Tornados

With all this tornado stuff going on I am inclined to remember a few myself.  If you look back you will find one of my stories about the tornado we saw while on the Custer land and while our school bus had a flat.  I am not sure buy it was over close to Joy Frank's house and she may have been on the bus as well that day.

Anyway, I only remember one time when a tornado hit and really made a mess of things.  It was at Tanny Olsen's house (grandparent of Jay, Jon and Jamie Olsen then Eddie, Janis, Bob and David Harris plus Tanny and Levi) and the tornado came down the creek from the west and took one barn and picked it up and smashed it across the creek to a pile of rubble.  Then it came to the next barn and picked it up and then sat it back down on the foundation but turned about two feet.  The next barn it came to it sucked a barn full of corn out and there was not even a rat left.  Then there was the grain bin which is a round metal bin that looks like a giant tin can setting on a cement foundation.  The tornado sucked all the wheat out of it then came straight at the house where Tanny and Nanny were sitting.

Now they were typical ranchers and farmers they just pulled up their chairs and sat in the garage which was an underground garage built into the side of the hill under the house.  It faced the west and you could sit there safely and watch the goings on.  I cannot say whether they were scared but my suspicion is they were.  Tanny was taking us around showing the damage.  He told us the tornado was coming right at them then suddenly jumped up and went over the house an on to the cattle pens on top of the hill where it did some limited damage.

I know this sounds crazy and my dad got mad at me one time when I said I wanted to see a tornado but I did.  I really enjoyed watching those tornadoes crawling across the wheat and grass fields in the spring.  There was no apparent damage but just a site to behold.  Dad taught us how to look in the sky for those fingers or circulating clouds that could become a tornado.  It was always amazing how you could just sit in the open prairies and watch the clouds move across the sky so majestically with the dark black and sometimes green but mostly giant white clouds shooting up in the air thousands of feet.  If you could separate yourself from any danger it was absolutely gorgeous to watch.  I should note to you that when you saw green and other shades of colors it typically meant there was ice or hail in the storm.  Of course it was easiest to see the beauty of a storm when it was coming and before a large blanket of dark clouds and rain was on top of you.
I guess as a kid I was probably not scared enough and Mom and Dad always protected us especially when things were getting too close.  I do remember one time in the cellar we could hear the roar of the tornado and that was the only time it was just a little too close for comfort.

I should also mention that thanks to my sister and her wonderful mothering nature (she gets all the credit) raised a son Richard Crow who builds, owns and runs Groundzero Storm Shelters www.groundzeroshelters.com which is the largest maker of tornado shelters in the country.  Somehow those Osage roots make a difference.  If you want one give me a call and I will put you in touch with Debbie.  In fact if you look it up on the Internet and make the call you can ask for Debbie.  There are others there but she is the best and she is my favorite sister.

One last thing and that is something my brother, Larry, told me two days ago on the phone.  He said that when you are laying in the wheat fields watching the clouds that you should be careful of green piles of cow manure as that can make a good time bad.  This is referring to one of my stories a few days back.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• look for the beauty in things 
• remember there is always danger in good looks, that reminds me of a girl I dated, HUMMMM
• Without the rains and storms in life there would be no water and no tornadoes, so be careful what you pray for

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Osage vs. England Part II

What else is different about England from the Osage?-

No. 1 - We have Mollie Bivins and they don't.  We are blessed she moved to the Osage and built her gardens.  Go visit Bivin's Gardens in Shidler.

Breakfast - They make pretty good jellies and they have this lemon curd which is pretty exciting but they cannot beat Mom's home made jellies.  They do seem to use real butter which I really like and we use to have that all the time but when someone invented STICK butter from the store and then Margarine I don't believe we ever made HOME MADE BUTTER again.  Besides if you have never done it you should try it.  Here are a few methods:
1) just find some whole milk and let it sit for a day until the butter fat rises to the top and then dip it off and put it in a Ball Jar with a lid on it.  Shake it until you can shake it no more then shake it some more and you will get butter.  2) get an old fashioned butter churn and there are several models and put the same whole milk combination as above in it and get after the cranking.  Yes, it is a manual crank and your arms do get tired unless you use the churn where you pump it up and down and then your arms will still get tired.

I would also have to say that they do a nice job with the potatoes but the tomato which they cook just has no appeal to me at all.  Their toast is store bought and when we lived in the the Osage Mom made the bread and it was excellent especially with real butter and home made jam or jelly.

