SpoCon 2011: Meandering ... Part One

SpoCon 2011:

Meandering Through Spokane’s Home Grown

Science Fiction

&

Fantasy Convention

by

Wally Lee Parker

(all rights to this material retained by the author)

Part One

“Its heart is in the right place — even if all its ducks aren’t in the water”

            During the Comic Con held at Spokane Community College this spring, we picked up a small glossy card advertising SpoCon — described as being “Spokane’s Local Sci-fi/Fantasy Convention”.  We considered this promo-card just another mild curiosity — just another one of the gazillion little freebees found at the comic convention.  And that was it — right up until the wife noticed that the promo-card listed author Patricia Briggs as the convention’s “Guest of Honor”, and that Dan Dos Santos — the illustrator responsible for all the covers for Patricia’s bestselling “Mercy Thompson” urban fantasy series — was listed as “Guest Artist”.

            No turning back now.

            My wife — another Patricia — is a voracious reader of most anything to do with vampires, werewolves, and the like.  She immediately fell in love with the Mercy Thompson character.  The fact that Mercy’s adventures take place in the Tri-Cities area of southeastern Washington State, not that many miles from our Spokane home, only adds to the allure.  And the idea that my wife might finally get to meet one of her favorite writers sent me searching the internet for SpoCon references — as well as questioning everyone I know as to what they might know about past incarnations of SpoCon.

            The Spokane sci-fi and gaming convention appears to largely be a local fanboy (and fangirl) endeavor — although there are doubtless some regional and national organizations involved as well.  That’s just to say that in appearance this seems a fan-based, shoestring operation aimed primarily at gamers; meaning a local event not pretending to aspire to the level of such as Seattle’s Emerald City, and more attuned to those that enjoy one to one combat across the top of a gaming table.  That lack of pretense is good, since taking on airs tend to suffocate the spontaneity of home-grown events.

            And after all the disparaging remarks about former SpoCons were shuffled through, even the convention’s critics felt the really important thing was that Spokane was at least trying to have a convention of its own.  Those critics may not think it worth the $35 weekend pass, but the idea still seems something worth trying.

            Let me reiterate that the lack of polish associated with SpoCon is not necessarily a bad thing.  As with any non-professional production, there’s a learning curve involved.  Over time problems do get sorted and things do get better — as long as everyone is willing to learn.  The first part of leaning is to take a cleansing breath, pull in the defensive hackles that tend to plug the ears to even creative criticism, and take a realistic look around.  Then go with your strengths.

            I was raised in the Clayton/Deer Park area north of Spokane.  My original idea of a parade float was a flatbed trailer being pulled by an Oliver or Ford-Ferguson tractor.  Cardboard and crepe paper may not be as sophisticated as one-hundred thousand fresh cut roses, but when one of the princesses on the float is your eldest sister, that’s worth more than all the roses imaginable to a six year old.  Just like giant fairs and giant parades, what the giant conventions are likely to lack is that down-home sense of community.

            On occasion I’ve heard Spokane referred to as an overgrown cow-town.  Well, not so much since we lost the stockyards and the attending aroma.  Still, what people seem to be thinking is that the city lacks that sophisticated edge — though I suspect the town more than makes up for any such shortcomings by its abundance of backdoor economic swindles and overt political shenanigans.  Kind of like our super-sophisticated congress.  If one were to revisit the cow metaphor you might say; if Spokane were a pie, it would consist of a topping of pretentious, well-greased bible-belt gentry crusted over a sour redneck filling.  Again — kind of like congress. 

            I do worry that the rednecks might rightly consider such a close association with Spokane’s gentry — or even worse, congress — an insult.  So let me clarify that I agree with comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s stipulation that the term “redneck” means little more than an individual or group possessing “a glorious lack of sophistication.”  Most rednecks I know are more than willing to accept that assessment as it is intended — a non-critical observation of the obvious.  The rednecks that give pause are the ones that fail to see themselves as other might — which means those that fail to see themselves with any degree of humor.

            It reminds me of one such redneck who was more than willing to punch me out because I suggested Dolly Parton had had a boob job.  Assuming that’s the standard, it’s a sorrowful day for the now soiled virtue of southern women.  After all, Dolly settled the question herself when she said, and I quote, “I’ve had a boob job.”  For those of us who understand that feminine virtue is found in the heart, not in the stifling corset of society’s apologetic myth of femininity (a dichotomy resulting when the object of such ornate chivalry is otherwise reduced to a state of second-class citizenship), Dolly — a humanitarian of considerable reputation — remains a first-class southern belle despite any surgical augmentation such a hard-headed business woman might need to titillate the fantasies of the more emotionally stunted members of her male fan base.

            And let me add — as a card-carrying member of the working-class — that it’s amazing how many carousing, drunken defenders of womanhood have no problem going home and beating their wives to a pulp — if so inclined.  Which indicates that the above described example of Dollywood chivalry is just one of those boastful little fantasies one often hears loudly expounded to the nearest available barmaid.

            In the final analysis, once you wash away the unique colloquialisms, rednecks are just working class people with mannerisms rooted to the rural.  I know that as a fact because my own people were farmers from the Ozarks, and our family history is well peppered with anecdotes from the War of Northern Aggression and the Great Okie Migrations told in a brogue that others consider “quaint” — if you get my drift.

            Being considered quaint — which usually settles out as being considered backward — does on occasion hurt.

            My mother, orphaned at an early age, only had a second grade education.  Coupling that with the residual of her Okie brogue, it always bothered her that others might think her backward.  On the other hand, she was smart enough to try to teach us that people needed to be judged on things other than the airs they assume.  Her answer was always, “What’s important is the difference ‘tween how they treat you when everyone’s lookin’ and how they treat you when no one’s lookin’.”  So when one of my sisters — worried that her own kids might pick up some of Mom’s uneducated Okie brogue — suggested Mom take a speech class, Mom lit up like a Roman candle.  “I taught you better!”

            As for other examples of our redneck lack of sophistication, I recall the time one of my plumper aunts told my mother, “Hon, I found the best diet.  I can eat anything I want as long as I take two tablespoons of Epsom salts in a glass of water right after.”

            My mom came back with, “That’s a laxative!  You’re just shooting your food through before it has any time to digest!”

            “Yeah, I know,” my aunt replied.  “Ain’t it wonderful?”

