50's Farmer: Bill’s 80th Birthday Party

On December 2, 1933 Gladys asked the doctor, “What is it?”

“You have a healthy boy,” the doctor replied.

Never one to shy away from saying what she was thinking, Gladys said “Throw him in the lake.” So the story goes.

It was the middle of the Great Depression. Bill was the fourth child. He already had two older brothers and an older sister. He brought nothing new to the table except another hungry mouth to feed during the hard times.

Since that day, Bill has made sure that folks know he was not thrown in the lake. For his birthday, his daughter solicited stories from friends about experiences they shared with Bill over the past 80 years. She wanted 80 stories to go with his birthday, but she got more than a hundred. The stories range from extreme gratitude to extreme aggravation.

In one story, Bill passed a pickup on the side of eastbound I70. Shortly he came upon a young man walking, so he stopped and picked him up. The guy, just out of high school, was fleeing a court appearance in his hometown in Colorado. He set out in his old pickup and when it ran out of gas, he set off on foot going he knew not where to do he knew not what. Bill stopped at a café, fed the kid, convinced him to return to face the judge and make a new start in life. Bill bought a bus ticket and sent him on his way home with the assurance that when things were going better and the kid decided he wanted his pickup back, he could come get it at Bill’s place. Bill loaded the pickup on his trailer took it to his house. We happened by Bill’s house when the kid’s grandparents came by some weeks later to take the pickup home. Needless to say, the grandparents thought Bill was an Angel sent by God.

Not so a roofing crew many years ago. One summer noon when young Bill didn’t show up for dinner (dinner was always the noon meal in this part of the country), C. W. set out to find him. C. W. didn’t have to look high and low for him, just high. He was spread-eagled on a roof in the noon day sun, where members of the crew he had been pestering all morning had nailed his shirt cuffs and pant legs to the roof (yes, Bill was still in shirt and pants) and then left to enjoy their nooning.

Here is one of the sixteen memories I recounted for the occasion. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

One week after I got my pilot’s license, we took off with three Cessnas and one Beechcraft to fly to Carlsbad New Mexico. Rudy S’s Uncle Jake and the Cavern City Lions hosted us. We visited the Caverns and had an all around good time. Jerry B. left his pipe in Dalhart, TX because he was taking in the scenery of the short skirted fuel gal on a step ladder fueling 4441Romeo. We planned to leave on Sunday but had to stay and leave Monday due to a blizzard and high winds in Kansas. Barney, Roger, and Rudy got home easily because the Bonanza didn’t have to make a refueling stop and got home before the wind came up. But we Cessna blokes had to fuel in Dalhart (and retrieve Jerry’s pipe). We flew in high winds and dust until we got to Tribune. On the south side of the highway, dust was rising up in big canyons. On the north side of the highway, there were snow drifts and no dust. But still plenty of wind. Adrian’s alternator wasn’t working, so he shut of his radios and was out of contact with us. In his plane was Dave B. and Melvin D. (maybe, can’t remember for sure). In Bill’s plane, Jerry clung to the seat while John F. went to sleep. In my plane, I tried to calm Dennis B. by telling him I could land in a stock tank with the head wind we had. A Volkswagon bus slowly passed us on Highway 27 below as we fought the headwind between Sharon Springs and Goodland. Dan S. took it all in stride pretty well. Denny was all for calling Mardel when we landed at Goodland to come get him in the car, but when we refueled, he crawled back in and flew home with us. George Ross, pilot tester, saw me in the terminal in Goodland and allowed that I was really testing my week-old pilot’s license. Bill led the way home from the Goodland refueling stop and landed on runway 30—in the mud. Bill called the rest of us and told us to use runway 36, which we did—cross wind landing. Adrian landed on the nose wheel—as usual. Bill’s crew backed 4441R into the hangar and closed and locked the door while Bill was still sitting in the plane filling out the log book.

Here is what it looked like on December 2, 2013 where we celebrated Bill’s birthday at the Mexican restaurant: