I spent my summers with Grandpa and Grandma. When school was out, I would go to the farm. Mom and Dad usually took me down, but once I rode the bus from Dallas to Meridian. I remember the bus didn't take the same route to Meridian that we usually took. I was a bit anxious the entire trip...especially when the bus made a turn that took us in the opposite direction from where we were going. I didn't realize it until after we finally got to Meridian that the bus stopped at every little town and wide spot in the road to pick up passengers and freight. I believe the trip took a couple of hours longer than it normally took Dad to drive down. I was really glad to see Grandpa at the bus station.

Each day was pretty much the same. In the morning before I got up, Grandpa would milk and do early morning chores. We would have breakfast about 6:30 and the menu was pretty much the same - eggs, bacon, jelly, biscuits, homemade butter, milk and juice. It was always a great breakfast. When we finished breakfast we would get the old Chevy panel truck and load it up with Purina Turkey Chow, oats, maize, and, sometimes, spelts. We would take the feed to the turkey range. Grandpa raised turkeys for as long as I can remember. He usually had between 2,000 to 3,000 at different times. One year, the turkey range would be in the large live oak grove east of the house. The next year it might be northwest of the house in the trees north of the hog pasture. Other years we would have the turkey range in the trees west of the old trench silo. The reason we rotated the location for the turkey range each year was because it reduced the chance for disease.

When we drove the panel truck to the turkey range, they would come running and, of course, they would always be right where you wanted to drive. When you tried to carry feed to the troughs, they were always right under foot. More than once did I trip over a turkey while carrying a bag of feed. After we got the feed in the trough, we would wash out the water troughs. Grandpa made the water troughs from 1" x 6" pine boards. The seams were filled in with tar. We would take a piece of feed sack and scrub out the troughs and give them a good rinsing. It made me mad to get a trough clean and get it set back into place and a "darned ol' turkey" would mess in the trough while you were leveling it up. I've kicked turkeys in the tail feathers for doing that! We would have about five or six water troughs that were fed by a float type valve. We had to haul water in a tank mounted on a trailer. We hauled water at least twice a day, and on really hot days we would have to haul an extra tank. I learned to back a trailer when I was a youngster, as I had to back the trailer up to the tank house to fill up the water tank. We had a two-inch pipe extending out from the top of the tank house with a valve on it. When I got the tank into position, I would turn on the valve and fill the tank. I liked to haul water because most days were very hot, and it felt good to wash my head and face under the cool stream of water.

We would usually be through feeding by 9:00 A.M. After taking care of the turkeys we would do other work that had to be done. Once when I was a bit older, Grandpa and I fed the turkeys in an hour. I remember that because he commented to me that was the fastest the turkeys had ever been fed.

I remember occasions when Grandpa and I would go to Meridian to Philip Markman's Purina feed store and place a feed order. I liked to go to Markman's because I liked to sit around and listen to the farmers talk. They usually talked about the weather and their crops or something I thought interesting. We would then stop by the store and pick up some things for Grandma. We had a list (or bill) to fill. Many times we picked up Gladiola flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, etc. We'd get the flour in 25 pound bags.

On the way home we would stop at Burton Gustafson's Midway Store. The store was our stop for a cold drink or an ice cream cone. I liked the smell of things in the store and I liked the way the floor creaked when you walked on it. The grocery store at the Gap also had creaking hardwood floors. It was fun to go to town on Saturday. We would see the neighbors...many of our kinfolk... and all in all we had a good time. I thought it was extra nice to go to town during the week. We went during the week only if we had something breakdown or if Grandma needed something special, or if Grandpa had a meeting. I got to go with him everywhere that he went. Some people called me Grandpa's shadow. I liked that! Grandpa would give me some spending money when we went to town. It was usually a half-dollar. I could buy some candy, or I could buy a box of .22 shells. I usually bought the shells because I knew Grandpa would treat me to something at Bynus Tindall's drug store before we went home.

When going to or from the Gap, we would sometimes take the back road so we could look at other farmer's crops and on a couple of occasions stop and visit with someone when we caught them plowing near the road. Once we stopped at the branch and got out. Grandpa showed me a place in the branch where he once saw a bunch of pocketknives in the cool running water. He said there were all kinds of pocketknives...large ones... small ones... some with plain or colorful handles. I soon found out that he had once dreamed about the knives in the creek. Every time I cross that branch I think about Grandpa's dream.

