In The Field…..

My daddy was a wheat farmer. Wheat farmers do lots of field work. Usually farmers had a son or two to help out when they get old enough. My daddy had three girls! But I remember mama saying that daddy was always so proud of his girls. He taught us everything we needed to know to help out around the farm just as if we were boys. And this was great for us. We grew up knowing many things that our girls friends knew nothing about.

We started helping daddy when we were very young. When daddy would go out in the early spring to start working on the tractors or combine to get them ready for the work ahead one of us girls were always with him to help out. Our job was to fetch daddy tools when he was under or on top or inside of the machinery. And during the time when tools were not needing fetched we had a putty knife and we scraped grease and dirt off of the gears and other parts of the tractor or combine. This was not only to keep us busy but also help keep the machinery running better to not have all of this build up of gunk. At least that is what daddy told us! I always thought this was fun to make everything look clean again. And by fetching tools I learned the names of all of the different wrenches, hammers, pliers, and bolts. This was helpful information most girls did not know.

During harvest time I remember when we still had the old combine that had to be pulled by a tractor. Daddy would drive the tractor and Shirley Jean would drive the steering wheel on the combine. I think she also had to lift the front of the combine up and down.

　
Then later daddy had a combine that could be driven by itself. This was very modern and much nicer for cutting wheat. Daddy would drive the combine and Janice and I got to take turns riding in the bin where the wheat was being dumped into. I am not sure why we thought this was so much fun. Maybe because it was sort of like swimming. You could wiggle around and get down into the wheat and have it cover you up to your waist. As a kid I never paid any attention to the dirt, the itchy chaff, or the squished bugs. It was fun to have a big yellow grasshopper crawling on you. But don’t squish one of those green stick bugs! They smelled yucky.
After a few times around the field with the combine daddy would stop to dump the wheat into the truck. Each of us girls had our turns as we got old enough to drive to help with this part of harvest. We drove the truck under the auger on the combine so the wheat would land in the center of the truck. Then we had to climb into the back of the truck and take the scoop shovel and scoop the wheat towards the corners of the truck. The wheat had to be spread out level before we drove it into town to the elevator. You couldn’t drive real fast because the wheat would blow out of the back of the truck. Every piece of grain was important so you tried not to lose even one.

Harvest time was an exciting time but also a big worry to daddy. Once the wheat was ready to cut it had to be cut right then. If you waited too long the grains of wheat would fall out of the head of wheat and be lost. Daddy was always worried it would rain. You couldn’t cut the wheat when it was wet and you couldn’t get into the fields when they were muddy. Many times I remember daddy cutting wheat and having to make big circles around patches where there was a mud hole. And boy it was big time trouble when the combine got stuck in the mud when daddy would get a little too close to a mud puddle. It would take a tractor to finally get the combine out.
Once the wheat was all cut then it was time to plow the fields. Again all three of us girls did this as we got old enough to learn to drive the tractor. The first tractor I remember daddy having was a small red one. It had a wheel on the side of it that turned around and around when ever the tractor was running. I realize now it was used to put the belt on that went to the threshing machine. That was used in earlier years before I was born.

In my years of growing up daddy always had two tractors. First Shirley and daddy each drove one. Then later on it was Shirley and Janice or daddy and Janice. And finally it was my turn. Janice and I drove the two tractors. After Janice left home it was daddy and I. Usually he did one field while I was over in another field. Many times it was just me because daddy was also working as a television repairman and had to do those jobs too. But it was always a family event in the early morning. After we had a big breakfast, on the farm I grew up always having a big breakfast, then all of us headed outside to get the tractors ready for the field. You had to fill them with gas, water in the radiator, and grease all of the zerts. Mama would get the big tin ice jug filled with ice and water to take along out to the field.
I would start the tractor up and head out to the field. Daddy would usually open the field. This meant that he did the first two rounds. The first round was a little hard because you didn’t want to run through a fence. All of the fields that we had you could see our farm house from the field. It would be really far away but you could see it. When the sun got high in the sky I would be looking toward the house because mama would get up on the cow lot fence and wave a big white tea towel to let me know it was time to come in and eat dinner. After dinner I had to put gas in the tractor again and check everything out. Then I would work in the field until the sun would set and it started getting dark.

