How about little Osage history about Selma Codding

Selma Codding immigrated to the US from Sweden with her brother Tanny Olsen in 1886 with their father and mother Mr. and Mrs. John Olsen so now you know how the family connected but now it is time for "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say.

Tanny did marry Nannie Johnson so it was their real names, Tanny and Nannie Olsen.  What you did not know is Nannie (Anna Nannie Olsen) was the daughter of August and Karlina (Olson) Johnson.  Karolyn(same as Karlina but spelled different in different documents) was my Granddad Olson's sister as well as another sister Ingrid Mattson of Sanbeck, Sweden.  Don't worry there is more complexity to this story.  Nannie was born in Puliki, Sweden and came to America when she was 12.  They came through Ellis Island.  Her father had come three years earlier and settled in Skiddee, Kansas.  Nannie is Jon Tanny's grandma, I told you that just because it rhymed but it is true.  Nanny and Tanny moved to Cedar Vale, Kansas and I am sure it was because that is where a bunch of the Johnson's lived (family, get it).  They later moved to Hardy, OK where they lived and built the ranch and had that mess of kids: Bill, Bob, Jim, Larry, Vea, Selma (died at an early age) and Melvin.  I might as well tell you that Bill married Edna Mae Barton (my mom and Edna Mae were good friends) had a daughter named Nann that Married a guy called Chuck who had a son called Ladd that married a girl called Ree who you might know as The Pioneer Woman.  Oh Ya.

OK, now here is the one thing that always has puzzled everyone in the family.  We all have known that Tanny and Nannie were cousins but here is the kicker that may answer a family secret.  I found in the 1900 US Census where John and Anna Olsen (parents of Tanny Olsen) were listed in the census documents as John Olson.  I had always heard there was a name change and I don't know for sure if this proves it but I am looking at it as I write this.  It also lists Oscar, Thomas and Selma (Codding) as children.  We always called Oscar Uncle Oscar and Selma as Aunt Selma but I think that was more of what they wanted to be called and I don't believe they were really my aunt and uncle.  That is like Helen Conner of Grainola was and always will be thought of as Aunt Helen.  She was one of my all time favorite ladies and I have a painting she signed as she was a wonderful artist and she was not even a relative of ours.  Hard to believe.

Another twist I have to add that I never knew was John and Susie Hobbs were relatives of ours as well.  John's mother was Tillie Hobbs (Tanny's sister).  This is complex!  Susie Hobbs was probably one of the greatest cooks of all times.  I use to love to work at their ranch because of the food.  As far as I know John never sold a vehicle but parked it in a field after he bought a new one.  Susie would go outside and kill a few chickens and bake a few pies and green beans faster than we could work cattle.  Her pies are what I liked the best.  If you would ever like a copy of her recipes find a Grainola/Foraker cookbook and she will have plenty of recipes in there.  I would have to add that my wife, Shouna, tried a few and Susie may have not included all of her secrets.

This is getting way too long but just to mess with your head Jim Olsen, father of Jon Tanny, married Margurite Ganisjager (miss-spelled but that is what i found on the records).  Her last name was a mouthful.  I actually thought it was Gamsjager but found this spelling in an article as well.  Another thing is Mark and Evelyn Johnson (yes, the same family as Nannie) are the parents of John Edward Gamsjager's wife Maralee who is Marguarite Olsen's grandparents.  Should I mention that Jon is the brother to Jay and Jamie.  Jamie was by far the prettiest of the three.  And just to mess with you, did you know that Theresa Stradal of Edmond is a Price and her grandparents are Henry and Pauline Johnson.

Back to the story:  My grandmother, Mary Forstrom Olson, was from Dalarne, Sweden and lived around Womega, Kansas.  John Olson (Olsen) as listed on the death certificate of Karlina Johnson as her father is the same Johnson family where Nannie came from making them cousins.  WOW, does this make your head spin?  No one in the family has been able to explain all the connections but this is as close to the truth as I can find from government records.