Now here is something that has changed over time about breakfast and that is coffee.  It hard to believe but I think coffee has made more change than anything over the years.  First when I was a kid you would grind up the coffee beans and put them in boiling water after which you would strain the coffee through what we called a cheese cloth to get the grounds out.  Some folks did not strain the grounds out but just let them settle to the bottom of the cup.  I would have to say that was one of my favorite ways of coffee even with the grit in the bottom of the cup and on occasion having a little coffee grounds stuck in your teeth.  The second and way that folks prepared and drank their coffee and which was my Grandpa Olaf Olson's way of drinking coffee was to pour you a cup of coffee made like the first method but then he would pour the coffee out of the cup and into the coffee saucer from which he would tip the saucer toward his mouth and kind of suck it in.  I think the idea was the coffee was too hot (remember it was boiling) and by pouring it in the saucer it cooled faster.  Third was was the new fangled percolator coffee pots.  There were really two styles here and one of them you plugged in to an electric socket and turned it on and the second was you would set the coffee pot on the burner.  The real difference on these is that there was long aluminum tube in the middle of the pot with an aluminum attachment on the top of the stick which held the coffee grounds.  The idea was to keep the coffee grounds contained.  Mom used a new fangled type of pot which came about because of the space industry, Corning Ware.  It was a pretty pot that sat on the burner and it made great coffee.  This was my favorite.

But then something else came from the space industry, INSTANT COFFEE, Folgers instant coffee crystals.  Nice idea but it just ruined coffee for years and Mom liked it and it was easy and convenient. I don't know how long that lasted but I was out of high school before real coffee came back into play.

OK, back to England.  Their coffee was outstanding as they made it the old fashioned way and they brewed it.  Now one problem they do have over there is they load it up with a LOT of milk and sugar. The funny thing is some of you probably agree with it since Starbucks has transformed folks into spending $4 and $5 for some fancy coffee desert and even if you are old fashioned they still got you paying $2 for a cup of coffee WITHOUT free refills.  In fact if you are in London or some of the big cities they are over run with Starbucks.  Are we stupid or what?

Here you can see a typical breakfast except they NEVER cook eggs over hard unless you ask for it.  They were shocked I asked for it.  That black piece of stuff is Pigs blood and I refused to try it.  It cannot be good for you.  And bacon is ham not bacon as we know it and sausage is very good but not sausage like we know it either.

Now here is one last thing about coffee and that is they take a break every day in the afternoon and have coffee or tea and scones with jelly, strawberry jelly and curdled milk which is really just cooked cream but it was pretty good.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Coffee is best the old fashioned way, HOT and black - try drinking it from a saucer
• Tomatoes are to be cold and sliced not cooked
• No matter how special anywhere else is, HOME is where the heart is

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com

England vs. the Osage

The Osage, Oklahoma and England, what is the difference?

We just finished 11 days traveling England and we visited about 20 gardens and 12 castles or homes, 8 bed and breakfasts, The Tower of London, Big Ben, the home of Lizzy as one person called the Queen, and the list goes on and on.

Here are a few comparisons:

The People - exceptionally friendly and proud of their homeland and very helpful to strangers.  Am I talking about the Okies or English folks?  BOTH, absolutely amazing how nice and friendly every single person was.

The Roads - their roads are for the most part all black topped and very or extremely narrow with no shoulders and in fact generally have a hedge and mound of dirt preventing you from getting out of the way.  They have very minimal pot holes, we have very little roads without pot holes.  They are very courteous drivers and don't use sign language when you mess up.  This is an area we could learn to do better at.  The picture shows basically a two way street made of cobblestone and folks just drive and park on the sidewalk to either let you buy or they just park to get into their house.

Breakfast - they eat way too much for breakfast in that they have cereal, yogurt, fruit, juice, coffee or tea, then they eat an English breakfast with small potatoes, mushrooms, cooked tomatoes, eggs always sunny side up and toast plus unless you stop it they have this black thing which is pigs blood and it looks like toast.  We never ate that, not even close.

They have no idea what a real drought is and they have no idea what hot weather is.  It rains a little to a lot every day and it stays fairly cool every day even into August.  

They think a castle is for the rich but we think a castle is where you live and ours is surrounded by creeks and rivers but they have motes.  I have to admit it would be nice to have one of theirs but a newer modern version.

They like fancy hats and we like baseball and cowboy hats.  They have stores just for hats.

Gardens - their gardens have trees older than Oklahoma is a state and older than the USA is a country.  Their gardens are like a story book as they include statues and older buildings which all have stories around them.  Many of the gardens are 200 to 300 years old and then older and the oldest building was in Bath which was built just before the time of Christ.

