Trip to California Southwest Airline
The Pancake Breakfast The  Sink Hole Cave

Trip to California

It was very hot outside the car in southern Arizona, 1958. Lonny swerved the big old Dodge station wagon from side to side of the downgrade-paved road as we passed a burned out service station. The gas gauge showed empty and the engine had began to sputter. I was awakened from the floor behind the back seat, for we had traveled nonstop from Pampa Texas, on our way to San Leandro, California. Lonny wanted to make sure every drop of fuel in the tank would have a chance to be picked up through the intake line.  We made it to a gas pump somehow for there was time stranded on the roadside. My dad had given in to all my begging and pleading to go with Lonny and Ada Jean. I had a lot of practice getting Mother and Daddy to let me go to the farm with Uncle Billy. We arrived at Ernest and Elizabeth's , completely exhausted. The next day or so, Uncle Ernest took all of us to San Francisco to a restaurant (renovated from an old saloon) where I was introduced to horse radish sauce for the first time. Latter on Neta showed me what a pizza was. Granny, Granddad, Grandma Morris, uncle Red, and uncle Bruce; had already made the trip from Pampa and settled in at Lakeport , about a three hour drive north of San Francisco. Lonny had missed Granny's cooking as much as Ada Jean had missed her mom and dad. Well Lonny had been laid-off from the job, and took the opportunity to make the trip, which meant he would have to find work before they could make it back home. Uncle Red had a job, picking pears. He would use a ladder to reach the high branches, loaded with fruit. He carried a fruit picker bag with a shoulder strap. When the bag was full he would unhook the lower end, which was open to release the pears into a box, stacked near the wagon trail between the trees. Red used a metal ring to size the fruit  ' if he could not determine by sight. The pears were picked, full size, but still green, for durability in shipping. Ok Lonny  got  Red to ask the foreman if he and I could have a job. We were given a choice, Pick or load the pears. Since picking would leave us in one place for long periods of tome, we chose loading. The foreman's son drove a small tractor to pull the old wooden trailers with regular car wheels and tires. The boxes of pears were a little heavy for me at first, but the boredom of the task was worse. You couldn't really be bored, with Lonny around; there was nothing he enjoyed better than talking. We would load, tie down, and ride to the packing shed, where they unloaded the cargo with a forklift. We were getting along fine until one day as the tractor turned left up the small incline to the packing shed, the front axle turned too far, leaving the outside front of the trailer, unsupported. The heavy load went over, with us on the back end. Pears went rolling. Embarrassed; we picked up what we could save, and waited to be fired. The foreman decided it was the trailer's fault and came up with a fine idea. We had seen them in the orchard and wondered how four trailers, hooked one behind the other could turn a corner without cutting across. There it was; our four new trailers, with tie-rod steering, waiting to be loaded. That's when we really went to work. There was not much to do when we made it to granny's in the evening, just eat and get our bedroll ready in the back yard. It was August and there were lots of shooting stars.  Lonny and I worked two weeks and They had no more than eighty dollars to make it back to Texas  and start a new job. I was allowed to remain in California, and attend my senior year of high school, even though Granny and Granddad returned to Texas when Morris came home from Okinawa.

by Claude Morgan

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The Pancake Breakfast

It must have been 55 or 56 when Lonny Carlton had managed to gather a few greyhound-hunting dogs. He had a pen in the back yard, and I'm sure it was a chore to keep feed and water for them. A group of men in Pampa would organize what they called "wolf hunts". Lonny knew they had planned a hunt for the next day or so, and I was trying to talk my way into going with them. I didn't have two cents to my name and Lonny had spent his extra money on dog food. The Hunters used old pickup trucks that could take a beating without hurting anyone’s feelings if they got scratched or banged up.  Somehow we wound up on some old ranch north east of Pampa, maybe near Canadian. The men turned their dogs out , and the first cat out of the bag, those big old greyhounds took in after a jackrabbit. The hunters didn't know at first because the dogs started out through a gully and then out into the open. In the old trucks, we followed as best as the drivers could, bouncing and dodging holes and obstacles. They wanted the dogs to hunt coyotes, but that jackrabbit gave them a pretty good run, switching directions, with the hounds right on his tail. Those men probably enjoyed eating as much as hunting, as we eventually found ourselves in a little country cafe. I remember seeing that waitress bring those pancakes and eggs, trip after trip, but I don't remember if Lonny and Me ever got to eat or not. Anyway he made it up to me later on when he took me along on a business trip to Elk City Oklahoma, where he bought me a meal in a restaurant and I had Strawberry Shortcake for dessert. Awe, do you reckon he used the company expense account?

