Stories from Dad's family

I was reminded today that I should continue with stories...

I have a few short anecdotes about Dad's family.

Grandma Hampton (Dad's grandma) had all sons; I'm not sure of the geneology and can't tell you how many, but they all had nicknames; Dad's dad was Slim, and one of his brothers was Slick. I don't know where the names came from. When the family all got together, inevitably the boys would be in the kitchen with their mother, telling her dirty jokes which delighted her.

Grandma Hampton had a house on Ann Street in Ventura; the house is no longer there. When Dad would visit with his family as a child, she would kill a chicken and cook it for them all. Apparently she made great chicken and dumplings. The grandkids could play in the yard as long as they left the rain barrel alone! Ventura water was awful (very minerally) and she used the purer rain water to wash her hair.

Dad mentioned a tragedy in the family, apparently a bunch of kids were in the back of a pickup truck when it flipped and some of the children were killed. I'm not sure who it was.

Slim was in the oil business, and they lived near Los Alamos, California for awhile while Slim was drilling in Wild Cat Canyon. He was brewing his own beer, during Prohibition, and dad recalled occasionally hearing one of the bottles blow up in the closet. Slim and Ange would invite friends over for a BBQ and Slim would grill steaks; he'd ask everyone how they liked their steaks, then would grill them all exactly the same.

Slim bought Ange a Model T Ford when they first came out, but Dad said she was never a good driver. When the Depression was in full swing, a lot of the guys Slim worked with lost their jobs and went to work on the WPA project of building the Hoover Dam outside Las Vegas; somewhere I have photos of them visiting. On the way there, they stopped in Vegas to visit an uncle or brother of Slim's who would hang out at one of the casinos in the old part of town (Fremont Street); imagine those casinos without air conditioning.... He had a big bull dog which would hang out on the porch of the casino where it was apparently cooler, and had his own water dish in front of the casino (which was not common at the time).