            Likewise, if your expectation of sci-fi fandom includes a similar inherent lack of sophistication — sophistication in this case being defined as a notable dearth of commercial polish — then you’re well on your way to being able to integrate into the gentile joke called fandom.

            Being a retired person who spends a fair amount of money on comic books, I’ll most certainly allow you to become as incensed as you wish at my discloser that fandom is a gentle joke.  I’m going to allow you to become incensed because I spent the majority of my working life around pain.  I’ve waded through human blood, vomit, spittle, feces, and tissue.  I’ve seen both the best and the worst of humanity and I want to tell you sincerely, if it wasn’t for all the misery, life would be quite nice.  Fandom is escape.  Fandom is a fantasy — and as such it’s a joke.  And it’s also a blessing.  The insanity of fandom, oddly enough, can become a quiet pool of sanity if one doesn’t become too enraptured.  The fans I enjoy being around are the ones that are in on the joke.  No matter how serious they seem to be, they understand that fandom is just a diversion.  As for being around the others — as for being around those taking their entertainment with such a grim seriousness that they’d throw down the gauntlet at something as benign as a suggestion Wonder Woman might have augmented boobs — there’s not so much joy in being around those kinds of people, and apparently not all that much joy for them in being around themselves either.

            That’s just to say that the gentleman willing to punch me out in defense of his Dolly Parton fantasy was likely not one of life’s happier campers — as is most any sci-fi/fantasy fan that has lost his or her sense of humor to the dark side. 

            But then, we all have our off days.  Whenever I find myself become more insufferable than even I can stand, I just recall one of dozens of little incidents I’ve been witness to that tend to draw life into perspective — incidents such as the morning I received a call from a nurse on the surgical unit.  She was rattled.  “Wally, everybody else up here is busy.  This isn’t something I can ask housekeeping to help me with, but I can’t do it myself.  Please.”

            She warned me, but it was still too much to take in.  The patient had set himself up on the side of the bed, legs dangling, for breakfast.  His breakfast tray was setting on his over-bed table.  The nurse had pulled the table away when she charged into the room at the screams of the room’s other patient.  The deceased was still sitting, but slumped against the bed’s headboard.  All this was shielded from the hallway by a curtain — all this was shielded except for the large smear of blood on the floor.

            Death was pretty obvious.  There’s nothing like it.  The color was a wash to near cinematic black and white — overcoated with that odd kind of blue we’d see in the cathode glow of early television screens.  It’s unique in that there’s a waxy translucence to human skin that makes real death hard to emulate with makeup.  And there’s a droop to the face.  All the little ticks and tremors and tensions are gone.  People like to say it’s a look of peace, but what’s really left is perhaps better described as a soul-deep weary.

            And the cause of death?  Well, there’s blood everywhere.

            This not-all-that-old man had an “inoperable” esophageal aneurism.  A weakness in the wall of his body’s massive central artery was ballooning out against and into his esophagus — where the rubbing caused by the act of swallowing was slowly eroding through the patient’s thinning artery.  The artery would eventually rupture.  And everyone — including the patient — knew that when the ballooning artery finally broke, blood would gush up his throat and out of his mouth.  Unconsciousness would follow in seconds.  And death from exsanguination shortly thereafter.

            The patient had been sitting on the side of the bed, just starting his breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice.  Perhaps not the best diet for someone with an esophageal aneurism — but what the hell.

            “When I got in the room the only thing I could think of was that the patient would drown in all that blood,” the nurse related.  “I was ready to run for a suction kit when it struck me that any kind of intervention was ridiculous.  Thankfully he was unconscious.  The blood flow was already slowed to near nothing.  And there was nothing to do but let the process finish itself.”

            There’s a reason “and never do harm to anyone” is a clause within the Hippocratic Oath.  Sometimes doing anything will in fact do nothing but harm.  Death isn’t always an enemy.  But for most nurses it takes special training to be able to accept that.  It’s not in their nature.  And watching people die in endless repetition wears away something — especially when you know that dying is for the best.  Still, it tends to breaks something deep inside the care giver.  Those who work with the dying can sometimes become callous to it all, but more than likely they break themselves into alternate selves — the clinician and the other.  And you learn to read those who have two such souls.  There’s a subtlety and sadness etched into the face.  There’s an odd, deliberate grace to their movements.  Perhaps most evident in the oncology nurses — the cancer nurses.  Soldiers who have seen too much often have that same look, that same not-quite-in-phase distractedness.

              All that was left for us on that long ago morning was the cleaning process — somewhat helped by the blood’s congealed state.  Perhaps the worst part was pulling the jellified mass of blood and scrambled eggs out of the patient’s mouth.  And then cleaning a pint or two of the same off his breakfast tray.  And all this time wondering how much awareness there was for the patient in those last few seconds?  Was it surprise, panic, pain, terror, or just curiosity at where all that blood was coming from?  Or maybe just an overwhelming sense of sadness?

            Having lived with so much death, having held a fair number of hands as life left the body, having stood by helplessly time and again as decades memory storied in the organic wetware of the brain dissipates in those first few minutes after death, I’ve grown a bit weary myself.  Too weary to tolerate making something seem far more important than it is.

            Which would beg the question; when an order of importance is placed on all the possible choices that arise between birth and death, what’s the proper place for fandom?  It’s not something like your native intelligence, your sexual orientation, skin color, or your grandmother’s criminal record; you know — the things you really don’t have that much choice in.  Fandom is something you become a part of because you want to.  To me, an angry, obnoxious, overtly serious fan is someone obviously in the wrong pew.

            As for the apparent lack of sophistication at most fan events, maybe what’s really needed here is a clearer definition of the term sophistication.  To me there’s nothing more sophisticated than common sense.  It reminds me of a little piece of advice I once read in Playboy magazine.

            Let me preface this by saying that among those generally classified as neo-conservatives, Playboy is perhaps the most hated corporation in America (and hating corporations is a hard swallow for neo-conservatives considering the compromising positions most are willing to assume in their corporate relationships).  In fact, it may be that Playboy is the only corporation neo-conservatives hate more than the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  And the reason is found in the articles the neo-conservatives don’t want you reading.  (Yes, I’m implying that objecting to the photographs is just a smoke screen.)  Their real objection has to do with the fact that Playboy has long been a fairly effective proponent of integration, women’s right, gay rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, a sense of journalistic responsibility to the Bill of Rights (though I do disagree with Playboy’s stance on the Second Amendment) and the welfare of the Republic, and most every other of the rights and moral imperatives that tend to piss neo-conservatives off.  Attacking Playboy feeds into that sadomasochistic right-wing fantasy of breaking all dissidents to their righteous will — kind of like what the Jesuits attempted during the Inquisition.  After all, both groups — the neo-conservatives and the Order of Jesuits — have at one time or another come out in favor of “interrogatorio mejorado del agua” — which translates out as “water enhanced interrogation.”  And both groups have traditionally had a remarkable percentage of their membership engaged in closeted and often bazaar sexual activities — most often in direct opposition to their avowed beliefs and carefully staged public personas.

