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Kelly HughesA collection of stories and memories by his family. |
In fond memory of
Kelly Walton Hughes
June 16, 1906 - May 11, 1996
most recent addition: March 19, 2001
A Daughter's Memories
Doris Sue (Hughes) Sparks
Bits and pieces
David Wayne Hughes
Cattle Wrestling
Timothy John Hughes
Haying
Doris Sue (Hughes) Sparks
Some help
David Wayne Hughes
Rooked
David Wayne Hughes
One of the things I enjoy the most in researching our various families' histories is learning about the people behind the names and dates. The book "Descendants of Peter and Dority Hart, 1740-1995, Virginia and North Carolina and Allied Families", written by Ruth Gibbs Hart and Karen L. Cooper and published in 1996, is a great example of what I mean. These two women did a great job of gathering histories, documents, letters and the like that help bring our ancestors to life.
So, it seemed to me that this favor could be passed on, by collecting stories about more contemporary relatives. This is a task that is hard to put boundaries around, and it will never be "completed." But that doesn't mean we shouldn't start it.
This document will be happily updated with new memories and stories as they are offered, so please feel free to send them to me, and I will include them.
As with the "Remembering Dan" document about my youngest brother, I've made few if any changes to these stories; each author speaks in his or her own voice.
DWH
When I was checking Carl's slacks' pockets to prepare them for the wash, I found steeples, and screws in them...reminded me of my dad. Mom always had to dump out steeples, and nails from his overall pockets before she washed them. Carl had fixed the fence next door, which had been bent over due to the crushing weight of some vines...Daddy was always having to fix those barbed-wire fences on the farm.
I told Bud, last night, that every time I hear a man whistling, it makes me think about Daddy. I remember, as a child, hearing him coming home from the fields, whistling, while standing to drive the old white Ford tractor. It's amazing to me that I could hear his whistling over the tractor's engine noise, but I would be standing by a swing in the old Oak tree, north of the house, and sure enough, I'd look up, and he would be driving by the red hog house, preparing to turn into the driveway, by the chicken house...always wearing a blue chambrey shirt, overalls, and his old straw hat! What nice memories I have from my childhood!
One funny story about Daddy, which I was not there to witness, but Mom was...not too long after he'd gotten his rider-mower, he got too close to one of those sycamore trees out by the chicken house, and tried to climb the thing. Mom & he always had a joke about that experience. I don't think the mower ever worked exactly right, after that, but it always brought a smile to Daddy's face, when Mom would mention it.
One of my earliest memories of my dad was his carrying me upstairs at night to put me to bed, after I'd fallen asleep on the couch, or in a chair. You know, he did that until my feet hit the stairs, when he carried me!
Maybe, I have all these wonderful memories, because I loved to be outside doing things with my dad, rather than doing all those domestic things. When I got old enough to drive the tractor ...12, I think... WOW! I got to drive forward, from the north side of the barn to carry a huge load of hay up into the mow with those huge hooks; then, back the tractor towards the barn again. I did this until the load of hay was transferred from the hay-wagon to the haymow! It was loads of fun ...unless the rope carrying the hooks got all twisted up; then, Daddy would yell (he'd have to for me to hear him) for me to stop, and back up again to bring the hooks back down to the wagon; he'd re-adjust some kind of contraption on the hooks, and we'd try it again. That was better than the hooks releasing the load of hay, just before they took it into the haymow, and dumping it onto the ground. Not a pleasant sight, nor words from my dad. He'd jump down from the wagon, take the pitchfork and load the hay back onto the wagon, while uttering some unpleasant language, and we'd try it again. Can't blame him for being disgruntled. The temperature outside was always hot, and muggy, and hey, that was hard work! I know. I'd much rather just drive the tractor back and forth. HA!
A scarry time for me was when I saw my dad drive his old white Ford tractor to the north gate, get off the tractor, and crawl to the house. Somehow, he'd gotten his foot ran over by the tractor, and it was broken.
I remember Mom taking care of him, and his sitting on the couch with his casted-foot elevated on the back of a chair. In his much later years-of-life, when he would complain about his toes on his other foot hurting, I'd joke with him, and tell him I guess the cure for them was to stick his foot under the tractor and have the tractor run over it too. He wasn't too keen on that idea, though. HA!
You know, my dad told me that Cheryl Ann & I kept Mom and he "young." He said, "Sometimes, we didn't feel like doing things with you, but it was our decision to have you both, so we did the things, and in the process we kept young." I know when they were raising Wayne, times were hard—we're talking depression years—and I'm sure Daddy concentrated on making a living for his family. By the time Cheryl Ann & I came along, he felt like he could take time off to take us to band practices, band concerts, football games, 4-H meetings, etc., and he did that a lot. I was in the band from 6th grade to 12th grade. The band practiced every Friday night, and then had a free concert every Sat. night, in the summer, in Princeton. That was 2 nights every week, until Karen Elmore (a neighbor, and a year older than me) could drive us...6 years--46 miles (round-trip).