I remember one time when I was all most finished with this one field. There was just a little bit left in the middle. I thought I could go ahead and get it done before going home. It was starting to get dark. But just one or two more rounds and it would be done. It was getting darker. Maybe just a couple of more rounds, it is just a small area. Finally it was getting dark enough that it was hard to see but I was so close and I was thinking how proud I would be to know I had finished this field. Pretty soon I saw daddy walking across the field. He stopped me and asked what I was doing. I told him I was trying to finish this field, I was so close to being done. We didn’t see daddy smile very often, he was usually pretty serious. Daddy smiled at me and told me that it was okay, I could go on to the house and he would finish it. That smile let me know that he was proud of me that I was trying to finish my job. It gave me a warm feeling.

When my sisters and I were still living at home and plowing time was over, it was time to have a celebration. This was one of only a few times that our family would go do a fun thing as a family. It would be in the hot time of summer and daddy took us all down to Bluff Creek south of town for a picnic. This was a great adventure for us. Here we would take our shoes off and go wading. And once in a while there would be an area where it was deeper, almost up to our knees, and we would sit down in the water and play. After playing in the creek for a while mama called us over to the car where she had the blanket on the ground and we had a picnic. One time I remember daddy teasing mama, I don’t remember anything except seeing mama running around the car laughing and daddy chasing her. It was so neat to see them doing this because this was not a normal occurrence with daddy. We were all laughing and having such a grand time.

I use to get so bored just sitting on that tractor doing field work. You just go around and around and around. And on those hot days I would sunburn so easy. Daddy fix up the tractor with an umbrella for me. After we did plowing we had to disc the fields, sometimes twice before it was time to use the spring tooth. I enjoyed the time to spring tooth. You didn’t have to worry about staying in the lines! You went across the fields from corner to corner instead of around and around and it didn’t matter if you messed up where you were. This time of the year was getting close to fall and so many times I didn’t get to use the spring tooth much because I would be back in school. Then later still daddy would get the drill and plant wheat back onto all of the fields. And it would all be ready next spring for us to start all over again.

All of this field work was a chore and we grumbled many times, but all three of us girls were very lucky because daddy and mama would pay for our tuitions and other things to go to college. All three of us never had to worry about money while in college except to pay for our clothes and meals on weekends.
This was our pay for being daddy’s Sons!!!

A Valentines Day I Remember

Do you remember when it was Valentines Day we took a card to everyone in our class at school? They were these small Valentine cards that were in a large book and you had to poke them out of the cardboard pages.

It was very important to look at each card, read it, and pick out certain ones for certain people.
I would pick out favorite ones for my best friends and try to find mushy ones to give to the boys I liked. Of course these boys probably never even read them! You had to be careful not to give a mushy one to someone you didn’t like!

When I was young and going to grade school at Washington, I think it was when I was in the second grade, daddy would drive me to school in his truck on his way to work at Martis Electric. It was just daddy and myself. This Valentines Day I had my arms full. With a heavy coat and mittens on, I also had a book, my lunch box, and my box of Valentines for all of my class.
It was a cold and blustery day. We weren’t really late but all of the kids were already inside and I knew I had to hurry. As I opened the truck door and stepped down out of the truck I dropped all of the items I was carrying.
The valentines started blowing across the playground and I started crying! I couldn’t lose all of these special valentines, everyone else would have valentines to give out!
I felt despair as only a child can feel. Daddy had to hurry to work but he turned off the truck, got out and started picking up valentines. He calmed me down and told me it would be okay, we would find all of them. He helped me get all of my valentines picked up. And we did find all of them! He wasn’t mad, he just helped me.
I do not remember exactly what daddy said but I remember the weight of the world was off of my shoulders at that moment. Daddy was my hero!! For a long time, years in fact, I remembered that time as a special love I felt from my daddy, just for me.
It has always been a special Valentine Day…..