One summer I remember plowing at the Otto Nygaard place. Grandpa rented that place from time to time after Otto moved away. I was plowing stubble, and I noticed clouds building in the northwest. The clouds really looked "mean." Grandpa drove up in the panel truck and by that time a few scattered raindrops started to hit me. As I plowed up to where he was, he said I had better unhitch the plow and get to the house because we were fixing to have a storm. As soon as I got unhitched, I started to drive the tractor to the house as fast as I could. By the time I got there I was sopping wet, and the tractor was running on one cylinder. As soon as I got the tractor under the shed it started to hail. Golf ball size hailstones were everywhere. After it quit, I went to the house and found no one there but Grandpa George. I saw Grandpa and Grandma at the turkey range. When I got out to the range, I was shocked to see turkeys lying all over the ground. The hailstorm had killed several turkeys. I remember the sick feeling I had when I saw the dead turkeys. We started to gather them up, and Grandma called Aunt Orelia and Aunt Ada and a few others to come and get some of the turkeys before they spoiled. I remember helping Grandpa and Grandma skin a number of turkeys. We cleaned as many as we could store and took the rest to the ditch. The buzzards really had a feast for several days.

In the summer of either 1951 or 1952, there was a wild turkey hen that stayed in the branch between our place and the Grimes place. There used to be several huge cottonwood trees on the Camfield branch, and it was there that the turkey hen stayed most of the time. Grandpa first pointed the hen out to me while we were driving down to the Grimes place late one evening. The hen had already gone to roost in one of the cottonwood trees. I first thought it was a buzzard, but he assured me it was a wild turkey. As we slowly drove closer to it I could see plainly it was a turkey. That was the first wild turkey I had ever seen. I didn't think any more about the turkey until one evening when Grandpa and I were at the turkey range checking on the turkeys. It was my job to drive the turkeys that had flown over the fence back to the flock. Late in the evenings as it began to cool off, the turkeys would begin to feel their "oats," and they would start to run and fly. Some would fly over the fence and then walk up and down the fence line until someone came to drive them back inside. On this particular day I had just finished driving in the turkeys, and Grandpa pointed out that I had missed one up the fence line. I dropped the fence gate and circled up toward the turkey that was walking up and down the fence. I walked as close as fifteen feet, and all of a sudden, the turkey took off like a quail. It startled me as she took wing. I was taken totally by surprise. The hen headed toward the cottonwood trees on the branch. That was my second encounter with the turkey hen. When I returned to where Grandpa was, I could see "that little smile" on his face. He knew all along that it was the wild turkey, and he had pulled a joke on me. I must say it was a good one.

After that incident we saw the hen in with our turkeys on other occasions. She would come up and eat and hang around until late in the evening. Sometime later, Grandpa told me that Edna Grime's sister, Mrs. Pierce, shot the turkey and tried to eat it. I understand it tasted terrible and she threw it out.

Grandpa bought turkey poults from Western Hatcheries in Temple. When they arrived, they were about two weeks old. We kept them in the brooder house (where the shop is today). They had to be watched both day and night while they were that young. Grandpa lost turkeys in various ways over the years. One year the brooder house caught fire and killed several. Another time, an owl flew into the brooder house, and a hundred or so piled up in the corner of the room until many died by suffocation. Turkeys are not the brightest creatures... most anything will spook them, and they have a tendency to bunch up and that caused problems. As they got a little older, we would open up the sun porches and let them get sunshine during the day. At night we would have to drive them back into the brooder house. It was my job to climb into the sun porches and chase them in. On other occasions we had possums, coons, and skunks to visit our young poults during the night. At times, Grandpa slept near the turkeys trying to catch any varmint trying to raid his flock. I remember Grandpa telling me about the time that he was trying to catch something that had been getting one turkey each night. After spending a couple of nights just outside the brooder house he finally bagged an owl. He would fly in through the window, kill and eat his prey, and then fly out the same way. We also killed a big skunk one night that was getting in the hen house.