            But I digress.

            I believe it was back in the late 1960s that a man wrote to the Playboy Advisor asking something to this effect.  “I was sitting at a bar when another gentleman approached and started to chat.  It took me awhile to realize I was being propositioned.  At first I was mad.  I had no idea what I had done that would make him think I was that way.  Finally I just waved him away and left the bar.”

            The writer went on, “I’ve asked several of my colleagues how I should have handled something like that, and the usual response was that I should have beat the propositioner to a pulp.  There’s got to be a better answer.”

            The Playboy Advisor replied, “Try doing what sophisticated women do when confronted with an unsolicited proposition.  Look the gentleman in the eye and say, ‘I’m not interested.’  If it needs to be taken any further than that, rest assured you’ve already done the proper thing, and however uncomfortable things get from there on out is totally up to the other.”

            And that leads me to believe that one of the indicators of sophistication is a measured response that makes sense.

            This brings me around to an opinion of SpoCon from someone who has seen a lot of conventions.  Mike Briggs freely admits that he is the voice behind his wife’s website.  Writing best-selling urban fantasy takes such a large part of Patricia Briggs’ time, she can’t do the website justice.  So Mike takes on that duty — along with a lot of the more mundane nuisances involved when it comes to Pat’s convention appearances.  Regarding SpoCon, Mike wrote, “It’s young and they’re struggling a little with finding the perfect facilities for a growing convention, but the leadership is superb.”  Since Mike has been dealing directly with SpoCon’s leadership, he should know.

            I’ve attended two conventions now, Mike Briggs has attended dozens.  If he is essentially saying that SpoCon has its heart is in the right place — even if all its ducks aren’t in the water — I’ll go with that.  At least SpoCon is still small enough to have a heart.

            One suggestion I have for the SpoCon group is to apply a bit more expository chat to their website.  People are constantly asking why they can’t buy day-passes at reduced prices as opposed to a three day membership.  The closest I got to an explanation was that it had to do with licenses and taxes.  Selling only three day memberships allowed the group to maintain its status as a convention.  If the group sold day-passes, such would move them into the ‘event’ category and require a whole new set of overlying licenses and taxes.  Simply said, the group can’t afford to sell day passes.

            Another little problem with the website; I followed a link to pre-registering and found a form I was supposed to fill out and mail.  I began the process of filling the material out and noticed that the place indicated for the convention on the form was different than the Doubletree Hotel as mentioned on the website.  Closer investigation indicated that I had been directed to last year’s pre-registration form — which means I would have been sending in too little money for a no longer existent event.  That was a bit confusing.        I sent an email to one of the contacts mention on the website and was sent a link to the proper page.  For next year, a cleaner path to pre-registering would be appreciated.

            Very much a plus was that we were able to do everything online, including paying with PayPal.  It always makes me more comfortable to not have to send a credit card number to an essentially unknown entity — and a few otherwise reputable companies and groups have lost my business simply because they don’t offer that service.

            I promptly received a confirmation notice by email.  Since I sent our order in late May, by the beginning of August I was getting a bit concerned.  Though I’d gotten a confirmation, I had not received any explanation on when I was going to receive the passes themselves.  When August arrived but no passes, I sent to following to the website.

            “I’m more than a little fuzzy on how all this works.  I’ve ordered two of the 1 x 3 Day Adult Badges from the SpoCon store and apparently, as a result, have been listed on the SpoCon website as a member of the “Inland Northern Science Fiction & Fantasy Gaming Association” for the last five weeks and two days.  What has not been made clear — at least I’ve been unable to find any clarification of this on your website — is what happens now.  Our confirmation email included details regarding our badge numbers and such — but I’ve no idea if these IDs are going to be mailed to us, if these are to be picked up at the hotel on the first day of the convention, or what.  I’d be grateful for a little guidance on all this.”

            In short order I received this reply from “Carol”.  “The badges and your packets will be waiting for you at the registration table in the pre-registration section. I look forward to seeing you.”

            That most certainly did help, but being old and easily confused, I still had to write one more note to the website.

            “I seem to be finding all kinds of little problems as I try to wade through all the stuff on the SpoCon website.  The latest issue involves signing up for the various events using the website system.  The wife and I have registered to stay at the Doubletree during the convention, and I want to make sure we’re both able to take advantage of everything offered.  The wife is especially looking forward to meeting Patricia Briggs.  Our immediate problem is how to get signed up for the events we want to attend using the system provided on the website.  I’m assuming the system is considered intuitive by the organizers because little guidance is provided, but I certainly can’t make sense of it.” 

            Within a few hours I received this in reply.

            “I’m sorry for the confusion.  The website system is somewhat new and not ideal by any means.  All you’re doing when you sign up for an event on the website is create a printable schedule intended for your personal use.  Events at the Con itself are offered on a first come bases with no sign-up needed.  If it’s likely to be a popular event — the Masquerade, Steampunk Spectacular, and other large events — arrive a bit early. 

            “As for Patty Briggs, I am very confident you will get to meet Patty at some point over the weekend.  She is very public and very approachable.

            “If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.”

            So — the website is confusing, but the people with the answers are readily accessible.  This is good.

… to be continued …

Jump to Part #2 of SpoCon 2011.

Jump to Part #3 of SpoCon 2011.

Jump to Part #4 of SpoCon 2011.

Email comments, concerns, corrections, and additional data to bogwenreportonline@gmail.com.

