In 1954, my good friends Johnny Ramp and Eldon Province went to Pond Creek, Oklahoma to go on wheat harvest for Eldon’s cousin, this was the last of May. They needed another combine operator on the crew, so they came back to Latham to see if I wanted to go, which l did. We drove back to Oklahoma and we went to work getting the equipment ready for wheat harvest.
The man we were working for was Omar Skaggs and he had four combines and four trucks as well as a trailer house and a bunk house with metal bunk army cots for the crew. Omar’s wife was our cook and she and Omar stayed in the trailer house. When we were in the fields cutting wheat they would bring our meals to us, otherwise we would eat in the trailer house.
When we moved to another location, we loaded the combines on the trucks and the header of the combines were raised so they would be just a few inches above the cab of the truck. We would load up with combines loaded, a pickup pulling the bunk house and a pickup pulling the trailer house, quite a parade on the road. I was a combine operator but when we were moving I was driving a truck that was loaded and top heavy. When we were not cutting wheat we didn’t get paid but did get room and board. The combine operators were paid 12 dollars a day and the truck drivers were paid 10 dollars a day. Johnny and I were combine operators and Eldon was a truck driver.
We cut Omar’s wheat and some of his friends around the area, then we loaded up and headed to western Kansas. Eldon decided that he didn’t want to go on further so he went back home. We worked our way through Kansas, some of the customers were people Omar had cut for several years. He was always calling ahead, getting more acres as we moved north. We left Kansas and cut into northeast Colorado then into Wyoming and back into Nebraska. It wasn’t unusual to have a big deer jump up as you were cutting in these areas.
We moved into South Dakota then into North Dakota. Omar always made arraignments to park our bunk house next to a place that had bathroom and bath privileges such as a local hotel. We left the Dakotas and moved into Montana which I thought was a lovely state. The wheat was not ready, but we were at a ranch of twin brothers and they had bailed hay that they need to be brought into the barn so we hauled hay for a couple of days. The school kids that lived in the country made arrangements to stay in town during the winter so they could get to school.
While we were in Montana, Johnny and I drove to see Custer’s last stand. We would try to see things in the area we were working when we could. When we got paid, I would cash my check and send most of it home by money order and mom would put it in the bank. We were at Helena, Montana and near the Canada border around September 10. Johnny was to start his senior year and school had already started, so both of us quit and the crew went on up into Canada. Johnny wanted to hitch hike to Oklahoma with our stuffed duffle bags, I said it’s the train for me so we both rode the train to Ponca City, Oklahoma which is twenty miles back to where Johnny’s car was. We left our heavy bags at the train station and started walking. We walked past other hitch hikers as we walked the 18 miles of the highway, then turned onto a gravel road and walked another mile and caught a ride the last mile. We arrived at the Skaggs farm to find a flat tire on Johnny’s car. We changed the tire and drove twenty miles to the train station to get our luggage then headed back to Kansas. We both were glad we didn’t ride our thumbs from Montana.