Of all the jobs I did during the summer, there was one job I never did really enjoy and that was combining grain. It wasn't that it was so hard, but I hated the dust and chaff associated with it. Grandpa got his first and only combine in the late to middle 1940s. It was a John Deere, which arrived in wooden crates, and had to be assembled. The combine was pulled by the tractor and got its power from the power-take-off. Gene or I sacked the grain on the combine, and then the sack was tied with twine and stacked on the dump chute. After stacking seven or eight sacks on the chute (the chute was much like a curved slide seen on playgrounds but only four feet long), we would dump the sacks by pulling a trip rope. Dumping in designated areas prevented us from going all over the field when we hauled in the sacks of grain. I liked to sack when we combined spelts because I didn't think it was quiet as dusty and the spelts were also light in weight and the bags easier to handle. Maize was the hardest and dustiest crop to harvest (from the bagger's standpoint). Maize had a black fuzzy chaff that really itched and irritated your eyes. The sacks weighed around a hundred pounds, and it was hard work toting maize all day. On some occasions when the crop was poor and the grain thin, it took a long time to fill a sack. Sometimes I would jump off the combine to avoid dust and walk across the field to a certain point, and then meet the combine and get back on. After trial and error and a little bit of experience, I found I could time it just about right as to when a bag would get full. There were two bags hanging from the filler spout. When one filled up, I would turn a handle and the other bag would catch the grain. As that bag was filling, I would have time to tie up the other bag and place it in the chute. Then I'd place an empty bag on the filler spout and wait until the other bag filled and continue the process for as long as the combine was running. This job was always hot and dusty. I remember on more than one occasion getting something in my eyes to the point that when I would have to stop Grandpa or Carroll (who usually was driving the tractor) and having them help me get the "junk" out of my eye. I tried on many occasions to wear goggles, but they were hot and uncomfortable. When things really got dusty, I tied a bandanna around my face. That would filter some of the dust to where I could breath more comfortably. Sometimes Gene and I would both bag grain. Gene would sometimes catch me sitting on the grain sacks and dump me down the chute along with the sacks. We played around trying to make play out of work. Once we were combining in the south field, and Gene told me to take over for a minute. He headed for the windmill where he washed his head and face and got a good cold drink of water. He then sat down under the tree and played like he was sleeping. This really hacked me as I was getting hotter and dustier and had a killing thirst. I'm sure I wasn't any hotter or dustier or thirstier, but just the thought of Gene sitting up there by the windmill made things worse than they were. He sat up there for one or two rounds until finally Grandpa hollered at him and told him to get back down there. As soon as he got back, I believe I went to the house for the rest of the day and literally left Gene "filling the bags."

One time we were combining, and we had a breakdown. A bolt had worked loose up in the shaker rack. Carroll tried to climb up the straw rack to fix it but he was too large. He explained to me what had happened and sent me into the combine. I really wasn't too thrilled about doing it, as it was awful dusty and hot up in there. I finally got into the combine and started looking for the missing bolt. I never did find the bolt, but Carroll sent a replacement with me, and I soon had it bolted back into position. It really wasn't that bad, but my initial thought was, "I don't want to climb up in there." For someone that is not that fond of chaff and dust, I had horrors of breathing in all that junk. I saw layers of itchy dust and grain beards wedged between the shaker racks like sharp needles sticking out just waiting for someone like me to lean against them. If I hadn't worried about all the needles, chaff and dust I'm sure I could have fixed the problem a lot faster.

Another job I hated was cleaning out the grain bins. Each year before harvest, Grandpa and I would get the scoop and broom and head for the bins in the barn. We had to get the bins cleaned out for the new grain crop. I hated that job because the dust would get so thick I couldn't breathe. I remember one morning after feeding the turkeys Grandpa said that after dinner we needed to clean out the grain bin. From the moment he told me, I started to dread it. I couldn't enjoy Grandma's hot rolls at dinner for thinking about what we had to do after dinner. Grandpa had a way of sensing how I felt about that job and even said I wouldn't have to go into the bin, but I said I didn't mind it. (I lied!) It had to be done. After dinner and a short rest, Grandpa said, "Come on, Bud, let's get it over with." And sure enough, before I knew it, we were through. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Sometimes dreading something is much worse than the actual job. I still try to remember that lesson whenever something unpleasant comes up.

