Go Cart on Main Street

The Deaton boys were crazy!!  They had a really nice go cart, and they drove it all over town.  The town was Wann, of course, so nobody even cared.  At the time, the main street through Wann was a paved county road, and had very little traffic.  Main Street is now Oklahoma State Highway 10, so I doubt that they could get away with using it for their private raceway.  My older brother and I took the Deaton go cart for a couple of spins and had a blast.  We later acquired a go cart of our own.  It had an old Cushman motor scooter engine, with a two speed transmission.  Wide open, going down the county road in front of our rural Pawnee County home, it would do about 60 to 65 miles per hour.  It was a lot of fun, but probably no safer than the Deaton boys and their many trips around Wann.

The Accidental Barn

How do you buid a barn by accident?  In my case, it happened like this.  My Dad was working at a rock quarry near Dewey, Oklhoma.  One day, he was replacing the fan belts on a front end loader.  Front end loaders are so large that you don't have a good view of the engine compartment from the operator's position.  I say that because in my Dad's case, that's what caused his accident.  Dad was installing the new belts, when the operator returned.  Not seeing anyone working on the other side of the machine, he hit the starter switch.  That minor lapse of safety set the pulleys and the belts in motion, just as the manufacturer intended, along with Dad's hand, not as the manufacturer intended.

That fraction of a second ran Dad's hand through the pulley, crushing most of the bones.  He was rushed to the emergency room, and sent home with a cast on his hand.  He was off work for around six weeks, waiting on the bones to mend.  My Dad could never sit still for more than an hour, so he started thinking about things that needed to be done around the farm.  One of his primary goals was to build a new barn, but that's a little tough to do with your hand in a cast, unless you have some help.  His help looked a lot like me, so we started, and completed the project with time to spare.  Dad mostly pointed, and measured, and I put the boards in place and hammered in the nails.  I'm not convinced that he was satisfied with his assistant, but he never said a word about the quality of my work.  I don't have any pictures of the barn, and that's probably a good thing.  I still love working with wood and the barn is probably not an example of my best work.

The time we spent building the new barn was probably the longest period of time that I can remember spending with Dad.  It was hard work, but it came with the satisfaction of a job well done, and I couldn't have asked for a better boss.

Need a Good Used Car?

"I was raised a poor black child."  Not really.  That's just one of my favorite lines from Steve Martin's movie, The Jerk.  We were poor, but we didn't know it.  We had some neighbors that were on the 1960's version of Welfare, and they usually had better clothes and shoes than we did.  It didn't seem to matter to us, since most of the kids in our school dressed about the same way.  We got one pair of shoes per year, and those were usually work boots that could serve double duty.  We wore them when we worked around the farm, polished them up, and then wore them to school.

I think the only time I thought my family was poor was the year that Johnny Mackie got the 20 gauge shotgun for his birthday.  We were in the 5th grade at the time.  Other than that, I always felt like we had enough, and that's all one really needs.  More than enough is the same as too much.

My dad worked for Barlow Lumber Company for part of my life, and that job must not have paid well enough to get us by.  To keep us in dependable transportation, he would purchase a used car that needed a little work, fix it up and then sell it, or attempt to trade for something a little better.  He traded cars so many times one year that the Oklahoma Tax Commission sent him a letter to let him know that if he kept up the pace, he would have to get a used car dealers license.  He just kept on trading cars and pickups until he got the job at the rock quarry.

Swingers for Pennies

We begged our parents to buy us a swing-set.  You know, the one with the glider, and slide.  We told them that some of the other kids in town had one.  Being very frugal, as many depression era parents are, Mom told us we would have to save our own money.  We rode our bikes, which were purchased second hand from my cousin's bicycle shop in Coffeyville, all around town to pick up old pop bottles.  We couldn't believe that people would toss out a perfectly good pop bottle on the side of the road.  Back in those days, a pop bottle was built to last, and recycle.  When tossed from a moving vehicle, they could land intact, unless they hit a bridge or a road sign.  We would pick up the bottles, and turn them in at the local grocery store for 3 cents.  We were making a killing.