Stepping to the Side: A Dynamite Primer

Stepping to the Side: A Dynamite Primer

by

Wally Lee Parker

— previously published in —

 Reports to the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society — 2005

Deer Park Tribune — September 28, 2005

Nostalgia Magazine — January, 2009

© Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society — 2005

(used by permission)

For those unfamiliar with the area, the Little Spokane River drainage basin is a fair size valley north of the city of Spokane.  The farmlands on the basin floor were deposited when a series of glacial floods backwashed into the valley and the suspended silts, sands, gravels, and ice borne erratics settled from the rushing water as it slowed.  Those deposits were augmented by loess blown in by the massive dust storms rising during times of glacial drought — the same storms that left behind the incredibly rich soils of southeastern Washington’s famous Palouse.  Particularly benefiting from that accumulated glacial dust, Williams Valley is one of a north/south trending set of rural communities nestle in the shadows of the Five Sisters – the mountains rising to form the western wall of the Little Spokane basin.  And the small town of Deer Park is the dominant incorporated community within the northern reach of this larger, south draining valley.

               Looking over the green and quiet farms of Williams Valley in the nineteen fifties, most city people wouldn’t believe anything more dangerous than an occasional ornery farmer lurked there.  But on closer inspection you’d find mowing machines, thrashing machines and hay rakes, all with churning knives and spikes. You’d find gears with chewing teeth, and chains with snapping blades.  There would be top-heavy tractors, with all kinds of exposed belts, levers, and hydraulic cylinders.  Odd mixtures of moisture and electricity, from milking machines to irrigation pumps.  Poisonous powders and granules with similar root names — pesticide, fungicide, herbicide, insecticide — most as yet undiscovered carcinogenic agents.  You’d find flammable fluids in a multitude of unmarked containers.  And you might even find an ancient box of dynamite or two.

               Although such lethal tools surrounded farm kids, the majority of us survived.  One reason, besides luck, was that we were taught to handle these things.  Curiosity satisfied, the tools quickly passed from being scary novelties to being just more grungy work.

               I was about eleven or twelve when my dad, Owen Lee Parker, was getting ready to remove some stubborn stumps and figured it was time I learned how to work with dynamite.

Owen Lee Parker

(1958)

               There was part of an old box in the barn.  But Dad figured the stock on hand was just too old, since the sticks had swollen to the point that the wrappers had peeled open and the contents crumbled out.  Then too, there was that white, mildew-like powder covering everything.

               So off we went to Deer Park, four miles to the east.

               There may have been something to sign.  Dad was always going on about the growing clutter of regulations.  “It’s getting as bad as Russia,” he would say.  I don’t know what the regulations were back then.  But what I do remember was him walking out of Deer Park’s Weber’s Hardware with a box of dynamite — about fifty pounds I think — dropping it in the back of the old half-ton, and me, with eyes wide, watching the box thump around the Chevy’s bed as we drove home over the sandy washboard of Bittrick-Antler Road.

               Once home, Dad fired up the old Ford tractor.  He threw the dynamite on the hay trailer, along with a dynamite auger and a wooden box with some special tools, and we went bouncing across the fields and through the woods to the back of the farm.

               Clearing land was endless work.  Attack the trees with chainsaw and axe.  Hire Bob Koehler and his crawler tractor to push the stumps and slash into windrows for burning.  For those stumps too big for Bob’s crawler, out came the dynamite.

               It was hard enough with all these tools.  Clearing land before they came into use — clearing land with mule teams in harness, with block and tackle, with a hand full of shovel handle or axe — now that must have been absolute misery!

               Somewhere in the reading room at Spokane’s Museum of Arts and Culture is a particular pioneer recollection.  Just a few dozen pages of manuscript stapled between colored construction paper covers.  All I can remember of the document’s title is the word ‘Prairie’ — as in Half Moon or Wild Rose.  Impressed from typewriter cut stencils, the pages of this recollection mentioned a method of removing stumps employed by the area’s pioneers.

               They would pile slash over the stump and set it afire.  When the blaze had burned well into the wood, they smothered the fire beneath shovels of dirt.  They would mound the dirt up over the stump to cut the wood and fire away from air.  And there, under the earth, the embers would slowly gnaw away the remains of the stump — eating its way along the roots — till only ash was left.

               One wonders how many such fires escaped into the standing timber.  Surely not that many, since most of the timber once standing in the stretch between Mount Spokane in the east and the Five Sisters in the west was fed into lumber mills, not fires.

               With dynamite, it was best to blast in the wetness of spring.  If the ground wasn’t damp, there was always a chance the explosion would just blow the dirt away, leaving the stump firmly anchored by its roots.  The heavier the surrounding earth, the more likely everything would rise in mass.

               While Dad used the auger to angle a two inch diameter hole a good six or so feet under the stumps, he set me to crimping blasting caps to thirty second lengths of fuse.

               The cap was a small, thin wall metal cylinder — maybe an inch and a half long and a quarter inch in diameter — with one open end.  At the bottom of the closed end was a small charge of pyrotechnic powder.  Slide the fuse down the open end, then crimp the metal down tight around it.  In effect, you were making a firecracker.  When the fire carried in by the fuse ignited the pyrotechnic charge, the trapped combustion gasses had nowhere to go, so the entire cap blew apart.  The shock wave from that explosion was what detonated the dynamite.

               Although pyrotechnic caps weren’t particularly sensitive to proper crimping, years of warnings about blasting caps made me turn my head every time the crimping tool crushed down on cap and fuse.  I guess I figured it was better to lose an ear than an eye.

               I would grit my teeth as Dad used his pocket knife to cut into the side of an inch and a quarter thick by eight inch long stick of dynamite, push the fused cap into the cut, then bind stick, cap, and fuse with a couple of spirals of black friction tape.

               Besides the fused stick, I can’t recall how many more sticks, on average, went under any given stump, though six to ten sounds about right.

               With only the fuse exposed, Dad would tamp the auger hole full of dirt and send me back a couple of hundred feet to wait in the tree-line.  Then he’d light the fuse and come running.

               The explosion was something felt more than heard.  It came through you.  A hard thump in the chest.  And then a fountain of dirt and wood shot skyward.

               Out of the top of that fountain would fly black chunks of stump, some weighing a couple of hundred pounds.  As they sprayed in every direction, Dad would yell, “Heads up!  Heads up!  You can’t see ‘em coming if you’re watching the ground.”  Then, “If a chunk is coming at you, move left or right.  It’s easy to step out of the way, but hard to outrun.”

               As a reminder of how powerful those waxy red sticks were, for long seconds after the blast, unseen things rattled down into the trees behind us.

