Word: kuester
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...Farming began for Gus Kuester when he was eight. At eleven he was doing a man's job day in & day out with the threshing gang. School (he attended only the winter terms) ended for Gus with the eighth grade when his father died (1904). Gus, then 16, managed and farmed 400 acres for his mother...
...Elda bought the old Weaver homestead, which had passed out of the family. The early years were hard, but the Kuesters pulled through, says Gus, "by chickens, hogs and going without." They pulled through also thanks to the patient devotion of Elda Kuester. Over the years hogs paid the mortgage (today the land is worth $225 an acre), and the Kuesters received the final patent of ownership: the neighbors began to call the old Weaver place the Kuester farm. There were born Dale and a pretty daughter, Shirley, now 19, who sometimes acts as her father's official secretary...
...Legislator. In 1932 the neighbors claimed Gus Kuester for politics. Gus is a politician's dream. He is a big (6 ft. 4 in.), impressive, grey-haired man, stooped with outdoor labor and powerful with outdoor strength. He feels most at ease in overalls but looks just as much at home in city clothes. Integrity and gravity are written in the character lines of his face. He is deeply religious. He does not swear, but, no prude, he does not hesitate to quote other men's oaths. His fiercest epithet, uttered with terrifying inflection about people who drink...
Enlightened Republican. Kuester is an enlightened Republican. In 1932, he voted for Franklin Roosevelt, in protest against the Republican farm program "or lack of one." He is afraid of a runaway market, and his most outspoken beef against OPA is the inability of the Washington planners to understand some of the difficulties of farming. He is friendly to labor. But he is an implacable foe of promiscuous spending of public funds. Gus wants the state's finances run as efficiently as he runs his farm. When legislators start throwing money around, he unfailingly gets up and drawls: "I want...
...well aware of the" basic issues in the world today and thinks long and doggedly, as only a farmer can, about them. He knows that one of them is food. But he knows his land, he knows his kind of people. Says Gus Kuester: "I know that a lot of folks are counting on the American farmer. I don't think folks got nawthin' to worry about...