Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.
00:17
My name is Victor Bailey and today is January 11, 2019. It is my birthday and I am 92 years old. I was born in 1927, the year that Charles Lindbergh became famous for flying the Atlantic.
His parents moved to St. Louis county around the time that Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped. The neighbors called the FBI because his family was new to the neighborhood. Victor suggests he may have been the youngest person ever arrested by the FBI.
He’s not sure why or exactly when the Bailey’s left Scotland. Later Bailey’s were Quakers. He mentions Patrick Bailey who, in 1680, had business dealings in that period. His mother’s native name was LaChance. He discusses the founding of the local village, St. Michaels which would later become Fredericktown. Among the founders of St. Michaels were 6 LaChances.
Six generations of Baileys after they arrived in America, Joshua Bailey was born in 1815 and he is Victor’s great, great grandfather. He was married four times having outlived 3 wives. He had 19 children.
3:03
Victor’s grandmother and grandfather lived 3 miles west of Fredericktown, from about 1910 on. His grandmother was part Osage Indian and was born on Christmas Day and was 100 years old when she died. He discusses his grandparents and their life their farm.
He then discusses a visit to his grandparents by a man after WWI who was ill.. Before dying he confessed that during wartime he and several other men avoided the war by hiding out and living off the land. They had engaged in a series of bank robberies in the area and then hid the loot near the Current river. The man left a map for Victor’s grandpa who was never able to investigate. Victor’s father and uncles found the map many year later and eventually made several attempts to find the gold. He recounts several stories of their encampments and failed attempts to locate and recover the treasure.
7:40
The brothers’ attempts to recover the treasure came to an end when the U.S. entered WWII. One of the brothers, Paul, joined the Navy a few days later. Victor recounts Paul’s time over seas and his return to the states and his adventures as a cowboy out west. He eventually made his way back to Missouri. Another of the brothers, Arlis, moved from St. Louis to Alaska where he became a fisherman. Victor recounts various stories about Arlis’ time in Alaska.
12:00
Victor tells of his time working at the shoe factory, building a home in Oak Grove and starting a family.
Wayne came back to Madison County and bought an old school house which he took apart. Victor sold him 2 acres and helped him assemble it there. Wayne had inherited the infamous map and so Victor and his younger brother Morris agreed to help try to find the buried treasure. They couldn’t find the treasure but they did find an interesting cave which they explored the following weekend. After exploring they returned to the car and were met by a man with a gun who had come to see who was there. He informed them that the cave was a bear den!
15:00
He quit the shoe factor and went to work for National Lead. Around that time Wayne’s house burned and could not be saved. The map burned along with it.
Victor tells of his love of caves and going with his family to Hannibal to see the cave where Tom Sawyer got lost. He tells of his younger brother Morris, his sister who was married and lived in Texas and their brother Kurt who joined the Air Force. He and Morris often took float trips during the summer and visited. He tells a story of Morris who had gone to grade school in St. Louis and was picked on by a bigger boy. When Victor was 15 the family had moved back to Fredericktown. Morris had made a promise to himself to return to St. Louis one day and find the bully, Francis Fitzgerald. Around the time that Morris was 16 he went to work at the shoe factory. He got a car and went in search of Francis in St. Louis only to miss him. He’d gone that very morning to Chicago to fight in a Golden Glove boxing championship. Morris decided he’d forgive Francis Fitzgerald!
Victor recounts Morris’ love of guns and the two times he accidentally shot himself. Later Morris joined the National Guard and was noted for being a good shot at moving targets.
21:00
Victor recalls that many in the family were musically inclined. He started playing the guitar when he was 5 and always played it. He recounts working at Monsanto Headquarters around 1960 and that he had several patents in his name.
He built designed a new kind of music instrument that hat an aluminum frame and a harpsichord type keyboard and 6 sets of mandolin keys for tuning and 8 sets of electric guitar strings which were coupled to 4 magnetic microphones he made and then coupled to an amplifier. He wanted it too sound something like an electric guitar. He recounts playing with his daughter Connie who played the melody and bass parts while he played the middle with chording. A disc of the music is available at the library. He called the instrument a guitanna. He recounts other musically related projects.
During that time he also built a sports car which took second place at a custom auto show at the arena in St. Louis. He also built and flew a gyro copter which he describes as a for-runner of the helicopter.
He states that he has, for the most part, invented something at every place he has worked, and mentions having done so at the cap factory. Before he moved to St. Louis he designed and built a speed boat and used it on the City Lake. He designed and built the elevator in the Sonderman Building including the controls.