Just for fun, I found a death certificate of Nels Olson, Womega, Kansas who died January 31, 1940 and he is listed as the son of John Olson (Olsen) and Hannah Olson born both in Sweden.  Now you can guess that this is the real Nel Olson of "Little House on the Prairie" , just kidding.

In summary that makes me a relative to about everyone in Womega, Kansas, Cowley County, Kansas and Osage County, OK including the Witt, Weixelman and the Eberts, the Olsons and the Olsens and the Harris family.

But now you must ask how did they all get to the Osage.  John Olsen was on a cattle drive from south Texas to Kansas and for helping he was given 100 head of cattle which he used to start his ranch which was originally the Jersey Ranch in the Osage.  After that everyone followed over time. And I might tell you some more family secrets in the future.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• be careful who you marry it might be your cousin
• kissing cousins is not a joke
• great families grow up in the Osage
• I now have proof that the Olson, Olsen, Johnson and Codding families are at a minimum DOUBLE cousins

Have a great day.

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Spring Baseball

One thing you can say about Shidler and the Osage is we loved baseball and Spring meant baseball was starting.  It started at school and the summer brought even more baseball.  My fondest memories of baseball were the summer baseball leagues where we played at the Phillips ball field west of town in Webb City.  One year when my brother was playing, Larry, the team was sponsored by Laurence Dehl who owned the foodliner.  Larry's team seemed to be full of some hot shot players but one in particular I remember was Jimmy Butterfield (hope I got that name close to right so send me corrections if I missed) who was a pitcher.  He was not the 'any old pitcher' kind of guy.  He threw what we called a side-arm-sub which meant he swung his arm low and to the right almost underhanded so that the ball came across the plate right to left from the batters perspective.  He could throw a sinker and a curve ball and it was HOT.  I think every kid tried to throw a side-arm-sub because of him.  Rocky Arrington was on that team and he played second base.  He was a scrawny (that means little) guy but he was faster than greased lightening and he could throw the ball to first base so fast it would make your head spin.  Harvey Harrington was the catcher but his strength was he could hit it out of the park.  Steve Blake may have been on the team but it has been a few years.  There were just a lot of great athletes coming out of that small country town.

Now for a fun side note last night I was attending the Oklahoma Christian Basketball game here in Edmond and sat by some friends of mine Scott and Lori Randal and Jeff and Mark Wedel.  It just amazes me about how small the world is because Scott asked me where I was from and he knew Shidler well.  And in fact his uncle was from Webb City and his cousin was/is Sunny Brock who I believe might have been on that team.  What I do remember about Sunny was he was a pretty good baseball player and a likable guy and of course I was a kid learning from watching those older kids.  I don't really remember much other than he seemed like a pretty smooth guy and that he was on the 4-H judging team with my brother Larry.  I think he also worked at the Codding Ranch.  This reminds me that we need to be careful as everybody knows everybody and especially if you are from a small town.

Well baseball is around the corner and a local boy from Edmond, Cale Coshow, just went to spring training camp for a minor league team in the Yankees organization.  So if he ever gets famous you just remember I told you about him, just kidding.  He is a pitcher and I told him I would be his agent just in case he got the really big check.

For no other reason than this, baseball is a great sport and is a time the family can spend together.  I really do believe that so many people grew up to be good family men, fathers and workers because they spent time playing baseball and going to baseball games together in the Osage.

So here is my advice:  shut down the TV, get the entire family and all your friends together and no one is allowed to NOT go, spend the day together and watch baseball.  Your family and friends will learn by watching you and they will learn about your character (is that scary?).

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• a lot of work and a little play is good for the family
• take time for your family because if you don't you will lose it
• remember the good times and set the bad ones in the back of your mind to help YOU 

God, I love this country.  Please help us to do a better job of taking care of it.  Amen

Thanks for your time,
gary@thepioneerman.com
 p.s. sign up for the Shidler Review and learn a lot more about the current days and sometimes a little 'flash from the past'.  Shidler Review c/o Julia Ross at PO Box 6, Shidler, 74652

