From roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Thu Mar 9 17:27:33 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.65.34]) by admin.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k2A0RXjb009345; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 17:27:33 -0700 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l.rootsweb.com [66.43.16.22]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k2A0RWo9019942 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 17:27:32 -0700 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l [127.0.0.1]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id k29LvHFI015584 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:57:17 -0500 Received: (from roots-in@localhost) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.8/Submit) id k29LvHsE015583 for roots-approved@rootsweb.com; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:57:17 -0500 Received: from lists5.rootsweb.com (lists5.rootsweb.com [66.43.27.41]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id k29KNpFI015384 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 15:23:52 -0500 Received: (from slist@localhost) by lists5.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) id k29MrrgS007735 for roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 15:53:53 -0700 X-Envelope-From: paul_odlesr@yahoo.com Thu Mar 9 15:53:52 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.65.34]) by admin.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k29Mrqjb007660 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 15:53:52 -0700 Received: from web60912.mail.yahoo.com (web60912.mail.yahoo.com [209.73.179.1]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with SMTP id k29MrofK023048 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 15:53:51 -0700 Received: (qmail 67928 invoked by uid 60001); 9 Mar 2006 22:53:46 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=FHy2ifBhwxJKNFF2CHV79AbOkN5sUjxeqlLbzENoNIlkxiczlxk0ji/Ti8l3qb1q9i6JhtHFZWcm7yPeJ+3bxIHqHORgVdEA0K4xiQpj6vXIkgEm1+GowUJwYdsdNpfcuEy+v+o3WCH2lcVuzCYnEAdgZ6eFn0BpcmGalQzVDG4= ; Message-ID: <20060309225346.67926.qmail@web60912.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [66.141.90.216] by web60912.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:53:46 PST Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 14:53:46 -0800 (PST) From: Paul Odle To: Roots Webb MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.65.34 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.65.34 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by lists5.rootsweb.com id k29MrrgS007735 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by roots-l.rootsweb.com id k29KNpFI015384 Sender: roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Subject: [ROOTS-L] THE GEORGE BASS RANCH The George Bass Ranch On the 18 Th day of June in the year 1941, my baby brother LARRY JOE ODLE was born in the front bedroom of the O.K. Holliday house on the corner of 7th Street and Oak Street. (Our Grandparents the O.K. Holliday house.) It was not long after my brother LARRY JOE ODLE'S birth, that Albert McGarris and my father JAKE ODLE drove a wheat truck and a pick-up from Yukon, Oklahoma to the Bass Ranch in Belleview, New Mexico for the purpose of moving all our earthly possessions and us to the ranch. It was an exciting trip as my brother Buddy & I traveled from Yukon, Oklahoma to the Bass Ranch just out side of Belleview & Rosedale, New Mexico in the back of the pick-up. There was a mattress and blankets on the floor of the pick-up for us to sit or lie down on. I recall the trip down Route 66, reading Burma Shave signs along the roadside during the day light hours. And when the night came the sky was light up with the stars. My brother and I tried so hard to count the stars in the sky. The narrow road leading into the BASS RANCH was a deep white sandy soil, I remember how different it looked compared to the red clay of the Oklahoma hills that I knew and loved so well. I saw my first cattle guards and electric fences that were charged by batteries. There were no cattle guards or electric fences in Oklahoma in those days. There was no electricity in rural New Mexico in 1941. Rural Oklahoma had electricity. There was one small adobe house on the Bass Ranch where the foreman Albert McGarris and his Irish cook lived. About 200 foot south of the adobe house stood an old grainery that my father converted into our living quarters, he cut an extra door out of the wall and shoved an old canvas covered horse drawn wagon, like you see in the cow boy movies against that opening. The covered wagon at one time was used as a cook’s wagon to feed harvest hands during harvest or on cattle drives. The covered wagon was converted into my brother Buds and My bedroom. There was a coal-burning stove for heating the one room converted lodging. My mother had a kerosene cook stove that cooked many great meals and baked the best home created bread you ever tasted. Mothers once electric motor powered Maytag ringer type wash machine was soon to sport a brand new gasoline powered motor that was started with a foot crank. That was an experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do not known how many times my mother HAZEL HOLLIDAY ODLE had to re-start the washer. My little brother Larry Joe was a newborn and my little brother Jimmie Lee Odle was a year old. Mother would tie me (7 years old) to the rocking chair, placing a baby brother in each arm. I rocked the babies while she did laundry. In New Mexico it snowed all winter and rained all through spring. In the wintertime my brother Bud and I would wake up in our bedroom (the canvas covered wagon with big round wooden wheels.) Our blankets were covered with two foot of snow, but we were warm as toast. We would get out of bed and run knee deep in snow to the one room grain storage wood building that was our house. And warm our selves and get dressed by the old coal burning pot bellied black stove. Whatever side was facing the stove was warm. When it rained the lake just south of our house would flood around the house clear down to the milk barn. My Dad would row a boat to the milk barn. The Bass Ranch was wheat, sorghum, cattle, and hog ranch. The grassland for the cattle had hundreds of prairie dog holes and prairie dogs, and even more rattle snakes. My brother Bud and I would try to catch the prairie dogs and we threw rocks at the rattlesnakes. At that time on the GEORGE BASS RANCH there were 58 head of cattle, one thousand head of Berkshire and Hampshire hogs. The Hog barn was a long building with many birthing stalls that was filled with sows and cute little baby pigs. Each sow had around 13 baby pigs. The pig pin was always a mud hole, where the pigs wallowed in the mud to cool off. Bud and I use to love to get on the backs of the big bore pigs and ride them like