THE OLD GRAY GOOSE
In An Earlier Post I Mentioned the Goose Nest

When we moved to Grandpa Easley's place at the end of January 1941, there was evidence of geese, though I don't remember seeing geese.  I know that geese go way back in the history of the family.  On the Easley side, there had to be geese, because I found that goose nest in the milk barn.  And I know the Luker side had geese because  Granny and her just older brother, Uncle Tom, were responsible to drive the geese through the peanut fields in north central Texas.  The geese's jobs were to eat the grass seeds off the grass heads.  As "little granny and little Uncle Tom" followed the geese along, the geese talked:  quack, quack, "you take this one and I'll take that one."  Weed control was their job.  They also served as "watch dogs."  Goose feathers was one of the ways people had good pillows and mattresses.  I think they used straw, cotton or wool as well.

Aunt Thelma's gaggle looked like the goose we had on Grandpa's place.  On the internet I found this information about  "Domestic geese in America generally came from German language countries.  They were bred mainly for meat, eggs, and fattened for liver (foie gras).  These were descended from Greylag geese (Anser anser)."  But the picture I saw seemed a bit different from our geese.

I asked Aunt Thelma once what kind our geese were.  I thought she called them "Tulaps", and she said they were French.  So that part fits better with the information about "the Toulouse breed which originated near Toulouse, France."
They were said to be "ponderous in appearance and to have large dewlaps {flaps of skin hanging under the jaw.)"

It could be that I misunderstood her to say 'Tulap' when she meant to say dewlap.  They were gray like a picture of them.   The picture shows them with the "dewlap," but I don't remember those.  The article said they didn't need a pond. And that certainly was my observation.  It mentioned they would enjoy bathing and playing in water.  Since we seldom had rain, I never saw that trait in action.  It did say they preferred "to stay close to home and made them ideal for large gardens or orchards."  I concur with that idea, except our orchard was so far over in the far side of the fields, the geese never went that there.  It is my belief that they were descended from those "Toulouse, first recorded in 1555."  "Lord Darby first brought them into the United Kingdom in 1840."  Use your imagine to figure how they might have come to America.

I don't remember our geese looking exactly like this one, which I copied from the internet, but I do think it is awfully close.
  

A tufted Toulouse

So far as I remember, we never butchered a goose or used their eggs.  But of course we had only  that one of gander.  Aunt Thelma was the only one with a gaggle of 10 or 12.  They all wondered around together between her house and the barns and chicken house out back.  When we played at their house, we often met the geese.  They always stuck out their necks and hissed.  We weren't afraid of them, but we moved on one direction and they went the other.  The only real problem I had, was over many years I had recurring dreams  about those geese hissing and then their necks turned into rattlesnakes and came after me.  THAT WAS A PROBLEM!!!

I don't know how many times the family gathered at Thelma and Dillon's house to pick feathers.  People who are serious about it start checking the geese about the middle of April.  When you pluck a feather off the breast and it doesn't have a bloody tail, it's time to pick.  And then ever 6 weeks until the last picking in September.  The time I remember, women and kids were all in the chicken house with all the geese.  Each person had a goose under his left arm with a sock over the goose head.  Geese have 3 weapons of warfare:  claws on their feet, wings for beating you, and a beak for biting anything you get in their way.  We held them under our left arm, their wings tight against our body and their head turned back under our armpit.  With the right hand we picked breast feathers and put them into a paper bag.

People probably have not had paper bags all that long, but I think probably as long as time has been, folks must have been picking feathers off fowls for use in pillows and mattresses.  I have no idea how many feathers a goose will yield in a season, nor how many is required to fill a pillow or a mattress.  Mother sometimes kept the smaller feathers off chickens, when she was cleaning them.  I think feather cleaning must be a real science.

Now back to the River Farm.  We never named the old gander.  Since there were no other geese, the ole fellow got himself a girl-friend.  We had an old brown brindled milk cow, that had some how got crippled.  She couldn't keep up with the other cows when they went out to pasture.  The gander took up with her.  At night in the cow lot, when the cow lay down, the goose hunted her up and squated beside her head.  It was so funny.  There was the old cow, dozing away, and the gander muttering beside her until they both fell asleep.

In the morning, after milking when the cows went out to pasture, the goose waddled along with old brindle.  Probably not every morning, but often, about 10 or 10:30 a.m. from the south pasture there arose such a clatter, we rushed out the door to see what was the matter.  Honking and squawking the old gander appeared in the sky.  He circled the dairy barn a time or two, getting lower with each twist around as he got lower and lower.  He had never learned how to land.  So finally he just ran into the hillside and then the feathers flew.  And the old gander quacked and shouted that he had returned safely home!

