International Travel - Part 1

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to travel to many places, some outside the United States, in my lifetime. Most of these trips, in the early days, were connected to my work. After I retired, Louise and I had a chance to visit many places as well.

I’m not really sure about my first time to leave the U.S. - it was probably in 1971 when we got transferred to Detroit with my job. Detroit is, of course, right across the river from Windsor, Ontario and I do remember us going over there. During that time, I also made a few sales calls in Toronto.

In 1978, my job title was Product Manager. In that role I was responsible for long range planning for the three product lines we had. My next big travel adventure spanned a period of about eighteen months when the Company decided to start manufacturing winches in Mexico. I was assigned to be the liaison to our Mexico City plant to get this project started.

During this period, I traveled to Mexico about nine times. These trips were always pleasant and the people I worked with were enjoyable. Although most of our time was spent in Mexico City, we did get out and see some of the Mexican countryside.

I remember that, on one occasion, we drove up the eastern coast to Tampico and called on a cane sugar processing plant. While on that trip, we stopped at a roadside cafe for lunch. It was a thatched roof hut with dirt floors and we had cabrito (roast goat) for our meal. It was delicious!

The manufacturing program, however, did not succeed. The labor rate in our plant in Tulsa was about $8.00 per hour at the time, compared to Mexico City’s $1.00. Inefficiencies in their plant more than offset this labor difference and another bust cycle in the oilfield hit; the program was stopped after a couple of years.

In early 1979, I became the International Sales Manager and my long distance travel really began. My first really long international trip was made in March, 1979 when my boss told me to go to Caracas, Venezuela to call on a customer. Being young and adventuresome, I was thrilled.

After consulting some maps, I discovered that another customer was located nearby, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, so I planned a stop there to see him.

As I recall, my sales call there was uneventful and cordial. That afternoon, after I had checked out of the hotel, I went to the airport to catch my flight to Caracas. I was booked on a flight on Aeropostal, an airline owned by the Venezuelan government.

This was where I began to realize that I was not in the U.S. After about a two hour wait at the airport, the woman at the desk made a PA announcement that the captain had decided not to fly that day. She suggested that we come back the next day when he might feel like flying. Fortunately I was able to get a hotel room where I had stayed the night before.

Sure enough, the next day the captain felt like flying so we headed for Caracas, about a two hour flight. However, the rest of the trip just “went downhill” from there. We had a sales office in Caracas, manned by Venezuelan employees. They had made my room reservation for me and the hotel they had selected was squalid!

I was on the fifth floor and the elevators only worked occasionally. Worse than that, however, was the fact that the room had no lock on the door. I was in Caracas about a week and slept with my passport under my pillow the entire time. That still wasn’t the worst part of the trip.

A Cincinnati company had sold a plastic injection molding machine to a customer in Caracas and it was having hydraulic issues, specifically with a motor that our company had provided. A service technician from Detroit had traveled to Venezuela to fix the problem but told the customer that he would have to return to the U.S. to find a solution.

This did not suit the customer at all so he stole the technician’s passport to prevent him from leaving. All of this was happening right in front of me! When I returned to the U.S. the next week, I telephoned the guy’s boss to find out if he had been freed. At that time, he had not but a couple of weeks later he was released.

Fortunately, I wasn’t having that kind of problems. However, when I got ready to leave I encountered another problem. I was booked on a Pan Am flight to Miami on a 747. I got to the airport, boarded the plane, and it taxied out to the end of the runway. And we sat there – and we sat there! Finally, after about two hours the captain come on the intercom and announced that the only reason we weren’t airborne was because the Venezuelan government was harassing us. You could tell by his words that he was extremely mad. After another hour or so, he finally got his takeoff clearance and we left! When I got back to Tulsa, I told my boss to not ever try to send me to Venezuela again.

I’ll pick up on my continuing travel on the next episode.

Skeletons in the Closet

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a post on Facebook that was interesting. A fellow named Kevin Heaton had written a book which sounded interesting and was centered around my home town, Mannford, Oklahoma. Although I didn’t know Kevin, I did know his parents and also several of the people written about in the book. The subject of the memoir was Opal George, Kevin’s mother-in-law, and the name of the book is, appropriately, “Opal”.

I quickly ordered a copy from Amazon and received it in a couple of days. When I read it, I was surprised to see that one of my distant relatives, Raymond Wyatt, was mentioned. He and Elva Workman were two of Mannford’s most unusual characters.