horses. There were two horses and a colt on the ranch. There was also a very mean bull that my brother and I loved to tease. We would run for our lives toward the fence and climb over it just in the neck of time. The Milk barn had a room with a cream separator in one corner. It separated the cream from the milk. The ranch sold cream and fed the milk to the pigs, after we got what we needed. Bud and I loved to catch the warm milk in a tin cup and drink it. Across this room from the Cream separator were two cement square vats containing the coldest spring water you ever drank. One vat stored big metal cream cans filled with cream, waiting to be picked up by a dairy. We also kept perishable food in that vat as there were no icebox in the house and refrigerators for homes had not come into being. Nor electricity in the country. Mom would set home churned butter in the window sell to keep cold in the winter. That summer I learned to drive the 1942 red formal tractor, and I learned to plow in a straight row. My father was so proud of me. I loved the smell of the fresh plowed ground. We had kerosene lamps for lights; mother ironed her clothes with sad irons that were heated on the kerosene cook stove. At bedtime my mother heated bricks on the stovetop and wrapped them in newspaper and placed them at the foot of the bed, for us to warm our feet. There was a big metal machine shed that on one side housed two tractors a new red formal and an old John Deer, a wheat truck and a pick-up. The other side was grain bins where wheat was store. There was ladders built on the sides of the machine shed, that Bud and I loved to climb up high to where the pigeons nested, we would fill our pockets with eggs from the nest. We tried to climb down with out breaking the eggs. IT NEVER HAPPENED!!! It was fun living on the Bass Ranch. There was a shale road that separated the tiny towns of Rosedale, New Mexico and Belleview, New Mexico. The filling station (GASOLINE) and Grocery store was on the east side of the road in Rosedale the three room school house was on the west side of the road in Belleview. Yes we had boys and girls out house at school. The schoolrooms were heated by coal burning stoves. A new modern brick school house with a cafeteria, electric lights, and indoor flush toilets. Every Saturday ALBERT MCGARRIS and My dad would go to the little store for supplies. They always drove the wheat truck. If Bud and I got to go with them, we had to ride in back of the wheat truck. We always had two big metal Barrels that had to be filled up with gasoline. My folks bought 4 pound buckets of Syrup, Honey & peanut Butter. They saved the empty cans to can salt and sugar cured pork. Albert always bought us a sack of candy. He would un-load the sack of candy last. We were taught not to ask for things. So we just had to be patient. I use to hate to take those peanut butter and honey sandwiches made on homemade bread or pot ham sandwiches. Those rich city kids brought lunchmeat and cheese sandwiches to school. Sometimes we traded sandwiches. The Country kids had paper sacks for lunch pails. The city kids had shiny metal store bought lunch pails. We had one electric radio, living in the country with no electricity, so on Sunday night we would go to Albert and Georges house and listen to our favorite programs on his battery powered radio. "FIBBER MCGEE and MOLLY, " THE PHIL HARRIS SHOW," and "JACK BENNY," were some of my favorite radio shows. I guess when we lived on the Bass Ranch was one of the best times my little brother Bud and I had playing together. Years later after we were grown, he was killed in a car wreck at the age of 32. I still miss him. The City children would go across the street to the little store and buy candy and come back to school and share their candy. I always wanted to be able to do the same thing. But I knew my folks barely had money for necessities. We did not ask our folks for money back then, we knew they did not have it to give. One time I told a little white lie with hopes to getting a dollar bill. I told my mother that Mrs. McCain, our teacher’s birthday was the next day and we were supposed to bring her a present. My mother had a box of fancy ladies handkerchiefs that she thought was too nice to use. She also had a box of assorted greeting cards. She got out a birthday card and put this prized Handkerchief in the card with the teachers name on the card. I did not know what to do. My candy fund was still zilch, and I had one of my mothers prize possessions. So I gave it to the teacher and told her it was my birthday and I wanted to give her something. I felt safe in doing this as my mothe! r had never met my teacher and had no way of transportation to go to school things. Wrong! The neighbor lady on the next ranch was the PTA President. She was always trying to get mom to go with her to PTA. My mom would always say she couldn’t go because her hair needs a prem. So Flossy Hubbard told my mother if she would go with her to PTA meeting, she would give her a home perm the day before. Wouldn’t you know mom went with Flossy to PTA and she met my teacher Mrs. McCain. Mrs. McCain told mother how thoughtful she thought I was for bringing her a present on my birthday. My Butt is still red over the blistering I received for that tall tale. One Sunday night we were over to Albert and Georges home listening to the battery powered radio. The news was on and World War 11 was going on at this time; and they were talking about Japanese aircraft being shot down. I was 8 years old and I did not know anything about the war. The next day I went to school telling about a Japanese airplane flying over the Bass Ranch and said my father shot it down with a shotgun!! That story spread like wildfire! ! Well when my dad got through re-arranging my imagination with his double edge razor strap I never told a war story again. I decide early in life those Jap’s could fly over some one else ranch. My mother and Albert McGaris went half’s on 200-baby Rhode Island Red chicken. My dad dug down three foot deep in the ground and about four-foot wide and 25 foot long, and built a broader house out of wood covered with tar paper. This structure was about two foot above ground and was heated by Kerosene lamps. We moved from the Bass Ranch after my dad and Albert the foreman got into an altercation over a cigarette my dad had me holding for him, while he climbed back up on the combine. Albert thought the cigarette was dangerous in a Childs hand in the middle of a wheat field. So he took the cigarette from me and put it out. My dad was hot tempered. We moved to Clovis, New Mexico, with mothers 100 chickens. By Paul L.Odle, Sr. Lawton/Fort Sill Veterans Center P.O. Box 849 Lawton, Oklahoma 73502 1-580-354-3287 or 1-580-512-4767 Paul_OdleSr@yahoo.com --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail makes sharing a breeze.