Every year the Church Easter Egg Hunt was in Thelma and Dillon's pasture to the west of their barns.  The "prize egg" was one Thelma had decorated and donated to the Saturday hunt.  One year Aunt Thelma gave us one of her hens.  Gander appeared to totally ignore her.  But when her nest of 6 or 8 goslings hatched, he was all "Daddy/"  He proudly quacked along with her and them for several weeks.  But by the time their yellow down had turned gray, he lost interest and hunted up the cow.

For several summers, during really dry weather, Daddy rented cow pasture 8 or 10 miles to the northeast of our place.  We drove all the dry stock 4 miles north of the farm to the east-west road from Dillon's farm to Hi Point Church.  We turned them toward the Church.  At the end of that section, we turned them north again at least 3 or 4 more miles, toward Creta.  When we were in front of Mr. Yeats place we put them in a pasture west, across the road from his mail box.

When autumn came we rode the horses over and brought all the cattle back home.  In about an hour after they were all back in our cow lot, old gander was quacking away right beside the brindle cow.

What Do You Do With A Leap Year?

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A LEAP YEAR?

            What do Leap Years have to do with us?   One Hundred years ago, 1912, was a Leap Year and a year of weddings.   Seventy-six years ago, 1936, was also a Leap Year and a year of weddings. 

            Granny and Papa, Frank and Kate Easley, were married January 12, 1912 in Texas.   Mother-Shumaker and Grand-daddy, Earnest and Liffa Shumaker, were married September 21, 1912 in Texas.  Neither couple knew the other at that time.  Both couples moved to rural Eldorado, Jackson County, Oklahoma.  There they met and two of each couples children were married in 1936.

            There was a tradition that in Leap Years women could propose to men for marriage.   I don’t know if that’s really true or why, or why couldn’t a woman propose to her man any year?   Anyway………

            Aunt Thelma and Uncle Dillon were married January 4, 1936 and Mother and Daddy were married December 19, 1936.  Mother said that Aunt Thelma thought it was funny that she got her man early in the year and it took Mother almost to the years end before she got her’s.    

            Hope I didn’t waste your time, but just thought you might like that little dab of family trivia on this 29^th Day of February, 2012!   

           O my goodness!!!  Here it is almost a whole year  later.   I apologize.  I do hope my failure to send this out when I first wrote it won't warp your sense of time in the universe: nano-seconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, scores of years, centuries, myriads of myriads, thousands of tbousands and eons upon eons.                  Please do have the greatest year yet!!!

BEES AND HONEY

Daddy built a bee hive for inside the living room.

Bees and honey were a great, welcome part of our Easley family. Papa had several hives in a row under a large, low, spreading mesquite tree at the entrance of their driveway. I think all the other family members had at lest one hive, maybe a few hives. At least once a year toward fall, we all gathered in Granny and Papa's cement house for the great honey harvest. The men with hats veiled in net all around and tied at the neck, wearing long sleeved shirts and thick gloves, carried bee smokers stuffed with smoldering cotton rag. The bellows on the can kept a supply of smoke ready to drive away the angry bees.

The women and children were set up in the cement house with the extractor, pans, jars, knives, and lots of hot water.  Some cut the caps off the frames.  They were then put inside the extractor.  It could hold 6 or 8 frames.  One of the boys usually turned the crank to spin the honey out of the frames.  The frames were then turned around and spun to extract the honey from the other side.  These empty frames were returned to the men, who later returned them to the hives.  As the extracted honey accumulated in the bottom of the extractor, the women drained the fresh new honey into jars.  The girls helped with cleaning the jars and screwing on the lids.

The caps from the frames were cut off with sharp butcher knives which were kept hot, by dipping them in pans of hot water.  Honey caps were wonderful for eating as the day progressed.  We were all warned, continuously, don't eat too much new honey!  "It can make you sick.  If you ever get sick, eating too much new honey, you may never want to eat any honey again!"  Some of the older folks could testify to that fact.  I don't remember any of us younger folks falling for that mistake.

Lots of honey was extracted each season.  But I don't remember hearing how many jars or gallons may have been taken.

Papa and his sons all read and studied the science of bee culture.  There were excellent books in the family for anyone interested to study.  Papa said, "every person should eat one teaspoon of honey each day."  A pitcher of honey, or syrup was on every dining table of the family.  I don't remember any of the family making syrup in those early days.  But Daddy raised sugar cane and made syrup in later years after they moved to eastern Oklahoma or northwest Arkansas.

