Clabe Wilson was strict with his sons about gun safely. When they went hunting together, a boy was not allowed to carry his own gun until he was twelve years old and could demonstrate how to carry it safely, especially while crossing over a wooden fence or through a wire one.
In the photo, Dale and Danny are both holding guns, but Danny was only 11 so he couldn’t carry one on a hunt until the next May. (He later earned a reputation for being a “crack shot.”)
Unemployed men with sons in the Navy or CCC were cut off relief jobs first. The Wilsons couldn’t afford to buy meat so Clabe and his sons hunted and trapped. Mostly they ate squirrel and rabbit, which they brought to the kitchen already dressed and ready for Leora to fry or bake. Trapping meant pelts to ship to Sears through the mail to trade for goods ordered from the catalog. A few times a raccoon or opossum became their meal.
The Roadster
The “roadster” was the Model T truck the two oldest Wilson brothers drove to Des Moines to join the Navy. Clabe took off the top and cut down the windscreen. This photo exists so they’d have it to send with a letter to their “Navy boys.”
Clabe sold the roadster that fall, 1934. The small town of Dexter (population of 748 in 1930) was too small for any kind of public transportation, but the family lived without a vehicle until the spring of 1939, when Clabe was hired as a tenant farmer. Yes, no car for nearly five years.
More from Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression.