Recalling Haymaking After the Flood of 1944 - In My Father's Own Words

This spring season has been one of the wettest on record which has thrown some hay baling off schedule. This week, I discovered the notes when Dad retold of one of the rainiest springs in his memory. I decided to publish it as he told it.

            There was a big flood on the same land as 1923. Due to the flood, Pop did not get his alfalfa cut until June. I came home from Europe the last of May in 1944. Pop cut his alfalfa with a 6-foot mower pulled by a team of horses – Mag and Morgan.

Grandpa Gates with Mag and Morgan

            Ernest and Virgil Rice baled it right out of the swath without raking it because the baler was the same width as the mowing machine! (Ernest was my mother's uncle and Virgil was her cousin.) It made 100 bales to the acre. The 15 acres of alfalfa made 1500 bales! The alfalfa had been “irrigated” by the Arkansas River’s flooding so it was about 3 feet tall. It was a bit stemmy but made good feed.

            I helped Pop stack it. Then he got 1” by 12” lumber. The boards were 16 feet long. We covered the hay with the boards.

It almost cost me my girlfriend, Bernyce. When I got home from Europe, I didn’t go see her, instead I just started helping with the hay. (Remember “snail mail” was the swiftest method of communication. There were no phones in the Bend.)

Dad identified Grandpa Gates as the man halfway

 up the haystack. The person on top is 

unidentified. This haystack method of forage

 storage predated the innovative square bales 

baled in 1944 by Ernest and Virgil Rice for Grandpa.

Mother, a spunky 19-year-old, was upset because he had written all during the war but made no effort to contact her when he returned to the Bend. Her parents were very loyal to returning servicemen. Their gratitude compelled them to let the heroic young men know. My grandparents, Gladys and Calvin Smith, made plans to welcome him home. Grandma told Mother she should go with them to see him – just out of appreciation. Even her father, the more reticent, introverted parent, seemed eager to thank the airman who had just returned stateside. Of course, her father had served in World War I so he knew the sacrifice military service required. Mother went reluctantly but remained very quiet. Her only comment was, “He talks very fast – like the English.”

            Mother recalled Dad apologizing for working in the hay instead of coming to see her. My grandma, an indomitable worker herself, approved heartily of Dad putting up the hay instead of contacting Mother. My grandma, Gladys Rainey Smith, categorized laziness as one of the seven deadly sins!

• Every cloud has a silver lining  - with no fertilizing in those days, Grandpa still had a bumper crop of hay, probably because of the flood.
• Genuine love readily says, "I'm sorry."
• Business before pleasure - Living life often requires we do the important over what we wish we could do, especially if we want to eat or in Dad's case want the cattle to eat in the winter!

In most aspects of life, if we are willing to work hard and say "I'm sorry" readily when it is needed, we can realize success in our work and our relationships.

Note: Dad mentioned their farm being flooded in 1923. Here is a link about the impact of the 1923 flood on the Gates farm:        https://bernadeanjgates.blogspot.com/2015/01/did-warmest-january-in-oklahoma-during.html

Celebrating the Gates Patriarch

Today, June 16, 2019 marks the 142nd  birthday of my paternal grandfather, Edmund Gates, Sr. This originally posted four years ago. Ironically, 84 years ago today, Fredrick Daniel Gates, the third son born to my grandparents was killed by a direct lightning strike during a thunderstorm on a Sunday.
Singing "Happy Birthday"

            How true the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words.” When I found this photograph in my mother’s collection, memories flooded my mind. This appears to have been the one of the last birthday celebrations for Grandpa Gates.

I could not count the times I gazed at the  tiny shelf above the kitchen sink (shown in the background of the photo) as my parents were saying their good-byes to Grandma Gates or other family members. As a child, it seemed a whole new conversation began as my parents parted ways from their loved ones, so I had plenty of time to observe that little cabinet above Grandma's kitchen sink.

Looking at the round wooden table on which the birthday dinner was setting, I realized that I never sat at that table until I was a freshman in college. Being seated at the round dining table was assigned based on age or status. Many, many family members were older than me. I distinctly remember the Thanksgiving that I first met Barbara Clark Gates Clovis as I was seated at the table in Grandma’s kitchen. That may have been the first time I sat at the table! However, I had arrived after the noon meal so I might not have been old enough to sit at the table for lunch, but since the football game had already started, there were available seats for Barbara and me.

