20 Years Ago on May 28th

A Platinum Couple

                On May 28, my sister and brother-in-law will celebrate their 20^th wedding anniversary. Platinum is the modern gift associated with that milestone in marriage. Platinum is malleable or flexible as well as the strongest of the three precious metals. Ben and Angie have abundantly demonstrated flexibility and strength over the last twenty years, especially the last three since Dad's strokes. In my opinion, platinum denotes the type of couple they are.
                My parents could not still be on the farm they love, in the community they love, if Ben, my brother-in-law, had not been willing to clear fencerows, build fence, prune trees and shrubs, plus 101 other demanding tasks.
                Ben has provided much needed medical advice and medical attention for both my parents. During the last power outage, he chided me for not calling him in the wee hours of the morning for instructions on Dad’s care affected by the outage. I told him I was beginning to call at 6 a.m. but the power came on. His last words to me on this subject, “Call me not matter what time it is.” Platinum brother-in-law.
                Angie as soon as Dad had the stroke in March of 2012, made the decision to go to part-time with her job. She is at the farm four days a week. Angie never complains nor steps away from difficult situations whether it is helping Ben build fence or getting groceries and supplies each week for the farm or umpteen other down and dirty tasks to be done. Platinum sister.
                All this platinum couple does for my parents is motivated by love. Ben once said when as a teen-ager he helped Bob Rice work an astronomical number of hogs, he made the decision to not make his living on the farm. Yet out of love for his parents-in-law, he faithfully helps them. Even though Angie lived on the farm from her birth until her marriage, her adult motto has been, “I want to live within five minutes of anything I need.” Yet she makes a round trip from Jenks at least twice a week.  She has logged thousands of miles during winter, spring, summer, and fall. A platinum couple.
                God has greatly blessed my parents and me with Angie and Ben and their generous, helpful spirit.  May He bless this platinum couple with 20 more happy years of marriage!


Ben Bradley and Angie Gates were married on
May 28, 1994, at the Ralston Baptist Church.

    

Celebrating a Hundred-Year-Old Treasure

Hazel Rice Goad Guthrie- A Century Worthy of Remembering

                On May 20, Hazel Rice Goad Guthrie will celebrate her 100^th birthday. Hazel and my mother, Bernyce Smith Gates are first cousins on their mothers’ side – the Rainey family.
                Hazel has such an infectious laugh. I remember as a child when Hazel and Rosie or she and Von dropped by to visit Mother and Grandmother--just hearing Hazel laugh made me happy, too.
                When I was almost five years old, we moved into our newly built home – “the pink house.” My grandmother had strategically planned for me to have a small room of the garage as a “playhouse” room. Hazel was cleaning out her kitchen and thought of a little girl trying to furnish her new playhouse. She brought the most wonderful, gently used dishes, utensils, and pans. These weren’t play dishes but real ones like Mom had! What excitement for a little girl! My sister Angie was born just a few months after we moved into the new house so along with our friends, we had many hours of delightful play with Hazel’s old kitchenware. I’ll always remember her thoughtfulness and generosity.

Junior VBS Class at Big Bend Baptist Church in 1963
Kneeling: Larry Dooley, Kathy White and Terry Dooley
Standing: Richard Whannel, Gail Morris, Danny Grimm,
Ronnie Wilson, Mary Jane Freeman, Luther Ray Freeman,
Donald Wilson, Wayne Ray Mitchell, Jean Morris, Clay
Freeman, and Sandra Wilson. Teachers standing on porch:
Carol Evatt, Patricia Jefferson, & Gladys Smith.

                Gladys Rainey Smith, my grandmother, was Hazel’s aunt. One summer my grandmother wanted to give the kids at Vacation Bible School at the Big Bend Baptist Church in the “Junior” class – the oldest students – a Bible trivia booklet. Grandma asked paint stores for old wallpaper sample books with the intention of using the sample pages as durable covers for the Bible trivia books. Then she asked Hazel, the most gifted typist she knew, to type the original copy of the questions. Hazel worked at the Fairfax Memorial Hospital in the office so she could not work in the weekday morning VBS sessions, but she was willing to work with Grandmother to create the Bible trivia books. Grandma researched and developed the questions. Then Hazel typed them up in a booklet format. I recall Hazel stopping by periodically with the typed question pages. Grandma then used an archaic Hectograph to reprint the original pages. Grandma and Hazel were not trying to produce kids who were Bible trivia experts. They were hoping the students and their parents would be curious enough to look the questions up in the Bible, as a result learning the eternal value of reading and obeying God’s Word.

Sample of the 116-question Bible Trivia Booklet.

                These are just a couple of memories I have of Hazel. Many Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations were shared and enjoyed by our families. Below is a photograph of a get-together of the Rainey family and friends in the early 1940s, long before my time.

Photograph of a Rainey Family and Friends Celebration in the
early 1940s. Bernyce and Hazel are standing next to each other.
 
Bernyce Smith Gates had written these names on the back of
the above photograph.