One year when we still lived on the River Farm in Grandpa Easley's old house, Daddy made a bee hive for us to watch and study inside the living room.  He built a framework to hold a single bee frame from a hive.  It was enclosed in glass sides.  There were cardboard covers to slide over the glass.  He had drilled a hole through the wall about 5 feet above the living room floor.  A 3/4 inch wide pipe was fitted into the frame work that held the bee frame.  It extended out through the house wall.  So the bees could pass from the outside through the wall into their mini-hive inside our living room.  Because bees generally work in darkness, we only lifted the cardboard sides when we wanted to learn how the bees worked, how they made new sells for new queens, and the royal jelly they fed the newly hatching queens.  The experiment didn't last very long.  I think two frames might have been better, though we couldn't have observed what was going on in the middle.  With the single frame, I think there were not enough bees to raise a strong brood.

You might be interested in asking Ray how to heal wounds with honey!

THE RIVER FARM

Mysteries continue to rise up, out of the sandhills, from the sagebrush and the grassburrs. Even the goatheads may be butting together.

Where is the boundary line: at the fence, on the river bank, in the middle of the river or on the other side of the river?

Where does Oklahoma end and Texas meet? How many acres were there / are there in Grandpa's 320 acre farm?

When I first became aware of this question, the SunRay (?) Oil Company came asking to sign a five or ten year contract with Mother and Daddy for the right to possibly someday drill for oil on the farm. I believe they paid fifty cents an acre per year. The payment included acreage beyond our south fence, out into the river. That extra half dollar for those extra few acres made a huge difference in the annual income of the farm. But I'm not sure how far that went. The oil company never came to drill.

In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson tried to buy the City of New Orleans from Napoleon, but the deal fell through. Spain had ruled Louisianna from 1799 - 1803. The final transfer of the Louisianna Colony was made from Spain to France on November 30, 1803. The next day France was to transfer the Louisianna Purchase to the United States, but the sale was not confirmed until December 20, 20 days later.

The United States purchased Louisianna for $11,250,000 and assumed claims of its own citizens against France up to $3,750,000, for a total purchase price of $15 million on December 20, 1803. On that day the United States took formal possession of the full Territory of Louisianna in St. Louis three months later, but its boundaries were vaguely defined, when France handed over the rights to the upper Louisianna Territory.

Various boundary disputes have continued since that time. The Red River as the border between New Spain and Louisianna Territory had areas of dispute. Finally it was Oklahoma and
Texas. For instance, after 200 years the United States Congress, in the year 2000, finalized (hopefully) the line between the those states where it runs through Lake Texhoma. The lake spans the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma. The south vegitarian bank of the river is the dividing line. So I don't know if the 320 acres of Grandpa Easley's farm are all inside his fences, or if some of those acres lay outside the south fence in the river, or if the acres in the river to the south of the fence are additional acreage.

I do know the south bank of the river is slowly moving north. Papa told me when they moved to Oklahoma Territory, the river was three miles wide. When we were growing up, it was about a half mile wide. Now days it is much more narrow than that.

I'M BACK

Hello All, I returned safely last night. I seem to still be very sleepy. I don't feel so tired, just sleepy. So I'll just let you know, I'm back. I'm doing well. The trip was oh, so good! Lydia sang so very, very well. We should all be so totally proud. We flew from Bergamo, Italy, about 2 hours for Gabriel to drive us on Thursday morning, Feb. 5th. We flew on RyanAir. The oneway tickets for each of us, each way, were 5 euros. We landed at Breman, Germany. We had a little time to walk around seeing sights and having lunch. We visited an old Lutheran Church. A branze statue of the Musicians of Breman, were near the entrance. We went from there by train to Bremerhaven, Germany. Lydia sang Friday night in the beautiful opera house. I better tell you more later when I'm more alert. I've been wondering lately, what a lert is? Where do lerts live? What do lerts eat? Much Love and Many Prayers! Carlton!

OUT OF BOUNDS

Hello One and All,

This is not a memory. It is a future event. I suppose several of you know that I'm in Italy with Lydia, Gabriel and their girls. Lydia and I will be flying, the Lord willing, tomorrow morning to Bremerhaven, Germany, where she will be singing in an opera Friday night.

We won't have computers with us. So I won't be blogging. I hope you all keep well. I'll sign in again sometime next week, the Lord willing. We are scheduled back on Monday night and I'm flying out from Torino, Tuesday morning.

