Thirteen
____________
The
Wally & Thelma Jones Farm
I don’t ever remember having a sofa in any of the
farmhouses we lived in. Ma and Pa sometimes had their bed in the living room.
We had an old potbelly stove at this farmhouse and it kept us real warm.
The kitchen was the normal place for visiting
with folks. We had us an older battery operated radio in there that was only
used occasionally; we listened to Fibber McGee and Molly on it. That radio show
was one of the longest running comedies there ever was.
There was an extra porch room at this house that
we used for separating the cream from the milk. We also used the room for
storage. I loved to turn the handle on the cream separator.
There was a small lawn to the side of the house.
We didn’t have any lawnmower or anything like that, but Richard and Teddy
managed to keep it lookin’ real nice just usin’ a sickle and Ma’s
clothes-makin’ sheers. It looked as good as any governor’s lawn would have
looked, at least until it all dried up ‘cause of the drought.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Ya done yet, Rae Ann?” Hilda Charlton
questioned her daughter. “I can come turn that crank if your arm’s gettin’
tired.”
Rae Ann shouted back toward the kitchen where
her mother was working on baking fresh bread, “I’m ok… almost done I think.”
It was almost four in the afternoon by the time
Rae Ann finished her chores for her mother. Mary was washing socks with the
washboard on the front porch. Richard and Teddy had their own out-of-doors
chores to complete before supper.
During supper Mr. Charlton related some
incidents his grandfather had told him when he was but a wee boy, “My gramps
told me that he once went to see the Barnum's circus. It was the largest circus
in the country back then. Gramps even saw General Tom Thumb.”
“That little fella?” Rae Ann inquired.
Her father affirmed, “One and the same.”
Rae Ann smiled.
Mr. Charlton continued, “Gramps said his Pa got
their horse and wagon stuck in the muddy road on the way there, but some local
folks helped them get it out. Roads weren’t as good as we have today and wagon
wheels tended to get stuck a lot, especially after a heavy rain.”
Richard speculated, “I bet it took a lot of
strength to get a horse and wagon unstuck from mud!”
“Back in the day,” everyone listened attentively
as their father told them of homesteading, “gramps woke up one morning to see a
whole flock of folks on one of the large vacant land parcels down the road a
piece. It turned out that they’d heard the land was more Indian Reservation
land bein’ offered up for homesteadin’, but that was a false rumor and the
folks all had to leave.”
It makes me sad to think of them poor Indians
losin’ their land and homes and all,” Rae Ann lamented.
Their mother added, “It makes us all a bit sad,
dear.”
"We have many Indians throughout the state
of Oklahoma," their father continued, "Cherokee, Kickapoo,
Potawatorni-Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Illinois, Iowa, Kansa, Caddo, Chickasaw,
Quapaw, Tonkawa, Choctaw, Muskogee Creek, Pawnee, Ponca, Delaware, Klchai,
Modoc, Munsee, Kiowa and Kiowa Apache, Mikasuki, Missouri, Oto, Ottawa, and
many more. Most were resettled here—”
Rae Ann interrupted, "You mean forced,
Pa."
"Yes, dear, forced."
Richard boldly stated, “One day I’m gonna try
and do somethin’ about all that. After I gets me a proper education and all,
that is.”
Everyone smiled at Richard but did not know why.
“Another thing my gramps told me was about
runnin’ across some Civil War soldiers in town with his Pa one day. He was real
scared bein’ only a little boy and all. Anyway, he thought they might kill him
or somethin’, but his Pa calmed him down and eventually them soldiers went
their way. Gramps didn’t get into town much and he’d never seen a real soldier
before.”
“Tell us more, Pa,” Mary begged.
“I got me some work to finish up, youngins.
Maybe another time.”
While Mr. Charlton was away tending to the
evening’s chores, Hilda lit the kitchen’s large six burner cooktop woodstove
then joined her brood of children who were already shucking ears of corn. Once
the husks were removed the ears were blanched in boiling water for two minutes
then placed into a tub of cold water. After taking the ears out of the water
and letting them cool for a while, Mrs. Charlton stood each ear on end and used
a long knife to trim the corn from the cob. If time was running short Mrs.
