An Old Man's Musings

Every generation has memories of things, people and places that the next generation has no clue about.  I was reminded of some of these the other day and decided to write them down.

The Locker or Ice Plant - By the time I came along, we had an electric refrigerator but no freezer.  When we butchered a calf, a hog or chickens, we had to rent a locker at the local ice plant to store our meat in.  Two or three times a month, we would drive into Sand Springs and get enough meat out of the locker to last until the next trip.  The ice plant in Sand Springs was located on south Main Street and I remember it well.

Feed Sacks - All our feed was purchased in 100 pound sacks.  Cattle cubes and hog pellets were all in burlap sacks but the chicken feed was in printed pattern material.  Mom always had to go to Alfred Hughes' feed store in Mannford with Dad because she had to pick out the sacks she needed for sewing shirts and dresses.  I've worn many a shirt made from feed sacks.  Burlap sacks had a mulitude of uses but the one I remember best was for fighting grass fires.  A five-gallon bucket full of water and a burlap sack were necessities when fires were burning.

Pumping Water - Our house didn't have indoor water and the well was about 70 yards away so my brother and I would have to haul water in our red Flyer wagon to the house.  We were fortunate to have a good well and many of our neighbors used it as well.  It was not uncommon to see someone drive up to the well and fill up their containers (usually 10 gallon cream cans).

The Milk Cow - Although my Dad was fond of beef cattle, we always had a milk cow at home to provide us with milk and butter.  Again, it was my brother's and my task to make sure the cow got milked.  Usually we would sit on a stool on the left side of the cow to milk her and her calf would be on the right side taking its half of the bounty.  Our first cow was a Jersey named Pet and later we got a Guernsey, Rosa.  Having a milk cow is one of those situations where you HAVE to be there twice a day to milk her.  If we did, by some chance, go on a trip or a vacation, we had to find someone very reliable to milk the cow.

Selling Eggs and Cream - Because the cow produced an abundance of milk, we were always able to sell the cream we didn't use as well as our extra eggs.  After running the milk through the cream separator, we would haul it up to Varnell's store to sell.  The eggs were sold to any of our neighbors who didn't happen to have chickens.

The Outhouse - We didn't get running water or a toilet into the house until I was a sophomore in high school.  Prior to that, we had to make the trip to the outhouse when needed.  Dad had built a "two holer" which we used for many years but I don't recall ever sharing it with someone else.  Maybe it was just a status symbol!  My brother, Gary, and I did have the responsibility for digging a new hole when the old one was getting full.  It was a kind of ritual that we would dig all day and, when Dad came home, he would tell us that it wasn't nearly deep enough.  The next day we would finish the job.  Dad would then use the tractor to pull the outhouse from the old site to the new one.

Baling and Hauling Hay - Over the years, we put up many thousands of bales of hay.  It was hard, nasty work but I don't think we were scarred for life for having done it.  In fact, for two summers, Gary and I worked for Sylvester Garrison in Silver City doing custom baling.  At the age of 13 and 14 respectively, we would go to Garrison's and live in their house for the hay season.

Saturday Night Baths - We didn't take baths as often then as we do today.  Once or twice a week, we would drag the galvanized tub into the living room, fill it with water and take our baths.  There were six of us in the family and, by the time the sixth person got to take a bath, the water was milky white.  We had to set the tub next to the wood stove in the wintertime to avoid freezing our rear ends off.  Our house was not very well insulated (in fact, it had none) and at one point we had to switch to a coal stove because the wood stove wouldn't put out enough heat.  This picture is of our house just before we moved into it.

Telephones - We didn't have a telephone for a few years.  When my Uncle Dannie died in Utah in 1952, the Trowers, who ran the phone company in Mannford, called our neighbors up on the hill, the Larremores.  The Larremores then came down to our house and told us that we needed to go into Mannford and call my grandparents.  Later, when we got a phone, it was an eight-party line.  You could tell by the ring who the call was for.

There is no way I can imagine what my children would write along this same vein.  I'm sure it will sound equally bizarre to their children but that is life!

Hurricane Katrina

Ten years ago, August 25, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the Florida panhandle.  It turned and went back into the Gulf of Mexico and returned three days later, on Sunday, August 28.  Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, with 1250 people killed and property damage of almost $110 billion.

In 2003, Foster Harness, my brother Gary, several other people and I had made a boat trip down the Arkansas River to the Mississippi.  You can read more about that trip in my blog of October 17, 2013.  It was one of those trips that, the day you get back, you swear that you will never do again but a week later you're thinking that the trip had been a lot of fun!

Sometime in the summer of 2005, Foster ran into me at the local cafe and suggested that we should make the river trip again.  By that time, I had forgotten every one of the negatives of the first trip and I told him that I was all in.  The date of Saturday, August 20, was selected as the departure date.

