HOme Owners Associations

Praise God we did not have HOA, Home Owners Associations, in the Osage or at least in Shidler and Grainola.   I guess it is a sign of the times or just a city thing but from what I see we had it right in the Osage.  We respected each others rights to do what they wanted with their home and their land.  We may have not liked someones house or the way they kept their yard or barns or even their equipment  but we respected their rights to do what they saw fit for what was theirs.  Now I understand things have changed and there is too much trash and not enough pride and probably more than anything not enough self discipline and genuine caring.   HOA's are just messy.

What I remember was how my sister would go help folks who needed help and she did it without being paid and without being asked and without an HOA.  Debbie always had the biggest heart and I saw her go clean houses and cook for old folks week after week.  I saw people go mow the church yard without being asked and even weed-eat around things without being asked.  When something needed fixed people figured out how to fix it and got after it (that means they did not put it off).  I remember my folks would sometimes see that someone needed help and they would volunteer us/me to go help.  I wish I could say I was always a willing participant but in the end as I look back it was best for me too.   I think there was a sense of pride folks had in keeping things looking good.  I don't know why but Bud Head comes to mind as I recall he always kept things real orderly and then there was Perry Stephens whose house always looked clean and neat.  Vea Harris planted more flowers than about anyone and she even had them in her garden next to the potato plants and tomato plants.  By the way did you know that marigolds will keep squash bugs away?   And while I am at it, if you have problems with mites add a little soap to some water and spray the leaves.   Along the highway farmers would mow the grass and bail it for hay.  We never bailed it but Dad insisted that the one mile long drive to our house on Beaver Creek did not have excessive weeds or tall grass along the road.  He wanted it neat and clean looking.  Heaven forbid if there was a wire loose and sagging as that was a sin.  Right away we had to get out there and get it fixed.

OK, back to HOAs.  What I have found is that HOAs are an opportunity for everyone that wants to complain about something they don't like about someone else and not feel guilty.  What I would say is that most of the time folks need to filter what they say and for the most part keep their mouth shut unless they have something nice to say about someone.  Sure there are things we need to fix or take action on that affect others but we can say it with respect and kindness.  Everything someone has to say is NOT personal but if it is said in a respectful fashion then you have a responsibility to 'get over it'.    HOA's make me love the Osage just a little more.  If you still live there please count your blessings and do something for someone else and clean up your place so folks won't think you don't care.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• if you see someone needs a little help view it as a mission project and do it without needing praise or money and you will feel some real blessings in your life.
• if you learn to give it away you will receive far more than you ever give.  It is called a blessing and it might be in just feeling better about yourself.
• I love chickens, yes chickens.  I wish we did not have an HOA so I could have chickens just like in the Osage.

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com

People don't change much but they can if they decide

Easter is coming and that brings a lot of changes.  Of course it brings the daffodils and tulips but it also brings most families to one of two annual trips to church.  I remember Kerney Graham, pastor of the United Methodist Churches at Grainola, Webb City and Foraker sharing an observation that on Christmas and Easter a lot of families think about the spiritual side of life.  I was a kid back then but never forgot his thoughts about if I were to stand before God and He was looking at my church attendance would He be thinking I am on his team?  The better question I thought was, "would He let me in?" or "would there be evidence that I was guilty of being one of His".   Or "why should He let me in?" might be a great question.  Luckily I found the answer.

Have you ever noticed in life those small events or people who really made a difference in your life?  Maybe I am different but I have considered a lot of those things from growing up in the Osage.  Here is a short list:

5 years old:  I was told I was a hero for protecting Denise Logue from a big dust devil.  I thought it was a tornado.  I felt mature and good about my actions.

7 years old: Geneva Snyder (first grade teacher before she had a brain tumor) telling me I was too big.  I wished for years I was small like Jon Tanny, Jimmy H. and Hugh Allen Jones.

9 year old: Aunt Gladys (Shidler High School Teacher) telling me I was really good at puzzles and understood new math better than some of her high school students.  I studied math and science in college and her encouragement drove my entire career.

