Life on the farm

[buckeyefarmer]

Letter my dad wrote to his sister during Basic Training 9/27/1943 from the Wichita Mts of OK. Dale is his nephew.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Letter dad sent to his sister from Germany 3 May 1945. Joe that he mentions is his sisters husband.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Fun times! This was about the time that we ended up picking a couple fields of corn by hand but it wasn't by choice though. Between old equipment (corn pickers) and wet fields we ended up picking it by hand. By the time the fields froze enough to get into them the corn had started to fall over so the picker wouldn't work then either. I was only 9 or 10 at the time and the corn is what we needed for feed. We ran it through a belt driven hammer mill into our little feed shed. Talk about a hazard!

My Grand dad was only able to open his left hand about 2/3 of the way; which left it permanently cupped. It was also scarred on the back.

I asked him about it when I was a kid; he said he caught in a corn sheller and it was pretty badly injured.
I thought this next part was odd; he said the doctor treated his hand, and as a splint, he used a cigar box lid to tape it to. When he took off the bandages, the lid was warped and his hand had healed in the shape of the lid. Considering he was born on a farm in 1886, I can believe it.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I did basic training at Ft Sill OK. It was HOT! 108F on the rifle range.

Great letters.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I did basic training at Ft Sill OK. It was HOT! 108F on the rifle range.

Great letters.

Yeah, we get some hot weather here; but it gets pretty warm in Sharn Jean's home town of Gillmer Texas, especially in August.

I spent a Summer working in Trona California, loading boxcars with sacks of hot chemicals. It got 112, 114 almost every day, and the only thing that grew there was some salt tolerant trees imported from Saudi Arabia. Their golf course greens were asphalt; and I saw residents playing golf in that kind of weather.

Us imported Okies didn't go to the bathroom for a week until we got hydrated; drank lots of water and took salt tablets...but like they say, it's a dry death.

 

[Quaffer]

Trona California

Trona California can be miserably hot. On a par almost with Death Valley.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Trona California can be miserably hot. On a par almost with Death Valley.

Word was in the day, that it was only 60 miles away...and I believed it!

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Mom would have been 100 today. Here are my parents in 1962. First house I lived in.
View attachment 1650838

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Houses have sure gotten fancier over the decades, haven't they? I remember that brick patterned tar and asbestos siding. You couldn't get rid of the scrap by burning it.

 

[Buppies]

Thanks for sharing BEF