Mom told us that if we would dig "Snake Root", also know as Black Sampson, we could sell it in Coffeyville.  Just in case you don't know, Snake Root in the Native American equivalent of Novocaine.  If you chew on a piece of the root, your mouth will go numb, and you will drool like a rabid dog.  We dug all of the snake root in our pasture, moved on to Uncle Elmer's pasture, and got permission from a couple of local farmers to dig in their hay meadows.  We would lay the roots on top of our chicken house to dry.  When it was dry, we would load it all into burlap sacks, which we called gunny sacks (aka burlap sacks).  Mom hauled our diggings to Coffeyville, and sold it for 90 cents per pound.  When we were digging, we could see the dollar signs, but little did we realize that a dried snake root weighs about 100th of an ounce.  A gunny sack full only weighs around 5-6 pounds.  It's a lot of work for a little reward, but it just kept adding up.

We would turn in our earnings, and Mom would put it in a jar.  If memory serves me well, it was a gallon jar.  When the jar was full, we all jumped in the old Dodge station wagon, and headed to Dewey.  We walked in to the Western Auto store and the look on the owner's face was priceless.  We bought our first and only swingset with a jar full of pennies. 

Hello Dolly

A new family move to Wann in 1966.  A mother, father, three sisters, and two brothers.  The family joined our church, and enrolled in school.  I developed a crush on the eldest daughter, Dolly.  I flirted the best I could at the age of 12, but to no avail.  Dolly was pretty, and had her choice of the guys.  Her younger sister, Louise, tried to get me to ditch my crush on Dolly and "go steady" with her.  Louise was the sweetest of all the girls and was very pretty as well.  However, she stood about 6' and an inch or two, and I was only 5' 3".  Just couldn't make my male ego accept the height difference.  Probably my loss.

Our family moved to Pawnee in 1968, and I lost all contact with the family.  In 1980, my job at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, transferred me to Osage County.  

One day, I was working near Bartlesville, and stopped at a convenience store for a drink.  After getting my drink, I was leaving the store and nearly ran head to shoulder into a lady entering the store.  I said, "excuse me."  The lady said, "Jerry?"  I looked up and responded, "Louise?" She still towered over my 5'9" height.

We stood at the entrance to the store and talked about old times.  She asked about my family, and I asked about her's.  She gave me the update on her two brothers, and one of the sisters.  She never mentioned Dolly.  I asked her what Dolly was up to.  She replied, "She's working in a cat house in Vegas."  Being a little naive, my mind made a quick evaluation of the situation.  

I thought she could be the accountant, the housekeeper, maybe the cook.  With those thoughts in mind, I asked, "Doing what?"  Louise shook her head, gave me a look, and said, "Well silly, what do you think she's doing?"

I appreciate Louise's honesty, but I'm not 100% sure I needed to know that.  That sort of ruins my first crush. 

Human Forklift?

In 1966, our family planted 10 acres of Sweet Corn.  We used a John-Deere MT tractor, that my Dad had purchased for $200.  The implements were all re purposed horse drawn equipment.  An old drag type disk, and a 2 row corn planter. 

Dad later purchased two 2 row corn pickers.  He took the two old corn pickers, and built one pretty good one.  Before that bargain basement equipment deal, Mom and Aunt Hazel picked the corn by hand.  They first checked the silk, and only picked the ears on which the silk had turned brown.  They would also pull down the corn shuck a little to examine the kernels.  After picking each of the individually selected ears, they would snap the ears off and hand it to one of us kids.  The combined workforce available included Aunt Hazel and Uncle Elmer's kids, Ruby, Betty, Delbert, Joe, Roy and Sharon.  Mom's contributed my older brother JR, myself, my younger siblings Tommy and Glenda. 

We would walk down the seemingly endless rows, with our arms outstretched like little forklifts.  They would place the ears of corn across our arms until they deemed us fully loaded.  Each of the forklift kids would then make the trek to the edge of the corn field, and unload in the pickup.  This process went on all day, for nearly a week, every Fall. 

