Part III-The Farm, Chapter 22-Before The Dairy

Chapter 22

B. D. (Before the Dairy)

1978-1987

We stayed with Mom and Dad for several days until our furniture arrived from Missouri. Then we rented the old farm house from George and Lou Young. The Youngs went to the Decatur Church of Christ and through my folks knew we were looking for a place to live so it worked out good for both of us. They had just built a new house on their farm and lived about a quarter mile from the old farm house we rented. It was located about three miles west of the farm we would be living on as soon as I could complete our new house. Young’s house had a lot of character but was beginning to show its age. The first two rooms were built in the 1880’s using square nails. Around 1906 it was expanded by adding porches and four more rooms in two stories. At some time a bathroom and garage were also added. Since Randy was in college we had plenty of room, but the house was a little airy when the north wind was blowing. It was heated with propane space heaters which are always a little scary but with electric blankets we could stay comfortable. The well wasn’t very deep and when Nell washed we always ran out of water; after a short wait it would run a little more.

The old farm house was built on pier and beam; this was the biggest shortcoming of the house. Actually there was nothing wrong with the pier and beam except it left just enough room underneath for the skunks to make a nice home. No matter how many holes I plugged up, the skunks would dig another one to get under the house. Still, we were able to live at an uneasy peace with the skunks until a fighter moved in. For three nights straight we had a skunk fight under the house and they didn’t spare the ammunition. The odor would seep up through the floor; I hadn’t been in fumes that thick since my trapping days in the Nebraska cellar. The odor even got in our clothes hanging in the closet. One Sunday morning we walked into Sunday School class and someone said, “I smell a skunk”. Someone else said, “I saw one behind the building on the way in this morning”. Nell and I didn’t say anything but we knew where the skunk was. We decided something had to be done so I set a steel trap. Then when we heard one thrashing in the trap we would get up in the middle of the night, Nell with the flashlight and me with the shotgun and dispose of the critter. After we got rid of five or six, we had the house to ourselves again. One of the skunks was missing a lot of hair and was all scratched up; we figured he was the fighter. The Youngs only charged us $70 a month rent so we were willing to put up with a few inconveniences.

I did some farming in 1978 and 1979 but put off all chores I could in order to get the house done. For two and half years I spent most of my time working on our new house. Randy helped me some during the summer when he wasn’t in school and I hired help now and then but I did most of the labor myself. Ronda also helped some during the summer, but she graduated from high school in the spring of 1979 and in the fall left for college at Tarleton State University in Stephenville. One of the first things I did was have a well drilled and the steel building erected for my shop. Then I picked up some of the power tools I bought from Pawpaw and the shop made it much easier to store materials and work on things. I still had quite a bit of concrete to pour before I could start construction. I hired a crew to pour the slab in the basement after I got all the concrete walls done. I framed the exterior walls using 2”x6”s instead of 2”x4” so I could have more insulation. I made trusses on the ground to hold up the tile roof then borrowed a tractor with a loader from Tooter Pruitt to lift them in place. I looked at the clay tiles that came off the old train station in Decatur and would have bought them to roof the house, but there were only enough to cover about 80% of the roof and I couldn’t match them so I bought new concrete tiles. Since I had never worked with a tile roof, I hired a crew to put it on. I also hired a crew to put the stucco on, and they hired me as a helper. I drew the plans for brick siding but changed my mind. Now I wish I had stuck with the bricks. I did all the wiring, plumbing, sheetrock, taping, bedding, doors and painting. I hired someone to put in the carpet and linoleum. I finished the cabinets that I had started while still in Grandview. The work went slow but I enjoyed it. I worked long hours but at the end of the day I could see a difference. I usually ate lunch with Mom and Dad in their house at the bottom of the hill. Dad was pretty sick with his emphysema by this time and couldn’t help but he was as proud of the house as I was and that made me feel good. One of the things I enjoyed most was coming to work in the morning and going home at night and usually not meeting a single car on the road. This was a change from the last 20 years in the Air Force and was easy to get used to.

We had been able to save some of my Air Force pay and we had made some money from the sale of the Alaskan houses. We paid Mom and Dad for the balance of the farm. I bought about 35 heifers and some old farm equipment and started building the house with what was left. My plan was to build until I ran out of money and then borrow what was needed to finish. This was a mistake; the bank didn’t want to loan money after construction started. They were afraid I owed money on materials already used. I had to get a lawyer to straighten out the paper work before I was able to borrow $60,000 to finish the house.

