Gordon Leadfoot

    His name was Gordon right enough.  But not Leadfoot.  That was a moniker I bestowed upon him.  It had nothing to do with his musical abilities.

     He had one good eye, and one not so good, as in legally blind in that eye.  He wore pop bottle lenses for glasses, for both eyes, the good one included.

     He was from Oklahoma.  He eschewed being called an “Okie”.  I never saw him get angry.  But if you called him an Okie, he would hasten to correct you.  He was an Oklahoman.    

     He stood about 5’6”. He probably weighed 200 pounds.  On roller skates, he was anything but lead-footed.  Backwards, forwards, tight circles, he could do nearly anything on roller skates.

      At the local swimming pool, he could put on an exhibition on the diving board.  He had played college football.  He was that good of an athlete.

     He once ran a foot race against one of his eighth grade students, for maybe forty or fifty yards.  He won handily.  There had been a bet.  The student had to stop wearing colored glasses in the school building as a result of losing the race to a ”short, fat, old man.”

     I got to know him the summer of 1972.  I signed on to help him move alfalfa bales one June day.  We were on a county road in his pickup.  He was taking me somewhere to get a tractor with a loader.  He was driving.

     We were doing sixty miles an hour on the gravel.  Gordon decided his glasses needed cleaning.  He took them of and started in on them with his handkerchief.  We were headed north, still doing 60 mph.   In an instant, we were in the west ditch, still going 60 mph.

      “What’s goin’ on here?” Gordon asked.  He put his glasses back on.  “Oh.”  He pulled the pickup out of the ditch and back on the road.  He never let up on the gas pedal.  I had made an instantaneous grab for whatever I could get a hold of to survive the inevitable rollover.

      He looked at me and I looked at him.  He went on with our conversation, as though nothing had happened.  I made a mental note:  don’t ever get into a vehicle this guy is driving.

     The lead-foot moniker didn’t come about then.  It would be many years later when Tisha and I rode to an out-of-town football game with Uncle Bill in his hot Red Dodge.  On the way home, somewhere east of Colby, Bill managed to overtake Gordon driving his big old Ford.

      The race was on.  Bill knew a shortcut through Colby.  When we pulled up to the stop sign at the highway that would be the final 30-mile stretch home, Gordon’s Ford blew past us.  We tailed him for several miles, both cars doing 80 to 90 miles per hour.

     Finally, we reached a flat stretch with no traffic coming our way.  Bill floor boarded the Dodge, the turbo kicked in, and we soared past the 100 mile per hour mark.  As we went past Gordon, I could hear the Ford’s exhaust pipe shrieking and I knew Gordon had his foot “in the carburetor” as thy used to say in those olden days.  The big old Ford just didn’t have any more to give. 

     (Someday there will be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Old Automobiles and Bill and Gordon will both be enshrined in the Hall of Infamy.)

     The Dodge won the race, but we all won in that nobody got killed that night on the way home from a football game.  Then it was I named Gordon, Gordon Leadfoot.

      Gordon was always a farmer at heart.  He quit teaching to try farming full time.   But the 1980’s were a huge disaster for farmers, many who had mortgaged heavily to buy land after the explosion of grain prices following Nixon’s grain deal with the Russians in the 1970’s.  Gordon had to return to teaching.

      He returned to, or took up, school bus driving when he went back to teaching.  I advised my girls, “Don’t get on any bus Mr. C. is driving, if you can help it.”   Of course, they couldn’t help it.  They were on a bus or two that lost a little paint as a result of Gordon’s driving.  Gordon’s driving was a bit of a joke among the students riding his bus. 

     But I am happy to report that nobody ever suffered an injury as a result of Gordon’s driving.  I am sorry to report that Gordon is gone now.  Oklahoma’s loss was Kansas’s gain.  I am glad I got to know Gordon, leadfoot and all.  Adieu, friend.

          

       

The Siding Project

     About a year ago now, it hailed.  

    Then began the lengthy process of notifying the insurance company, scheduling with the adjuster, waiting to see how much the company would pay, if anything.

      The roof was okay.  The metal roof suffered a bit of “cosmetic damage” the adjuster said.  Before the company would pay anything, the roof had to suffer damage so severe that it would leak.  That was okay.  After all, hail--proofing the roof was one reason to put the metal roof up in the first place. 