They get into statues a little more than we do.  Sir Winston Churchill takes the cake for most statues and most of his statues were placed where he was either born or the house he lived in for most of his life after retiring from politics.  

They have a little more detail in their woodwork.  absurd!  They have an extreme amount of detail in the woodwork.  

They are excessive compulsive about gardening and cutting grass.

Our churches have bigger hearts and theirs are in design and they bury dead folks in the floor.  Most of the ones buried in the floor are famous, at least to them.  The churches are incredible designs.  Actually a lot of fun to visit and very interesting historically and spiritually.

Well I have had fun with this so here goes.  

What do you learn in the Osage?

• We have trees just like they do but maybe a little smaller
• We have taller grass thanks to the bluestem
• There are great folks everywhere, you just have to look for the good in people.

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Building Fence

I was visiting with a father of a young man who was getting ready to play football in Edmond, Oklahoma.  He was sharing with me how his son had to train almost year-round.  During the off times it was expected that a son would get special training in weight lifting and quickness skills.  Other times he was expected to attend training camps and then of course spring practice and fall practice.  In fact I remember when our oldest son was playing football for Deer Creek High School and he was expected to do all of these things if he wanted a chance to play.  Well that is not how it worked in the Osage.

In the Osage if you lived on a farm or ranch you hauled hay as soon as the weather permitted putting up hay.  That means after school in the spring until after dark and there was NO spring practice.  In fat SPRING BREAK was not at all what it is today.  It was only an opportunity to work full time building fences, hauling hay and more.  During the summer you hauled hay from daylight until dark and only stopped for lunch.  And that was only if you did not have time to eat it while in the hay truck between loading and unloading.  If that does not make sense to you then you need to learn about how to be more efficient and save time.  It was also seven days a week unless it rained.  That was the only excuse for not hauling hay.  Even the city kids helped hauling hay.  Steve Chrisco always talked about hauling hay for the Jacques and working with AJ.  I think every guy had the opportunity to haul hay.  

If that was not available there was fence building which really was a year-round sport.  Don’t assume this is the only things we did because we still had to do our normal chores of feeding cattle or taking care of the show animals we had for 4-H livestock shows or even feeding chickens and everything else. 

I do believe building fence was the hardest of the jobs on the farm.  It seemed like it took forever and basically before automation it was even harder.  Let me explain automation.  Automation was having a post hole digger on the back of a tractor to dig holes for wooden posts.  In case you did not know it there were several types of posts.  The new ones which are still used today are called T-posts.  When they came about it was a life saver but it was still back breaking work.  Let me tell you how that worked.  Basically you had about a 16 pound hunk of steal that you pounded the top of the post with and drove it into the ground.  It was called a sledge hammer.  Then someone got real smart and welded a piece of steel pipe where one end was closed and there were handles on each side.  It only weighed about 20 pounds but once it slid over the top of the post all you had to do was lift it up and drive it down on the post until the post was deep enough in the ground to satisfy Dad.   No easy task either.  After driving one post your arms weighed more than the piece of steel and you had to lift it off and get ready for the next post.   This may not sound like that hard of a deal but when you do it for 12 or 14 hours a day your ass is dragging and you can hardly lift your arms.  The good thing is after a few weeks it was not near so hard.  I will put any young farm boy up against the greatest weight lifter and the farm boy can wear the weight lifter out.

Now the second way to build fence which was the old fashioned way  and before the tractor with the post hole digger was to take a manual set of post whole diggers and dig a whole about 3 feet deep to put an oak post into.  Sometimes they were cedar posts.  There is a type of oak tree we called a post oak which is a narley oak tree that does not grow very tall but makes a very stout post.  You would think that is not so hard but there are several issues with this.  First off Dad had a set of steel post whole diggers that weighted over 20 pounds and maybe even 35 pounds.  And picking them up and down was difficult enough much less trying to drive them into the hard ground and twisting and squeezing until you got a load of dirt to dip out of the hole.  The second issue is once you got the post in the hole you had to put dirt back into the hole and then tamp with a steel piece of iron that Dad got from the railroad which was made to move railroad tracks.  I think it weighted at least 20 pounds as well.    The point is to get the dirt packed around the wood post tight enough that the post would not move easily.  And then no matter what type of post you put in the ground Dad expected every post to be the same height sticking out of the ground and in an extremely straight line.  I should mention that I am not talking about building a fence around your house but around a field or pasture.  These fences could be a mile or more.  Can you imagine keeping posts the same height and in a straight line and perfectly aligned for hundreds and thousands of yards.  Each post had to be the same distance apart.  Farmers take pride in their fences and their property and Dad was no exception.  I would also have to say that Mom reinforced the same values in everything she did as well. 

Next time you drive down the road I want you to take a look at the fences and fence posts and appreciate the work that went into it.  And remember that farm boys got in shape for football by building fences and hauling hay.  In fact I would have to tell you that every year I started football practice in the fall I gained weight and I appeared much faster the first couple of weeks.  If you can’t figure it out that means the faster kids were not in shape in the beginning but as they caught up they were faster than me. 

So what do you learn in the Osage?

·       You teach values to your children by building fences

·       High expectations are to be admired and achieved no matter how many times it takes to get it right
·       Building fences and doing it right is more important than football

• Building fences and mending fences is like a good marriage - it takes time and it is hard work but the straighter and more consistent you are the better you feel about yourself and your marriage and people admire you for your efforts

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Building our house

When I was about 5 or 6 and before I started the first grade Dad and Mom decided to build a new house.  I don't know what was wrong with the old one but we started building one about 2 or 3 feet from the old one.  All I can remember is it was so close to the other one it was a challenge getting up on a ladder. 

 After we moved into the new house they loaded our old house and moved it to Grainola where Mrs. Heath would live and build onto it a post office.

Just as a side note which I am prone to do we did not have pre-K or kindergarten and it seemed that everyone turned out ok and in fact I would say better than what I am seeing today.  Now I am just a country boy but do we really need all of this since the country is broke?  Don't get PO'ed but it is something to think about.  I just think a little more parenting might do our kids some good.  In fact I had a healthy fear of being punished at home if I miss-behaved at school.

Back to the house.  I think it was about 30 feet by 40 feet and yes it was a rectangle with one roof line.  That means we had 3 bedrooms and about 1200 square feet with 2 adults and 3 kids.  Larry and I shared a bedroom.  We turned out ok as far as I can tell but you might want to ask some of my friends.  Debbie got her own room and it was kind of girlie if you know what I mean.  There was one bathroom and no shower but the great thing was there was an old time stove in the bathroom which served multiple purposes.  First of course it would warm the room so when you got out of the shower it was warm or if you were on the toilet it kept you warm.  The other advantage was when there was a smell generated by someone taking a dump it burned up the gas if you know what I mean (do I need to explain and I don't know why we did not say leaving a dump vs. taking a dump).  That little stove was an open flame with grates and it was a delight.  I am certain that some activist group got those outlawed because you never see them anymore.  The rest of the house was heated by an old brown furnace with grates in it set in the hallway.   The living area, dining area and kitchen were heated by the fireplace which was huge.  I bet the limestone seat was at least 10 or 12 feet long.  We moved up in the world as we now had linoleum floors NOT that old fashioned oak floors.  Things have changed again.  The dining room table was made by dad out of a new door and it was pretty cool.  Mom had copper tone appliances in the kitchen and there were no microwaves back then.  Like most houses we had multiple entrances and the main one was never used as it faced the south and the north entrance was most often used by company while we used what we called the back porch.  The back porch which was inside the house is where the washer and dryer and a freezer big enough to hold at least a quarter of a calf and I remember having a hog in there plus all the frozen vegetables from the garden.  I bet the freezer was 8 to 10 feet long and it was a chest freezer so it stood about four feet tall.

What I remember was I carried nails and anything Dad wanted as I loved being there to help him.  If he needed boards I insisted on carrying them.   He would not let me get on the roof when he did the shingling but I carried shingles up the ladder and handed them to him.  The entire process took several months because Dad had to take care of the farm and carry the mail as a rural mail carrier each day then work on the house in between all the chores and work.  Larry and Debbie were at school so I was the main help.  Bill Head helped do the finalelectrical wiring as Dad and I ran the wires but Bill wired all the connections.  Yes that is Bill as in Mrs. Head, my English teacher, and their Barbeque sauce son Danny who runs Head Country.  Dad wound up becoming the builder for about everyone around Grainola and a bunch in Shidler and he always used Bill Head for the electric work. 