Obviously the theme of the photo is the family singing "Happy Birthday" to Grandpa. The singing at Grandpa’s birthday party was joyous and hearty. Music had always been important in the Gates household. Grandpa was notorious for teaching his children laments like “Old Billy Goat” or “Pretty White Kitty, My Pretty White Kitty.” Grandma had a beautiful singing voice, according to my father, Edmund Gates, Jr. I recall listening with delight when my grandma played by ear the organ her son-in-law, Marion Roberts, had given her.

Looking at the photograph revives funny, wonderful memories, but some are bittersweet. I am standing almost directly behind Grandpa Gates and am barely visible. To my right, is Mike Newland, the eldest son of my aunt, Julia Irene Gates Newland, my father’s next to the youngest sister. Mike had a brilliant, creative mind. He had a penchant for writing and wove words in meaningful, descriptions as a skilled weaver intertwined loose thread to craft a breath-taking tapestry.

A copy of Letters to Mickey still graces one of the shelves of my parents’ home. Thousands of letters were sent to Mickey Mantle in his last days. Around 120 of the fan letters were selected to appear, along with Mickey’s final reply to his millions of fans worldwide. Mike’s letter can be read on page 42 of the collection. Mike struggled with his own battle with stroke-complicated disabilites that trapped his voice and expressions for many years, ending in 2014, with his passing.
Mike was a voracious reader. He generously donated and mailed large boxes of used books for my third grade classroom. I treasure the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird given to me by Mike.

To my left in the photograph stands my cousin, Vickie Gates, the youngest daughter of my father’s brother, Jess. Vickie and I were born the same year but she was about five months older than me. Vickie seemed to always have a cute “pixie” hair cut that suited her perfectly. In my memory, she was outgoing and talkative, whereas I tended toward shyness and being reserved. Vickie liked being in the middle of the action. Even as a kid she showed signs of leadership skills. Yet the year we celebrated our 13^th birthdays, Vickie lost her battle with leukemia less than three weeks before Christmas. As an adult, how I have wished the advances made in leukemia treatment, practically eradicating deaths from it in juveniles, had already been discovered in the 1960s.

My father, Edmund Gates, Jr., is on the extreme left of Grandpa. Dad was born one day before Grandpa’s 42^nd birthday. Grandpa had decided this son should be his namesake since their birthdays were so close together. Who could have quessed that his next son, would be born exactly on his 44^th birthday! Tragically, that same son, Fredrick Daniel, was killed by a lightning strike on Sunday, June 16, 1935, on his 14^th birthday and his father’s 58th birthday.

Debbie Gates Marty, Patrick Newland, and Rory Newland are the other cousins in the photograph. In typical Gates fashion, I know that all three of them could relate some superb family memories. The family tales told by the Newland boys would have listeners laughing hilariously. Debbie and I might have more poignant remembrances. 
             In families, no matter what we achieve, how far we go from "home," who we become, or how long ago our memories occurred, as relatives, we share forever the bond of collective times unique to only our family. Never can those be taken from us. Each of our remembrances have impacted who we are. Let's treasure these memories as we cherish each other.

Grandpa Edmund Gates, Sr.'s birthday celebration in the two-room house in which he and Grandma
had raised 12 children. Left to right: Debbie Gates Marty, Patrick Newland, Mike Newland, me
(Bernadean Gates) barely visible behind Grandpa, Vickie Gates, Rory Newland, with his head barely
visible behind the cake, and Edmund Gates, Jr., my father.

Celebrating Edmund Gates, Jr. on the 100th Marking of His Birth

                   June 15, 2019 marks the 100^th year since the birth of my father, Edmund Gates, Jr. For about a year, I have been anticipating this posting date of June 9, 2019, because it is the one before Dad’s 100^th birthday. 72 hours before the blog posting should be published, I had only the title.

Edmund Gates, Jr. at his 88th Birthday Celebration

                Then Thursday’s events help me know what to write for this special week. I fed our beloved neighbors’ pets and then checked the cattle. I never check cattle early in the day, but I had to verify that one of our heifers had calved. I was sure I had seen her with a tiny white calf but had no camera to capture what I thought my eyes had seen.