     The poor old vinyl siding took in the shorts yet again.  It would be the fourth application for the north and west sides of the house since the vinyl first covered the old cedar in the 1980’s.

In July, a check for some $30K arrived. 

      I was somewhat taken aback at the size of the check.  Until I started looking for a siding contractor.  It was also time to hail—proof the siding.  Vinyl wasn’t going to do it.  I also decided that this project, though not as daunting as the roof project, was one I wouldn’t try to do myself.

      Then began the task of finding a contractor that would do the job.  The first one I contacted would not send a crew out so far in the boonies to do a siding job.  They would, however, send out a crew to replace the rain gutter system. 

      Finally, one company sent out a salesman from Colorado Springs.  He measured and took photos.  His estimate, arriving a couple of days later, was over $50K.  A bit much, I thought.  We dickered for a while. 

     They offered a vinyl product that was supposed to be more hail—tolerant, but the price was very little less than the James Hardie product.  I wasn’t willing to pay that amount, so I kept on looking.

     The rain gutter guy was local.  When he came to measure for that job, he recommended a local contractor.  By the time the local siding guy came out, looked, estimated, we were into Fall.  He said he could get started in December, and he did get started.

      I made a down payment in December to cover the cost of materials.  But the job wasn’t done until January.  Still, all right, except for income tax purposes.  I had the insurance check in July, but I didn’t spend it all in 2018, so I had an augmented income without the expenses.  Oh well, the accountant said.  You will show a loss next year.

      The project went over estimate, too.  That was because the contractor didn’t plan to remove the old cedar siding, just the vinyl.  When he got to the cedar, he decided it needed to come off, too.  I concurred. 

      Then there were the south windows upstairs that Paul replaced 30 years ago.  Why he put in the undersized windows I’ll never know, but the time to change them was now, if ever we were going to do it.

      More shopping, this time window—shopping.  I tried a Loveland outfit, but after our initial conversation via telephone, I could never get a hold of the guy again.  They didn’t answer the office phone, nor the cell phone number he gave me.

     On impulse, I stopped at Lowe’s.  They had Pella windows on sale.  I ordered.  They arrived while we were tripping to Denmark, Ireland, and Iceland.  I took on the old south porch window by myself.

      I enlisted help for the upstairs ones.  The big job happened on a couple of nice days in November.

      It would be several months later before the inside work would be done.

     The siding job got mostly done in January.  The crew dodged a couple of stormy patches.  They have a few details to complete.  Spring weather and their schedule haven’t coincided yet.

      We’re good, until it hails again.

Spring 2019

 March:

  

 Watering the asparagus patch

April:  

May:  

         Two steps forward, one step back.  March brought needed moisture.  It also brought mud—inside.   

      April saw the picket pile go down a little, the hedge get trimmed.

     May got off to a rough start.  The first step backward happened when a used oil filter in the back of the pickup fell over and leaked oil.  I cleaned that mess up on arrival at the farm.  Then I took a little tour of the premises.

    The plastic tabs holding the storm window broke and a wind gust took the storm window down.  One pane of glass survived.  The other two had to be picked up a piece at a time.

    Two trips to Hugo got the glass replaced in the frames, but not on the house.  Can’t put the storm window up until the windows get washed, for heaven’s sake. 

      Meanwhile the wheat got off to a good start with March and April moisture.

    And the summer fallow got a good going over, with a little help from the neighbors.

           The sea of purple that doubles as the farm yard awaits the mower and warmer weather. 

     Up next, the window and siding update.

Uncle's 21 Massey

      My memory reminds me of a big plastic bag filled with water.  At first, there’s just a little drippy leak.  Then it develops into a stream, and then a gush as the pin hole spreads into a fissure.  First, the memories come slowly, and then the rupture brings them out in a gush.

    So it was with the old Massey.  As I explored that story, another one came forth.  http://50farm.blogspot.com/2014/03/21-massey.html; http://50farm.blogspot.com/2014/03/21-massey-part-2.html

    Sometime in the early fifties, Dad borrowed Uncle Walter’s 21 Massey.  It was about a fifty mile trip between our farm and Uncle’s place.  As harvest time approached, Dad hired neighbor Gene to haul the Massey on his GMC truck. 

