Ronland K. Attebery

Rural vocational programs in the 1960s.

Excerpt from an interview with:
ROLAND K. ATTEBERY by LINDA L. WEST
December 7, 1992
San Jose, California

ATTEBERY:

But then we did have a … I mentioned Title V [WIN Program] in the papers that I sent you, and I think Title V came through the County Welfare Department, which allowed us to train individuals to do any job that was needed in the city. Therefore, we began our training programs, and one of the things that I remember most about that was I was granted fifty acres of land [by our district] on one of our sites to offer a training program on. So I didn't have any building on this land, so I got an approval to use the trainees to construct the building. So we constructed the building, pouring cement, wiring the building, making welding stations, and we had a drive-through in this building where we could bring tractors in and taught tractor repair. And also, these men were taught farming, because it was a farming community, and so the neighbors said, "Well, we really like what you're doing for the community," so they gave us fifty more acres of land with a pump, a water pump, for $1 a year. And so we planted our crops, and [at harvest time] I was out trying to sell my dry and my wet wheat.

In those days, you could use this money for anything you wanted to. You could put it in the kitty, and if you decided to do this you could. So I had those stipulations where if you brought in four people from a neighboring township in the county that we would give [ the driver] gas money. So we gave people gas money for bringing individuals to school and so forth at that time.