In the evening, the corn was shucked, and the corn shucks were fed to the pigs.  While the corn was being shucked, some of the kids were assigned to ice cream freezer duty.  When the shucking was complete, corn pickers, human forklifts, and corn shuckers, shared in the ice cream and watermelon party.

I would love to see the face of one of today's kids if they were told they would be used as a human forklift.  I don't believe ice cream and watermelon would be sufficient payment.

My First Job

My first "Official" job was working for Jesse Sturgeon, a local farmer.  Jesse's wife, Arlene was the sister-in-law of my Mom's sister Emma (Hadley) Stevens.  

We always called her Aunt Arlene, so I guess that makes her family.  She always shows up for the Hadley family reunion, so she must think she's family too.


Back to my first job.  Jesse was talking to my Mom one day and mentioned that he was looking for someone to disc his wheat field prior to planting.  I was about 9 years old, and my Mom thought  I was big enough to drive a tractor and pull a disc.  I had used our old John-Deere MT disking the 10 acre corn field at Uncle Elmer's, so I guess it was a natural assumption.  I must have done alright, and Jesse paid me $0.75 per hour.  I thought I was getting rich.


Jesse is long since gone, but I still appreciate his confidence in my abilities, or at least his trust for my Mom's confidence in me.  Having an Aunt Arlene probably didn't hurt anything either.

Life is Good

We used to have a small farm just South of Wann, Oklahoma.  Our neighbor, about 1/2 mile South of us, raised pigs.  He had a few piglets that he could not keep in the pen.  

On one of his many trips to our area, gathering his stray piglets, he told my Mom that if we could keep the strays in a pen, we could have them.  I set about constructing what I thought was an escape proof pig pen.  

The next time his stray piglets wandered down the road, I had a pig roundup.  I managed to keep two of them contained, so I became a pig farmer.  

I fed them everyday, hosed them down, and attempted to meet their needs.  I guess it never dawned on me that I was makin' bacon.  When the pigs were big enough, my Dad, and Uncle Elmer butchered them, because that's what farmers do.  

Like most kids on the farm, I had raised the pigs as pets.  I'd given them both names, but the only one I can remember is Porky.  When we were eating the bacon or sausage, we would say we were eating Porky.

We also raised a few calves.  Nothing special, just some weanlings that my Mom bought at a nearby dairy.  We would bottle feed them until they could move on to grass, hay or cattle cubes.  We kept round bales of hay to feed them through the Winter.  Not the 1,500 pound bales that are prevalent today.  Back in the 60's, most of the round bales weighed around 65 pounds.  Anyway, we would have a stack of 100 to 150 bales next to the barn.  I would climb all over the stack, and play.  

I think I watched to many Roy Rogers, Gun Smoke, and Hopalong Cassidy shows, so I was always shooting it out with the bad guys.  I was having a major shootout with a bunch of no good outlaws one sunny Summer day.  I had managed to get most of them, but one got off a lucky shot.  I rolled down the side of the hay stack, mortally wounded.  

I lay there, basking in the sun, breathing my final breaths.  When I opened my eyes, standing above me was my Mom, who had been washing dishes and had seen me roll off of the haystack.  She thought I was really injured, or possibly worse.  

What was she thinking?  Would Roy Roger's Mom come to his aid, even if he was knocking on death's door?  I don't think so, but maybe I'm a better actor than Roy.

Grandma Hadley was a Peach

My Grandma Hadley was a peach.  She had to be because my Grandpa Hadley was a prune.  Don't get me wrong.  I loved the guy, but he could be a grouch.  

He just said what he thought, but thankfully, he didn't think much.  He was an Archie Bunker type, with his chair in the center of the living room, so he could scope out anyone or anything that came into the room.  He worked a LOT.  He farmed, and ran a blacksmith shop, and he managed to bring 11 kids into this world.  Don't know how he found the time.  He passed away before my Grandma Hadley, but she continued to live in her family home.  Since she lived alone, my Mother would rotate myself and my siblings to stay with her in the Summer.  