If you really need me, call or e-mail Joanna. She will have Gabriel get word to Lydia, probably by phone. What an amazing age. Pray for us. Pray for Lydia's throat.

Love and Prayers,

Carlton Easley

SISTERS TO THE RESCUE!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Donnie and Pallie!

pse said:

I remember hearing one time when in the feed bin part of the barn that it was one time Grandma's "old" house. Do you think they first built and lived in those two rooms before adding on to it?

Well, thanks Pallie! I never thought of their building those two rooms first. They did have to build something first. I'm willing to accept the possibility. All I do know, it was always said they built the house in 1900. I just thought that meant the whole thing. And I remember Daddy telling who lived in those rooms (I thought it meant when he was growing up and / or even later). I believe he mentioned Uncle Melburn and his family.

Uncle Melburn and Aunt (I think her name was) Minnie were at the barn choring one morning. Their daughter was in the house. I believe she was 12 years old. She was trying to get the wood stove started. Whatever she had started kept going out, so she poured in a splash of kerosene. There must have been smoldering embers from the night before, because it exploded and she caught fire. She died from the burns and was buried in the beginnings of a small family cemetery in the pasture south of the house about a quarter mile. She and another young boy cousin, son of Uncle Zeb, who died from dephtheria were latter moved to the Odema Cemetery. Their bodies were moved after we moved to the farm. Uncle Lawton recently told Keith that soon after he helped with moving those bodies, Edwin got sick with diphtheria.

All of that to say, I don't know were Uncle Melburn was living when that tragedy happened. I'm thinking they may have been living in those two rooms, rather that the main house.

Thanks, I appreciate your raising the questions. This project has sure stimulated my brain. I wish I would have asked more questions of more people. And I wish I would have written down what I might have learned.

Donnie said:

This weekend I was reading in one of the Family Chronicles, Volumes 8-9, Feb. 1997, page 80.
Mother wrote, Our Life Story, Part 1.
Papa, Gordon,Lawton Easley and Dillon Shumaker had formed the Shumaker Easley Company. (She didn't say what year), but in 1936 Daddy, Gordon and Lawton were batching and taking care of the 650 head of sheep at a camp about a mile of so from where Granddaddy and MotherShumaker lived. They lived in an old abandoned house. Lawton took care of the sheep the day Mother and Daddy got married, Dec. 19, 1936 and a few days afterward until the new Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Easley arranged to go the the sheep camp. The sheep went to market in April, 1937.
The big blizzard came April 8, 1938
The next time she told about being in the tent at the sheep camp was January and February of 1940 they had bought 900 head of sheep and had them on pasture near Duke, Ok. So Daddy, Carlton and I lived in the tent and camp to care for them. It was cold, cold those days, but nice and warm in the tent. We had snow during that time and lost several head of sheep. I should ask Carlton how much of those days he remembers.
January 31,1941 we moved out of the little two-room house to the Easley farm on Red River. How pleased we were to have a large three-room house with a side room.
Our Life Story, Part 2 is on page 113
How interesting your memories are. Maybe some of these dates will help with the timeline of some of the stories.

Let me make a few comments here:

A few weeks ago I was talking to Uncle Elbert about the sheep range era. He first told about that old house. And I remember Mother saying there were goats living there. I've written about that before. I didn't know, but Elbert said there were 200 sheep. I don't remember hearing about 650 sheep.

That blizzard in April 1938 may have been the one where Daddy got stuck in the road by our mail box, and later that evening was walking to Shumaker's. I would have been little less than 4 months old at that time.

Uncle Elbert didn't remember so much about the sheep range, where we lived in the tent. I think that was because he was already in or about to go to college at OCU in Oklahoma City. I do remember hearing there were 600 sheep. I don't remember any thing about 900 sheep. I remember Daddy's story about the snow storms, the sheep being hungry and the weather finally cleared one morning. He opened the sheep pen and they rushed out into the pasture. Almost immediately the weather turned bad again.

He saddled the horse and began trying to bring them back. It was an impossible job. Finally he roped one sheep at the time and tied it onto the horse. At one point he led the horse into the pen and untied 20 sheep from hanging onto the horse. I don't remember hearing how many died, but I do know they lost a lot of them to that storm. He unsaddled the horse and closed up for the night after the moon rose about 10:00 that night.

So we were supposed to go take care of Grand Pa by January 1, 1941. But due to his dying "prematuraly" we relaxed (?) and made the move January 31.

Ca n you imagine trying to write a history about Homer's eating habits, or Chief Joseph's views on space travel?