Phil Farmer Sr.: Recalls the Golden Years and Before

By Phil Farmer Sr.

I was just a poor farm boy, born and raised in southeastern Oaklahoma. "I wasn't born in Texas, but I got there just as fast as should be Oklahoma I could.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 2, 2007
• ISBN: 9781425194437

Phil Farmer Sr.

The author of this autobiography relates his early life as a poor Oklahoma farm boy. He tells of his pre-school years living on farm after farm. He also relates how, in his early school years; he was ridiculed, by many of the school kids. He reiterates his exploits as a woodsman in his early years. He tell about his siblings leaving home one by one. He is the youngest. He later relates his travels and many experiences of life. He tells about the 32 years he spent working in the oilfields for a natural gas company. He relates how he was converted and his un-dying love for Christ. He speaks of retirement and his wife telling him he didn't retire; he just changed bosses. He tells about relocating to San Angelo for his retirement years. About purchasing a two story house (his wife's life long fancy). He finally relates about going back to his roots; when, he purchased a 48 acre farm outside Ballinger. It was later named "South 48 Ranch" The author dedicates the book to: his wife of 54 years his four children and families, his sister, his many nieces and nephews, a host of cousins, two aunts and a multitude of friends.

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© Copyright 2005 Phil Farmer Sr.

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ISBN: 978-1-4120-5845-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4251-9443-7 (e)

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PHIL FARMER SR.

Recalls

the Golden Years

and Before

PREFACE

Phil Farmer Sr. Remembers

I was born in Southeast Oklahoma, about 60 or so miles across the line from Hope Arkansas, where Bill Clinton was born, although, some years before Bill was born.

My Dad’s last name was obviously, Farmer. My Mom’s maiden name was Land. So it was only appropriate that they hook up together and produce a very bountiful crop of ten young Farmers, three of whom died either at birth or at a very young age. The seven children who grew to adulthood were six boys and one girl. The youngest was yours truly.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER I   Young Years

CHAPTER II   Buying a Home

CHAPTER III   Farming Help

CHAPTER IV   New House

CHAPTER V   How Poor People Lived

CHAPTER VI   Migrating

CHAPTER VII   Leaving School

CHAPTER VIII   Growing Up

CHAPTER IX   Changing Schools

CHAPTER X   Branching Out

CHAPTER XI   Life After High School

CHAPTER XII   Life After Salvation

CHAPTER XIII   Phinous Makes a Move

CHAPTER XIV   Changing Occupation

CHAPTER XV   Growing Family

CHAPTER XVI   Moving Up

CHAPTER XVII   Leaving Midland

CHAPTER XVIII   Country Life

CHAPTER XIX   Back to Town

CHAPTER XX   Working Toward Retirement

CHAPTER XXI   Closer to Retirement

CHAPTER XXII   At Retirement’s Door

CHAPTER XXIII   Life After Retirement

CHAPTER XXIV   Retirement is Great

CHAPTER XXV   Moving to the City

CHAPTER XXVI   Changing Churches

CHAPTER XXVII   Ron Leaves San Angelo

CHAPTER XXVIII   Losing a Pastor

CHAPTER XXIX   Roots

DEDICATION

CHAPTER I

Young Years

On Sept. 10th 1932, I was born at America, Oklahoma, the youngest of ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood.

Mom and dad lived both in Oklahoma and East Texas before I was born.

The first memory I have in my young life was a few days before my third birthday, when my grandma, mom’s mother passed away.

I remember riding in a wagon pulled by a team of horses. They stopped the wagon on the right side of the road by the graveyard, at Haworth, Oklahoma, where she was buried. At that time, we were living at the old Bud Hill Place at Marshall Hill.

I was four years old when we had our Christmas Program at school. The teacher asked Mom if she thought I would be too bashful to recite the opening Christmas program. She said No, She thought I would do all right, so they gave Mom the part for me to learn. On the night of the program they placed me on a nail keg, and these are the words I had to say.

I’m quite too small a person

To have very much to say,

But, yet I’d like to tell you,

I’m glad you are here today.

We hope you like our program.

Coming when I make my bow,

And I wish you a Merry Christmas,

Just the best way I know how.

I made my bow. They gave me a loud ovation. Then they lifted me off the keg.