If you do genealogy long enough, the skeletons are surely going to come out of the closet.  In my case, I've had several.  Some people don't like to talk about certain of their relatives but I think, in most cases, it's terribly funny.

Let's start with Alvie Workman.  Elva W. “Alvie” Workman was born in Miller County, Missouri, on March 16, 1892 to Richard Ellis Workman and Sarah Malissa (Gilliam) Workman. They were both native Missourians and both had been born in Miller County. Miller County is located in the south central part of the state. Richard was a farmer all his life as were most folks in that era.

Alvie was the oldest of three boys born to that marriage. Sarah died in Miller County in 1926 at the age of 56 and Richard died in Perry, Noble County, Oklahoma, in 1959 at 89 years of age. He had moved to Perry to live with his son, Thomas, when he became too old to work.

Alvie moved to the Mannford, Oklahoma area sometime between 1900 and 1910.  In 1917, he married Ida Jane Ihrig, my father's first cousin.  Alvie and Ida had a total of six children, all boys between 1918 and 1928. In the late 1920’s, he was arrested several times for “moonshining”, operating an illegal whiskey still. This was not uncommon, however, for prohibition was the law of the land from 1920 to 1933.

Ida Jane was the fifth child and third daughter of Francis Marion Ihrig and Mahala (Stephens) Ihrig and was born in 1899 in Indian Territory. Mr. Ihrig was also a farmer in the Mannford area. As a side note, one of Ida Jane’s siblings was Ernest “Twenty” Ihrig, a well known cowboy in Mannford and a “side kick” of Milton Walker “Cap” Alexander, the foreman of the Wilson Ranch in that town. An article about that ranch appears in a 2019 blog.

Sometime between 1940 and 1950, Alvie and Ida Jane separated. In 1950, he was still living in Mannford and listed his marital status as “separated”. Ida Jane had moved to San Mateo, California and listed her marital status as “widowed”.

In the early 1950’s, when I was about six years old, I became aware of who Alvie Workman was. My father told us children about how we were related to him. By this time, he had become one of Mannford’s “characters” and was feared by most of the children in the area. He was a tall, gaunt man who had extremely long hair and a long beard.

The story goes that he was possessed by demons. He lived in a tar paper shack down by Hazel Creek on the east side of town. Even with his idiosyncrasies, Alvie was a hard worker and did a great deal of labor, mostly for Raymond Holmes, the local hardware store owner. He was also a very adept whittler and made many a cane for people in Mannford. You could tell by his work that he had a great deal of innate artistic talent.

In the late 1950’s, Alvie began to travel back and forth from Mannford to Lebanon, Missouri. Hitchhiking and hopping freight trains were his preferred modes of travel. He died in August, 1981, and is buried in the Cemetery in Lebanon.

Raymond Wyatt was born on April 12, 1905, in Bowie, Montague County, Texas, about 90 miles northwest of Dallas. He was the son of Albert Lee Wyatt and Calvin “Callie” Horton Wyatt, both of whom were native Texans and who had wed in Montague County in 1902.

Not long after Raymond was born, the young family moved to Hazlip Township in Creek County, Oklahoma. No reason for their move has been found, although Albert had a half brother, Thomas Perry Porter, who had come to Keystone, Oklahoma, nearby, in 1902. The Wyatt family lived in the Mannford area for several years and Albert enrolled his son, Raymond, at Flat Rock School at the age of ten. It is suspected that he didn’t attend school for very long.

Sometime before 1935, Albert and another half brother, Doss Porter, left Mannford and headed for California. Doss took his family but Albert left Callie and young Raymond in Mannford. Callie worked at several jobs after Albert left and even had her own grocery store at one time. Raymond, without the influence of a father, began to drink heavily and got involved with bootlegging and moonshining.

The great prohibition “experiment” in the United States began in 1920 and lasted until 1933. Even after prohibition was lifted, the State of Oklahoma remained legally dry until 1959, with only 3.2% beer being allowed. In practice, however, bootleggers and moonshiners kept the State in alcohol.

It was sometime in the mid-1930’s when Raymond received his nickname, “Slip” or “Slippery”, so called either because of his ability to escape deathor to elude law enforcement. He had many close calls. Also, at one point, he admittedly ran a “still” up in “East Holler”, just east of the town of Mannford.