    I vaguely remember Dad going with Gene to fetch the combine.  He was gone most of the day.  I have a more specific memory of their arrival and unloading the combine.

     In those olden days, the lane from what is now County Road 26 ran straight west from the house to the county road.  That road left a ten-acre patch south of the lane and bordering the quarter section next to our “home quarter.”  In 1960, I believe it was, the folks decided to reroute the lane to run along the half mile line between our property and what then belonged to Baughman Corporation.  

     Somehow, the county crew did the road building.  It may have been a deal allowing the county to haul gravel out of our pasture, but I’m not sure.  The county boys dug two ditches with their machines, using the removed dirt to elevate the roadway to its present level a foot or two above the bordering fields.  They also hauled gravel and bladed it smooth.  For a few months, until spring and time to plow the field, we had two lanes running from CR26 to the house.  Hardly anyone ever used the new road.  Willie Suchanek referred to the new road as the “Interstate” and the old road as a “service road.”  Like everybody else, he took the service road.

      It wouldn’t be until the spring of 1960 when the old road was subjected to first the chisel, then the oneway disk that we started using the new road.  The mailbox had to be relocated to the new junction, and from there on out, the old road was history, fading gradually, but not completely, into the adjacent field.  Standing west of the farm house, a good eye can still detect the old road’s route by the slight rise running due west.

     The extreme southwest corner of the ten-acre patch, also the southwest corner of the farm, stood four or five feet above the road level due to natural terrain and somewhat to the road builders having shaved a bit off a natural rise to smooth out the road.  Instead of a ditch, the removal of dirt to elevate the road left a “cliff” (at least it seemed a cliff to us plains children used to the flat terrain) from the field’s edge down to the “ditch”. 

     As a kid riding on combine or tractor with Dad, making that first round which, passed by the cliff, was scary.  If tractor or combine wheel slipped over the edge, we would surely roll!  The new road took away that danger.  Now, when you turn off the county road, you climb a gentle incline of eight or ten feet, at which point you are at the apex of the hill, and it is gently downhill all the way to the farm yard.  No more cliff.

          Before the road revamp, the cliff did provide a platform to load and unload equipment.  Custom combine crews always used that corner of the farm to load and unload their combines.  They used scoop shovels to dig and pile so that the truck’s rear dual wheels were level.

     I remember Gene backing up carefully to the cliff.  It was a bit of a chore to get a truck crossways on the county road in order to have the truck’s bed square to the field edge.  Gene was in and out of the truck as he checked his progress and made adjustments to get the truck situated properly.  The combine got unloaded.

     After harvest, it was time to return the combine to Uncle Walter.  There was something about riding with Gene, or something else, that made Dad decide that the combine wouldn’t go back the same way it came.   Dad said something about Gene being a nervous wreck during the whole trip.

     So bright and early one late July morning, Dad and Uncle Ricky mounted the combine and took off for Yoder at about eight or ten miles per hour, the combine’s top speed in road gear.  The rest of the family followed in the car a few hours later.

       I don’t remember a lot about the trip.  Our combine drivers took country roads to avoid the highway traffic.  We tried to follow in their wake. One thing I do remember was meeting a combine on the country road headed in the opposite direction.  The driver flagged us down and asked for directions to Karval.

      I couldn’t hear much of the conversation sitting in the back seat.  What I remember was seeing and hearing the whine of the two big drive belts on the side of the combine, just outside the car window where I was sitting.  It certainly wasn’t an earth-hugging Massey, as it towered over our old Chevy.  In later years, I would recall that machine and speculate that it was a John Deere 55, a fairly recent addition to the self-propelled combine inventory.

       I seem to recall that we eventually caught up with Dad and Ricky.  Their trip had been interrupted by a thunderstorm that sent them to the rear of the combine where they took refuge under the bonnet covering the straw walkers to keep from getting soaked.

       I remember very little of the rest of that trip.  I think we went on ahead to “Aunty and Uncle’s”.  I don’t remember the combine finishing the trip.  I was probably distracted by playing with Cousin James.  We probably had supper and headed for home, all seven of us in the ’50 Chev, as we did occasionally in those olden days.