While we lived at the Bud Hill place, one of our neighbors, the Mitchell’s, had a girl who was six years old and in the first grade. She had a horse, which she rode to school.

She would stake the horse out and let him eat grass until school let out. At which time she would ride him back home. The unusual thing about this situation was; when she got home, she would take her mother behind the door. There she would get ‘nanny.’ She had a baby sister who shared with her. This girls name was Mattie B. Mitchell. She would rather fake being sick, than go to school.

We moved from the Bud Hill place to another place at the Marshall Hill community. This place was owned by a Choctaw Indian, named Sam Jesse. Dad rented the place on third and fourth. Now this simply meant the owner got one-third of the grain we raised and one-forth of the cotton.

By this time I had ‘unofficially’ started to school ‘part time.’ I was too young to start to school on a regular basis, but they allowed me to go part of the time and sit in one corner of the room and read books. Being the youngest in the family the older ones had taught me how to read. During my year and a half of ‘unofficial’ going to school, I read twenty-eight books. So I have always been able to read fairly well.

Along with the other crops that we raised on Sam Jesse’s Place, he allowed us to have a truck patch. Now, a truck patch in those days consisted of a garden of vegetables as well as a small watermelon and cantaloupe patch.

The place where we lived was located beside Old State Highway 21, which ran, at that time, two miles south of Idabel, Oklahoma (the large town) where we grew up, then turned east, eight miles to Haworth, Oklahoma.

Because it was a main highway in the community, my sister and I decided to set up a vegetable stand. We sold nice large watermelons for ten cents each, and nice large cantaloupes for five cents each or three for ten cents. Of course, we had to use the money for groceries and clothes, but it was a lot of fun.

My Dad was a man who believed if a child was old enough to walk and eat, he was old enough to work. So, each child had its job to do. When I was about three years old, my mom made me a cotton sack, from a meal sack with a strap sewed on it.

I walked along with Mom, picking cotton on her rows. She walked between the rows of cotton, picking two rows at a time. When I got my sack full, I would empty it into her sack. It was much easier for me to pick cotton then, because I could stand up, where adults had to bend over.

When I got a little older and our cotton was all picked, our parents would let us go and pick cotton for someone else. I saved the money I made picking cotton and bought a kitchen chair for one dollar and a red wagon for one dollar. I kept the chair for a number of years, and the red wagon for a few years, until my older brother, Norvil (Nub) decided to ride on it, and he broke it down.

After two years at the Sam Jesse Place by the highway, we moved to a second Sam Jesse Place, a few miles from this one. We were living there when I officially started to school. I was almost six years old at the time. My birthday was nine days after Sept. 1’st, which was the date when you could start to school. Because I had gone to school, part time, ‘unofficially,’ the school Officials let me start before my birthday.

We didn’t have running water in the house, so we had to go down to a spring, about 200 yards from the house, to get water to drink.

One evening just about sundown, Mom sent my brother Nub, to the spring for a bucket of water. He always carried a slingshot, which we called a bean flip, (as well as other things), with him. On this particular trip to the spring, he also, carried a supply of fence staples in his pocket.

As he approached the spring, he saw a large bullfrog. He took out his bean flip, put a staple in it, and was about to shoot the bullfrog, when he was bitten on the foot by a copperhead snake.

He was barefooted, as we all went barefooted from early spring to late fall. The snake’s fangs broke off in his foot. Instead of shooting the frog, he shot the snake through the head and pinned it to the ground.

He ran back to the house, where Mom put charcoal and coal oil on his foot and bandaged it. This was always ‘ Moms home remedy’ for all cuts and wounds. It usually worked. However, this time the snake had deposited so much venom into his foot, that it swelled up tremendously.

After a couple of hours with no relief, Dad hitched the team to the wagon, and took Nub over to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor had a car and took them into Idabel to the doctor. Doctors saw patients at night back then, as well as by day. The doctor cut the fangs out and sent Nub back home. In a few days he was ‘as good as new.’

One day Nub caught a huge opossum; we just called them possums. Nub skinned the possum and stretched the hide on a board. He traded the dressed possum to a black man in the community, for three guinea hens and $1.00 cash. That black man sure liked possum!!