10 Years old:  Mr. Lewis Morris encouraging me in math and science and sports.

Always: Mom and Dad telling me I could do anything if I chose to and worked hard enough.  They never said I had to be the smartest but just focus and stick to it.

12 Years old:  Coach Gillstrap told me I should play football and he wanted me on his team.  I could not wait.  I was so excited that I talked my folks into to letting me go to Shidler one year early.

16 years old:  Dr. Maoza (not sure how to spell it) told me I could not play football.   I became more determined than ever to play in spite of an injury as a freshman.

16 years Old:  Mrs. Helen Head telling me how well I dressed.  It made me try harder as I wanted to meet her expectations.  She was a tough one but she made me better at English and I wanted to please her.

17 years old: Mr. Treadway telling me I was one of his best acting students and I needed to keep my sideburns cut.  

Well you get the idea.  I know some folks are not as competitive and some folks just have more talent and potential but I never thought my glass was half full.  I did not try to find the bad in folks or figure out why I should be unhappy or why I was not as smart as the next person.  In fact over the years I have made the comment that a lot of folks are smarter but I can out work anyone and with enough time I will win.  Losing and being depressed or getting down on myself was not an option.  I do have to confess that over the years I have had plenty of ups and downs and I do get down on myself sometimes but overall I just want to be the best I can be with what I got and a little bit more.  

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Going to church is not a one or two time event but a life style especially if you really do want Him to decide in your favor.  Luckily none of it depends on me other than making a choice.  If you don't get the idea call me and I will explain.
• Getting down has no bearing on the outcome.  Only getting up and doing it quickly matters.
• Encourage someone.  Make a difference, a positive difference, in someones life even if you don't have the fortitude to make your own life better.  
• It is ALL your choice!  
• Don't count on God if He cannot count on you.

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Root celler

One of the great things about living on the farm is just about everyone had a root cellar which doubled as a tornado shelter.  Basically it was made out of brick and cement with a dirt floor and it was covered with grass on top with a door much like the cellar in Wizard of Oz.  Any time we had a big storm Dad and Mom would sit out on the porch watching the clouds to see if there was a tornado forming.  Of course the challenge was that after dark you could not see a tornado.  After dark Mom and Dad would listen for signs of a tornado.  Basically what they were watching for was the wind would become more circular and changing plus before a tornado would come down the rains would change from falling to going somewhat sideways and it might even stop raining.  The other thing that indicated one was close is the sound of the storm would be more like a train coming.  There would be a roar rather than lightening and thunder.  Now that I think about it when we thought a tornado was close the lightening and thunder was dissipate.

As a kid I was never particularly worried and what I really wanted to do was stand outside looking up into the storm like Dad and Mom.  I always thought the clouds were really cool to watch but one time I got in big trouble with Dad.  I said I wished I could see a tornado.  I got a butt chewing for that one.  Where we lived was on Beaver Creek which was down in the valley between some rolling hills and therefore we never did have a tornado set down close to our house although we saw some over head circling in the clouds.   Back then we did not have all the technology to detect tornadoes or the threat of tornadoes so you had to rely on farmers and ranchers who could identify fingers or funnels forming in the clouds.  I would have to say that I particularly enjoyed being on the plains and watching tornadoes in the distance dragging their tails across the wheat fields and tall grass prairies.

It was sad when you knew someone who lost their house or barns but I never did know anyone who lost a loved one from a tornado.

Back to the cellar.  Besides being a tornado shelter this is where we stored all the food for the winter before freezers came into the picture.  Just guessing from memory I would say the cellar was about seven foot wide and 12 to 14 foot long with two foot wide shelves all around.  During a storm we would sit in folding chairs down the middle of the cellar.  On the shelves we had about anything you could think of to eat.  There was jelly made from sand plums we gathered across the creek from the house to blackberry jelly made from blackberries gathered down by Oolagah, OK where Grandma Annie and Popi Jess lived.  We had pickled water melon rind, yes you can eat the green part, corn, green beans, yellow wax beans, peaches, apricots (Mom made the best apricot cobblers ever), canned okra, tomatoes and tomato juice, pickles (mom made the best sweet pickles and Sally Shumate knows how to make them), sweet and dill pickles, and lots more.  The floor was was covered in hundreds of pounds of potatoes.  During those storms we would just pile them out of the way and then spread them out after we left.