     My guess is that Dad decided that neither hauling nor roading a combine fifty miles was to his liking.  He would buy a well-used 21 Massey of his own and even go on to repair the old John Deere number 3 pull type.

      I’m not sure what happened to Uncle’s 21 Massey.  I’m guessing it was sold at his sale when they left the farm and moved to Kansas.

    

 

 

Picket Fence

   

   The pile has been there quite a few years.  I advertised on Craigslist for weathered pickets.  It’s probably a good deal I never got any nibbles.  When I decided to convert them to firewood and began unstacking those pickets, I found most of them were rotted beyond any use.

     As I stacked up five or six pickets, lining up the angled tops so I could cut a bunch at a time and get sticks the same length, I couldn’t help but think of Dad cutting all those things.  I don’t remember exactly how he did it.  He may have had a jig or something.

      What I do remember is coming home from school one day while the project was active to find Dad not able to do much, with a big bandage on his right thigh.  He used his Montgomery Ward Power saw, a “Skil Saw”-type machine, to cut them all. 

      Apparently, he had some type of system where he could cut several pickets, one after another, without having to put the saw down.  He would make a cut, draw the saw back to his leg while he lined up the next board.  It worked fine until the blade guard failed to retract and the still-spinning blade contacted his leg.

      I don’t remember how many stitches it took, but he did go to the doctor.  I don’t remember how long he was out of commission.  I do remember the picket fence, not fondly.  I remember trying to paint the thing, the frustration, the fights between us painters that resulted in crimes and punishments.

      The fence was to keep the chickens out of the yard while the new bluegrass lawn established itself.  I also remember the smell of the wet, heavily manured soil when we sprinkled water on it to try to keep it damp enough to sprout the seeds.

      I remember laying down the old 1x12’s side-by-side, end-to-end, when the wind kicked up to try to keep the soil and the grass seed from blowing away. When the wind died down, the boards had to be removed and stacked somewhere off the lawn.  Getting that lawn sprouted and going was a real pain.  So no wonder we had to keep the chickens out.

      I’m not sure, but I guess the fence preceded the seed planting.  Then came the day when the lawn was mature.  The first mowing was fun.  Every mowing since then, eh, not so much.

     After the bluegrass established itself, keeping the gates closed wasn’t an imperative.  Some of the gates disappeared.  The chickens had free range inside the picket fence.  They said thank you to the lawn by fertilizing it.  I remember playing football on the lawn.  Tackling or getting tackled meant landing in chicken manure.

      We nicknamed the yard “Debris Field”, like “Lambeau Field” or "Soldiers Field" maybe.  The picket fence deteriorated.  No one wanted the job of painting it again.  Rather than removing it, we planted junipers all around the inside of the fence.

      I could hardly wait until the junipers got big enough so that we could trim and shape them.  I can wait now, quite a while sometimes.

     After the hedge got big enough to be a hedge, the pickets were in pretty rough shape.  Brother-in-law Jim removed quite a few of them back in the day when he was still trying to heat his house with wood.  He converted the pickets to firewood.

     Not too many years ago, I decided to go after not only the remaining pickets, but the rails and posts, too.  The rails were 2x4’s, mostly rotted, warped, and split.  The process was very difficult because the hedge had thrust its branches between pickets and then branched out on the outside of the fence.  I had to do some major trimming to get the job done.

      Many observers were sure the hedge would die as a result of my major butchery.  Not old Ralph.  He pooh-poohed that idea.  He said his neighbor cut them to within six inches of the ground and they came back.

     In Eastern Kansas they try to kill the cedars.  Try and fail.  Cedars are a weed there, a nuisance in fencerows and a grass killer in the pastures.  The hedge survived, recovered, and still has to be trimmed once a year.

     Once the pickets and rails were removed, there remained the posts that supported the rails.  They were steel fence posts set in concrete, about six inches in diameter and maybe eight to ten inches deep.  I didn’t have a Farmhand at the time.  My extraction tools were the 820 tractor, a heavy log chain, and a piece of the trunk of a 100-year-old locust tree.