After that we had guineas as ‘watch dogs’ around the house. If anything or anyone strange approached the house, these guineas sure would tell you about it.

CHAPTER II

Buying a Home

My dad had been checking around, to try to find a farm that he could buy. He located a place, (40 acres) about seven or eight miles northeast of where we lived.

It was located five miles east and ¾ mile north of Idabel. He paid $800.00 for the place payable; over ten years. The old house and barn were in bad need of repair, but they were livable. It was somewhere we could call home. This would be my home until I graduated from High School.

Now the move from Marshall Hill Community to Shults Community was not in the mold of a modern day move. We had two wagons and teams, two cows, three guineas, which Nub traded the possum for, some chickens, and all our household goods to move.

We also had our plows and other farm equipment to move. It took two or three trips to move everything, but we all felt better when the move was completed. We were finally ‘home’.

We moved in February, 1939, and I started to a new school. We lived closer to school now than when we lived at Marshall Hill. The distance to school at Marshall Hill was two miles. The distance we now lived from school was ¾ mile.

I met new classmates and my new teacher’s name was Maude Lewis. She was a nice teacher and all the children liked her. We had three classrooms in the Shults School. One room for the first and second grades; one room for third, fourth, and fifth grades; and one for sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.

It didn’t take long to get settled at school, as well as at home. There were always chores to do around the place. We must get the land plowed and ready for spring planting. There were bushes to grub, weeds to cut, and lots of turning plow work to do. Everyone had his job; and knew what he was supposed to do.

By this time, my two older brothers had married and left home. That left four boys and one girl at home. The rooms were a little crowded while sleeping at night. However we managed okay.

Our bathtub consisted of a #2 washtub. We filled the tub about ½ full with water on Saturday morning, so it would heat during the day sitting out in the sun.

That night, we each took our turn, ‘in the tub.’ Naturally, the last one to bathe had ‘nasty’ water to bathe in. We soon started heating water in two tubs, which made it a little cleaner.

The next year, my next oldest brother went to the CCC camp. That only left four children at home. As I told you earlier, we all went barefoot from early spring to late fall. After a few weeks of toughening our feet, we were able to maneuver over just about any terrain.

My Dad, drawing water from a well, about 1940

Even in the woods, we were able to run over Bois d’Arc thorns. They usually broke off without going into our feet. For those who don’t know what Bois d’ Arc trees are; they have yellow apples (when ripe) called ‘horse apples’. Another name for them is Osage orange. They are also known as hedge trees.

We didn’t have to work all the time. Every now and then, Dad would let us go into the woods and play. We had our bean flips, which we carried with us almost everywhere.

There was hardly a tree anywhere around that I couldn’t climb. If it was too big to reach around, I just hooked my toes and fingers in the bark and climbed to the first limb. From there on up, it was easy to climb.

Leroy, my fourth oldest brother volunteered for the Navy in the spring of 1941. He was only seventeen years old. Therefore, Dad had to sign for him to enter the military because he was under the age of eighteen.

Pearl Harbor occurred Dec. 7, 1941. After that, President Roosevelt declared war. This was the beginning of the United States in World II. Leroy served in the Seabees during the war. With his leaving, only two boys and one girl were left at home.

We had cut a load of wood about a mile from the house and one day when Dad was gone somewhere, Nub wanted to go with the wagon and team and get it.

We had a pair of mares named Babe and Beauty. Beauty was with foal and due anytime. Nub hooked them to the wagon and he and I went over to where the wood was and loaded it. The load was heavy and Beauty balked and would not pull.

Nub hooked a stay chain on Babe’s side and made her pull most of the load. We got the wagon back to the house and that night Beauty’s colt was born. The colt’s sire was a strawberry roan and it took after him in color. It was also a horse that Dad later gave to me. He was quite a rowdy colt, so I named him Rowdy. I’ll tell you more about him in a later chapter.

We had a shop building where we had a blower and firebox to heat and sharpen sweeps and other plows. We also had a foot operated grindstone for sharpening plows. Dad had put an old cast iron turning plow wing out beside the fence. Nub and I thought it was a piece of scrap.

One day when we had some free time, we took the plow wing and broke it into small pieces for bean flip slugs. Sometime later, Dad was looking for the plow wing and