Slip’s exploits were many: In 1932, he stole a car from another Mannford resident and fellow moonshiner, G.W. “Jack” Housley, and later wrecked it. At the time, it was expected that he would never face charges for the theft because he was critically injured when he wrecked the car. Obviously, he did recover but the outcome of the car theft charge is unknown.

In 1937, he was shot in the stomach by Mannford’s constable, C. E. Woodruff after resisting arrest for disorderly conduct. Apparently, he, Slip, had gotten into an argument with Woodruff’s son where hatchets and hammers were involved. Slip was, of course, very drunk. He was taken to Oklahoma City where he recovered in a hospital there. Charges against him were later dismissed.

At the time of the 1940 U.S. Census, Slip was incarcerated at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma. The reason for his stay there is unknown but he did spend several stays there and in jails around Creek County.

In fact, in 1949, Slip made the national news when he wrote a postcard from Phoenix, Arizona to the Creek County Sheriff, Lee Johnson. Slip had walked off his trusty job with 30 days left to serve on a public drunkenness sentence. The card read:

“Dear Lee, do you want me to come back? I am sorry I run off. Tell all the boys hello for me. Yours truly, Slip Wyatt”

The sheriff commented that he would spend no county money to bring Wyatt back. When Slip had been booked into the jail on the public drunkenness charge, he had listed his profession as “moonshiner”. Wire services had picked up the story and it ran in many newspapers across the country.

In yet another event,in 1945, Slip was charged with grand larceny when he stole two pairs of reading glasses and two sets of false teeth, along with $65 in cash. The outcome of this case is unknown, as is what he planned to do with the false teeth. Again, the victim in this case was his friend, Jack Housley.

In all, the number of times he was arrested is more than can be counted. Charges included public indecency, public intoxication, driving while intoxicated and several others. In spite of all these run-ins with law enforcement, Slip was regarded as a likable fellow around Mannford.

In the early 1960’s, Keystone Dam and Reservoir were being constructed and the town of Mannford elected to move. Many of the residents moved to the new town location but some went elsewhere. It was around this time that Callie Wyatt decided to move to Oilton, about 16 miles away. Slip, who had never married, moved with her.

On July 10, 1967, Raymond “Slip” Wyatt passed away and is buried at the Drumright North Cemetery in Drumright, Oklahoma. No cause for his death can be found but, with the way he lived his life, anything would have been possible. His mother, Callie, died in Oilton in June, 1973 at the age of 91 years.

The History of Mannford Masonic Lodge

The Masonic Lodge has been an important part of Mannford's history since it was chartered on February 28, 1924. Many, if not most, of the leaders of the town have been Masons. The Lodge is a combination civic organization, charitable group and men's fraternity.

The original charter members included the following:

William A. Barron

Charles F. Carothers

James Henry Carothers

Matthew A. Clegg

Lovell Clark Clifford

Robert Chalmer Cline

Francis Marion Coonrod

Tommie R. Crane

Cecil Eugene Fox

Joseph Wade Gwathney

Bertie Irwin Greenwood

John Wesley Hesterlee

James Hinton

Vernon Harl Hinton

Robert Exum Holmes

Daniel W. Johnson

Clarence Randle McDonald

Thomas Edward Mann

Clarence Willard Newell

Reece Reed

David R. Robinson

Ernest E. Roop

Officers of that first Lodge included Clarence McDonald as Worshipful Master, Lovell Clifford as Senior Warden and Clarence Newell as Junior Warden.

Mannford Lodge has been in operation continuously since that first meeting in 1924. For many years, they met in a room above the Mannford Mercantile in the old town. When it was announced that the town was moving, they started a series of fundraisers and raised enough money to build a new building where it now stands at 106 E. Cimarron Street. In May 1962, the land was acquired and construction began. Grand Master Carson Scott of the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma conducted the cornerstone ceremony in 1964.

Keystone Lodge No. 348 had been chartered in December 1906. When it was decided to build Keystone Lake and the town of Keystone decided not to move, the Lodge there was consolidated with Mannford Lodge No. 515. This took place on December 5, 1961 by order of the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma.