                        I heard that a research study was done with centenarians trying to determine factors that led to their longevity. One trait all those study participants had in common was being able to adjust to change. All who know Hazel are most likely aware of the many challenges and losses that she has experienced. Of her four children, she has buried two of them, a task that no mother should have to do. She has tragically had grandchildren die. Yet Hazel has dealt with those extremely painful losses as well as bearing difficult burdens and situations. She sorrows, but her demeanor and countenance remains optimistic and forward-looking.

                All of us could take a page from Hazel’s life book to enrich our lives, and maybe in the process, we might add a few years, too!

Hazel Rice Goad Guthrie - seated. Her children
Rosemary Goad Dilbeck and Sam Goad standing.
Photograph by Shella Dean Dilbeck Crabtree at
Hazel's 98th Birthday Party in May of 2012.

The Tire, the Turtle, and Reputations

In 2013, I came in from checking our cattle and wrote about this simple experience and what lesson jumped out at me from the happening. A couple of Dad's friends who came to visit him recently said that they never heard Dad speak damaging words about any person. I guess he always rescues the turtle.

Rescuing the Turtle

 Pulling up to the closed west pasture gate, I put the pickup in park, hopped out only to see the front left tire just a few centimeters on the edge of a turtle’s shell. I bent down to assess the situation, nudging the shell of the turtle with my boot and discovered it couldn’t be dislodged from under the tire. I quickly jumped back into the pickup and carefully eased the truck backward. After putting it into park, I exited the pickup and finally opened the west pasture gate. As I glanced back, I glimpsed the turtle moving as rapidly as possible as if understanding what a close call had been experienced.

Sometimes in life we inadvertently roll up on a conversation and find ourselves on the verge of rolling unthoughtedly over another's reputation or at least people's perception of another--much like I rolled up on the turtle.  We then have to make the choice to keep the conversation rolling or backup & save a reputation.  I thought, “Am I as quick to preserve a person’s reputation as I was to save the turtle’s life?” Does someone else’s reputation matter as much to me as my own does?

 The Bible says in Proverbs 12:6 (HCSB) The words of the wicked are a deadly ambush, but the speech of the upright rescues them. My compassion  led me to save the turtle from being crushed by the heavy tire of the pickup. Reputations have value and should be guarded. May I never lead a deliberate or premeditated conversation that ambushes an individual’s reputation and leads to the destruction of an upstanding life or promotes a perception that is not edifying or uplifting. 

Lord, as soon as I sense a conversation is going to reflect badly on a person’s character, enable me to make a conscious effort to put on the brakes as I did with the turtle to insure that no harm comes to a person’s good name.

        

Put on the brakes...                                                                    and save a reputation.

The Burial in the School Yard

The Death of a Horse at the School

           Mamie Irene Tripp, my grandmother, along with her mother, stepfather, and siblings were living in the Big Bend community west of Ralston, Oklahoma. (To view a photograph of her mother and stepfather go to the blog entry posted on October 6, 2013, entitled The Marriage of Robert and Nettie Black.) My grandmother and her family were living near where my parents’ farm is now located. (For more explanation as to where Mamie and her family lived, see the blog entry entitled Calamity in a Tent posted on March 30, 2014.)
           Even in the early 1900s, there were two separate rural schools in the Big Bend. The school called Belford was located on the east side of the Big Bend. Greg and Vonda Goad now own the land on which the first Belford School building was constructed. The other school called Woodland was found on the western side of the Big Bend community. Incidentally, the community received its name because of the large bend made by the Arkansas River.              

The First Belford School is obvious in this photograph of
Greg and Vonda Goad's home.

Greg and Vonda Goad's renovation and addition to the first
Belford School. This place was owned by Bernard and Mabel
(Snow) Lynn prior to the acquisition by the Goads.

The location of the first Belford School as seen from Big Bend
Road just after exiting from the west off the Belford Bridge
spanning the Arkansas River.

             Mamie and her sister Cora attended Belford School. Around 1910-1911, Mamie was being courted by my grandfather, Edmund Gates, Sr. He provided her a horse – a saddle horse, not a work horse – to ride from the Deal place where Mamie’s family lived to the Belford School.  My grandmother, always conscientious about whatever she did, securely tied the horse as soon as she dismounted. I can only imagine her horror when she emerged from a day of diligent studying to find somehow the horse had managed to choke itself to death. Grandmother probably could hardly see her feet through her tears as she trudged to her home. As sensitive as she was, she must have agonized as she walked the couple of miles attempting to find words to tell her beau, my grandfather, the catastrophe that had occurred at school that day. According to the account my father related to me, Edmund, Sr. simply went to the school and began digging until he dug a hole large enough to bury the horse right on the school grounds since he had no other way to move it.  He then rolled the horse into the hole and covered it up. That’s how a horse came to be buried on the school grounds.

           Many people in the early 20^th century viewed education as a waste for young women, but apparently, not my grandfather. His provision of the saddle horse for my grandmother, his girlfriend, would have been like a car being provided today. That allows one to see the magnitude of my grandfather’s gift of the saddle horse as well as the great loss experienced when it accidentally choked to death. The loss in today’s terms would have been equivalent to totaling a good car! There was more to their relationship than material stuff since their marriage lasted over 50 years!