Horses on Dad's farm - courting, etc

http://www.medpagetoday.com/AllergyImmunology/Asthma/59504

I know that at one time my father had a team of at least four. I remember seeing a picture but don't have it. I don't know when he got a tractor - hey sister Charlotte up there, can you tell me - but I think it would be about 1943; he got the tractor on the black market during WWII. He started at the farm I was initially raised at about 1922; it would have been sometime after he came back to Nebr. from Enumclaw WA where he was with his brother Ira Baker and their brother Grant Baker was there too, with a friend from Nebraska... Van Housen, Janet??. Huge tree pictures from there; Janet Baker sent me a CD of pictures a few years ago.

Mother Luella Beach was in the Nebraska School of Ag (Agriculture) which sufficed as a high school in those days, I have papers but somewhere around 1920. Her schoolmate was my father's sister Pearl Baker (married Wantz very late in life). Mother and her sister Mabel Beach came home with Pearl sometimes and father took a liking to mother. He had a Model T with a rumble seat, and Mabel would ride back there when he was driving mother. So he got a Model T without a rumble seat.

Married in 1927. A wedding gift was a "Kitchen Queen" cabinet thing. I have one much like it in our kitchen, we eat breakfast on its counter. Susan Wilson you guys had one also didn't you?

My father was born in 1893. I was born late in his life. So I've been thinking - between him and his brothers and what I knew of their life (augmented by lots of media info of the last century), and my own, I am closely aware of a large span of life - history: 123 years, basically.

I don't know about the asthma thing. Maybe. There sure was a lot of irritant from hay dust and from corn shelling and handling.

I know that at one time my father had a team of at least four. I remember seeing a picture but don't have it. I don't know when he got a tractor - hey sister Charlotte up there, can you tell me - but I think it would be about 1943; he got the tractor on the black market during WWII. He started at the farm I was initially raised at about 1922; it would have been sometime after he came back to Nebr. from Enumclaw WA where he was with his brother Ira Baker and their brother Grant Baker was there too, with a friend from Nebraska... Van Housen, Janet??. Huge tree pictures from there; Janet Baker sent me a CD of pictures a few years ago.

Music in Russia, young talent

https://www.facebook.com/InstinctPrimitif/videos/1169103659807504/

thank you Keith. It is incredible. Some are pretty well born with it. And I will take one harp over a dozen organs.... argh!!

Hope you don't mind my adding thoughts.

It makes me think of my trip to Kazan in 1991, a 10 year old girl playing incredible piano to a recital to some 200 people including BBC reporter.

And sitting in a Tatar home entertained by a 10 year old accordion player going through a dozen songs perfectly without music.

One of the most lingering moments in my memory happened then. He played a song that had some sad stains. The interpreter said, "That's a sad song". I asked questions, and she said that was about Tatar migration. Where did they come from? "Balkans". Come to find out, their very origin was Crimea. I believe it was part of one of the tribes (you know....) and I have lingering suspicion of the Gypsies (Rom) origin too.

Janet Baker home

Me to Janet Were you in that house your sister has, with antiques and flowers? In other words was that a family home?

Janet.   If you are talking about her shop, It was the temporary family home, until my dad built the permanent house. It was where I lived until I got married from 1946- 1951/2. . My parents did have a phone like the one shown, but i was talking about the Ira Baker House. When the rural line became ATT we got our own phone.

My father's whistle tune

My father, born in 1893, used to whistle a lively tune. I've been trying to figure out what it was for many years. I have at times mused about what songs my folks grew up with as youth and teens. My mother was born in 1900.
This morning when I woke up, the words "It's a long way to Tipperary" came to my mind. (Why... some understand.)
We used to have an RCA Victor record player, hand crank, in the family home. It's now in the home of my Brother in law in Rocky Ford, in the basement. All kinds of old records on it. Many from John McCormack. Doubtless, this would be one.
It's a WWI song, originated in Ireland before WWI but adopted by the various UK peoples in WWI then WWII as well. Links to some other vintage songs will show on youtube.
My father's whistling was a bit more lively than this, and just the main phrases of the chorus. My father was a much better man than I, and remained upbeat through very heavy burdens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVM-tFAdADg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIRdoREgiH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqeeb6P1j_w

Facing the barrel of a gun.

When I was a kid we gave the crank on the side of the phone (think the antique in our house) and asked the operator to give us so and so, or to connect to so and so in Omaha.

Then when I was a young sailor, and visited Lakeland Fla where my uncle Earl was, I stayed in a hotel. Lakeland had this kind of operation. I got to talking to the young lady who was the operator plugging in the cords, on shift. 

Then when I was a young sailor, and visited Lakeland Fla where my uncle Earl was, I stayed in a hotel. Lakeland had this kind of operation with an operator who took the call when someone rang up and plugged in the cables to make the call go through or connected to another city operator.

I got to talking to the young lady who was the Lakeland operator, on shift.  Proceeded to a date.  I think it was a bowling date.  Later or later day, to her house then walking through a field to a gathering to be at her parent's house about 1/4 mile away.

Ended up facing a revolver in an open field.  There was something very important she had not told me about her status. She had her reasons. She was manipulating her husband into jealousy. I don't know the full deal but he was living nearby, which I hadn't know.

Just in case you wonder:  I was clean in that situation; there was nothing happened that shouldn't.  Looking back, it was funny. She was making sure he could see us together.

That was one instance, and there are many that didn't involve danger to me, that cause me to never lose the fact that some guys who bear guns never forget the power it gives them.  Riding with a guy who was a Shore Patrol, he remarked about some driver, and said he could blow him away. He wouldn't have, but it's the thought that I remark on. Typical of many observations.

A little about my time in Millington, Jeff Birth, Dad died, 1962.

450 Mulberry - location of  MLK Assassination 1968.

That is real close to downtown. When I went to the USO in 1959, it was downtown, within a couple blocks I would say. (My high school grad suit was stolen at that USO.)

When I returned for the training at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in 1962 with Joan my wife then, I dismounted the chariot at a motel on the highway just south of Millington, buddy night, and got a bunch of change to use at the pay phone ( !!! ) to find a house. . (The motel picture Marilyn posted really reminded me of that motel.)

The gathering of the Feds was interesting but I had no idea that was forming a historic moment. I'm pretty sure I was taking Joan for an obgyn appointment.

Then in August of that year, Jim's dad Bob had sent a telegram into the school saying I needed to get home. For lack of money, I hitchhiked homeward. From St Louis West to KC, got a ride with two blacks driving an old ( ! ) Mack truck.

Jim's grandfather, my father, died soon thereafter: Aug 12.

Jeff was born at the Navy hospital in Millington in September.

We bought a Nash Rambler station wagon in Memphis that fall, for travel to the Northwest, because the '57 Plymouth I had bought in Florida in 1961 had electrical problems.

That was a heck of a year.

Then I was at Whidbey Island at the time of the assassination.