This is a Valentine Card my mother gave to daddy before they were married. It would have been before 1932.....

Chicken Dinner on the Farm

Yum yumm…. It is hard for me to believe after all of the chicken I ate growing up that I still like chicken today. Mama fixed fried chicken at least once a week for supper and sometimes more. With five in our family we would eat a whole chicken in one meal. The fried chicken that mother fixed was nothing like the chicken you buy in the grocery stores today.
We raised our own chickens and they were taken at a much smaller size then the ones you buy now. They were so tender and fresh tasting. Daddy would always get the wishbone piece, Shirley the breast bone, Janice a wing, mother the ribs and I liked the thigh, it had a lot of meat on it. The rest of the pieces would be distributed so that we each had two pieces to eat.
On many Sundays we ate chicken and noodles or chicken and dumplings. These chickens were ones that had gotten larger and older and were always cooked with homemade noodles or dumplings. We had some older hens that we would keep to lay eggs but after they had become a year or two old they would be used for this meal. And a new chicken would take its place for laying eggs. I felt the best part of using these older laying chickens were the eggs that would be in their egg sack inside them, they were just the yolk, no egg white yet, and in varying sizes. Mom would cook these with the noodles. They were so good.

But the story I want to tell is of all that had to be done to get these chickens to the table!
It all started in early spring. Mama would go to the hatchery in town to buy the baby chickens. Many times I got to go with her. It was exciting to walk in and hear all the noise! Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep…. You could hardly hear yourself talk. There would be cardboard boxes with dividers in them, and holes in the top and sides. Several boxes would be stacked on top of each other. These were all full of baby chicks. I loved to stick my finger in one of the holes in the side of a box and feel the fuzzy chick inside. Mama would always buy White Leghorn chickens. I think it was at least 100 baby chickens that she bought. The babies were all so fuzzy and bright yellow. Once in while there would be two or three that had a little black fuzz on them or even one that was all black. But when all of them grew they would have white feathers and yellow feet.

We kept these chicks in a small brooder house. There would be straw on the floor and one or two light bulbs, with a metal shade on top of it, hanging down from the low ceiling, close to the floor so the baby chicks could huddle under it to stay warm. Then food and water had to be put out for them twice a day. As the chicks grew and had feathers we could let them out of the brooder house during the day into a small fenced in area. In the evening we would go out and have to chase them back in to the brooder house for the night.
As they grew and became about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds in size the day would come when we spent the whole day dressing and cleaning chickens. Mama had a long wire with a hook on the end. She would go into the small fence area and use the hook to grab a chicken around the leg. We caught about 6 at a time. As Janice and I were standing there holding a chicken by the legs in each hand, mama would take a large sharp butcher knife and cut the head off of the chicken she was holding. She would just lie it on the ground and put its head under her foot and cut right through the neck. This never did seem to bother her or us. It was just part of things that we did on the farm.

After its head was cut off she would let go of it and jump back. It would start flopping all over the yard. After all of the heads were off we waited until they were done flopping and then go pick them up. Mama would go into the house and bring out a large bucket that had been filled half full of water and heated to boiling on the stove. Then she took a chicken, holding it by the feet, and dunked it into the hot water, swished it around a bit and took it out. She would hand it to Janice or me and we started pulling all of the feathers off of the chicken. We had to get them all off. Mama would always inspect them to be sure we had all of the feathers off.
Then we would carry it inside and holding it over a lit burner on our kitchen stove we singed all of the little hairs and a few furry feathers that were left on the chicken. But we still were not done! Now we had a huge bowl of water that we put the chicken in and with a sharp paring knife you scraped all of the skin of the chicken to clean off the singed hair and pull out any pin feathers that were still there. Again mama would have to inspect it to be sure it was clean enough and ready to be cut up.
This part was a little hard to do. Mama did most of them but as we got old enough she taught us how to cut up a chicken. It was done a certain way. Mainly so that you could cut through the joints instead of trying to cut through a bone. Also it divided up the chicken into certain pieces for eating. The chicken would then be put into a bag and placed into the freezer. We kept most of the chickens in the freezer to eat for the rest of the summer and through the winter.

