With a baseball in his hand, Harold could
produce miracles. His knuckle ball usually hit me just about anywhere, except
in my glove. His curve ball would look
like it was way above my head, then curve neatly in for a strike at the last
moment. Right or left. His fast ball, well, I think I have about blocked out my
memories of catching that. He once stood in front of our house, threw the ball
up in the air, and hit it to the old barn down in front of the house. “There.
That will give you a goal to shoot for, as you grow older.” When I was grown,
and still was not anywhere close, I measured his hit. 500 feet.
When we squirrel hunted, I felt lucky to
hit the squirrel anywhere with our old .22. Harold only shot his in the ear, to
save the meat.
Fishing for
red horses and suckers, I once caught one with a bare hook. While Harold caught
half a washtub full.
Harold was a mature, solid person at a
young age. When Harold was a senior in high school, they needed a school bus
driver from Wing very badly. The Bluffton bus was doing a double route, and the
people up there were getting tired of getting up so early. There were no
potential drivers on the Wing end of the line, and there was no house on our
end of the line to move someone into. Finally, Harold's name was brought up. It
was said that he was as solid as a 40 year old man. And that was true. So,
Harold was hired as a school bus driver a week before school started. There was
just one problem. He couldn't drive. Some of the local men gave him a week's
crash course, and he learned quickly. When the Yell County Fair time arrived,
he drove a bus load of students over Danville Mountain, then only a dirt
mountain trail. All the other bus drivers chose to go around by Ola. Mr. Tommy Sullivan was on that bus. When they
started down the mountain, he moved up and sat on the steps right by the door,
hand on the door opener. At the bottom
of the mountain, he pronounced Harold a good driver.
Harold came in on a furlough from the Air
Force. I had caught some pretty nice catfish down at the slough, and as is
typical for Harold, he just had to give it a try even though it had been
raining a lot and the river was coming up. The slough makes a big curve from
the river, then back to it, and we would have to swim to get to the good hole.
One night Harold, my cousin Jack Larry, and I set out. The water was over my
head, but we got across okay. The fish were not in a biting mood, but the river
just kept coming on up. Pretty soon, the road was about the only ground not
covered on the whole island, and we decided to get out while we could. The
water moccasins were all up on the high ground too, and Jack Larry and I were
barefooted, with one small light. Every few steps we spotted another one. When
we got to the spot where we had to swim, there was now a rushing current. Larry
and I both had to hang onto Harold on the way across to keep from being washed
away. He was larger and a strong swimmer, but I still don't know how he did it.
Well, the snakes were just as thick on the other side, too, and I've never been
so happy to get home.
My wife and I once visited Harold while he
was in the Air Force, in Montana. He drove down town to a store and found a
parking place in front of the store, but it was going to cost him a dime. He
drove another quarter of a mile down the road, and found free parking. We had
to walk half a mile, but when we left for home, the dime was still in his
pocket.
Harold worked for the Forest Service several
years. When Yellowstone burned over, he took a firefighting crew there. After
30 hours on the fire line, he had a ruptured aneurysm in his brain.
He
was flown to Idaho Falls for surgery. His wife Lou headed for Idaho Falls, and
I followed a day or two later. When I got to the hospital, Harold had a drainage tube in his head, but
he had not lost any of his sense of humor. "Pat," he said, "Be
sure to tell the surgeon, if she takes anything out when she operates, just put
it in a little box. I'll want to go through it later."
The operation took eight hours. They had
to cool his body down to stone cold, to slow the blood flow. When the vessel
was then empty of blood, a clamp could then be slipped over it, and the heart
restarted. He made it through all right,
partially because, the doctor said, he was so big and strong to begin with. I
shook his strong but stone cold hand, and I headed home. I was not needed
there. Lou was awake, and on guard.
The net result was, when it was all said
and done, Harold's balance and ability to get around were affected. He could
not swallow for some time, and took his nourishment through a feeding tube for
a good while after he took the farm back over. His brain, fortunately, was as
sharp as always. Once he got through rehab, he continued to run his cattle farm
as always, but it was a lot slower and more complicated now. Given enough
thinking time, one can figure out a way to do most anything, if the
determination is there. And he always had a lot more than his share of that. He
went on steel determination for years. Once, he was raking hay. He was standing
beside the tractor and pushed a rake lever the wrong way. It tightened in on
him, and he quickly pushed the lever again–still the wrong way. Bones started
popping. He finally extracted himself with numerous broken ribs and a punctured
lung, but in typical Harold fashion, finished raking his hay before going to
the hospital. First and foremost, the farm is taken care of.
When I thought Harold was pretty well over the
hill, pushing forty, and I was still a young buck fresh from running college
track, I challenged Harold to a race. He won. So, I challenged him to an arm
wrestling contest. He slammed my arm down so fast and so hard, I thought it
must be broken. To try to save a little face, I pronounced, “I’m going to start
lifting weights. Someday, I’ll challenge you again.” For years I stalked him.
As he got older, time and again I visited Harold, and evaluated my chances.
Each time, when he rose to greet me and wrapped his aged, strong fingers around
my hand, I realized, I was rushing it.
Finally, he could no longer stand to shake my hand, and I started
looking for a table we could use. But his strong handshake again told me it was
no use. I just never felt the time was right.
I love you, Harold, and I will keep you in
my heart forever. But I will continue lifting weights, because I will see you
again.
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