               The explosive ingredient in dynamite is nitroglycerin.  First produced in 1846, this colorless, oily liquid is still one of the most powerful chemical explosives known.  When detonated, the liquid almost instantaneously turns into a gas, expanding to what, at normal atmospheric pressure, would be twelve hundred times its original volume.  In the liquid to gas conversion process, the chemical flashes to nine thousand degrees Fahrenheit, cooling as it expands.  The gas pressure at conversion is equivalent to twenty thousand atmospheres, with the initial shock wave moving outward at seventeen thousand miles an hour.

               And all that is required to begin this liquid to gas conversion is a physical shock — sometimes not even that.

               In 1867, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel discovered that this hypersensitivity to shock could be reduced by mixing three parts nitroglycerin with one part diatomaceous earth, and a dash of sodium carbonate.  Formed into sticks and wrapped in waxed paper, this became dynamite.  Later on, other binders besides diatomaceous earth were used — wood pulp for example.

               Two major problems are associated with dynamite.  First, as the sticks age, they tend to weep pure nitro — the chemical tends to migrate out of the binder and form droplets on the surface of the waxed paper.  Secondly, with prolonged handling the chemical can move through the user’s skin and act as a vasodilator, inducing headaches, heart arrhythmias, or worse.

               John Weber, whose family owned Deer Park’s Weber’s Hardware, said, “What we sold was called 40 percent stumping powder.  It wasn’t as high grade an explosive as pure dynamite.  And I don’t believe we sold it out of the store.  In fact, I don’t think we kept any in town.  We kept a few boxes in various places outside of town — on farms and such.  So, while I wouldn’t say your dad didn’t pick a box up at the store, it would seem unlikely.”

               “If someone ordered quite a few cases, we’d have those delivered to them directly out of Spokane.  Otherwise we’d pick a case from our stock and deliver it ourselves.”

               “Another thing, over winter we didn’t want any extra stock on hand.  If that stuff froze, the nitro would weep out of the sticks.  And that wasn’t good.”

               Area resident and longtime short-hall truck drive Fay Reilly remembers it a different way.  “I delivered to Weber’s Hardware for many years, and we unloaded dynamite right along with the paint, nails, and other items.

               “In early spring the store’s owner, Gene Weber, would begin taking pre-orders for dynamite.  When the railroad car carrying those orders arrived, he or one of his employees would call the customers and ask them to come and take delivery of their dynamite at the railroad siding in Deer Park … directly off the car.

               “At other times of the year, Oriard Powder Company would deliver cases of dynamite to our Spokane freight dock, and that evening I’d haul it out to Weber’s in my truck.  We’d let the truck sit on the street overnight, and unload into the store the next morning.

               “When I was still in school I recall my dad picking dynamite up at Weber’s store.  They may have had storage sites outside of town, but I can’t recall going anywhere except the store itself.”

               DuPont manufactured ‘Special Gelatin’ in strengths from twenty to eighty percent.  This was dynamite with a portion of nitroglycerin replaced by ammonium nitrate.  These sticks had a somewhat lower detonation velocity, but were also less sensitive to shock and friction.  ‘Stumping powder’ would be a good name for this farmer friendly form of dynamite.

               All this aside, working with the chemical was both fascinating and scary.

               Bill Sebright, retired Deer Park School District teacher and current president of the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society, recalls, “My dad unfolded the paper on one end of the dynamite.  He pushed a pointed stick into the explosive, making a hole for the cap.  Then he folded the paper back down around the fuse, pushing it tight with the butt of his pocket knife.”

Chester "Red" Sebright

(1960)

               “He’d prepare a row of stumps — long fuse in the first of them, then progressively shorter down the line.  Then he’d run from stump to stump, starting with the longest fuse, and set them all off.

               “Dad would always make a spitter — that was a fuse the same length as the first and longest actual fuse, with a notch cut every inch so sparks would spit from the fuse as it burned.  He’d light his spitter at the same time he set fire to the longest fuse. Then he’d carry the spitter with him as he ran from stump to stump, just to make sure he was out of range before the explosions began.

               “Dad never kept dynamite around the farm.  He’d put any extra sticks under the last stump he intended to blow — just to get rid of it.  But he did keep the extra caps in a tin placed high on a shelf in the granary.  We all knew they were there, but never messed with them.”

               There were rumors about recreational uses for dynamite.  Some told of depth-charging catfish or sending outhouses flying over the county line.  But Larry Lewis assured us that a story told about his dad, Hays Lewis, was true.

               “Every Fourth of July,” Larry said, “at about ten o’clock in the evening, Dad would take two sticks of fused dynamite and walk down the county road near our Big Foot Valley home.  That double boom the neighbors heard was his celebration of Independence Day.”

               Even then, safety was always an issue.

               Harold Klawunder, now in his mid-nineties, recollects, “My dad was a powder monkey in the clay pits at the old Clayton brick plant.  He’d set dynamite charges to loosen the clay for digging.  He’d blast stumps on our farm too — setting off four or five at a time.  I never cared to mess with the stuff myself.

               “Now Ben Renner — used to be brick plant superintendent — I heard tell his dad was killed by dynamite.”

               Ben Renner’s daughter, Karen Meyer of the Loon Lake Historical Society, sent a clipping from the June 18, 1936, issue of the Deer Park Union, describing her grandfather’s accident.

               The surprisingly graphic article states that Michael Renner, working on his farm about five miles north of Deer Park, was killed instantly when fifteen sticks of dynamite he was preparing to place under a stump exploded.  Michael’s son Gustave was working about one hundred feet away.  When he reached his father, he found “his hands, feet, and head badly torn and mutilated, and his clothing afire”.

               The article goes on to explain how Mister Renner, a former hard-rock miner, had a long history of working with explosives, and was known to be extremely careful.  The reason for the explosion was never determined.

               A while after my own stump blasting experience, Dad decided to throw away the box of dynamite that had been moldering in the barn — a decision based on the growing number of city raised grandkids prowling over the farm.  He threw what was left on the hay trailer and drove to a slash windrow on the back acreage.  There, he tossed the box in to burn.

               Dad was telling a neighbor about getting rid of that last box.  The neighbor said, “You know Owen, I can see how you would figure dynamite in that condition had lost its punch.  But the fact is, that whitish mold looking stuff was the nitroglycerin moving out of solution.  If old dynamite is in the mood, it’ll explode at the slightest jar — or maybe just a change in temperature.  It’ll burn fine, that’s no problem.  But you and your old Ford tractor could have easily ended up being scattered all around the edges of your farm.”

               Dad just sat quiet for a bit, chewing on his pipe.

