Gaither 1 Natalie Gaither D.

Watkins Comp I 4 December 2013 In the Early Days Natalie Lynn Fisher was born January 1, 1983, to Dennis and Lesa Fisher. Lesa was a stay at home mom and Dennis was a firefighter. She was born, raised and lived in Cushing OK. for 24 years. She has one older brother and one younger brother. April 8, 2006 she married her high school sweetheart. They lived in Houston TX. for five years before moving back to Oklahoma and now reside in Guthrie. Aline Elsie Disque was born June 3, 1921, to Adam and Margaret Disque, in Claflin KS. She was the fifth of 13 kids. She has seven brothers and five sisters and grew up on a farm in Claflin KS. Her dad was a wheat farmer while her mom stayed home and took care of the kids. Life was tough back in my day. When I was born, I had three sisters and a brother, whom I never met. He died when he was only two months old from asphyxiation. When I was six years old, my mother enrolled me in first grade. I went to a country school called State Center, the classroom was one big room where all eight grades were taught by one teacher. I can remember carrying my lunch in a gallon karo syrup pail and always having to share it with my brothers and sisters. An obstacle I had to overcome when I was little happened at school. The family that lived across the road from the school raised big white geese. The schools outhouse was located a short distance from the entrance and when I had to go to the toilet, I would take off running for the outhouse. The geese would see me running and they would come running after me, dragging

Gaither 2 their wings with their mouths wide open, hissing at me. I was always scared that they would peck me for flog me. Eventually, I realized that if I walk, the geese would never even notice me. For my mother, one of the challenges of having so many children was getting us all ready for school on time. Sometimes we would not be ready until 8:40, school started at 9:00 and we lived one and a half miles away. On those days, we would have to take a short cut through our wheat fields. Often, a scary situation would arise for us when we did this. On one side of the road was John Grossardts bull and on the other side was John Riemanns bull. Sometimes the two bulls would be fussing at each other. They would snort, grumble and paw the ground with their feet. Before we got to them we would all check to make sure no one was wearing red. When we were all clear of anything red, we would take off running as fast as we could past them. We were always afraid that one day they would jump the fence and come after us. After school we would walk home with the neighbor kids, there were about 10 of us. Along the road were short rows of hedge apple trees. We would each select a nice hedge apple and see who could kick it the furthest without breaking it open. Some of us could kick them as far as a half of a mile before they fell to pieces but we were never able to kick them all the way home. When I was a little older and daddy thought the weather was too bad for walking to school in, he would give us a ride. We had an old Model A Ford car that he had to crank to get started. He always needed one of us kids to help. Our job was to pull the choke out when it sounded as if the motor would turn over. It seemed as though my brother, Charles and I were the best at the job so we did it most of the time. We thought this was an important job and always considered it to be fun.

Gaither 3 Another job for me when my parents thought I was old enough was going to the pasture to get our dairy cows and bring them to the barn for milking. I really enjoyed getting the cows in the early morning. It was so quiet and peaceful out there. I could hear dogs barking, roosters crowing and birds singing. Toward the South I could see the outline of Claflin and the water tower. At times, I would sit under the trees and watch dung beetles roll up balls of manure. Every time there was a new addition to the family; my grandmother Radenberg would stay with us and take care of us kids until momma was fully recovered. I remember one particular time in 1929; some of us kids went fishing in our creek. We got tin cans to put the fish in as we caught them, we had quite a few. Afterwards, we had the bright idea to keep our catch, so we put the fish in our chicken trough. Grandma Radenberg came out to check on us and found our fish pond. She scolded us real hard and said we were making the chickens drink dirty water. She went to the house, got a broom and swept all the water out of the trough along with our fish. This was a very sad moment for us kids. On the ground, lay our fish, flopping around while the chickens ate them. 1936 I ran into some bad luck. One day while playing tag with my siblings, I tripped over my shoestring and broke my arm. I had to wear a cast for three months. In June, my older sister Grace passed away from an unknown illness. Later that year the only grandpa I ever knew, Grandpa Radenberg, passed away. I remember when we would visit him he would always buy us kids a soda. My favorite was either strawberry or lemon. However, in the midst of all the bad, I did graduate from elementary school this year. Two years later we suffered another loss. My younger sister Velma passed away. She developed whooping cough which turned into pneumonia. That same summer I experienced my first tornado. I can remember watching it develop, the clouds began to build and the winds really

Gaither 4 picked up. After it was over, we looked outside and saw that our big barn had been reduced to rubble. The big wheel and fan was torn from our windmill tower and up the road, two oil well towers had been blown over. Thankfully, our old limestone rock house withstood the test. 1942 was a busy year. I went on my first vacation with four of my siblings. We went to the Kansas State Fair in Topeka, KS. I also got my first job working for Bill Esfeld Dirt Construction Company. My job consisted of answering their phone, caring for their children, and occasionally doing housework. At the end of this year my grandma Radenberg passed away. She left her house to my parents. They moved into it shortly thereafter, leaving all of us kids on the farm to take care of it. Jumping ahead six years. October 6, 1948, I went to my friend Arvellas house to help her with some housework. Her Husband, Harold had hired a young man from Oklahoma to help with his fall crops. The young mans name was Russell Howser. Harold invited Russell to join us for dinner. I sat across the table from him and thought he was quite handsome. Russell asked me for a date a few days later and I took him up on the offer. For our first date we went to a movie called Emperor. A few days later, Russell went back to Oklahoma. He would visit as often as possible. In the meantime, we wrote letters to one another. Russell came back to Kansas July 12, 1952. We went shopping for rings and announced our engagement on July 19, 1952. I had been dating Russell for four years, nine months, and two days. When our wedding day finally arrived, October 26, 1952, I can still remember it being a nice, warm fall day with the sun shining bright. The day after our wedding we left for Oklahoma. We stayed there for a couple weeks before departing for our 35 day honeymoon to California. This was the start of a whole new chapter in my life.

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