I did forget to mention the reason for the cellar is that being mostly below ground the temperature was always cool and constant, regardless of what the weather was outside.  It was a great place to go sit during those really hot summer days as long as there were no visitors like bull snakes.  But no worry as they did not bother you.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Think ahead and get prepared as days will come when you will be glad you did
• Quality of life is a decision, you can stick your neck out of the cellar or you can keep it underground and not experience the good and bad of life.
• A teachable spirit can protect you from an emotional roller coaster or you can just let the tornado take control of your attitude
• Your choice and your fault

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com

A little history of Grainola

What started as a report on the history of Grainola that I had to write, against my will, turned out to be my favorite assignment all through 12 grades including Grainola Grade School and my class of 5 and sometimes 6 if Joy Franks would stay put plus my years at good old Shidler High School.  Just FYI Joy had a tendency to move from Grainola to Shidler and back a few times over 12 years.  It was kind of nice when she came to Grainola as she increased our girl population in my class by 100%.  The only problem was that she was so dog-gone smart that she made us look bad, or at least me.

Anyway, the project was kind of difficult to figure out how to get started and how far to go back.  Well let me give you a few tidbits about Grainola that you may or may not know.  First, it got its name from a girl named Inola and the fact that there were huge piles of grain (corn, wheat, oats, milo) on giant tarps piled by the Midland Valley Railroad waiting to be hauled off.  Thus the name Grainola, the city of grain and a young girl named Inola.

Grainola had two hotels and a pool hall, Frankford State Bank merged to become Grainola State Bank, a post office in 1906,2 grain elevators, lumber yard, Methodist and Lutheran Churches, a silent theatre,a community water well as there was no city or running water and more.   My dad told the story of a friend who they wagered could not put a cue ball in his mouth.  Well he did succeed but there was a problem.  He could not get it out so they had to run the guy across town to the doctor.  Yes, Grainola even had a doctor.  They did get the ball out but it created some excitement.

Now just as a side note I bet you never had a person who often would fly their plane to town and land on the town streets.  Well we did.  It was Paul Jones who is also  the person to give me my very first flight from a hay field around Copan, OK at the Mullendor Ranch where we worked to Shidler where I had to go for football practice.  Well Paul was always a lot of fun and could fix about anything.  If you would like a good read try the Mullendor Murder Case.  You will read about Paul Kelly and Paul Jones and a lot of other Osage folks.  I should mention that Paul tried his best to make me sick on that plane.  I think he was getting even with me for giving him a hard time about his hairdo.

Grainola was a bustling little town with about 600 folks and a couple of grocery stores, feed stores and other services.  It was really cool that we could collect the eggs and trade for groceries rather than use money.  Another of my favorite things was almost every store had a pot bellied stove that burned coal.  Generally these were the social gathering places during the winter when things slowed down around the farms.  Local farmers and ranchers would sit and drink coffee and catch up on the gossip.  I don't think the women had any more gossip than the men.  It seemed that every morning after the cattle, sheep and hogs and don't forget the chickens were fed that the men would head for the coffee shop.  I should also mention that grocery stores generally carried things like v-belts and bolts and other hardware type things just in case.  Another cool thing I learned from my mom is that when they milked the cows, by hand meaning no machines, they would use a manual separator to divide the milk from the cream.  Once that was done they would take the cream to Bargis family who collected it and sold to the dairy processors for making cottage cheese and other products.  Mom's family then took the milk needed for the house (7 kids) and they made their own butter and what was left was used to feed the hogs and baby calves.

There are a lot of great folks from Grainola but a few stand out like Mildred Kelly who could dribble and shoot a basketball like crazy, Lois (Lane, my mom's sister) Del Priorie who I was told by Mr. Casselman was the best basketball player out of Grainola and then there were the Fulsom girls who played on the 1950 State Championship Basketball team.  That team is listed as number 39 of the top 100 sports stories in the state of Oklahoma.  The reason is there were only 14 kids in the Shidler High School and all 9 girls were on the team.  High School was four grades, not three.  The odds were against them but they pulled it out.