One summer Grandpa, Gene, and I were combining grain at the Nygaard place. We had a patch of oats across the creek from where the house and barn were. It was terribly hot and dry that day. It didn't take long to combine the patch, but when we finished we started back across the creek, and Grandpa stopped the tractor. I wondered what he was doing as he was taking off his clothes. We all went swimming in the creek. I'll never forget how wonderful it felt to lie down in that cool, running, fresh water. It was heavenly. It was wonderful cooling off and washing off the dust. It was hard putting on those itchy sweaty clothes again and going home.

In the summer of 1950, Uncle Wade was campaigning for sheriff of Bosque County. I was eleven years old, and by that time I thought I could do anything. Wade and Sue were living on what we, at that time, called the Chris Rhone place, which was northwest of Norman Sinderude (Sparks Place). Chuck wasn't walking, but "scooting" all over the place. The twins were still very small. The reason I know is because I remember changing their diapers. Wade had quite a bit of land to farm, and he couldn't do that and campaign, so Grandpa let me go over and help Wade with his farming. It was stubble plowing time. Wade had an old McCormick-Deering tractor with steel lugs, and that is what I plowed with. I had nothing but problems. Then at the suggestion of Felix Shafter, Wade bought a Case tractor. It was not a new one but it certainly was new to me. It had rubber tires and an electric starter. I'll never forget how great it was to drive that tractor. I soon finished plowing the big field next to B.T. Hamby, and in time, I had all the fields plowed. I stayed with Wade and Sue several weeks and helped them with different things. Once I remember Sue needed something from the Gap, but she didn't have a car. I told her I could go to the store for her on the tractor if she wanted me to. I'm sure I insisted until she gave in, and to the Gap I went. I bought a toothbrush, a carton of Coca-Cola, and some washing powder.

I'll never forget how thick the horehound was around their house. It was everywhere. Using the tractor to pull an old sickle mower around the place, I mowed the stuff down. It was at least a foot or more high and was growing in the yard and in the cow lots around the barn.

I remember Felix Shafter coming by the place from time to time. Wade and Shafter were Shorthorn Breeders, and they probably had a lot of big deals brewing. They always looked very busy and business-like to me. If I remember correctly, I think Shafter is the one who started calling Chuck by his nickname.

I remember driving around the county campaigning with Wade in his old Ford pickup and hearing some people say to Wade that he was too good of a man to take that job. As the Korean War was escalating, Wade withdrew from the sheriff's race anticipating returning to military service. Even though he dropped out of the race, he almost won.

I spent one summer helping Carroll with his turkeys. Carroll had the first "big" turkey operation in Mustang. Grandpa would have only a couple of thousand at a time. Carroll started raising turkeys on a larger scale; he'd have six or seven thousand to feed. Grandpa asked me once if I would be willing to help Carroll feed his turkeys, and, of course, I was delighted to do so. I stayed with Carroll and Betty quite a bit that summer. Caring for his turkeys was a full time job. When we weren't feeding, we were working on troughs, sun porches, clearing land for ranges, building range houses and things like that. Carroll had a brooder house about 150 feet long and thirty feet wide. This house was filled with young poults, and it took a lot of time raising them to the size and age where we put them out on the range. Before we moved them out to the ranges, we inoculated them for various diseases and debeaked them. When we did this, we would have Grandpa, Sanders, and Clarence to help. It would usually take a day or so to catch, inoculate, and debeak, individually, several thousand turkeys. We would all help with Grandpa's turkeys as well. We had to change clothes and shoes so we would not bring possible disease from one flock to another.

It was always a real mess when the turkeys got a disease. The diseases I remember our flocks getting at different times were "blue comb, Limber-neck, or coccidiosis." When a disease invaded a flock, it could kill dozens each day. We would start the treatment just as soon as they were diagnosed. Most of the time the treatment was administered through their drinking water or feed. When Carroll and Grandpa were having turkey disease problems I'm sure they felt helpless for several days until the disease was checked. Diseases could wipe out an entire flock. It was always depressing hauling dead turkeys from the range each morning. It was encouraging when the mortality rate started to decrease in a few days. Raising turkeys was a risky business. I don't believe Grandpa made much profit raising turkeys, but he told me many times that he enjoyed doing it.

