Folks call me an entrepreneur and I would tell you I was full-a-manure.

 I cannot explain why it happened, but I figured out early that to make money I had to multiply my time and find something other folks wanted.  So, when I was about 7 I started competing in the Grainola District Fair.  The first thing I should tell you is I was always way too big for my age.  (see pic of our basketball team, Mr. Morris was the only person taller and the three littlest guys were the only ones my age, the others were up to 3 years older) The first thing I remember competing in was riding in bicycle rases during the fair and then I tried to learn canning from my mom so I could enter the canning contest.  Then there was the horseshoe contest and the greased pig contest and the big one for me was turtle racing.  

Now here is where it got good, I figured that winning depended on the turtle and not on my ability.  So, I decided to collect turtles and sell them to fellows wanting to race during the fair.  That was very profitable and I would attempt to keep the fastest turtle for myself but that did not always work.  

My next full-a-manure venture was when I decided to borrow money from the bank ($70) to buy two ewe lambs.  That is another story but I should mention I was 9 yrs. old when I went to the bank and asked Mr. Andrews for a loan.  Alright, I will tell the rest of the story.  He asked me how I was going to pay back the loan and I gold him we would have baby lambs and wool to generate money for the loan.  He asked me how we would have baby lambs if I did not purchase a ram.  I told him they were already pregnant.  He said, "then I will make you the loan".  I should also mention that dad never came in the bank with me but sat in the pickup.  I should also mention that I sold one of the first lambs to my sister and I thought I kept the best lamb for myself.  She won the Osage County Spring Livestock show, I did not.

This is getting long so I will tell more in the next story.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Hard work and a little risk taking can get you ahead in life
• Being the biggest guy in the school was not cool, until later
• A college education can hinder a person from reaching their best
• Hard work and tenacity can overcome 

Thanks for listening,

gary

Golson21@hotmail.com

Soups fishing hole

 When you grow up in the Osage you learn about where to go fishing.  Larry and I fished mostly about 1/4 mile behind the house on Beaver Creek.  We would sein for minnows in the creek or grab some liver out of the freezer and head out.  Interesting enough we never brought water or food, and mom never seemed to worry about us.  She always said, "when they get hungry, they will come home".  

Now if you walk about another half mile west and a little south there was a deep water hole called Soups fishing hole.  Now Soup Wade was his name, and his wife was Letha and she was a schoolteacher in Shidler, and I don't know what Soup ever did besides tell stories.  Letha was a full blood Osage and sweet to me, always.  Just past Soups fishing hole was a beaver damn, and it was fun to watch the beavers working.  It was a great hole, and I caught many a bass there.  My brother Larry always caught more than me.  He fished with a fancy real and mine was an inexpensive Zebco (manufactured in Tulsa).  One time I caught but not landed the biggest bass ever.  I am guessing it was well over 5 lbs. and maybe up to 8.  The other outstanding thing I caught one time was a rod and reel, yep, a rod and reel.

I have to admit that if the fishing was not going well, we would start shooting turtles with a 22 rifle.  One   of the best times shooting was David Goldenberg (my second most favorite Jewish boy) was with me and he had never shot a gun.  He grew up in Queens, New York.  I guess they did not live on a creek.  

He was also surprised when he saw mom's crocks full of cucumbers turning into pickles.  He had not given much thought to cucumbers make pickles.  He was also surprised that I did not know what a bagel was.  He also was surprised that I was not aware he was Jewish.  I told him that where I came from, we just had three types of folks, black and white and red.  It was strange to me that I never really cared what color a person was.  

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• everyone likes to fish
• not everyone has a creek 
• the color of the skin or the ethnicity of a person does not make the man
• character is what makes a man

Thanks for listening,

gary

golson21@hotmail.com

How did the depression make a difference in your life?

 I know that I did not grow up in the depression, but it certainly made a difference in my life.  Mom and dad grew up during those times including the Dust Bowls, Depression, WWI and mostly WWII plus lots of presidents and lots of politics.  

Did it make a difference in my life?  Certainly, because mom became extremely thrifty, and she worked like a dog every day providing for the family.  Dad wanted to own land and raise a family that he could be proud of.  They both worked long hours 7 days a week from before daylight to after dark.  They both wanted their children (Larry, Debbie and me) to go to college and they taught us hard work, discipline and respect. They gave us values, honor and faith.  We virtually never missed church and knowing about the life of Christ.

Let me be specific:  We always had a huge garden and literally hundreds of chickens and I would guess over 100 hogs, and milk cows (a dairy for many years) plus beef cattle and even a few sheep.  Every year we put up (canned) hundreds of jars of vegetables for the winter.  We butchered chickens for meat and harvested eggs for the kitchen plus we traded eggs at Dale's Feed Seed and Fertilizer store for groceries.  We separated the whole milk and sold off the cream and then the milk for income.  We even made our own butter for years and to tell you the truth, I was glad to see those sticks of butter in the store and then our kitchen.  It saved a lot of work.  All of this was a reflection of mom's thrifty ways.  She made clothes for the entire family, except for the Levi's and even those were patched many times to make them last.  

Another reflection of the lasting effects of the depression is that being the youngest, I got to wear the used clothes of Larry, my brother, and Billy Snyder, my first cousin.  That is, until I outgrew them and that was about the time I hit 12 or 13.  Debbie, my sister, and the Shumate girls all learned to sew and make their own clothes.  Mom was a great teacher.

Another thing my parents did, and I believe it was due to the depression, was giving or I could say sharing what we had with others.  They gave even when it hurt as they saw others in need more than us.  I would say they happily gave, and they never asked the government to take their place in that giving.  They did not require something in return, because they understood the law of giving was a gift in itself.

Leftovers were never wasted with the one exception of liver.  Dad hated liver, so we got to use it for fish bait, so maybe it was not wasted either.  Vehicles were driven for years and were totally repaired and maintained by us.  Even the tractors were maintained and never traded for a newer model.  We used everything until it could be used no more.  

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• A great life is made by the values you learn, the hard way or should I say hard work
• Without a good example of a father and mother, growing up can be very difficult
• Give and give until you can give no more and give some more, you will be richer for it

Thanks for listening,

gary

golson21@hotmail.com

Array Manufacturing - a great idea is not always a great idea!

A great idea is not always a great idea, Array Manufacturing.

Remember when we had continuous feed printers and it was a hassle getting paper to feed to the printer? Well, Bruce Milner and Kevin McAfee and I started a company called Array Manufacturing (around 1983) to solve this problem and make millions. IBM had one and it was a lot like ours but different (see pic below). We actually sold a lot of these, but we also had a lot of left over inventory.

It was fun but, it was a great idea at a great price, for the consumer anyway. I was in the computer industry and saw the need as personal computers were new and dot matrix printers were the cool new thing. Those computers were desktop only and had 8 to 16k memory with floppy drives using cassettes which had 32 to 64k. YEP, that is k as in 1000 bytes. Did you know it takes 8 bits to make a bite? And then there was ASCII and EBCDIC, try that on for size! I was an EBCIDIC person with heavy experience in assembler language and banking programs, but those are another story.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Great ideas are great ideas only if you execute on them, but it can still fail.
• Time moves on, so you better seize the day and get it done, NOW
• Profit margins do not mean a thing if you cannot put a little change/cash in your pocket
• * Fun can be expensive

Thanks for listening,

Gary

Golson21@hotmail.com

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