Did I  mention the first name given to Grainola was Salt Creek?  When the post office was established in 1906 the name was changed.  Also Frankfort was a small cattle town where John and Linda Murphy lived that had a bank which was merged into the Grainola Bank.

Well I had better go.

What do you learn in the Osage?

• life is what you decide not what others decide for you
• respect for others and respect for the law are assumed by small town folks and yes there will always be problems but character makes folks great, NOT more laws
• the land of the Osage is full of famous and wonderful people, go look for the good in everyone

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com

Ruby's Store

Ruby Jackson's gas station and grocery store

I don't know about you but who could ever forget the memories of Ruby Jackson's Store. Now of course she had to compete with Dale's Feed, Seed and Fertilizer (another story). But Bob Scott the bus driver and head honcho after Lizzie (the school cook)at the Grainola School would stop the school bus at Ruby's once a week and let us get off the bus and get a Pepsi (that is generic for a pop).

There really were 5 cent bottles of pop and it was terribly exciting when Ruby started carrying 12 and 16 oz. bottles instead of just 8 oz. bottles of pop. By the way a bottle was glass not plastic and when you brought the bottle back you could get a nickle for each empty bottle. Now if you were local to Grainola you would call that "stopping for a Pepsi" no matter what you would purchase. Anyway (I promise to use that word once every story) those larger bottles were originally 10 cents then later 15 cents and a giant Babyruth bar was 5 cents until it went to 10 cents. If you are under 40 there is no way you will understand the size of that Babyruth candy bar but it was about 9 to 10 inches long and looked like a ______. You tell me.

Now this might seem trivial but I remember struggling with some folks who could afford a Pepsi and a candy bar on the same trip. You might think in today's terms that was bad but as I look back I think it built character because it made me a better person in the long run. Let me explain.

First, I learned that some folks could not afford what others did and I remember wanting to share with those who could not afford as much. I learned to share in someone else's humanity and humility. I was humbled.

Second, I learned that if I worked hard I could afford more and therefore it made me competitive.

Third, I learned that if I saved my money I could buy something that lasts longer than an immediate satisfaction. I learned to save.

Fourth, I learned my self image was not about how much I could afford and that I should make quality choices in life.

Fifth, I learned circumstances do not make the person but the decisions I make effect others as well as myself.

Mrs. Head, please forgive me for using "I learned" too often. She really was a great teacher but don't tell her that.

Back to Ruby. The anticipation of that stop every week was huge and it made me angry when someone acted up on the bus and Bob canceled the event of stopping at Ruby's. I would like to see some confessions on who was guilty on these occasions. In those days there were consequences for bad behavior. I am not going to mention that Billy Snyder, my cousin, and I ever caused any problems at Ruby's except the one time he tried to hit me with the Pepsi bottle. I am confident that it was not my fault.

Now Saturday's were also big for me with a trip to Ruby's. You see my Grandpa Olson lived right down the street. Every Saturday that Mom and Dad would let me I would go to Grandpa's and play checkers (another story). Anyway, Grandpa and I would always walk down to Ruby's and get Nehi strawberry or cherry pop plus a package of those cinnamon rolls with the white icing. Do you remember how the paper was wrapped up on the sides and if you were lucky the icing dripped down the side and you could get a little extra icing? Man I loved those cinnamon rolls. Guess that is why my favorite food today is cinnamon rolls. I never told Aunt Peggy (Jimmy Heath's aunt as well) or Mom (Opal) that I lied to them about their cinnamon rolls. You see I told both of them that theirs were my favorite so that they would both make me cinnamon rolls. Today they don't make me cinnamon rolls but they are still my most favorite food. It is their fault I need to lose weight or is it because I make bad decisions about eating too much? I had rather blame them.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Wanting something bad enough is a good thing
• Wanting something someone else has can make you try harder if you make good decisions
• Learning happens everyday even on the school bus home

Thanks for listening,

Gary@thepioneerman.com