The best part of this whole operation is that Janice and I got paid for helping!! We received 10 cents for picking the feathers off each chicken, and 10 cents for singeing and scraping a chicken. And when we were old enough to cut up a chicken we received 25 cents for each one we cut up!! It was a big pay day for us!!

Janice and I each usually did about 10 chickens in a day and mama would do lots more. All of the chickens would be cleaned and frozen within just 2 or 3 days.
I would sure enjoy having one of these small fresh chickens for dinner today! There is just nothing like it any more.

A Christmas I Remember

Christmas mornings for me were always just like the books that you read. My sister and I woke up, always very very early, and since I slept upstairs near my parents bed, I would ask if I could get up. Of course they would say it is not morning yet and after a while I would ask again. Finally after Janice would wake up also in a nearby bedroom then they would let us get up.
We would run downstairs to see what our special gift was, sitting on our special chair and to see what was in our Christmas Stocking. The night before mama would help us set a dinning room chair right in front of the Christmas Tree, one for each of us three girls. We left cookies on a plate on each chair and hung our Christmas stocking on the back of the chair. We always used one of mama’s nylon hose for our stocking. You could get so much more in it!! (This was before Panty hose!)
I don’t remember believing that Santa Claus came, I knew it was mama and daddy filling our stockings. They filled them mostly with apples, oranges and peanuts in the shell. I went to bed and thought they must get up in the middle of the night and put things on our chair and in our stockings. That part I never could figure out. How did they do that without me waking up. As I became older it finally dawned on me that they just did it before they went to bed! ha
We didn’t get a new doll every Christmas. A new doll was a very special gift that we received just a few times as we grew up. My very special friend, my Judy doll, I had as long as I could remember and I loved her very much. When I had my tonsils taken out in the hospital I had to have Judy with me in the hospital bed. And before I would let them give me a shot or anything they had to give it to Judy first. But over the last couple of years before this special Christmas all of her hair had fallen off, it was just glued on when she was new. I felt so sad that she was bald. And I guess I thought she was ugly. This Christmas the folks asked me if I wanted a new doll for Christmas. I said "no" what I want is new hair for my Judy doll!
So what did I see sitting on my Christmas chair that Christmas morning?! Judy, with a whole new head of hair, beautiful golden curls all over!! I was so very very happy!! I remember I started crying I was so happy. And I told mama that now I know what it means to cry because you are so happy. That was the first time I had ever experienced that. I never could figure out how they had that done without me knowing it. I had to have Judy with me all of the time. In later years mama told me they had gone all the way to Wichita, 60 miles, to a doll place and bought the wig and they told daddy how to glue it onto Judy. Daddy even had to buy special glue.
I still have Judy and she is still wearing the same wig. It is tangled now so you can’t comb it but it is still beautiful and I still love Judy as much as ever.

Playing in the Pasture

One of my favorite things to do on the farm was to go play in the pasture. This was a 20 acre area that was used to keep our cattle in. It was like going out into the wild!
There were so many things to do and see.
Just to walk around in the pasture was an adventure.
There were large bare areas where grass and weeds would not grow. Daddy told us that these areas were volcanic ash and that there had once been a volcano is the area. This always fascinated me. I could just see a big volcano spewing out ash and smoke, probably east of us where the city dump was at. At least this is what I had decided. And in these bare areas were always lots of rocks. We could find all different shapes and colors. The best ones were the petrified wood and the agates. I always had a bucket of rocks around the farm and my favorites would be in my rock collection sitting on a shelf in my room. One year mama even helped us to make plaster of paris molds that we stuck these rocks into to make a keepsake. I still have one of these that mama had sitting on the back porch even after they had moved to town.

