Making connections and memories in life

          It’s kind of ironic how life comes full circle.
       While taking a writing course at the University of Missouri-Columbia, I did an essay paper on a story I found in an August 1972 National Geographic entitled “North with the Wheat Harvest” written by Noel Grove with photos by Jim Sugar.
       During the 1971 harvest season, Grove and Sugar followed the Max Louder family of Mankato, Kan. on their annual wheat harvest path from Texas to Montana.
         The story peaked my interest, namely because of my love for combines and farming.
       I first got interested in farming and old tractors in my mid to late 20s when my dad and I would attend the Oklahoma Steam and Gas Engine Show in Pawnee the first weekend of May.
        Pawnee is northwest of Tulsa and is home to the Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum.
       Gordon William Lillie, know professionally as Pawnee Bill, was a performer and American showman who specialized in Wild West Shows. He had a short partnership with William “Buffalo” Bill Cody of Iowa in 1908.
       In 1888, Pawnee Bill and his wife, May, launched their own Wild West Show, which was called “Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West.” After struggling financially that first year, Lillie regrouped and changed the show to “Pawnee Bill’s Historical Wild West Indian Museum and Encampment Show.”
         It went on to become a success.
         There’s a lot more on Pawnee Bill, too much to share in this column.
         Pawnee is about 60 miles from Pawhaska, Okla., home of the Pioneer Woman and also the movie site for “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
        It was at the Oklahoma Steam and Gas Engine Show that I started photographing old tractors and steam engines, the early beginnings of where I am today in life.
    I was going to the community college at the time taking photography courses. I always enjoyed photographing the old tractors.
        My dad loved to find a bargain and had a nice collection of old horse-drawn cultivator seats. 
       I remember at one show we attended, my dad found an old cultivator seat he was interested in buying. He asked the seller how much it was. “$15,” the seller told my dad.
       That was too much for my dad’s liking, so he’d walk around the grounds, then go back and ask someone else about the cultivator seat.
        I think after several tries, he got the price down to around $10, so he bought it.
     I liked that about my dad. If he found something he liked, he’d work the price down or leave it for someone else.
       I have a number of my dad’s cultivator seats in my antique collection, so I might have that seat.
       After graduating from MU, I landed in North English, Iowa at the Record newspaper.
       It was there that I learned of Noel Grove, who I had earlier wrote a paper based on one of his stories.
     Grove grew up in South English and recalled roaming the Iowa countryside around the family farm. He graduated in 1959 from McPherson College in McPherson, Kan., where he majored in English. After college, he taught English and speech at Inman High School in McPherson and worked as a reporter and wire editor at the McPherson Daily Sentinel. He also worked as a reporter and night editor at the Hutchinson Daily News.
       He joined the National Geographic magazine staff in 1969, where he went on to head the environmental department, a division created for him by then editor Wilbur Garrett. Grove wrote 28 bylined articles for the magazine, contributed several chapters to National Geographic books and was the author of eight published books and more.
     In 1990, he helped found the Society of Environmental Journalists, a non-profit national journalism organization for journalists who reported on environmental topics.
       Grove wrote the book, “Anyone But Duane” and published it in October 2008. It is a true-to-life book about multiple murders that happened in June 1965 when Duane Pope, a classmate of Grove’s at McPherson College, committed a robbery and murders at the Farmers State Bank in Big Springs, Neb., leaving three dead and one severely injured.
        Pope, 81, remains in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. 
     I learned about the book a couple years ago while visiting the English Valleys History Center in North English.
     I never met Grove, who passed away in January 2022 at his home in Virginia, but it’s nice to have the connection to his work through my own writing.
      I look forward to reading his book, maybe in retirement. First on the agenda is reading my wife’s second, third and fourth books.
      At least I have good intentions.
      Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.