Email comments, concerns, corrections, and additional data to bogwenreportonline@gmail.com.

Other Family History Stories

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Caught by an Oklahoma Tornado

My mother (Lillie Enkey-Parker), eldest sister (Wanda Joyce Parker-Vaughn), and one of my uncles on my father’s side (Jim Parker), recalled a series of incidents that occurred during the early to mid-years of World War II.  At that time the Owen Parker family consisted of Dad and Mom — Owen and Lillie — and my three sisters; Wanda, Faril, and Lillie Mae.  Extracted from a number of tape-recorded interviews, I’ve attempted to string these recollections into sensible order.  A few artifacts — such as the beginning of W.W.II, the date on the back of a photograph, and the postmarks on several cards — are all the known documentable pivots I have to string a time-line around.  And rather than trying to combine these into a unified narrative, I’ll let each of the tellers outline their bits of story in turn.

The Owen and Lillie (Enkey) Parker family. This photo was taken in Visalia, California, about December of 1940. From the left, Lillie, Lillie Mae, Faril, Owen, and Wanda.

Caught by an Oklahoma Tornado

A Story From

The Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter

— told by —

Lillie Ada Enkey-Parker

Wanda Joyce Parker

James (Jim) Grady Parker

— written by —

Wally Lee Parker

(1940 — 1943)

Lillie:

            “We tried to return to Oklahoma twice.  I think the first time was December of 1940 or early in 1941.  That trip we pulled a little house trailer — the first house trailer Owen ever built.  We stopped to stay with Owen’s brother Buster and Buster’s wife Bertha at Summerton, Arizona, for a while.  For some reason we didn’t get any further that first trip, returning to the folk’s place in California — where we’d been living in the milk-house of the place Owen’s dad and mom were renting near Visalia.
            “Owen had been thinking we should go back to Oklahoma to get into farming.  When we’d left Oklahoma in December of 1933, a lot of people were share-cropping — they’d move onto a farm, raise crops, and pay for the use of the farm by giving a portion of the crop to the land owner.  But things had changed.  You had to put down money for this and that before you could take on a farm.  We didn’t have that kind of money, so that didn’t work out.  Still, that was our thinking when we started out.
            “Before we left that first time we’d gone into Tulare to do some window shopping and Owen saw this little hooded jumper on a doll in the window display of a ‘Five and Dime’.  He said, ‘That’s just what we need for the baby’ — the baby being Lillie Mae.  The lady in the store said that she’d just put the suit on the doll — dressing up the window for the holidays — and it was the only suit like that she had.  Dad told her how we were moving to Oklahoma, and how cold it was over there in the winter.  Finally the lady relented and took the jumper off the doll.  I don’t know what we paid.  Since we didn’t have much money, it couldn’t have been much.
            “Sometime in ‘41 Owen sold the trailer house to his brother Jim and Jim’s wife Juanita.  When we left for Oklahoma the second time — that would have been in late November or just the start of December — we had a small utility trailer with all our stuff piled on it.
            “On the road we got so tired we decided we’d find a place along the road to sleep.  Owen kept driving, and driving, ‘til finally he said, ‘There’s a little town just up here.  We’ll drive through and then find a place to camp.’
            “It was dark.  All we could tell was that there didn’t seem to be anyone around.  We pulled over where we could get off the road a bit — a clear spot — threw our bedding down on the ground beside the trailer, and strung a tarp out from the side of the trailer to give us some cover.
            “Come light we woke and saw teepees and Indians all around.  We’d camped on a reservation.  It scared me — I thought they might get mad.  But they just stood and looked at us while we packed up and took off.
            “When we got into Oklahoma City — at a gas station or some such — the guy saw the California plates on our car and said, ‘Are you running home from the war?’
            “Owen asked, ‘What war?’
            “And that’s when we learned about Pearl Harbor.
            “When we first got to Haskell, Oklahoma, we stopped at the Martin family farm — the family my sister Mabel had married into.  I got my one complete year of grade school when I was staying with the Martin family after the folks had died.  When Owen, me, and the girls got there, old man Martin said, ‘I got a little house on the farm here.  When I heard you was coming I told the people living there that they’d have to find a new house ‘cause some of my kids was coming home and I needed that place for them.’
            “My sister Mabel and her husband Kelly lived about a mile down the road.
              All three rooms sat in a line.  The center room had a big chimney set into the wall between the rooms.  Then a third room had been added for a kitchen.  The kitchen was just big enough for a stove, table, and some shelves.  We put a bed in each of the other rooms — and Lillie Mae’s crib in one.
            “The kitchen stove was natural gas — four burners with the oven set off to the side.   
            “One of my sisters gave me a sewing machine.  Different ones would give us a chair, table — this and that.  Back then, you took what people was willing to give you and made do with it.  So we got moved in.
            “It was winter, just before Christmas.  Owen was anxious about not having work and looking to keep busy.  About the only tools he had was his hammer, a square, hand saw, plane, and level.  He decided to make me a dresser for our room, so he went out and found some lumber.
            “He asked, “How many drawers do you want?’
            “I told him I wanted two long drawers at the bottom, little one on each side, and I wanted the dresser standing high enough that the little ones can’t get stuff off the top.
            “As he finished each board, he took it over to the kitchen stove, turned up one of the burners, and moved the wood over the flames so a pattern of scorch marks was left on the surface.  When he varnished over that, it was just the prettiest thing you ever saw.
            “For the top of the dresser Owen had hand cut a board into a scallop shape — that board was grooved to hold a big, round mirror.
            “That first year back in Oklahoma we had Christmas dinner at my brother Earl’s house at Tahlequah.  My sister Renee and her husband John were living with Earl at that time.  Our oldest brother, Claude, and his family came over.  So we all had Christmas together.
            “That spring, at the little house on the Martin’s farm, I put in a garden.  We got some pigs we fed all the table scraps to, and some chickens to raise and sell.  And my brother, Oscar, gave me a heifer.
            “My sister Mabel was milking about twelve cows by hand, so Owen would go over to their farm and help her.  I’d go over and separate the milk, then wash down the separator.
            “Mabel had a big, mean rooster running loose on the farm.  Every time it’d catch someone in the yard, as soon as you’d turn your back, it’d run and jump on you.  We had to watch the little kids because the thing would jump the small ones without any warning.  One day that thing jumped right in Lillie Mae’s face — she was only about two years old at the time — and caught her cheek with its spurs.  That tore her skin pretty bad.  Mabel got so mad she just run out, grabbed that rooster around the neck, yanked it into the air and wrung its body around and around her fist until the rooster was limp.  Then she dressed it out and put it in the pressure cooker.  At supper she gave Lillie Mae one of the legs and said, ‘Here honey, bite this thing just as hard as you can.’
            “Mabel’s house, like a lot of the houses around Haskell, was built over a crawl space.  People would store jars of fruit under the houses.  When they needed some, they’d have the kids crawl back to get a few jars.
            “All the kids liked to get in the crawl space, just playing around.  My sister Julie had a little boy just older than Lillie Mae — LaMone.  They were under the house when Lillie Mae started screaming.  We got her out of there and looked her all over for cuts or bites.  What we found was a perfect set of teeth marks on her rump.
            “We asked LaMone what happened.  He said they were crawling between the rows of jars and he wanted to be in front.  ‘So I bit her like this’, he said — and bit her again.   
            “Owen was always looking for work.  It may have been late in 1942 when he found work in Muskogee.  He worked as a helper with the plumbers and electricians building Camp Goober for the Army.  He had a room at one of his uncle's in Muskogee.  He’d come back to Haskell on weekends.”

