Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

ducks will be going south now in a couple of more weeks and where the water's warmer
you will just see, why, there's a thousand, I'll bet there's nine hundred and fifty. (chuckles)
Q: Well 1'11 be darned.
A: They seem to know that it's there, and that's been that way ever since that power plant's
been there. You'll see blinds out in the river. I'm sure that you see them in other communities
too.
Q: Rut you didn't do much duck hunting yourself?
A: No I didn't do any duck hunting. I didn't do any hunting. Oh I maybe went rabbit hunting,
like that. Champaign County's a great pheasant place. That's where my wife is from,
but I didn't - I did not. I was working most of the time and I just wasn't much of a
sportsman. My dad wasn't and I guess that's why I wasn't. But we fished some. Went
to a lot of athletic events and . . .
Q: Did you have any occasion to get down into Calhoun County for any . . .
A: Well not too often, but my wife had. Since I've grown up, hell, my daughter lived up
there for about five years - not five years, about three years - up at Brussels. She doesn't
live there now, she's out in California. But we used to cross the ferry all of the time. I
guess for two years straight she worked down at Alton but her husband worked for the
Conservation Corps. They've hroke up. That's been a long ten years ago. I guess. She'd
take the kids to the babysitter and my wife would pick them up and take them home and
I'd go with her half of the time when I was here and she'd pick them up five days a week
and take them up to cross the ferry at Brussels.
Q: Oh, I'll be darned. (chuckles)
A: I guess she done that for between two and three years. Of course she didn't if they
weren't in school or if they were sick or something. If they were sick they'd drop them off
here.
(taping stopped for telphone call, then resumed)
Q: What about the agriculture in the surrounding area here?
A: Well of course now, Jersey County, I mentioned my TJncle John - he had a two hundredacre
farm out in Jersey County, just south of Jerseyville, between Jerseyville and Delhi, and
he'd raise a lot of grain and we were out there in the summer and they'd have threshing
parties you know, and they'd thresh you know, and they'd come in and they'd have the -
all the wives of the other farmers, they'd bring their grain in, I mean the men would bring
their grain in. Their wives would come to set the table, they'd set the table out in the yards
you know. And that was a big thing. The Sunderlands had the threshing machine. It was
the only one they had.
Q: Sunderland, you say?
A: Sunderland family out of Jerseyville. Now that was the only - that was before the combine
though, see. I mean, hell, that was long before that. And oh, I've carried water to
the threshers many a summer.
Q: Oh you did? How did you go about doing that? Did you have a cart?
A: Well I had - I rode a horse. (chuckles) I rode a horse and we'd just ride a wagon
and I've helped my Uncle John shuck corn.