One of Mannford Lodge's outstanding Masons was Eugene (Gene) Fields, a full blood Creek Indian, who became a Mason in 1965 and served as Worshipful Master of the Lodge in 1971. For about twenty years, he was Director of the Oklahoma Indian Masonic Degree Team. This team traveled Worldwide and conferred over eight hundred Master Mason degrees around the globe. Gene was also the first Mannford Mason to be honored by being made a 33^rd Degree Mason, an level few Masons achieve.

In 2001 the Lodge found that it had outgrown the original building and a plan was formulated to add a dining room onto the southwest corner. Construction was started in July and the exterior was largely completed within four months. Most Worshipful Robert Shipe, Grand Master of tThe Grand Lodge of Oklahoma, conducted the cornerstone ceremony on October 5, 200I.

New Wing Being Added

In November, 2010, at the annual communication of the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma, Mannford’s own Glenn Almy was elected to become Grand Master of the State of Oklahoma for the following year. For 2011, he was the highest ranking Mason in the State. Glenn joined Mannford Lodge in 1973 and has held many local and state offices, both before and after his year as Grand Master.

Most Worshipful Glenn Almy

Another Mannford Mason was well known in Masonic circles throughout the State. Jesse Swift served the Lodge for almost fifty one years before his death in March, 2016. Four months earlier he had been awarded the Masonic Medal of Honor, the highest award an Oklahoma Mason can receive. Like Glenn Almy, Jesse had served in several offices, both local and state, and he was a 33^rd Degree Mason.

Projects supported for the past few years include scholarships for Mannford Seniors, awards for Students and Teachers of Today, the Mannford Giving Tree, the Ag Boosters Club, and many more.

The Lodge has been an integral part of the town for ninety eight years and is looking forward to many more.

My First Train Travel

 I think we are all a bit intrigued by the idea of traveling by train.  My first train trip was in 1966 and it was a long one.

I had gone on wheat harvest with my friend David's uncle, Carl Rice.  I rode my Honda S90 motorcycle to Chickasha, Oklahoma, where Carl and his crew were already cutting wheat.  As you might expect, the harvest starts in southern climes and moves north as the summer progresses.

Cutting Wheat in Montana

From Chickasha, we went north to Dodge City, Kansas, where I decided that the motorcycle was too hard to carry from stop to stop so I left it there at a garage, telling the owner that I would return later to get it.  We then made a couple of stops in Kansas and Nebraska, and eventually into Montana.

After spending a couple of weeks in Brockway, Montana (population - less than 100), we moved to Opheim, Montana, 12 miles from the Canadian border.  Unfortunately, it began to rain and continued for days.  Because we couldn't harvest wheat, Carl and the older guys went off to Saskatewan for several days while I stayed in the trailer.

Our Trailer

After about three days, I got really bored and decided to head home.  I had no money so I called Mom and asked her to wire me some, which she agreed to.  I did have enough money to buy a ticked on the local train and headed for Williston, North Dakota where Western Union would have the money for me.

The train from Opheim to Williston was a true "milk" train.  We stopped at every small town and the conductor would load cream cans onto the train.  At one stop, he came into the passenger area and asked if I could help, which I was glad to do.  As it turned out, he needed help loading a casket onto the train!  I was the only passenger and he and I spent quite a bit of time talking.  The train consisted of a locomotive, a freight car, and a combination mail car/passenger car.

Passenger/Mail Car

I don't remember the timing exactly but I think the trip to Williston took about half a day.  Before I left Opheim, I had lost my wallet in the wheat fields with all my identification in it.  During the trip to Williston, it dawned on me that I might not be able to get the $50 that Mom had wired to me.  The conductor told me that he would go to the Western Union office and vouch for me, which he did.

In Williston, I bought a ticket on the Great Northern Empire Builder to St. Paul, Minnesota.  Because I only had a little bit of money, I was traveling in "steerage".  For much of the trip I was unable to find a seat and had to sit on a stool in the restroom.  I spent a whole night on that stool!  We arrived in St. Paul the next morning.

When I got to St. Paul, I boarded the Rock Island Rocket bound for Kansas City.  It too was terribly crowded and I found no comfortable places to sit.  I don't remember much about that leg of the trip except that we got to Kansas City late in the day.

I had a long layover in Kansas City before I caught the Santa Fe Super Chief headed for California.  Thankfully, this train had plenty of room on it and seats were plentiful.  Since I hadn't slept in a couple of nights, I asked the conductor to please wake me when we got to Dodge City and I went into a deep sleep.