Wanda: 

            “I’m trying to remember how the place we were living in on the Martin farm was situated direction wise — which windows the sunlight might be falling through, or which way shadows might be falling at different times of day.  But nothing comes to mind.
            “There was a pond on one side of the house — the downhill side toward Mabel and Kelly’s place.  It was a creek during the winter and a pond in the spring, and then it dried up in the summer.  The pond was full of turtles, and when it dried up, seems like the cows would walk across the bright green grass and their hooves would sink into the boggy ground — then the prints would fill with water and you could find a turtle in most every hole.  And there was a wire fence between the pond and the house to keep the cows out of the yard.

            “The garden was on the other side of the house — the side going uphill toward the elder Martin’s place.  I remember — though I can’t say if it was the first or second summer we was there — when the ‘measure worms’ took the corn.  The worms was so thick we even had them crawling into the house.  We carried tubs of stuff out of our garden — trying to can the stuff up before the worms ate it all.
            “Between the garden and the house was the barn — post and beam construction.  Post buried in the ground.  Beside the barn was the little chicken house.
            “Sometime before all this we’d gone over to Haskell — maybe Haskell — to pick up a bunch of baby chickens.  We pulled up next to a train depot.  Maybe a train depot — there were railroad tracks nearby anyway.  And the car caught on fire.  So we were scooping up handfuls of dirt and throwing them on the motor.
            “And it seems to me that something at some point killed most of the baby chicks.  I don’t know if it was disease, or weasels, or the tornado.  I don’t even know if the tornado was the same year.  But I do know that most of the chickens we had when the tornado hit didn’t survive.  And most of the chickens we pick up that day the car caught on fire didn’t survive.  So I’m thinking the two were related. 
            “The farmhouse was long — two or three rooms all in a line with the kitchen, as I remember, farthest from the road.  The front door was on the end of the house closest to the road.  I can’t remember there being a window on that wall.  Doubtless there was a back door leading out from the kitchen — I just can’t quite see it in my mind.
            “There was a stove in the kitchen of course.  Gas stove.  Propane or natural gas, I don’t know which.  It doesn’t seem like there was a fireplace in the house — just the chimney.  For heat we had a little gas burner — light it and it’d go whoosh.  And once it got started it’d glow red inside.
            “We’d use water out of the rain barrel to wash our hair.  I was using that room heater to dry my hair when my hair caught on fire.  Mom run over with a towel to put it out.  So I remember that heater all right.
            “There was a window on the barn side of the house — kind of in the middle of the wall.  The big bed was sitting under that window when the tornado hit.  And Lillie Mae was asleep on the bed.
            “As was usual in them days, Mom had all her preserves, her jars of canning, in boxes under the bed.
            ‘There was another window on the other side of the house — the creek side.  I remember that ‘cause somebody tried to steal Dad’s billfold through that window.
            “That was quite a few days before the tornado.  The folks’ bed was on the other side of the room then — close to the window on the creek side.
            “Daddy always had a habit of putting his billfold under the corner of the mattress ‘fore they went to sleep.  A good part of the year they kept the windows open.  Just a screen.
            ‘Well, one morning they found these big footprints outside that window.  They figured somebody had reached through the window after that billfold, but didn’t find it.  Somebody who knowed about Dad’s habit.  Mom had her suspicions — though she didn’t tell me who.  Some of our shirt-tail relatives I’m thinking.
            “I’m sure we had chamber pots to use at night, and I’m sure there was an outhouse somewhere around the place — I just can’t remember where.
            “Now the driveway came straight in from the road and stopped by the front door.  There wasn’t much of a drive as I recall.  Dad was working all week someplace else, and he’d come home just on weekends.  This weekend he brought one of his aunts with him.”

Jim Parker:

            “Owen was working at Briggs, Oklahoma, on some government project.  He’d come home to Haskell on Saturdays.  I remember Owen telling how he had seen the storm gathering and could tell it was gonna be a bad one, so he was hurrying.  I don’t recall him ever saying he knowed that what was coming was a tornado.  And I don’t recall him ever saying one of our aunts was with him, but, since Owen was staying with our uncle Grover and Grove’s wife Nettie, my guess would be that if he had someone with him, it was Aunt Nettie.

Wanda:

            “Daddy parked in the driveway and came in the house with his aunt.  As I recall dad and mom was on the other side of the little room — sitting, and me and Faril was standing ‘side our great aunt.  And Lillie Mae was asleep on the big bed under the window.  All of a sudden the wind hit and the front door flew open.  Snapped open.  And I looked out and seen it coming down the slope — down the hill.  Not a real steep hill either. 
            “I was trying to say something, but I didn’t know how to describe what I was seeing.  But Daddy saw me, and I guess he could tell how scared I was.  I think we were the only ones who actually saw it coming.
            “As best I can recall what I saw was this rolling white mass — not real white, but a kind of grayish white — and it was right down on the ground on its side rolling.
            “Daddy run to the door and shut it — used one of them slide bolts to lock it.  And Mom run over to grab Lillie Mae off the bed.
            “When it hit, the house went to rocking — floor tilting up and down, side to side.  The bed was scooting away from the wall then back again.  All Mom’s boxes of fruit came sliding out from under the bed — then went sliding back under.  The bed would slide, and then here would come the fruit.  The bed would slam back, and there would go the fruit.  They done that, it seems, ‘bout three times.  And all the time, Lillie Mae still asleep on the bed.
            “And the window over the bed blew out.  And there was glass all around — from the window, from the jars, from a glass ashtray, I don’t know.

