saddlebag dispatches
few days and really needed a chore boy, someone to get his cows in and help feed calves and hogs. He offered me a summer job helping him so I went over to his place and worked there for three summers until he sold the place. He did give me a calf each summer, and one time he gave me a colt and two pigs. He always paid me some money, and he was easy to work with— sometimes he was funny, too. He had good horses to ride and a good saddle too, but lots of times I would just run out and walk the milk cows in. Lowell's wife, Lois was the best cook, and she made me lots of western shirts. She called me “Dody,” because Lowell had a sister, Iris, whose little girl, Carmen, couldn't say my name but called me Dody. Lois thought it was kinda cute, so she called me that too. I really liked all those shirts she sewed for me. They always fit better than ones from the catalog or general store. Lowell and Lois sold their place when I was 15, so they left me with no job for the summer but not for long. Leo Anderson needed some help putting up hay and he hired me for the summer, but I quit in time to head back to school. Mom and the other kids rented a house in McIntosh for school but I liked the high school at Lemmon better. Lowell had taken a job as a cop in Lemmon and he and Lois offered me a free ride if I wanted to stay with them and go to high school. It didn't take me long to take them up on that offer—in Lemmon, I could play football and run track! Lowell even put in a good word for me at the Main Surplus Store—they needed a part-time helper and I got the job. Mostly I stoked the furnace and emptied ashes and stocked shelves. It was a pretty easy job and I got paid 75 cents an hour so I was like on easy street! The manager always liked to slip to the drug store for coffee and I had to manage the store while he was gone. Most stuff was marked but a few items weren't so he had told me if it wasn't marked that I should just pick a price out the air and if I did, to make sure it was high enough. Well, he was out to coffee and this lady came in and wanted to buy a wool blanket that didn’t have the price marked. I stammered a little, then said that it was $3.79. She took it instantly and left. When the manager got back he said the blanket should have sold for $9.95. I told him he could take the difference
from my wages, but he didn’t, however, we did get prices marked on more items after that. Sometimes I rode around with Lowell in his police car, which brought out a few snide remarks from fellow classmates, but Lowell was about the best friend I ever knew, so I figured they were just envious. Lowell and Lois liked to go dancing, and square dancing was one of their favorites. Many times they would gather at someone's place and usually, Elmo Cain would come and do the calling for the square dance. If they were short one person to make a square, Lois would insist that I fill in, mostly with her partner. I was a bit bashful and wouldn't dance with the older women. At Ken and Esther Elson's place, we danced in one of their granaries but mostly they would just dance in someone's living room. Oscar Wiesinger and his brother Rudy would play and everyone would dance up a storm at those house parties. Oscar played guitar and accordion and Rudy was a fiddler. Guess I would have to credit Lois for teaching me how to dance or maybe making me dance. I was a slow learner, but after a few years, I managed to get the hang of it to some degree. For the most part, high school was fun and easy enough. I wanted to go on to college when I graduated, but I didn't have much money, and my parents needed what they had just to get by. It cost over a $1,000 a year for tuition back in 1961. George Minges had offered to pay my tuition if I would go, but I was too afraid that something might happen. I might flunk out and I would still be short on money for books and clothes and trips back and forth—I was just too scared to try. After high school, I had a few cows with my brother Bob but didn't have enough to make a living with so I went to work out. I had 25 cows that I had been running at Leo Anderson's with his as part of my wages. That worked well for Leo and me too, but another uncle of mine—Uncle Sam—decided that I should come help him a couple of years, so I took my cows over to the home place and left them with Bob while I took care of some American missiles for two years in Germany. A couple of months after I got out of the Army, I had just gone to work for Oscar Wiesinger, when a winter storm hit the area that lasted three days. It
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