      I backed the 820 close to the post, and rolled the big log as close to the post as I could get it.  Cedar branches kept me from getting the log too close.  I tied the chain around the post as close to the ground as I could get it, looped the chain over the locust log, hooked it to the tractor, and eased the tractor forward.

     In most cases, the post went up, then forward, then over the log, bearing its cement overshoe.  That process worked fine on east south and west.  The north was a little harder because I was forbidden to run the heavy tractor up on the north lawn.  I added some more chain and pulled with the tractor out of the confines of the bluegrass.

      All went well except for the south gatepost of the east gate.  It didn’t just have a cement overshoe.  Subsequent cement pours to form a walkway had infringed on the post’s territory.  I made several nudges with the tractor without too much success.  The final nudge was more of a jerk.  The post gave up, all right.  It was determined not to go alone it seemed. 

     It came flying up over the locust log, chain, cement chunk, and all, and slapped the backrest of the tractor seat.  A few inches higher, and I may not have been able to tell this tale.

      I just spent two half days trimming the old hedge.  Trying to do it all in one day is a bit much for the old codger now.  I didn’t do the best job, but from a hundred yards away, you can see that it has been trimmed and you can’t see the misses.

       The picket pile will soon be relegated to the ash heap of history.  As for the lawn, Mom would really be disappointed in me, how I have let that precious grass turn to dust.  It just took too much water, with the hedge demanding its share, too.  It was too hard to keep the weeds out of it.

     It doesn’t look like much, that lawn.  But it’s really no problem, except when it rains.  Instead of treading on bluegrass, you have to walk in mud.  Oh well, doesn’t happen very often. 

Obachan’s Funeral

     “Obachan” died on January 22, 2019 in Seattle.  She was a very generous person.  She had set aside money for family to attend her funeral in Hawaii.  The ceremony in Hawaii was really an inurnment.  Her assisted living facility hosted a memorial on January 25.

     The memorial followed a “wake” on the evening of the 22^nd.  The facility allowed the body to remain overnight (time of death was 9:50 a.m.) and many staff members and residents dropped in to pay their last respects.  Quite different than most places who want a body removed immediately.  Shizuko’s body was cremated on January 24.

     We were in Tucson at the time and chose not to attend that ceremony.  Thirteen of us traveled to Hawaii, arriving on March 9.  That number included children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and two nieces.

     On Sunday, Michelle’s family took the cremains on a final tour of the island, including a swap meet.  It was a trip that Obachan made many times as a tour guide for the Japanese.

     Monday evening, we boarded a boat and headed out into the ocean on a “Sunset Cruise” where a package containing some of the cremains were placed in the sea. 

     Many years ago, in 1971, we cast a few of Walter’s ashes into the sea, as he had requested.  We were able to do that from the shoreline in those days.  We were supposed to be three miles out on this occasion, but the captain fudged quite a bit on that distance because it was a bit rough, and a couple of us were subject to sea sickness.

      The captain shut down the engine, opened the back gate, and the daughters committed the ashes to the ocean.  We paused long enough to shoot a few more photos, then headed back to harbor.  We 

had hopes of seeing a few whales, but that didn’t happen.

      It was growing dark as we disembarked.  We travelled to a hotel where Obachan loved to dine.  We celebrated her life with a nice meal.  We lacked one who retired due to motion sickness.

      The inurnment took place Tuesday March 12, 2019, fifty days after death, an appropriate interval, I’m told, in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as Punchbowl because it is the crater of an extinct volcano.

If you are a “Hawaii 50” watcher, you may recognize the monument from the opening shots on that show.

   A clergyman, who was Michelle’s high school classmate, prayed in three languages, Hawaiian, Japanese, and English.  His wife and two other ladies joined him in a traditional Hawaiian song, ending with “Aloha Oe”, sung by all.

      Four or five locals joined the family beneath the small shelter.  Following that brief ceremony, we walked some 50 or 60 yards to the gravesite.  A two-man crew from the cemetery, retired servicemen, took over. 

     They removed a sheet of plywood containing sod from over the grave.  They removed a cover from a cement vault.  The clergyman carried the vase with the ashes from the shelter to the grave site.  The three of them placed the urn into the vault.  The crew did a “Present Arms,” saluted, observed a moment of silence.    