Lillie:

            “Most of them bed-frames back then was metal — was curved pipe.  And the legs had them little rollers on the bottom so you could scoot them around over the plank floors.  Not that the rollers ever worked all that good, but that’s why the bed moved around so much.
            “I never did get to Lillie Mae till the tornado had moved passed us — till the house had stopped rocking.  I was trying to get to her.  I’d move toward the bed, the floor would rock, and I’d stagger back.  Move forward, stagger back.  When the floor finally stood still and I did reach her, she was still asleep.
            “Seems like the only person who got hurt was the aunt.  She fell against a little table and tumbled to the floor.  And you know, for some reason I keep remembering that we were calling her Aunt Rose.  I’ve got an Aunt Rose, but I never did meet her.  So it had to be some of Owen’s kin — I would think.”

Wanda:

            “The only one who got hurt was the aunt.  Seems she cut her finger on some broken glass — a broken ashtray.”

Jim Parker:

            “Owen told me he went out and looked.  The house had been torn in two.  The little chicken house had been picked up and dropped down on the other side of the house.  He’d told me he went out and looked, and that’s when he decided he’d had enough of Oklahoma.  That’s when he decided it was time to pack up the trailer and head back to California.

Wanda:

            “The kitchen had been torn away from the rest of the house — pulled away with only one wall still attached.  That one wall was like a hinge on a door, with the rest of the room lifted off the foundation and set back down after swinging away a bit.  One leg of the kitchen stove had dropped down into the space that had opened between the floors — so the stove was sitting cockeyed.  It seems like there was something cooking in the oven.

Lillie:

            “It was a chicken.”

Wanda:

            “When we went outside, it looked like a flood had gone through — I mean, everything was soaking wet.
            “Our little chicken house had been picked up and thrown over the house and over the fence, then dropped in the pasture where the creek was.  Only one of our little chicks survived.  The rest were dead.
            “The barn was okay.  I remember people saying that it was the post and beam construction — those post buried in the ground — the kept the barn from flying.
            “We went up the hill to stay with the elder Martins that night.  Seems like I heard the storm had taken some of the shingles off their roof — but that was all.  I put our one surviving chick in a shoe box and took it up the Martin’s with me.  I put the box up on top of the half wall room divider — a lot of those old houses divided living and dining areas with half-walls.  When we got up the next morning the box had tumbled off to the floor and the chick was dead.  ‘Course I figured it’d died from the fall and blamed myself for putting it up there.  And even though I know it was the storm that injured it so bad that it couldn’t have lived, even now I still feel guilty about it.  Isn’t that strange?
            “It wasn’t long after that when we left for California.  If, like Uncle Jim says, the tornado was the reason, or if dad had been figuring on going back for some time anyway, I don’t know.
            “But we was getting ready to leave, getting rid of a lot of the stuff we weren't taking with us, so I was to take my banty rooster down to Mabel and Kelly’s place on the other side of the crossroads — maybe a quarter mile away.  It was night, and I recall lightning jumping across the whole sky.  And I recall being really scared — really scared that rolling thing was coming back.”

Lillie:

            “We intended to drive back to California.  The tires on the car we’d brought to Oklahoma were real bad.  And with the war on it was nearly impossible buy car tires.  Owen found a car, a Durant, with good tires, and bought that for the trip. 
            “We had a two wheel trailer to pack all our belongings on.  I had dozens and dozens of quart jars of stuff I’d raised in my garden and canned.  One of my sisters had given us a bunch of utensils from a restaurant she use to own.  A gallon bucket of silverware.  Stoneware plates — divided plates.  Thick mugs.  All kinds of restaurant stuff to take back for us and Owen’s mom and sisters.
            “Somewhere on the road to California — it wasn’t desert, but it was desolate country — one of the wheels on the trailer went bad.  People would stop to see if they could help.  But what it needed was some kind of part, and we were told it was at least forty miles to the nearest town that might have something.  Owen pulled the rig off the road as far as he could, then set off walking to try to find whatever it was he needed to fix the wheel.  There was nothing to be found.  So we sat down to figure out what to do.
            “We had to leave the trailer.
            “We set everything out on the ground and started going through it — deciding what we absolutely had to have, and trying to fit it in the car.  We rolled one featherbed up with some blankets and pillows.  The rest of the bedding we left.  We left our tent, box springs, mattress, silverware, dishes, wash tubs, clothes, and some of our canned food. 
            “We packed the back end of the car till the kids had just enough room to lie on top of it all.  Owen tied my sewing machine upside down on top of the car.  There was a folding rack on the back of the car.  We piled what we could on that. 
            “We had some furniture for the girls.  A little table.  Two little oak rocking chairs — one for Wanda and one for Faril.  And, for Lillie Mae, a little red, green, and blue cane bottom chair with flowers painted on it.  One of the old girls’ rocking chairs had a crack in a spindle.  ‘Course the girls didn’t want to leave any of their furniture, so that hurt.
            “Owen said, ‘We can take the legs off the table, so we’ll take that.  One of the rocking chairs is broke, we’ll leave that and Wanda and Faril will have to share the other one.  And we’ll take Lillie Mae’s chair.’ 
            “All the time we was sorting stuff, tying stuff all over the car, people would stop to see what was going on.  Then they’d drive down the road a ways, pull over and park.  By time we got ready to leave, about a quarter mile each way was people sitting in their cars.
            “When we drove off they come running like a bunch of pigs.  And through our stuff.  We drove away watching people tearing through our stuff and running back to their cars with armloads.
            “The rest of the way to California we saw people passing us with our stuff tied to their cars.  But the worse was when this big, expensive looking car went around us, and tied to the back was that little rocking chair with the broken spindle .”

Email comments, concerns, corrections, and additional data to bogwenreportonline@gmail.com.

Copyright to the above material is retained by Wally Lee Parker — the author.

Other Family History Stories

Haying at Gila Bend: 1936-'37

Pistol Whippin Bertha

How Wanda Joyce Got Her Name

Stepping to the Side: A Dynamite Primer

Incident at Knight's Diner