A pocket knife for Christmas

Do you remember when every boy wanted a knife for Christmas?  For some reason that was almost an annual request when I was young and Grandma Annie and Popie Jess came through every year.

Just getting side tracked hear for a second I don't think there was ever a correct spelling for their names so I just did the best I could based on how we use to say their names.  Grandma Annie and Popie Jess Lane lived in Grainola in the old house on the hill straight west of Grainola like you are going to Newkirk or Tanny and Nanny Olsen's house.  Bob Jackson lives there now.  They raised six girls and two boys on that hill.  In fact I have always wondered how they all walked to school in Grainola which is over one mile from their house up hill both ways and many times bare foot.  Go figure?

Well today I still have one of those knives which always seemed to have a white pearl side and two blades.  It was a handy thing and small enough in the pocket that it did not leave a faded mark in your jeans.  I bet I sharpened it at least once a week but I was always a little jealous of Jon Tanny Olsen and AJ Jacques who seemed to be able to cut a blade better than anyone else.  Both of them could shave their arms with their knives.  And in fact I would say that is one of those things we did often at SCHOOL was compare our knives.  Isn't it amazing how we have to regulate everyone in America because of ONE stupid and undisciplined child who does something to harm another person because they are a bully!  I guess I got on my soap box with that one.

Now that I think about it a boy's knife was a symbol of pride.  Yes size does matter, and it was a cool thing if you had a really big knife.  And in fact I think it was David Howell who even had a leather holster where he carried a Bowie Knife on his belt and yes to school.  I am certain that a lot of folks wonder about the wisdom of letting us carry knives to school and I don't believe we ever had one bit of violence where a knife was used.  Although I do remember AJ getting a knife stuck through his boot one time when we were playing chicken.  That is a game where you throw your knife at another person's feet with the hopes of getting it closest to their boot without hitting or sticking in their foot.  It really is a pretty good game and outside of that one time no one got hurt and even then it just bled a little.  Besides a little blood letting was probably good for a person.  Just kidding.

My dad always carried a Case knife which had a nice horn cover on both sides and two blades.  I tried to get one for Dad each Christmas if his old one was worn out.  Being farmers and ranchers we used them almost daily.  Every morning during the winter we had to feed the cattle hay and we always used twine(string for city folks) to keep the bales of hay together.  Nowadays they use wire on hay bales.  Also if we were feeding cattle cake you need a knife because it was faster than messing with the strings.  Now that I think about it we used to always have what we called gunny sacks which were sacks made of burlap.  Those burlap sacks were pretty handy for a lot of reasons and we always tried to preserve/recycle them as a source of spending money.

Looking back it is very interesting how we recycled almost everything.  We did it because it saved money and if you recycled that meant nothing was wasted or thrown in the trash.  Isn't it amazing how much trash we have each week these days?  Thinking back we milked our own cows, made our own butter, raised our own chickens, hogs and cattle, raised our own vegetables and stored them for winter and of course we had chickens for eggs.  About the only thing we went to the store for was seasonings like salt and pepper, flour and toilet paper.

Well it has been fun talking to you.

What did you learn in the Osage?

• a knife is a boy's best friend
• if your mom says she walked up hill both ways to school it must be true
• a little common sense goes a long way

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Cannin - Canning if you spell it vs. saying it(reprint from 2011, my second story)

Tonight I sit at Barnes and Noble in Oklahoma City near Quail Springs Mall waiting on my youngest son Preston (that will be another story) to finish basketball practice.  But this gives me time to write a few more notes about the Osage and living on the creek near Grainola.

One of my earliest memories is all the mothers getting together for Home Demonstration Club. Now for the younger set that is a club for women where they talk about things you have no clue about (few exceptions for those who are getting defensive) like sewing, canning, and baking. Now I suppose I have to explain that.

Sewing is where a person cuts out material and makes a dress.  Whoops, when was the last time I
saw a young person in a dress, surely I don’t have to define that as I know there are formal parties where a dress is required.  Anyway they make clothes, like shirts and pants. 

Now canning might be more difficult to understand.  First it does not have anything to do with a can or a cancan.  Do you have any idea what a cancan is?  Well look it up on wikopedia.  Canning is a process where folks took things from a garden (will explain what that is next) and put it in a jar, heat it up and then put a lid on it which seals so that the bacteria are dead and the goods inside are preserved for later use during the winter.  The canned goods are stored  in a celler (dadgumit – now I have to define what a celler is).  Anyway the types of things most likely canned are green beans, corn, okra, cabbage, and whatever is grown in the elusive garden.  There are a few exceptions like when we dug potatoes we did not can them but let them dry and stored them in the celler.

For goodness sake lets define celler.  A celler is not a seller which sells things at a store etc.  A celler is a hole in the ground then bricked up the sides and over the top then covered in cement on
top. Now there is a door and steps to get into the cellar.   So now you are probably asking WHY?  Well I will tell you.  A cellar is in the ground because it stays cool during the summer and warm (above freezing) during the winter.  The potatoes are laid on the floor but not too deep as that will cause rot and not covering the entire floor as this is also where we stored the canned goods on shelves placed in the celler.  Now if that did not cause you enough frustration let me tell you the primary but confusing thing about a cellar.  It is what farmers call a storm shelter or tornado shelter.  Now that makes since because Gary England has told all you youngsters to get in a safe place during the tornado warnings.  Here is where it gets confusing.  We DID NOT get tornado warnings as we/dad looked up at the sky and spotted the commotion.  Anyway here is the strange part.  If you went to any farm house there was a cellar in the yard but during a storm everyone pulled out their fancy folding lawn chairs and watched!  I never knew of anyone getting killed but we saw plenty of tornados over the years.