On our first trip, the plan was to leave Tulsa, travel to the mouth of the Arkansas River just north of Greenville, Mississippi, and return.  The plan on this trip was to get to the Mississippi, turn south and go all the way to New Orleans.  We decided to recruit some more boats to go with us so we began to spread the word about our trip.  I had an additional task of trying to find a partner for my boat on the voyage.  My son, Dan, needed little encouragement and he as soon involved.  Foster also recruited a crew and we were set.

In spite of all our searches for additional boats, we only found one other guy willing to make the journey.  He had never done anything like this but he had a boat mate and was anxious to go.

The trip down the Arkansas was largely uneventful except for a couple of events.  When we got to Pine Bluff, Arkansas on the third day the marina where we planned to fuel up was closed.  Fortunately, there was a gentleman living on a boat in the marina who offered his pickup truck to us to go for fuel.

The evening of the third day was a disaster.  We had been sleeping on sand bars and hadn't had any problems.  On that evening, however, the mosquitos moved in and viciously attacked us.  That was probably the most miserable night I ever spent.

On Tuesday, August 23, we loaded up our gear, went through the last lock on the Arkansas, and headed south on the Mississippi.  Because there are no locks on the Mississippi, we anticipated making very good time.  Our plan called for my wife, Louise, and my daughter-in-law, Dorinda to meet us in New Orleans with the boat trailer on Thursday, the 25th.  We arrived at the marina in Greenville about noon and had a great lunch at their cafe.

By this time, I was beginning to have problems with the starter solenoid on my outboard motor.  In spite of this, we took off headed for our next fuel stop in Vicksburg.  We arrived there about 2:30 in the afternoon and quickly learned that there was no gasoline to be purchased on the river.  We were faced with the prospect of having to hire someone to haul gasoline to our boats.  My starter problem was getting worse and I was concerned that it might fail completely.

It was late in the afternoon, we were hot and sweaty, and there was a casino/hotel right up the hill from the ramp which was beckoning to us.  Dan and I looked at each other and decided to "pull the plug" on the trip right there.  After telling Foster Harness of our decision, we headed for the hotel.

We had been on the river for 3 1/2 days and looked like it.  In addition, we didn't smell wonderful.  In spite of this, we managed to check into the hotel.  I'm not sure I would have rented us a room!  We called our wives, told them of our change of plans, and headed to our rooms for a shower.  I think Dan took two in thirty minutes!

Later in the evening, after we had had our first decent meal in four days, we went to the casino where I found a blackjack table and parked there.  Within a couple of hours I had told the pit boss of our adventure and he liked the story enough that he "comped" us breakfast for the next morning, Wednesday, August 24.

Louise had taken the trip as an opportunity for a family weekend in New Orleans.  She and Dorinda were bringing the boat trailer, our Daughter, Rachel, and her then-husband, Mike, were flying in and, of course, Dan was with me.  Louise and Dorinda arrived in Vicksburg early on Thursday, we loaded the boat and were off to New Orleans.

When we got to New Orleans, we found a "you store it" place to put the boat, picked up Rachel and Mike at the airport, and headed for the bed and breakfast just outside the French Quarter where we had made reservations.

On Friday, we all got up, had our breakfast, and headed for the Quarter.  About this time we began to hear about the hurricane, Katrina, which was in the Gulf.  We weren't concerned, though, because it was headed for the Florida Panhandle, not anywhere close to us.  Late on Friday, we wound up at Pat O'Brien's and proceeded to drink a few "hurricanes".  They were aptly named, I suppose.

We finally got back to the B&B and crashed.  The next morning, Saturday, the women got up early and headed back to the Quarter to do some shopping.  The guys, including me, were suffering from acute alcohol poisoning (hangovers) and stayed in bed.  About 9 a.m., we began to stir and turned on the television.  That was when we learned that Katrina had made a left turn and was headed for the Louisiana coast.

This was one of those events where, the longer it goes on, the more panic stricken you become.  By about 11 a.m., we decided that we needed to get out of there.  It was about that time that we learned a valuable lesson - cell phones become useless in a crisis situation.  We were trying to contact the women to tell them we had to leave but could not get through to them.  Finally, we got a text message through and they said they would get back to the B&B.

Rachel and Mike had return tickets to Tulsa to leave on Sunday morning.  Against our urging, they decided to stay in the city and try to catch their flight.  As it turned out, theirs was the last flight out of New Orleans and they beat us home!

We left New Orleans about 2:30 after picking up our boat and headed for Lafayette.  Our plan was to take I-10 to Lafayette, then I-49 north to Alexandria.  The trip from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, normally about an hour, took us FIVE hours.  It was the worst traffic jam I had ever seen.  We finally arrived in Alexandria about 11:30 p.m.

Hurricane Katrina came ashore in Louisiana about 3:00 p.m Sunday afternoon.  I can't tell you how happy we were to be away from there!