 by Claude Morgan

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Southwest Airline

Lonny leaned hard, with both hands on the propeller of the old porter field airplane. Two pulls to prime, call out "Contact" to someone in the cockpit to turn the key on and one flip of the propeller to start the engine. It happened to be me (Claude Alvin), even though Lonny had not taken his test yet to carry passengers. He told me to bend down in the back seat  of the two seater until we were airborne so no one would see me. We flew around a few minutes and all of a sudden Lonny pulled back, hard on the stick. The loud noise from the engine was bad enough, but nothing to compare to the feeling of being crushed by the g-force of the plane climbing for the sky. Oh yeah, what goes up must come down. When the plane keeled over and started down it felt like I was being pulled out of the seat belt. Lonny just couldn't wait to try the "Stall maneuver". Sometime later on , in a better plane with side by side seats and steering wheel controls, we took a trip to New Mexico. Leroy (Red), Ronnie, and Dwayne were there where Red drove a Water Truck for a Drilling rig crew. The first thing we saw was a herd of prong horned antelope. The antelope were running in single file and Lonny would not let the moment pass without "Buzzing" them by diving the plane after them. It really was a beautiful sight. We landed to re-fuel and continued on to see black smoke on the horizon. It turned out to be a storage tank on fire. Lonny had his movie camera, and as I held the plane in a circular pattern, Lonny filmed the tape that Sammy has today. We made it to the little store on the highway where Red was and Lonny decided to land in a cow pasture. Believe me those pastures were not made to land a plane. The dry climate only allows the grass to exist in clumps, with little valleys of dirt in between. It was a rough landing. Ronnie made the return flight with Lonny and I think he had to use paper bag for something. It was the rough take-off on top of the turbulence I'm sure. I came back with Red and Dwayne  in a big old Cadillac . That Driver must have been doing one hundred miles per hour. I don't know which trip scared me the most.

by Claude Morgan

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The Sink Hole Cave

Lonny had been a Boy Scout as a young man, and there is no telling "where all" they explored. One place he did recall, was a cave in Palo Duro Canyon. Somehow he talked us into going there to see if we could locate the tunnel and possibly make our way through it. Lonny accepted no Danger in any venture. It was always "Give it a Try and see what Happens". Daddy got wind of the venture and refused to allow Darrel, Garry and I to go without him being at least close by. Mother, Daddy, Twilla, Valerie, Ada Jean, and I don't know if Lonna Jean came along or not. They parked the cars just off the dusty road somewhere in the Canyon, southeast of Amarillo. Lonny, Darrel, Garry, and I set out on foot so Lonny might locate a landmark such as a windmill or rock formation to locate the cave. It was summer and the heat of the day was climbing. Lonny had not been there in many years and all of the terrain looked about the same. Finally we came to what you call a Sink Hole, that led to and played a big part in creating the cave so many years before. It was a great funnel shaped hole in the red sandstone earth. Lonny had told us many times that the tunnel leading from the sink hole had some water along the way and it might be necessary to submerge in the water in order to continue. We wasted no time getting to the lower level, walking on our heels and the sides of our shoes. There it was; a tunnel half filled with silt, and damp from the recent rain. We had to walk, bent over, even walking side-ways to make it easier to see ahead, because the passage was not high enough to stand up. I had always wanted to explore something like this but I'm sure there were thoughts of turning back for this was close quarters. I think we did wade through some water but it wasn't too deep. We finally came to the end of the tunnel and cave and there was not an exit in sight. Lonny may have been a little concerned, but he just kept looking for a way out because we did not want to go back through the long sandy, wet, low ceiling, passage, with our flashlights growing dim. Finally we turned out all of the lights and saw a stream of sunlight that led to the way out. When we arrived back at the cars,  parked in the Hot Sun, the other folks were just about cooked. They had stretched out anything they could, overhead to block the sun and they were hot, hungry, worried, and aggravated to no end. The whole adventure was kind of a fast pace, so I don't know if we had time to enjoy it or not. Charles Goodnight loved the Palo Duro  and was quite successful at running a cattle operation there. The song says "Good-by to my  Palo Duro, good-by to the land that I love so well; I'll never do better than you, I'll never do better than you". Charles Goodnight had to leave the Ranch and lived his last years in Arizona, but he never gave up "making plans for the days ahead". That's kind of the way Lonny was; he always had plans for the days ahead. Sometimes he could get some of us to "Tag along".
by Claude Morgan

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