August Osage

Now I have a lot of pride about the Osage and that new movie just did not set well with me.  Don't waste your money.  I would have to say the scenery was great and it was absolutely home.  Even the house and the gravel driveway and out buildings reminded me of growing up in the Osage.  In fact I thought the house looked a lot like Alidane and Carl McConaghy's house.  Sure it was different but it still reminded me of their house and to some extent it reminded me of Jim and Margarett Olsen's house.  The old lady in the movie complaining about the heat and standing in front of the fan reminded me of growing up without air conditioners and just trying to find some air moving somewhere to cool down.  They even sounded a lot like home with the exception of their foul language.  Sure folks use to use words like shit and damn but it was few and far between to find someone using God's name in vain or using the big F word so often.  Their language was absolutely ridiculous and not representative of the Osage.  And in fact if you go to New York City you would find a lot more of the type of language they spoke in the movie.

It just ticked me off that they represented folks in the Osage talk with such disrespect for God and other people.  In fact I never knew any family that was as  dis-functional as what they showed in the movie.  Sure it was fiction but it was a depressing show with exceptional actors but one of the worst plots ever written and totally not representative of Oklahoma and the Osage.

If they (Hollywood) want a great story they could take a few tips from this list:

• The Osage Indian Murders (five books about the tragedies upon Osage Indians)
• The Mulendoor Murder
• The oil industry and how it got its start in the Osage and/or Green Country
• Getty Oil
• Phillips Petroleum
• CitiService
• Conoco
• and there are a long list of how the great oil companies got started in the area
• Famous people of the Osage
• Ben Johnson
• Patty Page
• Opie Taylor's dad 
• The One Arm Bandit (I bet the class of 71 could write a book on this one)
• Head Country 
• Drummand Family
• this list can be really long but you get the point

I don't know about you but I rate the move at 1 on a 1 to 5 scale with 1 being the lowest.  I would have to say that a friend of mine name Alyssa liked it and said it was a girl's movie.  My wife found it bad and empty and depressing just like me but we both agree the actors made a terrible book better.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• there are a lot better things to focus on than a dis-functional family
• the people of the Osage make it one of the best spots in the world to live and raise a family
• if you don't waste your money on Hollywood crap maybe they will stop making crap
• Crap made in the Osage is at least compost-able .. another way to say it is, "our bullshit stinks then goes away, their bullshit stinks forever"

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Social Security

I remember my mom and dad talking about having to make a choice to participate in Social Security.  Now that seemed like a pretty cool idea.  It was a choice.  Kinda like free enterprise and freedom of speech.  But somewhere along the way it became a mandate to almost everyone in America.  There are exceptions which I will not go into.  Anyway it amazes me how many folks and especially politicians talk like it is a government program or benefit.  It seems to me that when you pay for something every month of your working life that it is NOT a benefit but getting back what you paid for.  I suppose using the word benefit is OK but SSN is like an insurance policy in that if you don't use it you will lose it and typically that happens if you die.

Well here is my point for writing about SSN.  Some folks need it and use it because they lost a spouse and it helps financially to take care of the kids and of course the surviving spouse.  Sometimes it is used if a child or adult person is handicapped to help them make it financially.  But what the normal idea is that it is a retirement income source to give a person or couple a minimum amount of income they can depend on.  But and I do mean a big BUT not BUTT is that you need to know the options.  That is kind of like in poker you need to know when to show-em and you need to know when to fold-em.  I was talking to someone the other day who was getting ready to retire at 62 years old and start taking SSN.  He was going to get another job with less stress for about $36,000 per year.  The problem is that if he takes his SSN at 62 he gets about 70% of what he would get if he waited until normal retirement age.  The second issue is for every dollar over $18,000 per year he makes he loses 50 cents in SSN.  What that means is if he makes $18,000 more than the base of 18,000 he loses $9,000 in SSN.  Third, in his case he could defer SSN until he is 67 or even later and since his wife is 62 she can draw half of his SSN and his SSN will still grow to 100%  at normal retirement age and an extra 8%  for each year after retirement age while his wife still receives half of his SSN.  And there is no loss for how much money he makes at another job or if he keeps the same job he was doing.

