About Me, and a little extra

THIS PAGE IS REALLY STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!  I think one problem is that I should list everything in some kind of order!

At first I didn’t even want anyone to know who I was…  But, what the heck!

Several people have asked me to add a page about myself.  Well, it has never been easy for me to talk about myself…  I guess, since I am older, some of the younger folks may think there is something “historical” about me to share…

Actually, I have deleted certain parts many times….  I have tried to start over many times, and delete it again and again!

I guess I should really start with my philosophy of life…  HONESTY, INTEGRITY, AND SERVICE is kind of my motto.  I never cared how much time and effort I had to put in anything I cared about.  It had to be perfect.  I had to be able to stand back and look at the finished product and see it was perfect.  If I wanted to know about something, I did as much research as possible so I would know about it inside and out.  Research on poultry started when I was 15.  I wrote to breeders and collected MANY old books on poultry.  I knew the history of the breeds and where to get the best.  My goal at the hatchery was to improve the breeding program at Allen’s because I wanted to offer my customers the best…  In gardening, it is the same way.  I want to know as much about gardening as possible, the Families, Genus, Species and Cultivars, their history and how to best grow them.  Antiques and collectibles are no different…  The history of the manufacturers, their manufacturing process, and so on.  Believe me, some of these companies have a LONG history that spans hundreds of years!  To absorb all this information isn’t easy and you either have to be nuts or driven with some kind of passion!  I am not really sure which category I fall under.

I believe anything worth putting time and effort in to needs to be done right.  I would spend long hours working at the hatchery, doing as much as I could myself.  I really don’t know if anyone realizes that I spent 12-18 hours a day working during the hatching season or not and it didn’t matter if anyone knew. One thing I asked of Suzanne was that she not limit the amount of hours I worked…  Sometimes she would tell me to sit down and rest, and I would tell her I could sit down when I was driving.  Now that she has passed, I wish I had sit down and talked with her more than I did.  We did talk about a lot while we were unpacking, eating, and traveling to and from the store.  We talked a lot more when we were in California, but after we came here, I was nearly all work and no play.  NOW it is cold, and I can’t get outside and it is driving me NUTS.  The mansion is cold (and right now there is no heat in most of the rooms) and I can’t clean and re-arrange, take pictures or anything!  You know what it is like trying to take pictures while you are shaking?

Suzanne and I got along so well because we were both a little eccentric in our own ways.  In some ways, we were a lot alike.  We had many similar interests, but we could both go a little over board in our collecting.  One of her favorite words was “cutesy”, and it certainly defined many of the things she collected.  Well, as a man, I am not really into “cutesy”.  I am in to items with historical significance, whether it be antiques and collectibles, vegetable varieties, poultry, architecture, historic gardens and landmarks, etc.

So, should I start with birth?  Well, I was born in Windsor, Missouri in 1960…
I will fill in the bare spots later as I think of something…

I guess I owe my passion for gardening to my dad and grandpa (my mother’s dad).  My dad always had a huge garden, and my grandfather had 4 times the garden as my father!  Now, my grandpa came from Pleasant Valley, Oklahoma where his father and 14 brothers and sisters lived on a farm and grew produce as well as farmed.  I think either Pleasant Valley is not their any more, or maybe it was just the name of the school my grandpa attended as a kid…  My mother has some pictures, so I think I will try and scan some for the blog.

My grandpa always saved his own seed from his garden.  He would select seed from the biggest and best plants for his garden the next year.  Sometimes he would get a surprise when something different cropped up.  Like when his Acorn Squash, which was always green, sported some white ones one year…  He always grew a HUGE patch of watermelons, and he was very proud of them…  No telling how many years he had saved seed from the biggest and best fruit…  Then one year, someone gave him some “yellow meated” (as he called them) watermelons.  Well, he planted them and didn’t care for them at all…  So, he didn’t save any of their seeds.  Well, he was really upset when we started cutting into the watermelons the next year only to find many of the watermelons, of every variety, had yellow flesh…

Every year he would take his produce to the Missouri State Fair and a local fair in Calhoun called the Calhoun Colt Show.  He would always win blue ribbons on most everything he took.  Grandma raised rabbits of many different breeds and she also exhibited them at the State Fair…  She won MANY blue ribbons every year!  One other thing grandpa liked doing, was getting his picture in the paper with his vegetables…  Anything that was weird or extraordinary…  I know mom has a lot of those pictures and articles, so I will put them in the blog, too.  I remember one year, grandma grew some really tall corn…  It was probably some kind of corn dent corn or something…  Now grandma was a tall woman, but this corn was twice as tall as she was…  So, the newspaper editor had to come out and take a picture of her next to her corn…  Grandpa was really teased about that!

While grandpa raised the vegetables, along with a peach and apple orchard, grandma had several flower beds around the house.  Grandma also worked in the garden, did all the canning, made jelly, etc.  She also did allot of quilt making (as did her sisters), and exhibited them at the state fair and Calhoun Colt Show.

When grandpa died in April of 1981, at age 83, he was already getting ready for his garden.  He already had the potatoes planted.  When he died, I moved to his farm and grandma moved in with my parents.  She was a diabetic, and mom had to give her shots twice a day.  She lived until 1993 and died at the age of 90 something…  I will find out for sure and correct that.