                Sure enough, that dandy little heifer had a snowy white bull calf. As the morning progressed, I began to develop concern for it and decided to check again. The spunky, white baby bull leaped and ran baaing for its mother. As I drove back, I foolishly took a route that I hadn’t taken in two months due to the rain. Of course, I got stuck. I headed back to the house. At my mother’s urging, I called Vonda and Greg Goad. Within minutes, they arrived. Greg positioned their pickup, hooked up the chain and gave Vonda directions in their truck as I steered the wheel of Dad’s old truck. In no time, he engineered the removal of the old pickup from the slippery mud.

                As I thanked them, waved and walked into the house to update Mother on the successful pull- out, I thought Dad would say, “All my life, we neighbored with  the Goads.” In the Bend, neighbor is often used as a verb meaning “to help the person living near you with whatever that person needs.”

                Dad thrived on that way of living. A man told me that he had a flat tire near the farm and although he didn’t know him, Dad, in his late 80s, offered help. The writer of Hebrews extolled that way for living in chapter 13 verse 16:

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

                As we have anticipated the 100^th year since Dad’s birth, Mother mentioned one of her favorite characterizations of him remains, Man of Steel; Man of Velvet. She heard the phrase first in a sermon by Jon Ogle.

                Dad never backed down from any task. He learned that when Grandpa, Edmund Gates, Sr., put Dad on the other end of a crosscut saw to curtail sloughing off when he was an upper elementary student at Woodland School in the Bend. I assisted as he dug out a sewer line with a shovel and 101 other unsavory tasks. As a man of steel, he successfully completed 25 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe. Yet his dentist and friend, Dr. Gary Henderson, said Dad never told of being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

                The man of steel, man of velvet was illustrated as Dad promised his mother to keep his baby brother, Jim, safe at the Arkansas River. He positioned little Jimmy in a puddle so he could splash the water but sternly told him, “If you move from here, you will never come back to the river with us.” Little Jimmy obeyed. The man of steel took his sister, Martha, on horseback to her eighth-grade graduation in 1938 in a flooded deluge of rain. His velvet side sympathized with her having to endure horrible weather in her pretty dress. My only surviving aunt, Julia Irene Gates Newland, recalled the decorated World War II airman being the only sibling inquiring what was wrong with his little sister. When he found out she was suffering from a toothache, Aunt Julia assured me that Dad found something that relieved her pain.

                Dad became a man of steel for Mother when he agreed she would never have to do field work again. He planted, tended, and harvested the garden for her. Then she took the produce and did all processing, canning and freezing. Angie and I were enlisted to help both parents.

                Mother and Dad discussed most aspects of their farming operation and maintenance of it. Yet the heavy work fell to Dad and that was how he wanted it to be. That sensitivity to Mother revealed the man of velvet.

                As a parent to Angie and me, Dad supported and loved us unconditionally. He was the first to say, “It’s only spilt milk” indicating mistakes were no big deal. That was the velvet side. We both knew some issues were non-negotiable. The man of steel conveyed without words, Don’t go there.

                As I navigated the worry of the new little calf, the impending rain, and the stuck pickup, I prayed to not complain. That prayer came from my lips or appeared in my mind many, many times that day. Thankfully, I entered the house without murmuring about the stuck pickup. I enumerated the many reasons for gratitude. Maybe that has been one of my greatest ways to honor the man who never complained, no matter how tough the road became, even as he dealt with complications of two strokes.
               Being strong but sensitive, not complaining, and neighboring with whomever God brings across our path can carry on the legacy of the man who would have marked a century on June 15, 2019.

The Deadly Tornado of 1935

 I am indebted to Marcy Sterling, the librarian at the Fairfax Library, and her assistant, Linda Renegar, for their help in accessing the archives of the Fairfax Chief needed for this historically -based posting.

Seventy-one years ago today, June 2, 1935, a tornado described on https://www.weather.gov/oun/tornadodata-county-ok-osage as being 42 miles long and 50 yards wide began west of Fairfax and blew itself out in Perth, Kansas. Three injuries were recorded. Once again Mother’s little worn diary gave additional information on this tragic event.

Mother’s family and the Perry Woods’ family attended a memorial service for John Lynn in Fairfax, Oklahoma, that same afternoon. He and his co-pilot, his brother-in-law, lost their lives in the plane crash during a thunderstorm near Chicago. John Lynn had grown up in Fairfax. Perry Woods had driven both families that day in his two-seater car. Somehow four adults and five kids ranging from age 10 down to age 4 fit in the early day vehicle.