There was a pile of brush in front of the house that came from where the house was standing. A buzzard built a nest under the brush and as I worked on the house I watched as the old hen incubated the eggs. After they hatched and the chicks were a few weeks old, I decided I was going to get a closer look. They were fuzzy dingy brown and if they would have been any uglier I’m sure the mother would have stopped bringing in food. As I got closer for a better look one of the chicks regurgitated his breakfast. He didn’t get any on me but I was close enough to tell that if I had a choice of being spit on by a buzzard or sprayed by a skunk, I would prefer the skunk any day. The chick smelled like rotten meat to the maximum. Later I read that this was a defensive trait of the buzzard and I will testify that it is effective.

One day after a hard rain Ronda was driving down the dirt road and she saw two baby skunks being washed down the bar ditch. She rescued them and we had them around the house a while before they started making a little odor. When she or Roger or Roy walked through the yard, they would line up and follow. She fed them with a doll bottle. She gave one to the Malones for deodorizing the one she kept. Ronda kept it until it escaped from his cage and we never saw him again.

We had a busy year in 1980. Dad passed away in January and didn’t get to see the finished house. One day when we had gone to the hospital to see Dad, we were in the waiting room with Roger and Roy. There was another man in the room with us and he was smoking (which was allowed at that time). Roger, who was four, walked up to him and told him how bad smoking was for his health and how sick it made his Grandpa. The man put his cigarette out.

When we started painting the inside of the house, Nell tried to help some. We gave Roger and Roy brushes and gave them a closet to paint but soon found out it was faster if I worked alone while Nell watched the kids at the other house. By May, almost four years after breaking ground, we finished construction. Our neighbor and friend, Jerry Myers, helped us move. After we got moved in, I redirected my primary efforts to the farm. Then in August Ronda and Gary were married; we had the reception in our new house. Gary’s dad, Kenneth, was a minister for the Church of Christ and he performed the ceremony. I also started working in a cabinet shop for Ronnie Stalkup; he had a shop south of Decatur and built cabinets for Jim Walters Homes. We built the cabinets in Decatur and then hauled them all over north Texas and installed them. Then in September we signed a lease to drill for gas on the place.

Mom and Dad had bought an irregular shaped slab of redwood about five feet long by two feet wide and three inches thick to make a coffee table. They had never got around to putting legs on it and finishing it. For Christmas 1980 I snuck the slab out of Mom’s house and took it to my shop to complete the job. One day Roy was in Mom’s house and told her, “Daddy is fixing the table for your Christmas present”. Mom said, “Roy, I don’t think you should have told me what my Christmas present was going to be.” Roy thought for a while and then said, “Grandma, you will forget by Christmas, won’t you?”

After the gas wells started producing in 1981 I quit the job at the cabinet shop and put more time working on the farm. In the spring Randy graduated from MIT; we put the camper that we brought down from Alaska back on the pickup. Nell, Roger, Roy and I went to Boston for the ceremony. We went through Tennessee and saw The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home. We also saw the sights in Boston and when it came time for Randy’s commissioning, I put my uniform on and swore him in. (See figure 26.) While in Boston we stayed in the Hanscom AFB camp grounds.

Much of the fence on the place was in bad shape, so that summer I spent a lot of time, effort, and money to improve it. I fenced the lane going down the middle of the place towards Denton Creek, put in some cross fences and put the boundary fence around the northeast end of the farm. Then in October the tail of a hurricane moved through and we had 13 inches of rain in one 24 hour period and over 20 inches in about four days. It washed out about half of the new fence and all of Denton Creek bottom looked like the Columbia River. (See figure 27.) The flood washed a 55 gallon drum of oil up on the place and I thought I was going to get at least some good out of the high water. It was a Gulf barrel but I wasn’t sure just what type of oil it was so I called the Gulf dealer. He told me he had lost some barrels up creek from me and would be out to retrieve his oil. When he picked it up he didn’t even say thanks; my profit from the flood disappeared as fast as it appeared.

Near the end of the year I was appointed as chairman of the Decatur Church of Christ building committee. We bought several acres on Highway 51 South and constructed a building with a capacity for 300 people. I made the cabinets for classrooms, bathrooms, and the kitchen. I put a lot of time in on this project scheduling contractors and keeping the books.

In 1982 the work on the church building continued and we dedicated the building in May. That fall I was installed as elder. This was a mistake on my part because the eldership was divided on whether a person with an “unscriptural” divorce should be allowed to worship with us. Jerry Myers and I thought they were better off in church, but the majority didn’t think so. It was not an ideal situation.

I bought four Beefmaster cows, each pregnant and a heifer calf by her side that summer. I had bought a Beefmaster bull the year before. I acquired these cattle from a ranch near Lampasas. My intentions were to eventually have an all Beefmaster herd.