You know the weird thing about my dad was I never heard him say, "I love you." I never remember his hugging me, or kissing me. BUT I KNOW HE LOVED ME! He'd tell other people about my accomplishments, but he never said, "I'm proud of you." I saw him, only once, put his arm around Mom, and it was a joke at their 50th wedding anniversary re-union at Nine Eagles State Park, but I know he loved her...even with all their arguuing! The last few years of his life (4, probably) were pretty placid—he argued rarely, and raised his voice seldom. I think he knew those years were to be treasured. I told him once, "You know, Daddy, Mom really loves you." His reply to that statement was, "It does seem like she cares about me more than you would think." I'm sure it was how he was raised to not show much emotion, except when exclaiming some dislike, or frustration.
I relish my memories of my dad. My tears still spill out easily, when I think of him, although laughter is coming easier too. Time does have a way of healing our griefs.
There are a number of quick memories of my grandfather that I like to recall from time to time, like...
One spring, early 80's, while I was in college, I joined my Dad, Paul, and others in the family on a trip to Grandpa's farm. One day, Grandpa mentioned in passing that he needed to give one of the young cows (about 1/2 grown) a shot. If you've never seen the syringes they use on cows, they're huge! The needle itself looks like a soda straw but there's no sharpness to it at all, and it looks like it holds about a quart of medicine. You don't really ease it in; you just sort of punch it in. Anyway, since Grandpa was in his seventies at the time, Paul and I thought he could use the assistance of us two young bucks so we agreed to go, thinking we would basically do all the work for him.
We walked off into the fields and soon came upon the calf in question. Paul and I ran ahead to catch him but he scattered off in various directions, always one move in front of us. We just plain didn't know how to catch him or what to do if we did. We were running around in circles doing more harm than good, feeling pretty foolish as Grandpa just stood and watched. Determined, we hunkered down and doubled our efforts to catch him, to no avail. Finally, as we paused to catch our breath, we saw Grandpa go streaking past us, more or less tackling the calf and scooping up his legs all in one motion, knocking him to the ground. He then pulled out the syringe, delivered the medicine, and he released the calf. The whole thing took him about 20 seconds! Some help we were!
Paul and I have laughed about this episode and retold it many times over the years. We sure learned about the old adage: "old age and experience will beat youth and enthusiasm every time". We also learned that in spite of his years, he was still a spritely and agile man. Grandpa was a man of few words and we always wondered what he thought as he watched us two city boys aimlessly chasing the calf around. I know one thing for certain: he wasn't thinking "I couldn't have done it without those guys"!
I spent many days helping my dad put hay up in the loft using this hay hook. It was a BIG day for me, when I got old enough (12, I think), to be able to drive the tractor. A large rope was attached to the hitch of the tractor, at the north end of the barn. When I pulled forward (north) towards the fence, the rope would pull the huge load of hay in the hay hook (aka, "The CLAW") up into the loft. My dad would jerk the "trip-rope," connected to the hook, when the hook, carrying the load of hay, got to the position in the loft where he wanted to dump the load of hay. Then, as I was backing the tractor back towards the barn, he would pull on the rope to bring the hook back to the end of the track, and it would FALL down on top of another load of hay. My dad would then purposely position the hooks to take another load of hay into the barn, and the process would be repeated. It usually took 4 hay-hook loads to empty the hay wagon. By the way, my dad picked that hay up from the field with a pitch fork; then, Mom, Cheryl Ann, and I would tramp it down with our feet, so we could get a big load of hay. It was fun, but on hot days, it was SCRATCHY! In the winter, Daddy would throw some hay down from the mow, with a pitch fork, into the driveway; then, when he came down the ladder, he'd put the hay in the managers for the cows to eat, while he hand-milked them. I loved to watch the whole process, and sometimes, I got to help! What great memories I have from growing up on the farm! Wayne used a horse to do the same thing I did with a tractor! Thank goodness for motorized equipment, huh?
In late summer of 1972, our family went from our home in Pewaukee, Wisconsin to visit Grandma and Grandpa on the farm.
Now, it is interesting that, somehow, other people's work can seem like fun if you don't have to do that work on a regular basis. So it was that I found myself volunteering to help Grandpa bring in the hay from one of his fields.