As the two families returned to the Bend, they observed an angry, dark sky. My grandpa, Calvin Callcayah Smith, known for his few words, commented “That looks like a bad storm.” Perry, always a jokester, began to laugh off Grandpa’s prediction. Grandma, Gladys Rainey Smith, reached up from the back seat and “popped” Perry. She spoke sternly to him, “Cull knows storms. You better listen to him. This is serious.”

Even though Perry’s family and Mother’s family escaped injury, little did they know how heartbreaking that day would turn out to be for their friends just a few miles north. Around 4 p.m. that afternoon, near Doga Road, the Russ Hoss farm and Jess Thompson farm were both hit by a violent tornado. According to the June 6, 1935 issue of The Fairfax Chief, a pasture of Huffaker-Hadden Ranch was hit first. It then struck the Hoss farm, but the four members of the family had taken shelter in a cellar. The house stood but the roof was blown off incurring loss of household items. The destructive cyclone brutally attacked the Thompson home. The local paper reported that Mrs. Thompson and her two daughters sought refuge in a “storm cave.” Mother recalled a cave-in of their shelter injured the younger Thompson girl, Geraldine.

Her family rushed her to the local hospital.  In the Thursday issue of the Fairfax newspaper, following the tornado, Geraldine’s condition was described as “satisfactory.” However, infection ravaged her badly torn leg. On Saturday, June 8, her leg was amputated above her knee. Despite the valiant efforts of the doctors, the 14-year-old, who had just completed her freshman year at Fairfax High School, died on Sunday, June 9, a week after the vicious tornado.

Photo taken from findagrave.com site.

           The Fairfax Chief reported the loss of 50 head of cattle in the storm’s path. The front-page article told gruesomely of the skin being blown off a hog and the necks of livestock being “wrung or torn off and lying every direction.” Only the head of the bird dog belonging to the Thompson family could be located. The impact of the deadly twister on the Thompson farm was characterized as “everything above ground was destroyed.”

The fencing was rolled into balls or wrapped around trees. Implements at both the Hoss and Thompson farms were blown about as though toys. The tornadic suction pulled the casing out of the bored well at the Thompson farm.

Unfortunately, disasters reveal the heartlessness of human nature. Near the end of the article describing the destruction and tragedy of the June 2, 1935 tornado, Jess Thompson made an appeal. During the days following the tornado, “crowds of people” thronged to the Ross Day community where the Hoss and Thompson families lived. The unthinkable happened. The Thompson family had so little of their material possessions left and their younger daughter was hospitalized with an injury that would prove fatal. Some unscrupulous, despicable bystander “carried off” a precious Thompson family heirloom – a double-barreled shotgun that had been in the family for 60 years. Mr. Thompson asked simply, without malice in his plea, for the vintage firearm that survived the horrific tornado be returned.

Mother, at 94, recalled a couple of recollections that imprinted her impressionable 10-year-old mind. She remembered being told many of the dead cattle were lined up along the fence. Another unusual memory of hers involved seeing an unbroken glass pitcher with a crow bar bent around it.

No other year on record in Oklahoma, prior to the introduction of the Fujita Scale, had more tornadoes than 1935. Exactly a week after Geraldine Thompson’s death, my father’s brother, Fredrick Daniel Gates sought shelter from a thunderstorm that blew up while the boys and my grandfather were working in the field. On Fredrick Daniel’s 14^th birthday, he was struck by lightning and killed. Springtime weather in Oklahoma has been deadly.

Geraldine Thompson’s nephews, Richard Thompson, Gary Thompson, and Rod Thompson, still live or have connections to the area. Her grandfather, John Keenon Thompson aka J.K. Thompson, is buried in the Pixley Cemetery.

I must acknowledge how much my grandmother, Gladys Rainey Smith, would have added to this account. Her longtime friendship with Jess and Ethel Thompson would have contributed so much. Nevertheless, once again friendships made in the Bend and surrounding small rural communities endured. The sharing in sorrow and extending of empathy ran deep in the residents who subsisted off the drought-parched soil and tried desperately to keep livestock alive during the Great Depression, one of the darkest times in Oklahoma’s economy.

This yellowed newspaper clipping is from my
grandma's scrap book and commemorated
Jess and Ethel Thompson 50th wedding
anniversary in January of 1967.

God inspired Paul to speak of the importance of sharing in all of life when he wrote to the Roman believers in Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. So many people have “passed through” the Bend and other rural communities and now live in urban areas. Yet most of those former Benders retain that concern for others and willingness to help. May that be a daily goal of ours – no matter where we live.