PAST BUSINESS IN HARMON COUNTY, OK

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"PAST BUSINESS of Harmon County, OK"
A project of the Harmon County Historical Museum

Young Dairy Farm


By Mickie Young Hicks

My parents, Homer and Verna Young came to Harmon County as very small children. George and Hattie Daggs Young moved from Gunter, Texas, a small town in Grayson County. Their Texas neighbors, the Kuykendalls and Brashers followed soon after. Mother and her three siblings were orphaned at about the same time and were raised by relatives; Mother and her brother lived with their grandparents, the Brashers.

My mother and father grew up on farms a short distance from the LaCasa school. Dad attended college for a year and made the decision to return to Harmon County, and become a farmer, and get married, in that order.

The first Young Dairy Farm was located inside Hollis township at the west end of Vivian Street on land belonging to Ernest Hickerson, Sr. In November of 1929, Dad, Mother, and my five-year-old brother were living in the newly decorated farmhouse. Wicker furniture was the rage and Mother had bought new living room pieces. They had papered the entire house and installed a new kitchen stove.

My mother�s morning routine consisted of first heating the oven for baking biscuits, then she went out to the bottle house and started washing milk bottles. The morning delivery was made only to the commercial customers�grocery stores, and restaurants. Individual residents had their milk placed on their steps in the evening. Whipping cream and butter were also offered.

Sticking to her routine, Mother lit the new cook stove, of which she was so proud, and made her way to the milk house. She could hear Dad talking to the cows over the sounds of his radio. Dad always claimed that the radio calmed the cows and therefore they gave more milk. It was a cold November morning and she had dressed warmly. A wool sweater and woolen knee socks. As she resolutely washed milk bottle after milk bottle, she heard unfamiliar noises. She turned and saw a bright orange light. The house was on fire!

Mother panicked. There was only one thought in her mind. The safety of my brother Raymond Darrell. She didn�t consider going around to the front door. She put her hands on the glowing red hot kitchen door knob and walked through the house. After this, the stories vary. Raymond Darrell escaped on his own; the house exploded and Mother was blown outside on the gravel. Someone had called the Hollis Volunteer Fire Department. Dad was concerned they would drive over her and moved her. Raymond D. was picked up by a neighbor coming to fight the fire.

Mother spent months in the Hollis Hospital attended by Dr. Hopkins. Both hands had to have fingers amputated. Her throat was burned through. Her face was left severely scarred. And psychologically she was scarred forever.

The house was rebuilt. Dad had carried on the business of running the dairy and seeing to mother at the same time. He hired a full-time housekeeper when he brought her home. But nothing would ever be the same again.

The location for the dairy was moved to the old Jim Cunningham place due east of Hollis, just west of the Tom Cunningham place. At that time Highway 62 was still unpaved. Later, the operation was moved a mile south of Kirby Corner, just north of the Sandy Creek bridge, on the west side of the road to land owned by a Castleman.

In 1937, Sandy Creek claimed a wide swath of the farm land. She took back her sands whenever she wanted. I think I may be safe in saying I was one of few who traveled north on the road to Kirby Corner in a boat. In the middle of the night. My uncle, Chester Young, was staying with us at the time and owned a boat. I was carried to the boat right off of the porch and we headed north.

Sandy wasn�t always so greedy. I can remember �going fishin�� with my brother and Arlis Motley. We sat under old cottonwood trees munching on Van Camp�s Pork and Beans and crackers. Now, that was fun! Who cared about fish? I was allowed to be in the company of a much older crowd

Before Randall was born in 1938, we moved to the old Gib Moore place about a quarter of a mile south of Sandy on the west side of the road. The house was up on a hill and the barn was farther up on a higher hill. The barn was much nicer than the house. I guess that was okay. The Youngs spent more time in the barn than they did in the house anyway.

We had a blizzard in April of 1938. Dad always named his cows and �Coffee� disappeared during the blizzard to drop her calves. Twins! I can still see Dad and Raymond D. struggling up the hill, a calf in each of their arms. Old Coffee would first butt one then the other, all the while bellowing her head off. Twins! And I was allowed to name them. I don�t know if I ever remembered to tell the Hollis twins, Hixie and Dixie, of this great honor I bestowed upon them.

First a blizzard, then a plague of locusts (grasshoppers). The honeysuckle vine on the front of the house survived the blizzard but not the grasshoppers. Those grasshoppers had that honeysuckle for breakfast, lunch and supper. Plumb killed it!

The south wind blew and cooked us in the summer. We didn�t have electricity until the REA came in. (1938 or 1939?) No electric fans. Just the free ones the drugstores gave away with advertisements on them. A wet feed sack cup towel draped over the screen door offered some relief. Each day Dad picked up blocks of ice for the long tank in the barn in which we placed the milk cans. We defended ourselves against the swarms of flies with swatters. The cows did the same thing with their tails. And they weren�t careful who they hit in the face.

The north wind took its same toll on us. Unrelenting cold. Our little house with the half moon in the door had a clean-out opening on the north side. I can�t begin to tell you how that would speed up the day�s business. Dad and Raymond D. kept their heads warm by leaning into the cow�s side. At least, in the winter, our ice bill for chilling the milk was minimal.

There is nothing glamorous about farming. Any kind of farming. Dairy farming included. It is plain old hard work. One disaster after another. Months without rain. No pasture for grazing. Hauling bundles of maize to feed the cows. Not enough wind to turn the windmill. Too much wind. Too much rain. The barnyard becomes a loblolly of you name it. We had a dirt road to town. One lane at times. Whoever got his wheels into the ruts had the right of way.

How my Dad survived and why he kept trying is a mystery to me. The fire that so devastated my Mother took the same toll on him. He worked to pay the bills. There�s no telling how many years it took him to clear out the doctor and hospital bills. The reason he and Mother chose dairy farming was that they could work together. Well, they got that wish. Work was what it was. Lots of it. My parents worked hard and they expected their kids to do the same. Raymond D. worked as hard as any grown man until he joined the Army Air Force.

Would I choose the same life for my children? You bet your life I wouldn�t. But how can I explain to them the softness of a new born calf? The joy of finding a litter of newborn kittens in the barn? They will probably never smell newly mown alfalfa. There�s no way to explain the soothing smell of the cotton seed mill in the fall. Almost good enough to eat. In fact, I did. How do I explain making ice-cream on the front porch, using nearly 100 percent cream? Hearing a cow moo brings back only pleasant memories. I still like to look at a pretty cow. Now, I know I�ve fallen off the truck.

World War II virtually killed the dairy farm. My dad went to work as a carpenter helping build defense plants in Amarillo, Childress, Sunray, and Altus. The Kraft Cheese Plant came to town. We no longer delivered milk to the front doors of houses in town. I no longer had to ride on the running board of that old red Ford panel truck and take off at a run. No longer had to worry �bout Pekinese dogs biting me. For a time during the War Mom managed to get the milk to the Kraft plant with little help from me I�m sure. Dad sold the entire herd at the same time and after WWII became a full-time carpenter. I�ve tried to paint a picture of how life was lived in the southwest during the thirties and forties. It was a hard life, but we were all the better for it. We didn�t give up. We hung in there. We learned good life values. You can�t beat that for a good education.

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Read the original HOMER R YOUNG article on page 431 "Planning Route 2" Harmon County History Book II �Copyright 1987 by Harmon County Historical History Book Committee, Edith Carter - Chairman

SEE on Display at the Harmon County Historical Museum
photographs and tools from early days in Harmon County

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