      Under their direction, we all took a turn at dropping flower petals into the vault round the urn.  When all the flower petals were in the vault, the crewmen replaced the vault cover.  They then used shovels to take soil from their truck and packed it around and over the vault.

      I couldn't keep myself from thinking how much it was like setting a fence post, with shovels, dirt, and tamping iron.  When the soil had been removed from the truck and placed in the grave, the men took the sod from the plywood and carefully placed it over the grave.  That was tamped and manicured with soil to fill in the gaps.  When they were done, you could not tell there was ever a disturbance of the earth.

     One worker unearthed a flower vase hidden beneath the sod.  While he was doing that, his coworker fetched a pitcher of water from a nearby hydrant to fill the vase.  The great grandchildren placed some flowers in the vase.

     Everyone was invited to attend another meal at a Japanese restaurant.  Following the meal, we all disbursed to rest and recover.  Half of the mourners left on Wednesday.  Those headed for Denver had to alter plans because the snowy cyclone on the planes shut down DIA on Wednesday.  It was tough finding a flight for Thursday.  The last of us left on Friday, and the funeral was over.

      The entire trip, the meals, the ceremony were typical of Obachan’s generosity.  May she be blessed as she blessed us.    

     

    Obituary

     After living a long and what she always considered a lucky and wonderful life, Shizuko O. Johnson, age 90, passed away peacefully on the morning of January 22, 2019, in Seattle, Washington.  Shizuko was born in the Yoyogi neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan, the seventh of ten siblings.  She was proud to be an Edo-ko, a child of Edo, whose family lineage stretched back to the time when Tokyo was still known as Edo.  As a young girl, she loved helping her father and grandfather host the Obon celebration in Yoyogi annually.  They played the taiko drum and sang while she helped lead the dances.

     At school, Shizuko was the abacus champion and volleyball team captain.  She loved to sing and dance.  One day, while attending a women’s business college, her friend convinced her to give her moral support at an audition with the post-war Ernie Pyle Show which would be performing at the famous Takarazuka Theatre in the Ginza.  On a lark, Shizuko decided to audition too and was selected to join the troupe.

      It was during this time that she met her future husband, Walter Johnson.  They married, had their first daughter, Patricia, and then decided to move to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1949.  Once there, Shizuko began a career as a radio announcer with KHON and KPOI airing a popular Japanese language children’s program.  They returned to Tokyo in 1954 and had their second daughter, Michelle.  In 1964, the family moved to the United States, first to Denver and then to Honolulu in 1966.  Shizuko soon returned to her career as a radio announcer, airing a variety music program for KZOO radio station.  She also worked in the fabric department of the Shirokiya Department Store in Ala Moana Center.

     One day a tour company from Japan called Shizuko and asked if she could take a few visitors around Oahu.  She said “sure!”  This simple trip around the island helped launch the modern Japanese tourism industry in Hawaii.  Shizuko worked as a tour guide for several large Japanese tour companies until she became the first Japanese woman to obtain a Public Utility Commission license authorizing her to carry passengers in her spacious green Cadillac.  For the next 40 years, Shizuko owned and operated an independent tour company offering customized tours to Japanese tourists.  In addition to running her business, Shizuko served as the President of the Japanese Tour Guide Association for many years.

     Shizuko had a great and lasting love for Hawaii, her adopted home for more than half a century.  As often happens in Hawaii, there came a time when Shizuko had to leave Honolulu to live closer to her daughters on the mainland.  Shizuko lived her last years at the Nikkei Manor in Seattle, Washington, making new friends and meeting old fans who had listened to her radio programs in Hawaii every day!  Shizuko’s family is grateful to the management and staff at Nikkei Manor for the loving, professional care they provided Shizuko and for making every day for her and for all residents a joyful experience.  Shizuko taught everyone there how to clap their hands the Japanese way and how to dance the Tokyo Ondo.  She will be remembered for her engaging smile, her sweet, clear singing voice and her endearing flair for lifting the spirits of everyone around her.

     Shizuko’s husband, Walter, predeceased her.  Shizuko is survived by her two daughters, Patricia and Michelle, four grandchildren, Letitia, LeAndra, Izumi and Seiji and two great-grandchildren, Bronson and Ealie.

       (By Michelle Johnson Hansen)