Before we leave the topic here is one last tornado story.  It was after school and Bob Scott
was driving the buss delivering the kids to their homes when we lost a tire on the bus.  By the way Bob was Lizzie’s husband, the cook at Grainola Grade School, he did everything Lizzie did not do
at the school including driving the bus.  We were out in the pasture about a half mile from the Custer’s house, where Leb lived.  Now I have to add there were other Custers but Leb was a little older than me and Leon was a lot older than leb.  Anyway while most of us stayed with the bus others took off to the Custers to get help.  Soon after the tire came off we were looking toward the north toward Aunt Hellen’s house (explained later) and there was the longest tornado I have ever seen.  It looked like it was about 2 to 4 miles north of us.  That evening when I got home I was telling
Dad (Cliff Olson) about it and he told me they were outside (farmers) looking at the sky and they saw a tornado about 2 to 4 miles south of them.  He was at Aunt Helen’s and that was about 1.5 miles north of where we were.  For the younger folks get out your HP calculators or Ipad and figure it out.  For those older folks you can see immediately there is a problem.

Well thanks for the time.

So long, farewell,  alfrederzane (I never was good at German even though I did take the
class).  Someone remind me the German teacher's name,  he was great. (Mr. Lambert)

Gary Olson

Glolson21@gmail.com

http://thepioneerman.blogspot.com/

The Beginning ( a reprint from January 2011)

January 2011 - The beginning   reprint from 2011

Last week I found myself in Shidler, Oklahoma  wondering around and discovered a passion for

my roots in Osage County, Shidler and of course Grainola.  I stopped by the Review Office and discovered it now belonged to Shelly’s daughter. Now I know everyone has a name but what was important was that Shelly (Rowe) Wilhelm had a daughter who was very pleasant and she now owned the Review.  Shelly was one of the most pleasant classmates and I still think of her as a high school girl with pretty hair and a pretty smile.  It warmed my heart just to think about our friendship back then and how time has crept away.  But the most alarming thing to me is how much I wanted to just remember all the good times and good friends and to just start writing them down.

Before I do that I should also tell you the reason I was in Shidler, Kaw City and Grainola was to celebrate the life of Don Kelsey.  Don was my first boss outside of mom and dad.  Don and his son, Kenny, and I hauled hay for all of three summers.  Don was a WW II veteran of the European

front.  Anyway there are a lot of stories to tell about Don,  Dorthy, and Kenny but
I will save that for another day.  Right now I just want to say that Don was a great man and we will all miss him.  Keep an eye out in my writings because someday I will tell you about Don’s helicopter – home made.

That brings me to this. The first installment of Home on the Range, memories of growing up in the Osage and the people who made it special.  So if I can keep it up I am going to share with you my life stories and how it was in the early days and how it effects my life today.  Oh ya, Mrs. Head is not allowed to read this

because she might flunk me.  And Miss Shumate has long passed but she always said my writing and my penmanship was terrible so she will not be allowed to read in Heavan.

My earliest recollection was growing up in Grainola, one mile north and three west on Beaver Creek. This is now the house of Dee Johnson and Jim Heath once lived there as I remember.  Probably no one will remember this but our first house became the Grainola Post Office and Mrs. Heath’s house when it was moved in about 1959 to its current location.  They moved the whole dang house on a truck! By the way if you try to find the house it is down on its luck as it set next to the tennis courts on highway 18 and before Dale’s grocery store which is gone now as well.  For those of you who are local, REMEMBER THE OUTHOUSE behind the grocery store.  Ask David Harris if he ever did anything he was not supposed to relative to that outhouse.  I bet he threw a rope around it a few times and tipped it over and if he did not Bob Harris did and there were a lot of other folks who were guilty as well.  Thank goodness you could not go to jail for those things.

This is where there should be a picture of the old house this is not the old house but Ruby Jackson's Gas Station Anyway back to the farm on Beaver Creek.  Dad and I built the new house (Dee or Jim’s house later) about three feet from the old house.  I never did give Larry or Debbie (bro and sis) credit for helping as they were always in school and I was too young to go to school.  It was a brown house and I remember Mom (Opal) looking so young (she still says she is 29).  It was a great house because it now had that new tile on the floor.  Remember those 12 in by 12 in tile?  We had a huge fireplace which we used to heat the house even though we had one of those brown furnaces in the hallway to heat up the back of the house.  The other interesting thing about that house is that you could crawl under it (crawl space).  That is where all the new puppies were delivered.  In the kitchen we had copper colored appliances which were pretty snazzy in those days.  Dad came up with this idea to have a drawer that would open to the kitchen or to the dining area to make it easy to get silverware both ways,  TECHNOLOGY.

Thinking about technology I remember getting a record player  at that house.  Today most people don’t know what that is or what it looked like but EVERY Beatle recording was on a plastic disc called a vinyl and Suzie Snyder owned everyone of them (Gladys Snyder’s daughter).

We did have telephones then and each was black and as I recall that was the only option on color and everyone was a rotary phone.  Now for the young folks reading this that means when you dialed a 9 you stuck your finger in a hole and drug it in a circular motion back to the little stopper then let it go.  You repeated this step 5 times, yes 5 times,  because that is all the numbers I had to dial to call Eddy Harris, my cousin, up the road.  Today our phones have family shared minutes but in those days we shared the entire line with our neighbors.  As I recall we had the Weavers or was it the Shumates (Mrs. Shumate and her daughters Sally and Janie), Vea Harris (Norma, Bob, David, Janis, and Eddy), John and Linda Murphy plus kids and us (the Olson’s) on one line.  When you wanted to call someone you had to make sure no one else was on the line but if someone was already on the line you could listen in until they caught you and told you to get off. 

I don’t know how much of this you can take at one setting but I will start working on the next segment.

Happy Trails,

Gary Olson

Glolson21@gmail.com