OkieJohn, happy birthday!

[franksolich]

This is a couple of days early, but I fear we might be wishing OkieJohn a "happy birthday" from across Eternity; I hope not, but I suspect so.

OkieJohn had been a delegate to the Democrat National Convention in Denver in 2008, and after returning, confided in me he was struggling with cancer, and it was "iffy" if he was going to make it. 

I hope to God he did make it, but it's ominous he hasn't ever been here since that message to me in late August 2008.

OkieJohn's first post here, right after conservativecave first got underway in early 2008:

I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee.  It was during WW2.  All the  men in the family went to war and all the moms went to work in factories to support the war effort.  Grandpa went to Norfork and became a pipe fitter building ships for uncle Sam.

That left 13 kids living with grandma in a three room cabin, on a 600 acre farm, 30 miles from Knoxville. We kids ranged in age from 2 years old to 18. 

We raised a few cows, chickens, a lot of hogs and planted about 200 acres in vegetables and grapes and a lot of corn.

There were two mules who provided most of the muscle around the farm, and we treated them like kings.  There was a 1929 B Model Ford pickup we used to haul our produce and hams to town.

There was no electricity or running water on the farm.  Lots of dams had been build in the thirties and forties, due to TVA, but all that electricity ran to big industry and major cities to support the war effort.  Most rural areas in America didn’t have electricity until the late forties and early fifties.  We did have a root cellar, a smoke house and an ice house.  We cut ice from the river in the winter and filled the ice house which would last all summer.  The root cellar stored all our vegetables.  About the only thing we bought was flour, cornmeal, and sugar.  Every year we slaughtered about 30 pigs and smoked hams and made soap from the fat.

Grandma was an amazing woman.  She ran that farm with an iron fist.  Even without the men folk and nothing but kids, that little farm never missed a heart beat. Life was hard and there was always work to do, but she never let us stop.  She introduced a work ethic into us kids that drove us to be successful in life.  There are eight millionaires in that group. The rest are very close.  Thanks Grandma.

I don’t know when I started driving that old pickup.  It must have been when I was about seven or eight.  At ten, I was driving it into the farmers market in Knoxville, three days a week.  It was thirty miles into town and it would take about 3 hours to get there.  Muscles were important on a farm, and I was rather small, so I was the designated driver.  Pickups in those days were considered farm equipment and you didn’t need a license.  Besides there were  only two cops in the whole county and they went to church with us.  The battery was always going dead on that little truck.  Lots of times, I would have to beg an adult to turn the crank  for me, so I could get home.  I remember, I would unload a truck load of hams and veggies and head home feeling rich with the twenty bucks in my pocket.  Gasoline was ten cents a gallon, but you couldn’t buy it without ration stamps.  We didn’t drink coffee, so we would trade our coffee stamps for gas and sugar stamps.

Too many dads didn’t come home from that war.  Only two dads and two bodies made it out of eight. WW2 touched every person in America.

We were lucky,  electricity came to the farm in 1949.  I watched with fascination as the men installed these little white insulators and wires on the walls and ceilings.  There was one light and one wall socket placed in each room.  The first thing we bought was a radio. Electronics became my life from that point on.  It was a career that served me well.

Please excuse me for rambling on like this.  I felt a little history would explain the times. It’s something I hadn’t thought about in fifty years. The words just came.

Thanks for the thread Frank.

OkieJohn made only 56 posts, total, many of them dealing with automobiles of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s; there's some jewels.

http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php?action=profile;u=203;sa=showPosts

Happy birthday, sir, wherever you are, with us or with God.

[Carl]

Happy Birthday if you are still on this side of Eternity.

[Celtic Rose]

Happy Birthday OkieJohn.  May God watch over you where ever you are.

[Airwolf]

Happy Birthday and all the best wishes to you. I hope your still with us and pray that you get well.

[franksolich]

Happy Birthday and all the best wishes to you. I hope your still with us and pray that you get well.

OkieJohn was an "uncommitted" delegate to the Democrat National Convention in 2008, which was not the first national convention at which he had been a delegate; he had been at many others before then, too.

The man loved the Democrat party with a passion.

In messages to me during that 2008 convention, he described how the "uncommitteds" from Texas were trying to make the voice of Texas Democrats heard.  Failing in that, the "uncommitted"s swung around to support Messalina Agrippina, so as to bust the convention.

But then the bosses of the Texas Democrat delegation told the "uncommited"s that their votes would be cast for il Duce Bo.

I have no idea how that was done, but it was done.

OkieJohn then pronounced some sort of autopsy on the national Democrat party; like a corpse that "grows" hair after death, the party looks alive, but isn't.

OkieJohn was raised in Tennessee, went to college in Oklahoma (I think), but lived in Texas.  The "Okie" part comes from either his education or that he might have made his money in Oklahoma.

[bijou]

Happy Birthday OkieJohn, wherever you are.

[Chris_]

Happy Birthday OkieJohn, wherever you are.

Same from me.......

I went back and read his old posts at the link, and I remember reading them when he initially posted them.......the one about standing near a steam locomotive passing was my favorite, because as a kid at the end of the era of steam, I used to do the same thing in our town, when the Wabash freights went through on their way west......it was an awsome experience.......

doc

[Flame]

Many Happy returns on your Birthday, Sir.  If you be on the other side, may it be even more glorious than you could have ever imagined.

[Tucker]

Happy birthday.

I'm from just east of you. From Jonesborough. I do hope all is well.

[The Village Idiot]

 

Happybirthday, where ever you are.

[Odin's Hand]

Happy birthday, sir.

[debk]

Happy Birthday, Sir...wherever you may be, it's still your birthday.