Grandma was a story teller, and a nature lover.  She had what seemed like a hundred Doves living in a Dove Cote, and about 10 Parakeets in her living room.  I loved the Doves, but the Parakeets drove me crazy.  The only time they were quiet was when Grandma covered the cages for the night.  

Grandma used to sit by the window, and call Quail up to her house.  That amazed me!  I thought she was a bird whisperer, and the name hadn't even been invented.  My only complaint about Grandma Hadley was that she used to make Sasafras Tea for the kids.  It tasted fine, but I have found since that it causes Cancer.  Grandma lived to be 90+ and very seldom had a sick day.  Don't know if it was the Sasafras, or just good genes.  Either way, I have had my share of both.

What a Way to Go

My Aunt Hazel was awesome.  She raised 11 of her own children, and found time to help raise me, and my three siblings, and baby sit for others.  

A lot of kids in the Wann, Oklahoma area are what they are today, because of my Aunt Hazel.  She loved to cook.  She told me several times, that she always wanted to run a small restaraunt.  When all of her children were grown, and she was living alone we would stop by to visit and check on her.  She would be cooking for herself, and as soon as we walked in the door, she would start adding to what she was preparing.  Somehow, she managed to make a meal for one, into a meal for the masses.  Kind of like a "Loaves and Fishes" kind of thing.

She was at my cousin's home, getting ready for a holiday.  I believe it was Thanksgiving, but I don't believe that is important.  Anyway, she was had finished baking, and started carrying the meal to the car, to carry it to the home of another of her children.  

After a trip to the car, she returned to the house, and told her daughter that she was tired and needed to rest for a minute.  She layed down on the couch, and went to sleep.  That short nap turned out to be the "Big Sleep".

When I was told this story, I asked where the line formed to sign up for this deal.  I can think of no better way to leave this life, than to be doing the thing you love, lay down to take a break, and just pass on.  I loved my Aunt Hazel, and hope to follow her lead on the way to go.

No Particular Place to Go

My first thought was to make an attempt to keep this in chronological order, but I just can't.  I get random thoughts and need to put them down before I forget.  Anyone that know's me can tell you that my mind makes crazy connections.  

My daughter, Jennifer and I used to watch the PBS series Connections.  We just loved how he tied everything together.  That's sort of how my mind works.  If you just hang in there, sooner or later you will see the connection.

Since I've mentioned Jennifer, I might as well relate one "Jennifer" story.  When she was 2 years old, she wanted to be with me no matter what I was doing.  I have mowed the lawn at our house on 5th Street many times with her riding on my shoulders.  I've tilled the garden at that some home, with her sitting on my shoulders, and her two tiny hands clasping my forehead.  She was usually talking the entire time.  I loved it.  

She and I raked the leaves of the very large Cottonwood tree beside our house.  The pile would always be huge, so I would bury her in the pile, and have her jump out.  I have a couple of pictures of that event.  If I find them, I'll post those.

In the meantime, enjoy your kids while you can.  I know it's hard to believe, but they do grow up, and way too fast.  They need you so much when they are young, and you need to be there to meet their needs.  Being a parent is hard work, but the job doesn't last long, and before you know it, you're unemployed.  That is until the grandkids come along, and then you find out you're not as young as you thought you were.

Work can be fun

I have 12 double cousins.  I have double cousins because my Mom's oldest sister married my Dad's oldest brother.  My Aunt Hazel, and Uncle Elmer were married, and had 2 kids before my Mom was born, so my Mom has a nephew and a neice that are older than she is.  

My aunt Hazel continued to have kids until after my sister, the youngest of my siblings was born.  I guess it's a little tough to have a dozen kids without spacing them out over several years.

We spent a lot of time at Aunt Hazel's.  She and the kids raised a garden that was about 2 acres, and we helped harvest, and can the produce.  I guess you could call it help.  We would work in the garden for a while, and manage to find time to play tag, catch fire flies, do some fishing, and generally just do what kids do.  

