Remembering C. Carey Cloud
~ by Julia Pearson
A lot has been made of the grassroots of a community. Born on March 12, 1899, Hoosier C. Carey Cloud, is one such talent nurtured from the ground up.
As a young boy growing up on a poor family farm, summertime brought him hard work. In his autobiography, Cloud Nine: The Dreamer and the Realist, Cloud recalls a sun-scorching day in mid- July when he hand hoed the rows of corn with his father and older brother Corey. The others finished their work and went to the dinner table, leaving nine year old Carey in the field. Afterward his father’ s comments echoed down the years,“ Son, you are going to learn that throughout life you are going to have to hoe out your own row.”
Carey and his brother Corey made their own toys to amuse themselves. They made slingshots, beanshooters, tops, kites, pipe rockets, and other inventions. They also bought mail-order novelties from magazines. Since the brothers’ names were so similar the mail department would often get them confused. So Carey moved his middle initial“ C.”( for Claude) to the front of his name to make a distinction.
Dropping out of school in his teens, Cloud had a series of jobs that were stepping stones in his selfeducation. The first was working on Jake Baker’ s farm. After three months working on a Cloverleaf Railroad crew improving the roadbed, Cloud got
“ Basket of Apples,” acrylic.
68 Our Brown County Sept./ Oct. 2016
C. Carey Cloud circa 1944, at his desk playing with his toys.
a job at a glass factory in a suburb of Marion. He quit that to try his fortune in the oilfields of Kansas, but homesickness brought him back to Indiana with his first paycheck. The next job with the Marion Shoe Company was his“ first pleasant job.” It provided a salary of $ 10 per week for nailing soles on to shoes.
He was just 17 years old when he and 16 year old Vera Nickerson eloped to St. Joseph, Michigan. Joining Vera’ s sister and her husband in Cleveland, Ohio, Cloud worked in a steel mill.
The Clouds had a daughter and the family moved to Bluffton, Indiana where Carey worked at the H. C. Bay Piano Company. During this time, Cloud finished his course in the Landon Correspondence School of Cartooning and Illustration. This was the entire scope of his formal art education.
Cloud then worked for the Fort Wayne Engraving Company drawing labels, hand-lettering, and doing small commercial jobs. This was not satisfying his creative bent so he set off to find work in Cleveland again. He first painted signs. He earned $ 20 a week instructing students at the Landon Correspondence School. Next door was the Cleveland Press where Cloud got on for $ 25 a week. Soon he was working some nights at the Cleveland Plain Dealer in the arts department. Cloud also sold designs to greeting card