“WOODEN LEG”

 

This missive is about our fraternal grandfather Raymond, or as we called him as kids “Gonga”.  We never realized it as very young kids, but we later learned he had an artificial left leg. We never remember him limping or anything, although occasionally he would use a cane to walk.  He had a lot of class as I remember and in retrospect he was what I call a “Gentleman Farmer”. He, like my grandmother, uncle, and father were very intelligent. The story about his “wooden leg” was when he was 18 he climbed a tree (why I don’t know or remember) and he fell out of it onto a steel picket fence and impaled his left leg on it. The leg had to be amputated.

 

One of the neat things we had when we were kids on the farm was a tractor (which was a Farmall “H”) that had a right-hand clutch pedal so he could operate a tractor. I sure wish we still had that tractor now! I remember operating it when I was older and it always felt weird when I had to engage the clutch. Since normally the clutch would be on the left side, sometimes I would inadvertently hit the brake pedal and try to shift gears when I was on “The H with the right-hand clutch”! I always have wondered how they customized that tractor for a clutch on the opposite side from which it was designed originally.

 

I remember him getting ready on nights he had Kiwanis. He would shave with a shaving brush and spend a lot of time trimming his mustache to get it “looking just right”. His mustache was very memorable since only one other guy (Bert Oehling) had one at that time in an era where facial hair was indeed a rarity. I’ve had a mustache 95 percent of the time since the early 1970’s. Maybe I’m unconsciously trying to look like “Gonga” since I do bear somewhat of a resemblance to him as you can see in the photo below. He died in 1953 from lung cancer (resulting no doubt from his chain smoking Pall Malls). Even though Tim and I were only 5 years old when he died, we nevertheless have some solid memories of him.

 

One oddity that we never noticed until we were in our teens is that Raymond and Ollie slept in separate rooms! We never gave it a thought when we were kids when he was alive. Our grandmother wrote daily diaries for several years and she always referred to “Gonga” as “Till” and always had good things to say about him. Tim and I have often thought that if “Gonga” and our father had lived longer, that even today we would be no doubt farming 2,000 acres or more and have a “super farm”.  When “Gonga” and our father were living during the “Golden Years” of our farm with Uncle Ned farming with them as a team, they farmed 500 acres until the mid 1950’s which was considered a “Super Farm” in those days! Tim and I often marvel that they farmed these many acres with 2 “H’s” and an “M” (2 Farmall “H’s” and 1 Farmall “Super M”). Ollie’s diaries describe them plowing all night with a 2-bottom plow with the “H” and a 3-bottom plow with the “Super M”. In those days before the super sized equipment we have these days, farming resulted in many hours on a tractor.

 

When Tim and I were older when only Uncle Ned was left to run the farm, we too spent many hours on a tractor. I am convinced that many farmers are good thinkers and philosophers because you have a lot of time to think while sitting on a tractor and making round after round in the field in the time before tractor radios and air conditioned cabs were ever though of. Our grandmother Ollie would many times ask, “What do you think about out there on the tractor all day”? One time as a young teenager after Ollie ask me what I think about out there on the tractor my answer was, “Raw sex”! That really threw her for a loop! We both chucked about it afterward. Thus are the few but good memories of our grandfather Raymond the intelligent and classy “Gentleman Farmer”. Oh… speaking about “wooden legs”… Did you know that before 1889 that they never hung a man in Texas with a “wooden leg”? (They always used a rope!)  J