That summer I had about two thirds of the brush on the north side of Denton Creek cleared. This gave me about thirty more acres of farm land. It took a long time to get all the dirt out of the stumps and burn all the trees. Kenneth Cannon, a friend from church, was building a new house and wanted me to build his cabinets. He, his wife Joelle, and their two sons picked up the trash in the field while I built their cabinets. We traded it out even. I ended the year by buying a new John Deere 2940 tractor complete with cab, radio and air conditioner. Several people commented about how soft farmers are getting with radios and air conditioners in their tractors. Most people making those comments don’t know what they are talking about; the luxury of the radio and air conditioner pale in comparison to the luxury the cab provides in keeping the dust out of your nose.

In 1983 I cleared some more land, this time on the south side of Denton Creek, near where the creek comes on the place. A lot of the soil in this field is a good fine loam that had been deposited when the creek overflowed in years past. That spring a stray cow wandered on to the place. I called all my neighbors, the sheriff and put an ad in the paper. After several months she never got pregnant and I took her to the sale. Shortly thereafter I got a letter from the State saying the cow I sold tested positive for brucellosis and that my farm was quarantined until further notice. They had to come out and give all my cows blood tests two different times. Thankfully, they always tested negative and after several months the quarantine was lifted.

From time to time I would go to the salvage sale at Carswell AFB in Ft Worth. I bought some electric typewriters, my desk, and a drafting table there. When I bought the drafting table, they had two for sale. They sold them in a silent auction where you wrote your bid on a paper and turned it in, high bid getting the item. The first table sold for $90; I got the second one, which was in better shape than the first for $8. I was really surprised when I went to a sale one day and the Command Post trailer from JACK POT Charlie was for sale. I bid on it but didn’t get it. I would give a penny to find out how it got to Carswell AFB; I wonder what happened to the rest of the unit.

I planted a pecan orchard of about 100 trees in January of 1984. I haven’t counted them but I think over half of them survived. Everyone was recommending Mohawk pecans because of their size so I planted mostly Mohawk with some Cheyenne as pollinators. Now that the Mohawks have been in the ground several years the word is that they are not near as good as first thought; they make big nuts but they don’t fill out good inside the shell. The fact that they are not filled out good doesn’t bother the crows and squirrels. They have got most of the nuts except for one tree, one year. That was the year I shot at a crow and winged him but didn’t kill him. I put him in a cage, tied the cage to one of the best trees and fed him all fall. The other crows got the nuts out of the surrounding trees but they didn’t bother the one with the cage in it.

I built a set of cabinets for one of the neighbors, Rick Wilson, and built a chute to work the cows in during the summer. That spring Ronda graduated from college and Stephanie was born on October 11, 1984.

Jerry Myers and I resigned as elders from the Decatur Church of Christ in the first part of the year in order to reduce tensions. That helped in the short run but it didn’t solve the problem. Before the end of the year, Nell and I started going to the Greenwood Church of Christ. Nancy and Jerry Myers started going there soon after we did. About six years later the Decatur church completely split.

I had a good crop of wheat, mostly on the land I had cleared earlier; it averaged about 80 bushels per acre which I thought was pretty good. Dad used to do better than that on irrigated land but I was happy to get what I did on dry land.

In 1985 I got a job of building a break room for Wise Electric Co-Op. It was built in an equipment storage area and they wanted the ceiling built strong enough so they could store things on top. It required framing, electrical, sheetrock, tape and bedding, windows, doors and painting. They wanted me to redo the steps in front of the building when I finished the break room but it was a little bigger job than what I wanted to undertake so I turned them down.

I was also making wooden consoles to put in Chevrolet pickups for a place called Overland Coach in Rhome. I wasn’t making much money doing this so I found something else to fill my time. I heard that Afghan Pines made good Christmas trees and would grow good in this area without irrigation. I got some seed and planted them in styrofoam cups. After they were growing good I transplanted them outside in the spring; they did okay until summer hit and it was just too hot and dry for them. If I had watered them they might have made it but I was hoping they would make it on their own.

I think it was about this time when Nell, Roger, Roy and I were eating supper one night. We got to talking about some of the boy’s friends that were adopted. After a while Roy asked, “How do I know I wasn’t adopted?” I said to him, “Well, Roy, you were”, and after a pause, “but they brought you back”. I guess that was kind of a cruel thing to say to a young boy but I don’t think there was any doubt left in his mind that he was born into the family.

I made cabinets for Wayne East, a friend at church, and helped him remodel his kitchen in 1986. That was also the year Jerry Myers and I formed a partnership and built a small house on Sewell Street in Decatur. Jerry’s sons, Dan and David, helped, and the four of us did all the work except we hired a backhoe to hook up the sewer line. I had some chlordane left from the supply I bought in Missouri so we even treated for termites before pouring the slab. We made a little money on the house but we didn’t get rich.