Sure enough, when we got to Dodge City, he woke me up and I got off the train.  Although my train trip was over, I still had a long motorcycle ride ahead of me to Mannford.  Of the $50 Mom had wired me, I had $5 left and that was enough to buy gasoline for the ride home and for a candy bar.  When I got home, I had nothing but a little change left in my pockets.

It was a great adventure but I sure wouldn't want to do it again.  Many years later, Louise and I rode trains around Europe for three days and it was much more enjoyable!

The Last River Trip

 If you've read several of these blogs, you know that I've made a few trips down  the Arkansas River to the Mississippi.  The last trip was in September, 2018 and you can read about it in an October, 2018 blog post.

At the time we made that trip, I wasn't sure I would ever do it again.  With each trip, the sleeping bag became increasingly hard and uncomfortable.  However, no one ever accused me of being intelligent so we planned another trip this year.

The group this year would consist of my brother, Milt, and his good friend, Bill, in Bill's boat and my son, Dan, my cousin's husband, Jim, and myself in my boat.  We were going to change things up a bit and leave from Muskogee this year.  We had always left from Tulsa but were going to make this an abbreviated trip.

The plan was to put in at Muskogee Three Forks Harbor, go downstream to Little Rock, then return to Muskogee.  We figured it would be about a four day trip.  We were to leave on Saturday, September 17.

The appointed day came and we met in Muskogee.  We had decided that we weren't going to be in such a hurry on this trip since we weren't going nearly so far as we had on previous trips.  The first day, we took our time and did some fishing.  In fact, Dan caught a couple of Sauger right where the Illinois River dumps into the Arkansas.

Our plan was to spend the first night at Applegate Cove Marina on Kerr Reservoir.  We had stayed there before and had an enjoyable time.  Our first big surprise came when we got to Applegate Cove and discovered that it was closed and out of business!

Finding fuel on the river is always a challenging problem and we had planned on fueling at Applegate.  Fortunately, there was a guy there who had a key to the pump and we were able to top off our tanks.  We got to talking with him and he offered to let us sleep on the dock at the marina.  I'm not sure whether he had the authority to allow this but we took advantage of it anyway.  Sleeping on the dock that night reinforced my desire to not make this trip any more.

The next morning we took off down river and found ourselves at the Corps of Engineers Park in Ozark, Arkansas in late afternoon.  We had stayed in this park on previous trips so it seemed like a good place to stay again.  I haven't mentioned it before the the temperature on this whole trip was just better than unbearable.

After another miserable night of sleeping (and sweating) on the ground, we woke up the next morning and had a meeting.  Everyone agreed that we had had enough so we decided to turn around and go back upstream.  This would cut off at least two days travel to get to Little Rock and back.

Of course, this meant that we would spend the third night out at Applegate and be sleeping on that hard, hard dock again.  The trip back upstream was uneventful and we arrived back at Muskogee on Wednesday, September 20.

You may have noticed the title of the blog, "The Last River Trip".  As far as I'm concerned, unless I acquire a houseboat with air conditioning and a bed, I think I'm done.  I'm aware of the old adage, "Never say never", but I'm pretty close to never.

The Pandemic

 

In January, 2020, Louise and I were in South Texas as we had been for the previous thirteen years. We began to hear news reports of a new virus coming out of China, specifically in the Wuhan Province. The virus became known as Covid-19 or the coronavirus.

It seemed that the news started out as a trickle then became a raging torrent. As the days went by, we began to wonder if we shouldn’t go home. Not only were we concerned that travel might become difficult but our dog (my dog!) J.J., was ill and needed surgery. We made the decision to leave South Texas two weeks earlier than we had planned.

The virus spread from country to country like a wildfire. Transmission was apparently mostly by air. Within a couple of months after getting home, the entire Country went on lock down. Most people didn’t go to work, there were no restaurants or bars open, no churches held live services and so forth. A lot of people learned how to work from home and even attend virtual church services. If you did have to leave your home, you wore a mask and tried to stay several feet away from anyone else.

As you might expect, shortages of goods began to happen. One of the first shortages was of toilet tissue. What does it say about a country or society when the first thing we run out of in a crisis is toilet tissue? Other things, surprisingly, included bread flour. I thought bread making was almost a lost art at home but apparently it’s not – people began baking again.