While staying with Carroll, I learned to appreciate the fine art of "coon hunting." Carroll had a pack of dogs and every so often we would get in his old green Dodge pickup truck and drive the roads and shoot rabbits to feed the dogs. (He said they were foxhounds, but I don't ever remember them treeing a fox… just coons.) We would make the circle up by Grandpa’s, the Hasting's, Milsap's, Belford Grimland's, Hamby's, and then back home. By that time we would have twenty or thirty rabbits. We used an axe to cut the rabbits up for the dogs. The next morning there was only rabbit fur in the pen with the hounds.

The nights we went hunting we would load up the dogs, which would get excited, and head toward Meridian Creek near the Ghost Bridge. We would stop and pick up Sanders Tergerson. Moody Green would meet us where we usually turned the dogs out. It was always funny to watch the dogs get ready to hunt. As soon as we turned them out, they would run around whining, urinating, doing their job, sniffing any new dog that wasn't part of their pack... and after a few minutes of preliminary activities... one would start out toward the creek and the rest of the pack would follow. They would just whine and bark very lightly as they tried to pick up a trail. It might be several minutes, but before too long one would hit a trail and we would certainly know it by their change in song. The next thing we knew, all the dogs were sounding off and trailing a varmint. A coon hunter could tell if the trail was hot or cold just by listening to certain dogs that had good reputations as trail dogs. How fast the pack traveled would tell if they were trailing a coon, fox, or a bobcat. We would sit around and talk and listen to the dogs. We might sit for some time before the dogs treed. With Sanders around, things would never be boring because he was good about "spinning yarns" that sometimes caused you to wonder if he knew the difference between "fact and fiction.”

As we sat and listened to Sanders and Moody Green tell hunting stories we would soon hear the dogs bark treed. We would determine where they were and get in the pickup and drive toward them. We would have to stop from time to time and turn off the truck motor and listen to get a fix on their position. Then we would head toward them again. We might have to stop three or four times before we located the dogs. Then we would head out on foot with a light toward the dogs. Each time the dogs would have something treed. Most of the time it would be a coon. The idea was to knock the varmint out of the tree and let the dogs get him.

After they made the kill we would gather them up and take them to a new place where they might find a new trail. Once we took the dogs down below Midway store on Spring Creek and turned the dogs loose. Carroll had a friend named Bill who lived near Dallas. Bill and his friend came down with two high powered dogs. One was named "Headlight," and the other was called "Searchlight." Of course, Carroll had "Ol' Blue,” “Soil Top," and several others. We turned them out near the bridge and they went down stream and hit a hot trail almost immediately. Before we knew it they had treed. We made our way down the creek and sure enough there was a big coon in the top of a huge cottonwood. Bill used his pistol to shoot the coon out, and the dogs finished him off. The dogs didn't want to leave the tree... they kept barking treed, so Carroll boosted me up into the tree to see if there was a hollow in the tree where some might be hiding. I was inching along a huge limb and, in the dark, I stuck my nose right in a hole. The hole was about a foot in diameter, and the smell was sickening; and that wasn't the worst part, for I had my nose right over the hole, and I sucked fleas into my nose and mouth before I knew it. I gagged and nearly fell from the tree. I was twenty or so feet up in the tree. There was a bunch of little coons in the hole, but all I was interested in doing was getting down, which I did in short order. I sucked water from the creek into my nose several times trying to flush the fleas out of my nose. I felt as if I had fleas all over me for days after that.

We took the dogs to another place near Norse. The dogs struck a trail and trailed way up into the night. About 1:00 A.M., we started to call the dogs in with our horns. I blew so long and hard I got a headache. After an hour or so all of our dogs came in, but "Searchlight" and "Headlight." We drove and drove, blew our horns, and drove some more but they didn't come in. Bill went home without his dogs. About a week later, he came back down and found his dogs. 

                JMW/February 1981

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