needed parts we would not be able to find parts. To replace it he bought an older car/truck I don't recall which. He said we could always get parts for it at the junk yard. I know I was devastated by this. Although I was to young to drive I loved that car and looked forward to driving it in 3 or 4 years. I was 10 at the time and I was driving our farm tractor. Apparently my disapoitment was so much that I did not take any photographs of any of the replacement vehicles. I do have a vague recollection of us having a pickup truck and using to get supplies and take produce to Springdale to sell. At any rate after that I watched and helped Dad repair our vehicles to the point that I could later rebuild a motor like new and repair just about anything on a car.
Dad's Father, Wilson Lee Diven on 5 November, 1929 deeded the roughly 166 acres to my father Wilson Bryan Diven and this is what I refer to as the "Diven Farm" and where I lived and grew up. During the time we were on the farm Dad actively farmed the farm. He grew a few acres of strawberries, tomatoes, green beans and grew and harvested wheat, oats, corn, clover and other crops for hay. He worked often at the canning factory owned by his father where he fired the boilers which produced steam to power the machinery and the large pressure cookers in which the canned goods were cooked. As a note of interest as a teenager I fired these same boilers. He once tried to start a canning factory of his own on the farm but that was not successful and I really do not know why. I suspect it was because there was to much competetion. I never discussed it with him but I always figured he desperately wanted to be in the canning business because his father and his brothers were in that business.There were several very large canning factory operations in North West Arkansas. It may have been that he did not have the money to really get the operation more than barely off the ground. I know he worked very hard trying to make a go of the operation and in fact produced several cases of tomatoes which were stored in the barn. I do not know if he ever actually sold any of them. I recall he did have a label he put on the cans but i can't recall what it said. He had several cows which we milked and sold the milk to local daries. He raised some hogs and beef cattle for our own food needs. He had a few sheep but I don't recall us even eating any of them or shearing their wool. I do vividly going out in a snow storm to find an pregnant ewe. When I found her she had delivered her baby and I carried the little guy home with her following. She was bleating and fussing a lot because I was running off with her baby. As I said elsewhere Mom was not happy when she saw me coming with that new born lamb around my neck. It really made a mess on my shirt and coat. For a period he built 2 large chicken houses to raise chickens for sale to the local large chicken processors like Tysons. I say these were large chicken houses and to my child's eye they were large. I can't at this time dare to estimate the size but I know we had two such building he built and they housed several thousand chickens. Earlier in the raising chickens for sale the farmer would buy the chicks, raise them and when they were ready for sale he would offer them to the chicken processing plants who would make him an offer. At the time decided to get into the business things had changed a lot.There was a lot of duel ownership between the chicken hatcheries, feed mills and to a certain extent the processing plants. They controlled every thing so much that you had no choice but deal with them if you wanted to raise chickens. They would in effect make a contract with you to supply the chicks, feed and would take the chicken when they were raised. That is right all they were doing was paying you to raise their chickens. Your were really doing some really had work the same as if you had an hourly job.Dad had no part of that so he got out of the chicken business in a couple of years. I doubt he ever made enough to pay for the buildings he constructed.I had to help clean these houses before we got a new bunch of baby chicks, This was a very stinky, dusty and difficult process. It was just a few years until the processing companies bought or leased land built hugh chicken houses and controlled the whole operation them selves.The dusty smelly mess of cleaning the chicken houses could be said for the cleaning of the manure from the barn left by the horses and cows. I will go into greater detail in a later chapter. I do not think I have any photographs of the canning factory owned by my grand father but the following is a photograph of where it stood.
This photograph was taken in 2013 and you see the old store that was owned by Hugh Lichlyter. The building in back of the store is where the factory stood in fact a portion of the brown roof building was the warehouse for the canning factory. There was a railroad spur which ran beside the building for canned goods to be loaded for shipment. A lot of canned goods were shipped by rail during the World War II.
This photograph was taken in 2013 and also shows where the canning factory stood. As noted above the brown roofed building was the warehouse for the canning factory. The actual factory stood where you see the tall elevator equipment. Of course then the factory was powered by steam which was produced by two large boilers and they had a tall smoke stack which is no longer there. When I worked there in my teens the office for the factory was located roughly where the large white truck is parked. At and by the office there was a set of scales built into the ground for weighing the semi trailer load of beans, spinach that were delivered to the factory for processing. Often other truck with trailers would come to use the scales.
Dad tried his hand at some other work such as shoe repair and auto tire repair which I have no recollection.