Charlton would skip the blanching process. Blanching only made it easier to
remove the kernels from the cob.
“We’re almost finished with this part of the
process,” Mrs. Charlton announced to her brood.
Next, it was either raw-cold or hot packing the
corn, depending on if the kernels were blanched or not. Mrs. Charlton always
added ½ teaspoon of salt to every quart jar for seasoning purposes only. It
could take up to three hours or more to complete the entire canning process,
depending on the volume of corn.
It was late by the time the Charlton family went
to bed. John Charlton returned in time from his efforts to help with the
cleanup of everything related to the canning of the corn.
The night was peaceful. Rae Ann enjoyed
listening to the symphony of crickets as she drifted off into a deep sleep.
The next morning brought with it an unexpected
surprise. Just after John Charlton arose and woke Richard and Teddy for help
with the feeding of the livestock at 4 a.m., as they exited their front door
they observed a fire in the far distance.
“That’s one of our neighbors’ places. I’ll take
the car… you boys tend to the critters.”
“Ok, Pa,” both boys agreed.
The sound of her husband cranking and starting
the Model T woke Hilda Charlton abruptly. She had overslept. By the time she
had reached the outside, her husband was already driving away. Richard told her
what had transpired and pointed out the fire in the distance.
“Ok,” she said, “you boys finish up. I’ll start
on breakfast and wake your sisters in a while to make the lunches.”
“Got it, Ma,” Teddy replied.
When the Charlton children returned from school
they discovered that the fire they had observed in the distance earlier that
morning was a neighbor’s barn. The barn was so close to their house that the
house also caught fire. Mr. Charlton arrived in time to use the family’s
tractor to tear off the corner of the house that was burning, saving the home
and everything inside. The barn, however, was a total loss. John Charlton’s
hair got singed slightly on both arms and one side of his head. No other
injuries to him or the neighboring family occurred. The father of the family
was away on business. It was surmised that one of the man’s children, after
cleaning their potbelly stove, had emptied its contents containing burning
embers too close to the barn.
Rae Ann gently rubbed her father’s left forearm,
“Feels strange, Pa.”
“Yep, I recon so,” he replied.
“You were blessed to not get hurt, ya know,” Rae
Ann observed.
“Mighty blessed,” he closed his eyes for a
moment, “and mighty thankful.”
“Does it hurt,” Mary inquired with sad eyes.
“No, not even a little bit. Don’t you go on
bein’ sad, now, smile.”
“Ok, Pa.”
“I got an idea,” Mr. Charlton said as he stood
and walked over to the cabinet next to the wood stove. He quickly returned with
his Bible.
“You gonna read to us Pa?” Mary asked.
“Sure am.”
Rae Ann surmised, “I bet it has somethin’ to do
with fire.”
“And faith,” Mrs. Charlton added.
John Charlton read from the third chapter of the
book of Daniel about how three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused
the Babylon king Nebuchadnezzar’s order to bow down in worship of a huge golden
idol and were thrown into a huge fire to be burned alive.
“That statue thing they made for folks to
worship was about ninety feet tall, or so, and eight or nine feet wide,” Rae
Ann commented.
Richard looked disgusted and complained, “That’s
a lot of gold to waste on a silly statue.”
“Let your Pa finish,” Hilda admonished her
children.
Mr. Charlton continued to read, “And these three
men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the
burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up
in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men
bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O
king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of
the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of
God.
Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of
the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire. And the
princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered
together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an
hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of
fire had passed on them.
Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be
the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and
delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word,
and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except
their own God.”
John Charlton closed his Bible and reflected for
a time upon his firefighting day.
“I wonder if I would have that much faith in
those same circumstances as those there fellas did?” Richard wondered.
Rae Ann snapped, “Of course, silly. What are you thinkin’?”
Fibber
McGee & Molly photo: OTRCAT
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