Although events with more than just a handful people were discouraged, that didn’t stop Louise and I from having a party one evening with nine people there, including R.B. and Teresa Ellis, Bill and Gina Henshaw, David and Lisa Swanson, my brother Milt, and Louise and me. The evening degenerated into drinking tequila shots, all from the same glass. Sure enough, the next morning R.B. was ill and tested positive for Covid. Fortunately, his symptoms weren’t terribly severe but he did miss several days of work at the fire department. The rest of us all quarantined for fourteen days and got tested but no one got the virus. We decided that the moral of that story is that tequila is an effective antiseptic!

As the summer drug on, there was a massive race to develop vaccines. The Federal Government was pouring billions of dollars into this effort. We were being told that vaccines might be available by the end of the year. In fact, there were two companies that were able to get emergency approvals on their vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna. Because there was a very limited supply, the Government developed a priority system. The first people in line were health care and emergency workers.

Because the virus seemed to affect older people much more than younger ones, the next group to get the vaccine was those who were sixty five or older. Louise and I got our first shots on January 19, 2021, and our boosters on February 13, 2021, the day before Valentine’s Day. It was easy to remember the date because we both were sicker than dogs on Valentine’s Day. A lot of people suffered side effects after receiving the boosters.

Within a month after receiving our shots, the general public was allowed to get vaccinated. As with any massive program like this, within a few weeks there was more vaccine than needed. And like a lot of things in our polarized society today, this one became politicized, with some people taking the vaccine and others claiming that the vaccine wasn’t safe.

Our daughter, Rachel, who was teaching school in Broken Arrow, was one who didn’t think she should take the vaccine. So, in late August, 2021, she developed the virus. Shortly after that, her husband, Tom, came down with it as well.

The next wave was the “Delta” variant which has spread across the country and it appears to be even more virulent than the original. While we were seeing the number of cases ebb in early summer, 2021, it began another increase. Fortunately, the vaccines developed for the original virus seem to be effective on the variant as well. The current variant, called “omicron” appears to be much more contagious and consideribly less virilent than the first strains.

Louise and I do know, personally, three people who have died from Covid-19. Phil Finch was a friend of ours from our South Texas trips and was a fine man. Roland Gniech was the husband of Louise’s long time friend from Stillwater, Susan Gniech. The most recent friend to die was Gary McBride, a long time resident of Mannford who was an electrician. He died in early September, 2021. In addition to losing these friends, we know quite a large number of people who have gotten the virus but managed to get through it.

I’m hopeful that this is the last I will write about the Covid-19 pandemic!

Adventures with R.B.

 

One day in late 2013, I found a note on the door at home. It was from a woman asking me to call her – that she would like to talk to me about putting her horse in my pasture. I called her and she explained that she lived in the Lake Country subdivision, across the street from us, and that she had a horse that she was keeping in Sand Springs. She would have to drive back and forth twice daily to feed Roscoe. She asked if I would be interested in letting her keep Roscoe in our pasture. At the time, we had two Nubian wethers (neutered goats), Speed and Pull, and they couldn’t begin to keep up with the grass so I told her that yes, she could bring the horse up there.

A few weeks went by and I didn’t hear anything from her so I called her again. She explained that she and her husband were getting a divorce and she wasn’t sure who was going to get Roscoe. I told her that the offer to put Roscoe up here was still good.  Some months passed and I got another call from her. She and her husband had reconciled and she wanted to bring the horse up. So, in June, 2014, Teresa Ellis and her husband, R.B., brought Roscoe to live with us.

It’s funny how fate brings you twists and turns in your life. We had never met R.B. and Teresa but quickly became good friends, all thanks to Roscoe. They were about fifteen years younger than us but we seemed to hit it off. Teresa would come over two or three times a day to care for Roscoe and eventually we got to where we would feed for her if she was not available.

R.B. was the Safety Fire Chief for the Tulsa Fire Department and reported directly to the main Fire Chief. He and Teresa had a business on the side selling rescue equipment and training fire personnel in the area on ropes and swift water rescue. In addition, R.B. was an avid outdoorsman.