While you were looking for rocks in these areas you could see a lizard run by. I would chase him and try to catch him and once in a while I would. The horny toads were easier to catch and there were more of them. I would usually be carrying home a horny toad as I walked back to the house. Sometimes I would keep a horny toad in a large coffee can for a few days but the folks would have me turn them loose after a while so they would not die. I do remember once when I caught one of those lizards. I tied a strong thread around its neck and put a safety pin on the other end of the thread and wore it to school like a pin! That was fun! A live lizard for a pin!! Most of my friends thought it was neat but I think most of the other kids thought I was goofy! Then when I came home I had to let it go again.

After a big rain there would be a new adventure in the pasture. There was a dry wash that ran through it. Most of the time there was not water in it but after a good rain there always was. There were three areas along this wash that would hold a pool of water for several days or even longer if we had more rains. Then you could go to these pools of water and find crawdads and tadpoles and all kinds of water bugs. I liked to play with the crawdads best. You could walk barefoot in the water and when you would get near a crawdad they would run real fast backwards! It was so funny! I knew not to get to close because they had pinchers that would nip your toe but they never seemed to want to do that, they would just run from you. To see them run backwards was so much fun.

Another fun thing with this dry wash was the gold that I could find in it! Just ask my cousin Savilla she knows about this gold! She and I would go out with our little shovels and buckets and dig for it. In this wash were places where the water would rush through the pasture and leave a deep washed out area, it would leave a bare wall of dirt three or four feet high. Here is where we found our gold. We would dig into this wall of dirt and find blue-gray colored dirt, (clay), just a strip of it, a vein of gold!! We would keep digging, taking the blue-gray dirt and placing it in our bucket, and follow the vein back into the wall of dirt. After a while we would be rich!


Sunflowers were another adventure in the pasture. The wild sunflowers would grow so very tall. At least 6 foot or more. In the pasture there would be huge patches that had just sunflowers growing side by side. This area was just like a jungle to my sister and I. We would try to walk through them and then we would start bending them over by standing on the stems. And we could make a “room” in the middle of the patch. Sometimes we made a path and made a second room! We had a play house made out of sunflowers!
In the pasture is also where I developed my interest in insects. Of course there were many of them around. I would just sit out in the middle of the pasture, in one of the bare spaces, or by the pools, or even in the sunflower house, and love to watch the bugs. But this will be another story!

City kids didn’t know what they were missing . Although we did enjoy playing in the city parks once or twice a year when there would be a picnic or something that the folks would take us to. But my favorite place to play was in our pasture… Kansas in the Wild!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

RAISING WHITE TURKEYS
I am not sure what started us raising turkeys on the farm. We never had very many at a time and I know we sold most of them. But it was always an exciting adventure. Turkeys are not the smartest of birds, they are dumb!

We started in the spring with the little baby turkeys. About 15 I think. They were more of a cream color rather then the pretty yellow a baby chicken was. They also had a longer neck. They really were kind of ugly for a baby! And they took more care then a baby chicken. So we had a large box, like one a TV would come in, newspaper all over the bottom of the box, with a light bulb hanging over it. We kept this on our back porch until they were large enough to be let outside to live on their own. It was interesting when we fed them. We mixed up this powdery chicken mash with cottage cheese! They loved this food and would gobble it up so fast that they were climbing on top of each other.

Once they were old enough to be left outside they had shelter in the barn. The rest of the time they were able to roam where ever they wanted on the farm. We had to chase them into the barn each evening. When ever it started to rain or storm we would have to go chase them into the barn because otherwise they would stand out in it and get all wet. Then they could catch a cold and die. They wouldn’t go into the barn on their own. Dumb birds!