At the time, Grandpa still kept a lot of his hay loose, up in the hayloft of his barn, rather than in the massive round bales that he later favored. In order to store his hay, he would have to first dry it in the fields, then rake it into hayrows with his tractor, and then rake the rows into haystacks. The next step was to pull a wagon with the tractor from stack to stack, and manually throw the hay up onto the wagon.
I felt I was in pretty good shape; after all, I ran the two-mile run in track, and had been working out with the weight machines at school to prepare for playing football in the fall. So I figured I should be able to give Grandpa a lot of help. Off we went to the triangular field across the road.
Raking the hay into first the rows and then the stacks was pretty much a one-man project. It was impressive how relatively precise Grandpa was with this work; no doubt the result of many years of practice. Once he had the haystacks ready to go, he hooked up the wagon, aimed it between two rows of haystacks, and the two of us began throwing hay up on the wagon.
I found that I could generally get each haystack up onto the wagon in about three pieces, each feeling pretty heavy. I figured that I must have been getting ahead of Grandpa; after all, he was 66 years old. You can imagine my surprise, then, when he came around to my side of the wagon, put his pitchfork into the haystack that I had only started, and with in a single, smooth motion put the remaining two-thirds of that stack up on the wagon. Imagine, then, my further surprise when he went to the next haystack, and put the whole thing up on the wagon, in that same, practiced, smooth motion.
I had learned a number of things already that day: that my grandfather was a lot stronger than one would guess, given how thin he was; that Grandpa's experience really meant a lot more than any (supposed) fitness I might have been feeling; and that one should never underestimate the skill of an experienced "professional".
But there was at least one more lesson to learn that day.
We still had to move the hay from the wagon up into the hayloft. This involved moving the haywagon in front of the barn, underneath the opening to the haymow and taking the tractor around to the back of the barn and hooking it up to ropes that operated the hay hooks. Another rope ran from the hooks to the front of the barn; this was used to release the hay from the hooks and to manually retrieve the hooks to the wagon. My job then was to deal with the retrieval rope.
For the first few loads, everything went smoothly. I would pull hand-over-hand on the rope to bring the hooks to the front of the barn, then give a sharp pull to drop the hooks to the wagon. Grandpa would place the hooks in the hay so that they would pick up about a quarter-wagon-full, and tell my Dad, who was on the tractor, to go ahead. This would raise the hook-full of hay in the air to the opening of the haymow, and then move the hay into the haymow itself. At the appropriate point, I would give a sharp pull on the rope, the hooks would release, and the hay would drop into the barn. And then we'd start again.
Grandpa's barn was already rather old for a Mid-Western barn; it must have been over 80 years old then, and was starting to lean a bit towards the front of the barn and to the east. So the loads of hay would tend to catch under the top of the front door of the barn a bit. Seeing this, I decided to try to ease the hay out from the barn some by pulling on the "retrieval" rope.
Well, one of those loads, I must have been pulling just a little too hard, because just as the load neared to door to the haymow, some 20 feet in the air, the hooks released, and the load of hay (and hooks!) came crashing towards Grandpa.
I was surprised (and greatly relieved) to see Grandpa jump out of the way in time. He certainly didn't have much time to realize what was happening and make the decision to jump out of the way, but jump he did, and just missed being hit by all that weight.
And so my final lesson for that day: never underestimate the spryness of an old farmer; he is likely to surprise you!
The only card game that I remember being played at my grandparents' house is "Rook". This is a bidding game, typically played with two teams of two, and it was very popular in the area where my grandparents lived. As a child, I remember the adults playing late into the night; as an adult, I ended up doing the same from time to time.
Both Grandma and Grandpa were very good players who took the game seriously enough to review each hand to discuss how this strategy worked well, or that strategy would have been better, or "why did you play that then?" Still, it was clear that Grandma was the better player of the two, and equally clear that Grandpa wasn't happy with that.
One evening, probably in the summer of 1991, a good Rook game was going. Grandma and Grandpa were on opposite teams, as was traditional it seems. I was watching on the sidelines, participating in the strategy discussions after each hand. After one hand, when his team had lost a particularly close-fought hand, Grandpa asked if I wanted to take his seat; he was tired. "Sure," I said, "if you don't want to play anymore." Grandpa got up from his seat, and as I sat down he waved a hand in Grandma's direction. "Watch out for her," he said. "She's awful lucky."
Doris Sue (Hughes) Sparks
(Doris is the middle of Kelly Hughes' three children.)
David Wayne Hughes
(David is the oldest of Kelly Hughes' ten grandchildren.)
Timothy John Hughes
(Tim is the fifth oldest of Kelly Hughes' ten grandchildren.)