In early 2017, R.B. started planning a boundry waters fishing trip to Minnesota and asked me if I wanted to go. Of course I did! We had two or three planning meetings to get everything in order. In addition to R.B. and me, his son Bobby was going, along with a couple of R.B.’s friends, James Nichols and Travis Sheeder. Of the five of us, I was by far the oldest, some fifteen years older than R.B. and probably thirty five years older than the others. In addition, at 5’9”, I was at least ten inches shorter than all these giants.

On Saturday, June 10, 2017, we all met at my house in the morning, loaded all our gear into my Tiffin motor home, and took off for Minnesota. We all spent the first night in the motor home in the parking lot of the Cabela’s store in Owatonna, Minnesota. After spending a considerable amount of money in the store, we took off the next day and got into Ely, Minnesota just after noon. We met with the outfitter with whom R.B. had made arrangements and got our gear including two canoes and several “Duluth” packs.

We parked the motor home at the Outfitter’s store and he drove us several miles northeast of Ely where we loaded our canoes and took off. The canoes were loaded to the gunwales with gear! In addition to the Duluth packs, we had rods and reels, tackle boxes and kitchen gear. I should explain that a Duluth pack is a giant backpack and can be loaded with as much gear as you can carry.

After about three hours of paddling the canoes, and two portages, we finally arrived at our campsite. We were there for five days and had a great time! We didn’t catch a lot of fish but the ones we did catch were nice. We had two severe thunderstorms on two different nights but were dry as could be in our covered hammocks.

On Friday, the sixteenth, we loaded our canoes and started the long paddle back. Only this time the wind was blowing a gale and I was scared to death that we might sink. Fortunately, we made it back to the takeout point where our outfitter met us. The motor home was loaded up with all our gear and pointed south toward Oklahoma. We left about 2:30 in the afternoon and pulled into my house about 8:30 the next morning.While we were gone, Louise, Teresa, and another of their friends, Janet Varnell, took a three-day trip to Oklahoma City. I’ll bet they didn’t drink as much as we did, though.

In early 2018, the next year, R.B. suggested that we do another Minnesota fishing trip, but this time to a lake where we could take our boats. I told him I was all in on this one, too.

The crew which had gone on the previous trip couldn’t go so we recruited another friend of R.B.’s, Ronnie Fewell, to go along. He had a nephew and nephew’s friend who wanted to go so the five of us made plans to go to Lake Winnibigoshish (called Lake Winnie by the locals) at the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota. Ronnie referred to the nephew, Denton, and his friend, Clint, as the “crack babies”.

On Thursday, June 7, we loaded our gear and boats and took off for Minnesota. Again, we got to Owatonna the first evening but, because we weren’t in my motor home, had to stay at a motel that night. Once again, we left a lot of money at Cabela’s! Also, on the way up there, R.B.’s odometer in his Ford pickup rolled over 300,000 miles.

We stayed at a place called the Northland Lodge. It’s most redeeming quality was the bar in the Lodge. We spent quite a bit of time there when we weren’t fishing. We caught hundreds of fish, mostly perch, but almost all of them were too small to keep. As usual, our spare time was spent playing cards and drinking whiskey. We had learned on the previous trip that Wild Turkey and Nutter Butters went well together. The convenience store in the small town of Deer River quickly ran out of it’s supply of Nutter Butters.On Thursday the 14^th we started home and, as in the previous trip, drove straight through, getting home on Friday morning.

We weren’t through with 2018. As you’ve read earlier, I had made two trips down the Arkansas River in the past, once in 2003 and again in 2005. So, thirteen years after my last trip I talked R.B. into a river trip.  This time we recruited my brother Milt and his friend, Bill Henshaw. I was to take my boat, a nineteen foot center console fishing boat, and Bill would take his. He had a big wide aluminum boat which was perfect for the trip. My son, Dan, was going to meet us in Arkansas and join the trip there.

On Wednesday, September 26, we loaded up our gear and drove to Bluff Landing Park east of Broken Arrow on 71^st Street, where we launched. By launching at Bluff Landing you can say that you have locked through every lock on the Arkansas River. Louise and Teresa went with us to drive the trucks and boat trailers home.

Our plan was to meet the girls on the 28^th in Little Rock and spend the evening there with them. They were pulling the trailers and were going to spend the next night in Greenville, Mississippi, then meet us and drive back.

The first night we stayed at Applegate Landing on Kerr Lake. The marina operator was nice enough to let us camp in his pavilion so all we had to do was unroll some sleeping bags. Since we had not met Dan yet, there were just four of us. Every one of the four had a CPAP machine to use at night! Fortunately, there were plenty of electrical outlets.

