Colorado or Bust

By Winston Nightingale

This story is an incomplete account of the starts, the fits, the stalls, the stops, and the going on again of the Herman and Irene
Nightingale clan. Dad was the son of Fred and Lydia Nightingale, otherwise known as Grandpa and Grandma of Fairview, Oklahoma. Herman was just Herman until one fateful day in 1946 when my oldest sibling, Evan, was born and forever after Herman became known as Dad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493178827

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Copyright © 2014 by Winston Nightingale.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/02/2014

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Contents

The Beginning

Livingston: Continuing On

School: 1955-1959

Mostly Of Cowboys And Indians

Livingston: Day-To-Day Living

Of Uncles, Aunts, And Cousins

Uncle Joe’s

Family Doings

More Doings

Continuing On To Winton

Digging For Gold: (Otherwise Known As Contracting)

Colorado (Busted)

On To Kansas

Back To The Golden West

Life Continues

THE BEGINNING

T HIS STORY IS an incomplete account of the starts, the fits, the stalls, the stops, and the going on again of the Herman and Irene Nightingale clan. Dad was the son of Fred and Lydia Nightingale, otherwise known as Grandpa and Grandma of Fairview, Oklahoma. Herman was just Herman until one fateful day in 1946 when my oldest sibling, Evan, was born and forever after Herman became known as Dad . Dad was the oldest of seven children. Grandma Lydia always wanted one of her children to be a carpenter, and it seemed the lot fell to our Dad.

Dad and his brother Carl were good buddies, as well as brothers, growing up. As young men, they had an Indian motorcycle that gave them unexcelled experience in mechanics, as Dad told us of trips to Enid to get parts. I still wonder where they found time to go to town for parts when they had a dairy and a farm operation to see to at home. There is more to this story than just motorcycle parts though. Dad admitted that there were some girls they knew in Enid who were in nurses training. Sometimes the boys thought they needed to go see them and used parts as an excuse to go to town. It’s hard to picture Dad riding a motorcycle down the highway toward Enid. Dad had real curly hair and refused to put anything on it like all the other young men did in those days. VO5 was very popular in those days. Or if they got a butch haircut, then it was Butch Wax.

The grandchildren often asked Dad to tell stories of his and Uncle Carl’s youth. I believe, from the little we heard, they were on the wild side. Our daughter Yvonne was looking through some very old Messenger of Truth. This is a paper our church has put out for years. There are articles to read about how to stay on the straight and narrow, wedding announcements, deaths, and reacceptance when someone was excommunicated from church, then when they repented of their sins, then the reacceptance was announced in the paper. Yvonne was living with Lucy Ensz and going to Hutchinson College to get her degree in taking x-rays. Lucy was going to throw out all the papers her parents had saved for years. Yvonne went through them and found a lot about our relatives. She an entry which announced the baptism of my wife’s Grandpa and Grandma Hughes.

So, back to the youth of these two young men. They must have really had some fun until their dad asked, why so many trips to Enid? He was sure it was not all for motorcycle parts because of the very late nights and the very sleepy young men who got up so early to milk cows. I can just picture them dozing off, leaning their heads against the warm cow just made it so easy to fall asleep while milking and falling off the one-legged stool that was so popular in those days. A stamp of the cow’s hoof awakened the sleeping boys, and eventually, the milking was finished, and they thankfully returned to the house for breakfast.

One evening, while we sat around the dinner table at Dad and Mom’s house, Dad told us about the night the motorcycle really did break down and he and Uncle Carl had to hitch a ride back to Enid to try and find the parts needed. To make a long story short, they got home at 2:00 a.m. Grandpa was not very pleased and made those two boys do all the milking before getting breakfast. It looked like this humbled them, but looks can be deceiving. The next weekend off, they went for parts again. If the motor cycle needed so many parts how did it ever run? Your guess is as good as mine.

Dad was an unorthodox free spirit, to say the least, with a little wanderlust thrown in. I believe having an unorthodox parent can be a big advantage in life, but apparently, you need to realize its advantages early on to be able to make them work for you. I didn’t. Dad and Mom are both gone now, and I’m glad for all they were and all they taught us. I’m very thankful that we were so blessed as to grow up in a Christian home. I love my dad and mom for the priceless gifts of love they left us, as well as many, many fond memories, and also, for some of the lessons we learned the hard way. We grew up knowing what spankings are, and I remember all three of them, or thereabout, I got from Dad. Mom used a switch from a willow tree. It was thin and strong and really stung the body parts it hit. To boot, we had to go cut the switches we were spanked with. If it was too small after we cut one, we got an extra hit for not doing it right the first time. Dad didn’t need anything but his very calloused hammer hand to hurt our tender hinies. I am a firm believer in spanking as a corrective measure for children, but it needs to be done out of love and not anger.

Mom’s parents were Abraham Tobias and Mary Koehn. Granddad Koehn was better known as A. T. Koehn. To his grandchildren, he was Granddad. Not Grandpa, for goodness sake! Granddad! Grandma Mary was just Grandma; except when I got tired of being called Vinston and called her Vamaw (under my breath of course).

Our dad was in 1-W service in La Pine, Oregon, under the auspices of the National Forest Service, and the time he spent in the Oregon forests left him with many fond memories, which he often shared with his posterity. The 1-W was the classification given by the Selective Service Administration to conscientious objectors to military service, and in lieu of military service, the government had the men perform work that was in the national interest. This was Dad’s personal conviction, as well as the conviction of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite of which he and Mom were members. But let us start this story with a thing that happened about six hundred miles south of said forests.

The premarital story: Herman—he had no posterity yet, so he wasn’t Dad—had a few days off from work while in the Oregon woods, and I suppose his wanderlust was making him itch really bad, as it ofttimes did. He had an aunt living in Los Angeles, California, and he wanted to go visit her. She was not a member of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. The family did not see her often because she lived in Southern California and we lived in the central part of California. However, the ten dollars he had wasn’t enough money for a round-trip bus fare and expenses from Oregon to Los Angeles. How was he going to make this work? Alas! he said to himself. I know a minister in Winton, California, and if I stop by there for a day or two, Preacher Abe could take me to the bus station, and I can get a round-trip ticket from there. Without further ado, he hitchhiked to Winton. At nightfall, with the weather being cool,