You would have to check our cow tank several times a day too because they would try to sit on the side of the tank and many times would fall in. Since they didn’t know how to swim they would drown. We never had trouble with chickens doing that but there were always turkeys ending up in the tank. Mama would drag them out of the tank and take them into the house to dry them off. Sometimes I remember her lighting the oven of our gas stove to sit them on the lid to keep them warm while she dried them off. Dumb birds!
When someone drove into the farm yard we had to go out and shoo the turkeys away. They always wanted to fly onto the top of the cars. Of course company was not very happy with scratches on their cars.

But after all of this, these bright white large birds were so pretty and fun to watch when they displayed their feathers. They would puff up and love to strut around dragging their wings on the ground. Several males would march around each other trying to see who was the biggest and the toughest.

Then in early fall it was time to sell them. Mama put an ad in the Anthony Republican, our city newspaper. We also had a large metal stand that daddy made that was put out by the highway at the end of our driveway. “Live Turkeys For Sale”. Mama would pick out two or three to keep for ourselves. These she killed, cleaned and put in the freezer for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

When it came time to eat one of these large turkeys all of the work was forgotten. Turkey and dressing was one of the favorite meals in our family. It seemed they weren’t so dumb anymore.

Wash Day

It is Monday morning and when I was growing up on the farm this was always washday. Washing clothes was an all day project. It was a lot of work. When I was young we did not have automatic washing machines or dryers.
There was a small building just outside the back door of our house. This was the wash house. It did not have any heat or air conditioning. Inside the wash house was the washing machine with the wringer, the wash bench, and two big galvanized wash tubs. The washing machine was electric but all of the rest of the process was done by hand.
Mama did all of the washing every Monday but when we were not in school we had to help. First, we sorted the clothes into piles. These were put into laundry baskets and carried outside into the wash house. We had hot and cold water facets in the washhouse, which we hooked a hose to and filled up the tub on the washing machine. We set the wash bench beside the washing machine and set the two wash tubs on it. These two tubs were also filled with water. One had warm water and the second one had cold water. You always rinsed the clothes in the warm water first. After we took the clothes out of the rinse tubs, we put the clothes in the empty laundry basket that was setting on an old chair. Everything was set up so that the wringer on the washing machine could be put over the washer, or each of the rinse tubs and laundry basket as needed.
When it was time to start washing clothes we put a load in the washing machine, along with Cheer soap, and turned it on. It would swish the clothes back and forth. We let them wash a while and then turn the machine off and turn on the wringer. With the wringer over the washer you put a piece of clothing into the wringer and the two rollers would roll the clothing through to the other side while squeezing out all of the water and drop it into the tub of warm water on the other side. Put another load of clothes into the washing machine and start it going again. All of the clothes were washed and rinsed in the same water that was put in each tub. That is why you always wash the white things first and work your way through until you did the darkest colors last. Then we picked the clothes up and down out of the rinse water to get the soap out of them. Bring the ringer around so it was between the two rinse tubs and again put the clothes through the ringer to squeeze out the water and drop them into the second rinse tub. Pick up the clothes and rinse up and down for a second time. Now they were clean and free of soap. For the third time you put them into the ringer, now turned around so that it was over the laundry basket.
It was now time to go hang them out on the clothes line. Mama had a child’s wagon that two laundry baskets would set in and when she had two baskets full and ready to be hung we would pull the wagon out into the farm yard where the clothes line was. Hang each piece up a certain way with at least two clothes pins. Jeans and daddy’s overalls were hung by the legs. Blouses were also hung upside down. Bed sheets were laid clear over the clothes line and then pinned. Towels hung by the end.
You had to watch the weather. If it started to rain, you had to go running out and bring all of the clothes inside. On the other hand, if it was a rainy day you still did the washing on Monday but the drying was done inside the house. We had a large metal drying rack that opened up like an umbrella. It had cord strung from corner to corner all around so there was room for lots of clothes. This was placed over the floor furnace.
I remember playing outside and seeing a big brown cloud in the south, coming towards our farm. It was a dust storm! I ran in the house and told mama then we had to hurry really fast to take all of the clothes off the clothes line and into the house.
It was also fun in the really cold winter time when mama would bring in daddy’s overalls. They were so thick and heavy that they usually did not get dry before the end of the day in the winter. They would be frozen stiff, mama would stand them up in a corner in the house, and we would laugh because mama was standing daddy up in the corner! I remember once pretending I was dancing with daddy!
Mama finally had an automatic washer and dryer after all of us girls were gone from home. But I still remember how wonderful all of the clothes smelled when they were dried outside, and how nice the house would smell when all of the clothes were drying in the house whenever they had to be brought in to dry.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