The next day was relatively uneventful. We got to Ozark, Arkansas, where we met Dan and stayed in a Corps of Engineers park, Aux Arc Park. The park was right on the river so all we had to do was pull the boats up to the bank and unload our gear.

There is a lock and dam just outside the park and we got through it the next morning, September 28. After that lock is a seventy eight mile run down the River and Dardanelle Lake to the next lock. This was the longest stretch on the trip and took several hours. At the end of Dardanelle Lake is the lock and dam by the same name. This is also the largest lock on the entire system with a forty eight foot elevation change. Those locks are amazing feats of engineering.

We met the girls in Little Rock as planned, at a marina where we had made reservations to spend the night on a couple of boats in the marina. Louise and I and R.B. and Teresa were to stay on a houseboat with two bedrooms and the three other guys were staying on a cabin cruiser. We went out to dinner that night and had a wonderful time.

We woke up the next morning to some of the most dense fog I’ve ever seen. None of us wanted to venture out into that stuff so we found a restaurant close by and had a leisurely breakfast. Finally, about eleven, the fog started to lift. We topped off all of our gas cans, said goodbye to our wives and took off down the river. Little Rock is the last place before Greenville to purchase gasoline.

There is a lock and dam just downstream from Little Rock, David Terry Lock and Dam. Fate was not kind to us this morning – we got to the lock just as a barge tow was coming up. It was a big one, too, so it was going to take a couple of hours to get it though the lock.

I should explain that pleasure craft are the lowest forms of transportation on the totem pole on the river. About the time they were finishing up the barge tow, another big one arrived from downstream to be locked up. So, we sat there another two hours! We had lost three or four hours in the morning with the fog and how we’ve lost another four hours at this lock.

After we finally got through David Terry, we had to run hard to make up some of the time we had lost. It was Saturday, the 29^th and we were to meet the girls in Greenville the next morning. We finally decided to make camp just below Emmett Sanders Lock and Dam, some sixty six miles from the Mississippi River. We had only made fifty two miles that day.

We pulled the boats up on a sand bar, unpacked and had a delicious shore meal. I should point out that R.B. was quite a camp cook and took over that chore on every trip we made. The only downside is that he brought a lot of cooking gear with him!

We set our camp up, including tents because we knew that the mosquitoes would be horrible and, sure enough, they were. Because four of the five of us used CPAP’s, we had brought a portable generator to power them and we had extension cords running everywhere. The next morning, I was told that we had a group of four-wheelers come through the camp late in the night. I never did hear them.

The next morning, Sunday, we knew we had to run hard to get to Greenville at a reasonable hour. We were planning on driving all the way back to Mannford that evening. We had a quick breakfast and took off.

Now we came face to face with the gasoline problem. We had topped off the tanks in Little Rock but knew it was going to be close to get to Greenville. My boat had a forty eight gallon main tank and I had a twelve gallon portable tank as well. When we got to Greenville, the big tank was dry and the portable tank had about two gallons in it. Bill, in the other boat, was just about as dry.

Louise and Teresa met us at the boat ramp and we got the boats loaded onto the trailers. They had been waiting for us and had started to eat lunch at a Huddle House when we called telling them that we were at the boat ramp. We went with them back to the Huddle House and had one of the worst meals I’ve ever had. Milt continues to tease both Teresa and Louise about the Huddle House today.

Although we got a late start, the trip back home was uneventful and we got there very late Sunday night.

Years earlier, R.B. had had a cancer removed on his tongue. In early 2021, it manifested itself again and he had surgery to remove it. This time the surgery was more in depth and he was in the hospital several days. Because of the Covid pandemic, he was not allowed to have visitors. He got out of the hospital on Tuesday, February 23, and went home to be nursed back to health by Teresa.

The next morning about eight, I got a phone call. It was Teresa telling me that R.B. had just died. He had gotten up, was walking through their house, fell and just died. He was sixty years old. Three days later, on February 27, his funeral was held at the First Baptist Church in Tulsa. It was the largest funeral I had ever attended. Most of the Tulsa Fire Department was on hand, along with many firemen from outlying departments. The Mayor of Tulsa was in attendance as well as several other dignitaries.

R.B. was a good friend and a great person. I shall miss him.