Well there are a lot of options and we all need to know our options.   What frustrates the heck out of me is that it is so complex it is hard to find a government employee who understands it or you have to hire someone who can interpret it for you.  If it is such a great deal then why doesn't every politician have to participate and every government employee have to participate like all the rest of us?  I think that is a good question to ask our representative.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• if it is good for the goose it is good for the gander
• if it is too hard to explain then it would be best if it was changed or eliminated
• life is simplier if the government does not touch it

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com

The Beatles

Well here are are on the anniversary of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and I have to think about how they changed the world.  For one thing Steve Cannon grew his hair out and he looked like one of the Beatles.  At least in my mind and the worst part of it, The Beatles made it cool for the girls to like those with talent which left me out.  Of course at the time  I was too young but it never changed.  Steve Chrisco, Nate Bonham, Wiley Smith, and the list goes on and on could sing and and had that cool smooth looking long hair and the girls just were crazy about them.  The Beatles won the hearts of all the girls especially Susie Snyder who probably still has all the Beatles memorabilia and every album they every sold.  She even has them on VINYL (we called it records but now it is cool to say VINYL).
Speaking of vinyl The Beatles are also the beginning of cool for everything Vinyl or Plastic.  It became the rage to have Noggahide (vinyl or plastic) chairs and cushions.  There use to be a million jokes about all the little NOGGAs who got killed to make the Noggahide.  This absolutely proves that marketing can overcome common sense.  Everyone bought Noggahide in everything from car seats to couches.  The funny thing is Noggahide made your butt sweat as in hot.  And if you were in your pickup your back sweat as well, such a good feeling, not really.  It was so very uncomfortable but everyone loved it.  Sorry about that.

Back to the Beatles.  They may not have been bugs as in beatles but they did infest everything in America.  That Sunday night everyone (it seemed) must have been watching Ed Sullivan and it forever changed us.  I even let my burr haircut grow out although it was not until college that you could say it was long.  But let me tell you how it affected us.  One of the biggest things was it polarized people against long hair or for long hair.  I really do think the women liked it but the adult men thought you were a hoodlum or beatnik.  Does anyone remember what a beatnik was?  I dont' think I knew at the time but it seemed to fit.  Some guys who grew their hair out got free haircuts from law abiding citizens.  Just to be clear, they were forced to get a hair cut and there were no consequences or law suits. Schools developed policies to kick you out of school for hair over your ear or sideburns below your ear.  Hair on your collar could also get you kicked out of school.  Now the funny thing is we could carry our pocket knives to school and even clean your fingernails in class with a pocket knife and you could have your gun displayed in your pickup but you ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT HAVE HAIR OVER THE TOP OF YOUR EAR.  This is not directly related but it was illegal for an 18 year old person to drink or buy beer but you could be drafted to go to the Vietnam War and kill folks and the government would give you free beer.  Another thing that came out of this situation was girls started cutting off the bottom of their dresses.  In case you don't know it girls almost always wore dresses to school, not pants and never shorts as that would get you kicked out as well.  At first the skirts or dresses could just be above the knee cap.  But I will not name names or at least last names but Cindy, Shirley, Terry, Jeri, Jenni, Marsha, Denise, Chris, Diane and now that I think about it EVERY girl just kept cutting the bottoms off their dresses.  Now I will have to tell you none of us boys minded and did not understood all the fuss but Mr. Treadway and all the school board sure made it rough on those girls.  GO GIRLS was our motto.

I may be wrong about all this but I have to attribute short skirts and long hair to the Beatles.  It was a great time to grow up in America and we saw some of the most amazing changes in social norms but it was not all good and it was not all bad.

One last thing which I have told you before.  I did get to meet Ed Sullivan and it was pretty dog-gone-cool.  He was shorter than I thought and had a very dark complexion which I never realized from TV and that might be from the fact that there was no color on his show.  It was only black and white.  He was very nice and talked to me for a few minutes asking where I was from and what I was doing in New York.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• You can influence a lot of folks in good and bad ways
• It is your choice how you look back at the past and how You  chose to use it
• Aim to improve in something everyday

God Bless America

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com