The Trick and Treaters are about to arrive. I hope we have nice weather for all of them. I remember it always being such a fun time when I was young. We lived a little ways out of town and so mom would drive us into town to go trick and treating. We would always go to our preachers house, Uncle Howards, and Aunt Bethals. Then we would go to Aunt Annies. This was special because she always had a bowl of candy at the door for everyone, but when she saw that it was grandkids or nieces and nephews she would reach behind the door and get a special bowl of candy that had candy bars in it! And we are not talking about the little bite size bars kids get these days. You very seldom received any good candy like Aunt Annie gave us. You got popcorn balls, apples, cookies, and lots of hard candy and once in a while one of the little Hershey's miniature candy bars. Aunt Annie gave us the regular size candy bars!! Then mom would stay and visit with Aunt Annie while we walked up and down the street going to houses. It was always so exciting.

One Halloween I really remember is the Halloween that I was sick and I did not get to go trick and treating. I thought it was the worst day of my life!! But mom told me she would go to the store and buy me my favorite candy and bring it home to me. I told her I wanted Tootsie Roll Pops. She gave me a whole box just before my sisters, Janice and Shirley, left to go trick and treating. I wasn’t quite as sad then. But later when Janice and Shirley came home and had a whole sack of candy I was feeling very sorry for myself again. And then daddy came over and handed me a sack. I looked in, dumped it on my bed, and saw handfuls of penny candy!! There must have been a hundred pieces!!! That would be a dollar worth!! I had more candy then Janice and Shirley even did!!
I think that was the best Halloween I ever had and I didn’t even get to go trick and treating!!!!

Born in a CAR!!

Born in a CAR!
I was born June 21, 1944. The first day of summer! I was several years old before I finally learned the actual date of my birth. I just always told everyone that I was born on the first day of summer. That was a special day I thought.

My birth was quite an event even though I was the third girl born to my parents. I was born during wheat harvest. Wheat harvest was a busy time as each farmer did his own cutting with his own combine and tractor. A large combine was pulled by a tractor. One person driving the tractor and another person driving the lifts, etc on the combine. Also a person with the truck that the wheat was dumped into. Daddy had at least two hired hands at this time. And mama had to fixed lunch for all of them each day.

I of course do not remember all of the details of my birth but I have been told the story over the years. We lived 6 miles out of town. When mama started going into labor daddy knew it was time to start into town. Driving in a old Chevrolet car daddy starting going down the old dirt roads. As he arrived at the edge of town, where the railroad track was, I decided I didn’t want to wait any longer to come into this world. There was a very long wheat train going across the tracks. These trains had 50 or more wheat cars on them and did not move real fast. Daddy decided he would try to go down along the tracks and get to the back of the train faster. But it was slightly muddy and I was getting closer to saying hi to the new world. So daddy got back onto the road and mama always told me that “your daddy caught you” when I was born. I think mama said they always had an old blanket in the car to help keep your legs warm when traveling and she wrapped me up in that. Daddy was so worried and when the train finally got across the road he hurried on to the hospital. Mama said she wasn’t worried now that I was born. She was asking daddy if he cared if she named me Joleen. Daddy said very tensely “I don’t care what you name her, just keep her warm!” When they arrived at the hospital daddy pulled up to the emergency door and started honking the horn. Mama told daddy to just go inside and get someone but daddy would’t leave her. So he just kept honking the horn until someone finally came out.

There was not any more to the story that I remember. But all my life I have always bragged that I was born in a car!