( insert advertisement of this ) Also another thing I never knew was that Dad was elected as a Constable for Johnson. This was reported in the November 12, 1948 edition of the North West Arkansas Times newspaper as the November 2, 1938 election was certified by the Board of Election Commissioners. This obviously would be after we moved to Johnson and neither me nor my brother recall anything about this. I have no idea what the duties were and if there was any pay involved and how long a period he was to serve.
Dad was a member of the Masonic Lodge in Springdale Arkansas. I do not know what level he obtained but I do not think it very high although I must admit I know nothing about the levels of Masonic membership. His father and I believe all his brothers were also masons. I have no specific recollection of the fact that Mom did not like that he was gone for so many meeting. In reality I think the truth was that she was afraid to stay home alone ( with myself and James Louis as small children ). Dad dropped out of the Masons perhaps partly because of Mom's concern but I think the larger reason was as I recall him mentioning it he could not reconcile some beliefs of the Masons and his understandings of the teaching of the Bible. Mom and Dad attended the Stoney Point church but I have no recollection of that. I do recall vaguely us attending the little church at Shady Grove which was not far from our farm. We did attend regularily at the New Hope Baptist Church ( later became The Johnson Baptist Church) and in the late 1930's was built on the hill in back and near the Johnson Public School on land donated by Hugh Lichlyter. It was during a revival service in I think in the spring of 1938 that I became convicted of my sins and asked God to forgive me and I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. In a history of the Johnson Baptist Church Reactivated July 30, 1938 there is a list of persons becoming members of the church, One note indicated " Billie Lee Diven'' is a candidate for baptism. Most if not all the church records for that period have been lost or destroyed. Dad was an ordained deacon at ( insert name of church and newspaper article about him as a deacon )
Following the end of World War II I think is about the time Dad started getting the idea of moving off the farm and going into the trucking business. For the small farmer it was becoming harder and harder for them to really make money beyond just getting by. I will discuss this in some detail in the chapter 6, The Farm. In all honesty I don't recall him ever mentioning that in my presence. I know the idea of trucking would have appealed to me especially the thoughts of traveling. In fact I cannot recall us actually moving from the farm to Johnson. I have discussed this with my brother and he recalls it but I am at a complete loss to understand why I can't recall any details of us looking at the house in Johnson or if Dad looked at other homes. I can only surmise that I loved that farm so much that I in effect have blocked that time out of my mind. Never the less Dad sold the farm and we did in fact move to Johnson. Back to Dad going into the trucking business I am sure the reason he sold the farm was two fold. One he was going to go into the trucking business and that meant Mom would be home alone on the farm for long periods of time and two he needed the money to buy a truck and the home in Johnson. Also figuring into this equation was the fact that Dad had inherited part ownership of the Green Chevrolet building in Fayetteville with his sister Anna Eula Diven Hendrix. This building needed repairs to the roof and it was going to be rather costly and more than likely would require them to borrow money to make the needed repairs. Apparently Dad did not want to borrow the money perhaps because he knew he was going to go into the trucking business and needed all the money he could scrape up so he sold his interest in the building to Aunt Eula. Also figuring into Dad's desire to get into the trucking business was the fact that during the war years several men in Johnson had made a lot of money in trucking. I must admit that although not verified at least by procsecution some of this money was made by being involved in some black market activities. Although this was profitable for some Dad would never be involved in such activity and after the war there was no need for black market activity. In spite of this there was money to be made in trucking.
I have never seen any photographs of Mom during her school years but I suspect she went to the Stony Point School but I never heard Mom or Dad say anything about going to the same school or knowing each other in grade school. Mom and Dad's marriage license show her as a resident of Springdale and I recently came across information that her parent lived on a farm somewhere in the vicinity of the Stoney Point school. So it would appear logical that lived in the vicinity of the the Stoney Point school. Also puzzeling is the fact that if she went to the same grade school as Dad I would think that she would have been in the school picture above unless of course she was absent the day this photograph was taken. Another item that will go unsolved and perhaps it needs no resolution.
insert photo of petersons in old wagon.
Insert other photos of mom before mariage.
Mom Outside Our Home in Johnson
Mom Outside Our Home in Johnson
Mom in Our Home in Johnson
Mom in Our Home in Shawnee Mission Kansas. Mom, Aunt Joy and Dorcas came to Visit and They had Been Shopping
Mom in Our Home in Shawnee Mission Kansas. Mom, Aunt Joy and Dorcas came to Visit and They had Been Shopping and Apparently had a Marvelous Time. I hears they laughed so much they almost got thrown out of a couple of stores.
Headstone for Wilson Bryan Diven and Gladys Berline Peterson Diven