That house was pretty spiffy and it was about the only house I remember that was totally landscaped.  Mom and Dad loved landscaping and gardening and they went to a lot of effort to learn about landscaping from the county agent which I remember being Mr. Dowell who lived in Fairfax.  The last few things I thought were really special is that the house was built between a few really big trees, one which became my tree house tree and you could not put your arms around the trunk it was so big and then in the front yard there were originally 3 really big cedars but one was split by lightening and we had to cut it down.  The front porch faced the east and we would sit out there in those old metal lawn chairs for hours watching the evening activities of coyotes running across the hill side and listening to the crickets and frogs making racket plus literally thousands of fire flies flashing their yellow lights on and off.  Usually the dog was sitting there with us and a few cats.  At one time I had 23 cats.  Of course NO animals were allowed in the house.

I guess I should correct that.  Once the dog was allowed in the house because it was so cold and we have a picture of the dog lying on the couch and DAD sleeping on the floor.  Another time I brought my show steer which weighed about 1200 lbs. into the house at which MOM started telling me to get him out of there.  I thought it was pretty funny myself.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Kids learn a lot from watching their parents
• A new house is not a home unless the family is together
• Don't you wish it was your choice how you want to heat your house rather than the government?
• If you hold on to something long enough it will be in style again, kind of like wood floors

Thanks for your time,

Gary@thepioneerman.com

The first warm day of spring

What happens on that first warm spring day right after that last cold snap?  Life bursts forth!  The new calves are running and the mother cows (obviously that is redundant but city folks say it that way or at least they understand it better) are trying to keep up with them.  Just in case you did not know it cows are females and bulls are males and calves are babies, steers are castrated and females and heifers are young females that have not been bread, and all together they are cattle.  It is especially refreshing to watch the young calves and their moms in the wheat fields along the creek side lined with trees which are popping with new life and plush green.  If you get lucky you will even see a deer or now days a turkey eating in the wheat fields.  The air is fresh with spring clouds and a few rains coupled with the new heat from the spring sun making things grow really fast.  The oaks are beginning to bloom and wild flowers are everywhere.  The best of times are spring.

One of my favorite things is when its starts warming up is to go out in the wheat fields and lay down in the cool green wheat grass.  If you try it just watch out for those cow piles but it doesn't getting any better.  Another thing I use to do in the spring wheat fields was take out my bow and arrows and set up a few targets while it was still easy to find the arrows that missed the mark.  Now I never promised I was the sharpest arrow in the quiver but I thought it was a lot of fun seeing how far up I could shoot those arrows and see how close they came down to where I was standing.  On occasion it was scary but not too often as the wind would drift the arrow over.  Another fun thing we did was build kites and attach them to a Zebco rod and reel and see how long and how far we could get it to go.  We use to buy our kites for 10 cents at the Otasco store in Shidler or sometimes at the grocery store.  Back in those days at the check out at Lawrence Dehl's grocery store there would be displays of kites and not those trashy magazines of sexual encounters of the rich and famous. At least that is what I remember.

Spring was my time of year because I could plant flowers and other garden items.  I thought it was pretty cool watching the potatoes we had planted about a month earlier popping out of the ground plus the rhubarb was coming up pretty good at that time.  Fresh green beans picked and snapped plus   those small new potatoes put in a pot with a little water, salt and pepper then cooked until the potatoes are soft to the fork then add a LOT of butter (real not fake) and you had a meal that you will never forget.  OK, back to the flowers, Zenia's and marigolds were the most common back then and the colors would just burst out at you.  Flags, commonly known as irises, were in every yard, along the roadside and around the trees or the propane tank.  The old fashioned rose bushes climbed up the fences and hung over the wires and there were those bushes covered with white blooms that I literally never knew what they were but every yard had at least one.

If you have never seen or experienced what I am talking about just go to a small town right now and drive up and down the streets.  And when you are done find out where all the small cemeteries are and go drive through them.  Every cemetery had those same flowers planted by loved ones to honor those who went before us.

I know this sounds crazy but I have a friend who I don't see very often but he suggested if i wanted to know history I should visit old cemeteries   He was right.  At an old cemetery you will see all the old plants and flowers but you will also see that there were a lot of children that died early and many times you will find entire families who died from a disease and you will find a lot of folks who fought for our freedom long before WW I and WW II.  The ornate statues and the writing on the stones will amaze you.

OK, will I have meandered a lot here but warm days of spring are a delight so GO and enjoy the outdoors and get a little exercise.

What do you learn in the Osage?

• There is no way this happened by chance.  I  feel sorry for those who believe it was totally by a BIG Bang.  Now that I think about it why would they believe in the big bang theory and not believe in using guns that go BANG?  I never was good at humor.
• Honor those who worked to preserve our freedom, not those who restrict it(politicians).
• Do your part and plant some flowers!

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com