Now, I already had turkeys and geese at his farm and I was there almost daily.  He had also been a flockowner for the Grain Belt Hatchery, and introduced the Columbian Plymouth Rocks and Columbian Wyandottes for them.  He had raised other breeds for the hatchery but wasn’t happy with them.  He became tired of having to raise chickens that didn’t lay well…  So, he ordered the Columbian Rocks and Wyandottes himself from the Murray McMurray Hatchery.   So, the owner of Grain Belt asked if he would sell their eggs to him and he would just add those to his catalog.  So, grandpa agreed.  Now, since I was with the Allen Hatchery, and had been working there since I was 15, I didn’t want to sell eggs to Grain Belt.  So, after the season was over, I put a flock in for Allen’s.

Now, I had already spent a semester at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and was going to return after hatching season.  But, since I moved to the farm, I didn’t return.  Instead, I put in the gardens, and made new flower beds at the farm.  Grandpa also milked a few cows and had a few beef cows.  He also had ducks, guinea fowl, geese, and the rabbits.

The first flock of chickens I had for Allen’s were Brown Leghorns.  We lost the flockowner, so I agreed to take them…  Brown Leghorns are normally kind of flighty, but I put a radio in the chicken house, and they were so tame it wasn’t funny!  I always had to knock on the chicken house door before entering, though.  If I didn’t opening the door would scare them and they would fly to the back of the chicken house…  Then the dust would fly!!!  I did the blood testing for the hatchery, and normally chickens can’t wait to get off the table…  They had to be fastened in so they couldn’t move!   Well, by playing the radio all the time, my chickens were so tame they would actually fly back on the testing table!

HERE’S AN INTERESTING STORY!

I remember one of our flock owners had Anconas, a member of the Mediterranean Class, and they were some of the wildest chickens I ever saw!  His chicken house had a big hole in the roof, so they just ran wild…  We would have to give him plenty of notice when we were coming to blood test so he could get them caught…  He would have chickens stuffed in old cars, barrels, and anything he could find.  He reminded me so much of Pa Kettle (remember Ma and Pa Kettle?).  He didn’t have a care in the world and even talked like he did!  I know I am getting off track, but I am on a roll!  Anyway, we had these runs we had to sit up to run chickens through, kind of like coops with doors on the ends so the chickens could pass through till they were all filled up.  When one coop would get full, we would close it off so they wouldn’t get to full and smother the chickens.  When we set up at this mans farm, not only did we have to set up the runs like normal, but we had to weigh them down with concrete blocks.  These Anconas were so wild, when they started coming down the run, you had to be really ready!  They would come down so fast, and so many at once, that if you didn’t have them weighed down, they would just lift them off the ground and escape.  Each of the coops also had a door on top to get the chickens out of.  That was not easy with the Anconas either!  Try and pick one out, and twenty would try to fly out!  Well, these chickens were so wild they would constantly try to get loose from the table.  After I blood tested them and they were turned loose, their feet never touched the ground!  They would take off flying as far away as they could get!

We always hired allot of retired men at the hatchery because it was seasonal work.  They could really tell some stories!  So, since this is my blog, I guess I can add some here and there.  You wanted a story about me…  Well, GEEZ!  Maybe I should have a page of stories!  They could really tell some good ones!  It is bad that we don’t think about writing stories down until we get older and forget most of them.

Here’s one another employee told about someone else…  Now, I won’t mention any names, because they may all still be alive.  The man in the other story is not alive…  Anyway, a friend of an old employee went coon hunting with another friend one night.  It was really dark, and they had oil lamps with them instead of flashlights for some reason.  They were a long way from home, and apparently they didn’t even know where they were.  Anyway, they were out in this pasture when this big black bull came after them.  They climbed up in a tree, and the bull just stayed and they could not get down!  I don’t know how long they were up in the tree, but one of the fellows decided to pour oil on the bulls back and set it on fire!  The bull took off a blazing across the pasture and they two guys made it back home.  One of the men, on his way to work the next morning, saw that the hair on the back of his neighbor’s bull was completely burned off!  And that’s the truth!

I think this page is going to be a work in progress, too!  I am 49 (12-29-60), once I get on a roll, this could take a long time!!!

Some people may write a list of organizations they belonged to…  Mine are all from 1981-1987:

Boy Scouts of America (actually joined Cubs at 8, and remained till I was in my early 20′s)

Member of the First Christian Church.  Served as deacon, trustee, Chairman of the Board at 25, and served on various committees.
Former member of:

The American Poultry Association

The Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities

American Horticultural Association

I was member of a few other organizations, but right now I can’t remember!

I went to work at the Allen Hatchery when I was 15 in Windsor, Missouri (actually, I started raising chickens when I was 8…the same time I started gardening).

Former Co-Owner of the Allen Hatchery in Windsor (at 25).

I attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, majoring in Poultry Science.  I also studied advertising and promotion, accounting, business law, sociology, and animal science.

I went to a real estate school in Bentonville, Arkansas…  didn’t pass the 3-4 hour long test, though!

I attended Twin-Lakes Vo-Tech in Harrison, Arkansas and graduated with a certificate in Major Appliance Repair…  Could never find a job in that town!!!  Finally, I went to work for a furniture store, then worked as a car salesman/detailer for 2 1/2 years.  Then moved to Springfield, Missouri in 1993.

I worked in the commercial cabinet industry for 13 years (for the same company) where I was an edgebander operator for most of those years.

I worked for a residential cabinet maker for about a year.  Mostly building face frames.

My areas of interest are gardening, antiques, treasure hunting, historical places, cabinet making, model railroading, poultry…  I have not been treasure hunting yet nor do I have a model railroad yet!

Well, that’s enough of that for a while!