We played outside until one of the adults called us in, usually a little after dark.  Sometimes, late in the evening, a group of us would be assigned to crank the ice cream freezer.  I believe we ate more homemade ice cream and watermelon that any other kids around.

Work can be fun, if you go at it the right way.  My Mom and Aunt Hazel just knew how to do it right.

Starvin' Marvin

I guess I was a little mischievous in grade school, and spent my fair share of time in the principal's office.  I remember being kept after school one day, but I can't remember why.  When I stepped out of the front door of the school, I stepped into a pouring rain. 

I was really dreading the half mile walk, or run home.  When I was about half way between the school and the street, a car pulled up.  I saw the window being cranked down, and my cousin Marvin smiling his usual big smile.  "Need a ride cuz?"  My Mom had called Marvin and asked if he would pick me up after school. 

Marvin was always my hero.  He was a senior in high school, when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade.  Marvin was a basketball star, one of the hardest working people I have known, and a very loyal friend.

Marvin joined the Navy with his best friend, Buster Bell.  The Navy discharged Marvin, and sent him home because he walked in his sleep.  Sleep walking was a trait he shared with his younger brother, Joe.  Both of them would take very long walks while sleeping.  Not a good habit, if you happen to be on a ship.

After his discharge from the Navy, Marvin resumed dating his high school sweetheart.  One evening, while taking his sweetheart home from church, a drunk driver sideswiped Marvin's car, causing him to run off the road, and roll over a couple of times, in his pre-seatbelt car.  

Marvin was ejected, and pinned under the car.  My life has been a series of great times interupted by moments of sadness.  Marvin's death was one of the worst.

I can still see Marvin walking into the kitchen at my Aunt Hazel's.  He would walk in, and proclaim, "I'm Starvin' Marvin, what's for supper?"  We should all strive to Be a Marvin to someone every day.

More kids in school than in town?

I grew up in Wann, where there were more chilren in the school than there were citizens in town.  

The town claimed to have a population of 110, and the school enrollment exceeded 200.  The buses ran out into the countryside and picked up kids, and the kids around town usually walked the one to four blocks.  I say one to four blocks because that's how far it was across town.  

If we walked more than four blocks, we were outside the city limits.  My two brothers, and our baby sister lived a half mile South of town, so we made the short trek everyday that the weather permitted.

I can't say we walked a mile uphill to school and a mile uphill back home, or that we walked a mile in the snow or rain, but we made the journey on some very hot days and some that were really cold. 

On hot days we would try to run to stay in the shadow of the passing clouds, and on those days when an unexpected shower popped up, we ran through the rain.

We always enjoyed the walk, or run, because we could catch up on how the day went for our siblings. 

You Are What You Were When

We are all products of where we came from.  Originally products of our parents, and their hopes and dreams.  After they have done their best, and sent us out into the world, it's up to us.  Our parents can only hope they have done well, and that their best efforts will be rewarded.  Shouldn't we all do our best to prove that they have invested their time and resources wisely?  My son, Jerod, once told me that the last thing he wanted to do, is disappoint me.  What more could I ask for?

As for myself, I am the product of 1954 in Wann, Oklahoma. Wann is a VERY small town of about 110 citizens, at that time. My aunt was the operator of the telephone switchboard, two of my aunts were cooks at the school, my uncle ran the motor grader that graded the gravel roads in town, another uncle repaired the school buses, and another uncle was the janitor at the school. I know I've lost count, but I believe nearly 25% of the school was related to me in one form or another. I just assumed that this was the way it was everywhere. 

In 1968 we moved to Pawnee, Oklahoma, another small town by some standards at nearly 2,500 people. It was a bit of an awakening, to say the least. It did reinforce the fact that family is important.

Like Jerod, I strove to always please my parents, but I wasn't as much of a success as my son. I drove my mother crazy sometimes and I believe she lost a lot of sleep on my account. More than once she said, "Wait till your dad gets home." 

I was one of those kids that only a mother could love and I will be eternally grateful that she loved unconditionally.