23:46
He states that his grandma and grandpa LaChance lived in the Mine LaMotte area. His grandpa worked in the lead mines and was not very old when he died. His nickname was Squirrely LaChance because he was a crack shot at hunting. His grandfather died when Victor was 11 and his grandmother remarried to a farmer and James helped on the farm. He didn’t care for farm work so when he was 15 he ran away and joined the army. His granny found out and had him kicked out. He later rejoined and became an experienced communications officer and was stationed in Alaska. James’ older brother Harold worked in the mines and later owned a tavern in Mine LaMotte. He played music and was a bare-knuckled prize fighter which allowed him to make some extra money.
Victor recounts hunting when he was younger but states he would no longer hunt as he got older. He would rather watch the animals and would only kill something if it was a threat. He says he still likes guns and has several including an old 4-10 that had belonged to his mother who used for hunting squirrels which she would make into gravy.
26:45
He recounts a story related to one of the guns which involved some in the St. Louis Polish community that had formed a militia, “The Polish Falcons” for the purposes of community self-defense. They disbanded later when things got better.
He goes on to recount working with young men from other countries at Monsanto which had programs for communications positions in their home countries. During that time Victor designed various instruments for Monsanto. He spent time with the men and would invite them and their wives to dinner with his family. He hoped it would help them as well as his own family via the cultural exchange. They had people from Poland, Mexico, Israel, China, Japan, Arabia and France. He mentions several of them that became very special friends.
29:30
Victor recounts the achievements of his son Donald both as a young student and also his career in aerospace with satellites and rocketry. He also offers praise for his other two children. Specifically he discusses his daughter Connie and her talents as a musician. Vicky Darlene, his second daughter, was born 4 years after Connie on the very same day. He discusses her excellent academics and career as a radio announcer. Unfortunately she died young having developed cancer at 36.
He says that he and his wife married at 20 and were married for over 70 years. He’s a grandfather thanks to Connie and is also now a great grandfather as his granddaughter Diane recently gave birth.
32:00
He discusses his brother visiting and seeing his first radio controlled model airplane. He couldn’t afford the cost of such a thing so he built his own using cheap walk-in talkies to begin with building the remote control. He just finally left the hobby and at the time had 40 airplanes the biggest of which had a 12ft wingspan.
33:30
He recalls that his brother Curt graduated Fredericktown Highschool and joined the Air Force. After basic training he went to New York to training with General Electric. When he came back he went into a special job in a new Air Force project for radio controlled bombers. They were setting off atomic bomb blasts on the Kwajalein Islands and flying the planes through clouds to collect samples. Kurt’s job was installing the radio control into the airplanes. After that he went to Germany to setup missile bases. He went on to work with rocketry.
35:00
Victor took his family to visit Curt in 1958 to Cape Canaveral in Florida. They got to see a moon lander that was stored behind the glass that was ready to be placed on a rocket for launching. He then shares that Curt passed at 53 years old of radioactive poisoning.
Victor briefly mentions his sister June and expresses his fondness for her. He then mentions his youngest brother Dale who is 18 years younger than Victor and currently lives in the Northwest of the U.S.
37:25
Victor offers up a list of things he has done in his life ranging from being the president of the Oak Grove school board during the 1950s, an auto mechanic at DeSpain’s Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, manager of a sand-blasting operation, he worked for repairing farm equipment and painting and Sonderman’s Furniture and appliance where he repaired washers, dryers, refrigerators and furniture. When he retired he was working at the cap factory in Fredericktown.
39:30
Victor talks of his good upbringing and his love for his parents.
41: 30
He recounts his dad and grandfather building a one room log cabin which they moved into when they moved to Fredericktown from St. Louis. At the time it was the four kids and his mom and dad. They stayed in that while a bigger home was being built. He describes an old-fashioned house raising one day when members of the church came to help them. They had a picnic and the men worked on the house. He and his dad had already put in foundation using a homemade concrete mixer made from a 55 gallon drum and the motor from a washing machine. He helped his dad finish the house and learned enough that when it came time for him to get married he started building his own house which was around 1944. He and his sweetheart worked in the shoe factory and they pooled their money to finish. They were married October 3, 1947 and they moved in. It was not finished but it was close enough. They didn’t have electricity yet as it wasn’t available but he went ahead and wired it up knowing it would come eventually.
43:00
Victor tells the story of the inspector coming at a later date so the house could get electricity. The inspector was very impressed with Victor’s wiring job and in fact said it was the best he had ever seen.
44: 30
Victor signs off by sharing a few helpful life hints about staying healthy and being an optimist.
*The views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Ozark Regional Library or its staff.