Dad died at age 53, so although by then they had the farm paid for, they never had a chance to make a lot of money. There was never cash to spend. We had clothes and food and not much else. There was not a lot of variety of food but plenty to eat. Maybe that is what I want to tell, how things used to be compared to now. But that is getting way ahead of my story.

I probably have a German heritage. Glenda and I went to Europe in 1986, and saw names similar to ours. My brother has done some historical background and is pretty sure the name he found spelled as Wishong has been changed to Wishon. It was a fairly common name from the area bordering Germany and France. My brother Jim was born in 1943, and my sister in 1945.

In 1938, before Mom and Dad were married, Dad worked in the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp. This program was devised in 1933, to give work — building roads, improving parks, etc. — to unemployed youth. I think Dad was in Idaho where they did forest service.

During WWII, my dad went to the Portland, Oregon area and worked as a welder in Kaiser Shipyards. Although I was pretty small, I can remember Mom and me going by train to visit him. I was prone to have serious nose bleeds, and that happened when we crossed the Rocky Mountains. Even yet I have them in high elevations. We stayed and Dad and my uncle, his brother, built us a house. We got to go to the shipyard one day and see President Franklin D. Roosevelt come out and give a speech honoring their having built a ship in record time. He sat in the back of a big, open-type car. I remember when WWII was over, they had a really large street dance in the town near where we lived. My brother and my sister were both born in Oregon.

Although I wasn't very old, I remember Oregon well. A memory that stands out in my mind was seeing my first jet planes and the trails they left in the sky. I suppose I was about five. There were lots of airplanes and once in awhile we'd see a jet go over. We could hear and usually see the old propeller planes. The jets didn't make much noise until they had passed, then we could see the trails in the sky. That was amazing to me and impressed me a lot.

After the war was over, we came back to the midwest, to a Missouri farm. We lived pretty simply. I remember in 1947, they ran the power line past our house, before then we didn't even have the ability to have electricity. Then Dad had the house wired. We had one light in the center of the ceiling and two or three plug-ins on the walls of each room. Of course, we didn't have very much to plug in anyway, so it didn't make any difference. We finally got a refrigerator. Mom cooked on a wood stove probably until 1950, when we got a gas range. We did get a radio. It was about yay long with a battery about as long as the radio, and Mom and Dad expected those batteries to last six months. When we got home from school, we could listen to one or maybe two half-hour shows like "The Lone Ranger," and then we had to turn it off. Batteries cost money.

We didn't have much on the farm. It was pretty tough going. What money we had went to make the farm payments and buy the necessities. There wasn't much left. We had a car and a couple tractors. The first car I can remember, I believe was a '36 Dodge. We had an old Model A Ford used mostly on the farm. In fact, that is what I first learned to drive. I wasn't even tall enough to reach the pedals but Dad let me try to drive it. I ran into the mailbox and knocked it over. That didn't go over too well. I was probably six or seven, but we had to learn to drive pretty young because we had to drive tractors. As soon as I was big enough to reach the pedals —maybe I was nine or ten, I drove tractors in the field. It was part of growing up on a faiin.

Another part was our food. We pretty much raised our own provisions. In the large garden we had all kinds of vegetables. We had fruit trees and Mom canned apples and peaches, along with wild berries we picked along the road. At one time we didn't have a refrigerator but even after we had it, we didn't have a deep freeze, so we pretty much canned everything. Dad butchered our own meat. We took the beef to be processed in the locker in town, but the pork was cured at home in the smokehouse. This was a pretty substantial small building, not much bigger than the outhouse. The walls were thick, the boards about three layers deep, and every board covered the joists of the board below it. About 50 feet from the smokehouse was a pit where Dad burned hickory wood, and a trench carried the smoke back into the smokehouse. He hung the meat in there and smoked it for about a week as I recall, keeping the fire going 24 hours a day. That meat didn't need refrigeration. In a cool climate it would keep without being refrigerated. It was a long time ago but that is how I recall it. It was like that until Dad passed away and Mom sold the farm, including all the buildings, which were bulldozed down. So it's not there any longer but it was part of my childhood.

I started to grade school in 1946, a couple weeks late. I attended a one-room country school all through the eight years of grade school, and graduated in 1953. I still remember the feeling of going from that one-room school to high school in a three-story building in Princeton, Missouri. I was lost trying to find the room where I was supposed to be for different classes. It was pretty overwhelming, but of course, I got through it and graduated from Princeton in 1957.

What to do then? One summer a friend had a car and four of us guys went out to Colorado to work on a hay ranch. We were down in the valley with mountains all around. We lived in a bunkhouse that didn't even have running water. We had to pour water out of a bucket and some mornings it was pretty cold. They had both cattle and sheep on this ranch. We put up hay for them but it was a lot different than putting up hay in Missouri. It was what we called slough hay. We didn't use horses. Everything was mechanical, but the machinery was home­made. They had put it together with different kind of rakes. It didn't look like anything we had ever seen. We stacked the hay in huge stacks in the field. The animals were up in the mountains, on what they called the summer range. We didn't see any of them. They had a cattle drive in the fall to bring them out of the mountains, but we came back home early in September when the hay was all put up, and didn't get to witness that. It was quite an experience for young guys.

After we returned, we kind of bummed around working at various jobs. I didn't think I had enough money to go to college. If I had, I'd have gone to Maryville, which was then a teachers' college, but even so, I didn't have a major picked out. I was kind of lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I helped farmers for about a year, then went to work for a tree service out of Muncie, Indiana, and in the course of that job, I learned to drive a truck, which led to my career.

During this time, I met Glenda Willson, and we were married at Cainsville, Missouri on August 20, 1960. Our son Randy was born in 1961, and daughter Joni in 1963.

I started in 1961, with Bethany Falls Concrete Company in Missouri, and worked for them until 1981. That was during Carter's administration, when the economy went really bad. The cost of borrowing money was up around 20 to 22 to 24% and the company went bankrupt, so I went to work for Central Paving Corporation out of Indianola. I worked there until '88, when there was a change of ownership and I worked four years for VO Concrete until they sold to GNA Concrete. I was with them until they were purchased by Manatts. I've worked for Manatts Ready-Mix, who have plants in Iowa, Wisconsin, and own rock quarries in Missouri for about 11 years. I commute to and from our office in Johnston, Iowa five days a week, sometimes six or even seven. It used to be if we were working, I was there, but not anymore. I usually take Saturdays and Sundays off, but it depends on what we are working on.

Early on, when our children Randy and Joni were small, I used to take them with me in the truck for a day. That isn't allowed any longer, but at that time I was working for Bethany Falls and there were no regulations to prevent it. We had three plants — Cameron, Stanberry, and Bethany. We pretty much covered the northwest and north central parts of Missouri and southern Iowa. I worked out of Bethany, Missouri, and usually we didn't go more than an hour's drive from our plant location. The kids loved to go, and it was quite an experience for them.

At that time the company had about 100 total employees. There weren't any management areas open and there weren't many changes. People stayed with jobs for years so there wasn't much opportunity. I drove a truck until 1973, before I got into management. My first job in that position was at Davis City, Iowa. I only had six drivers the couple years I was there, then the company bought the Ready Mix Plant in Osceola. I came up to run it March 1, 1975, and that is how we came to move to Osceola.

I ran the plant, loaded the trucks, and accepted orders — at that time we had to hand-write delivery tickets. I took care of book work, helped drivers find where the jobs were and things like that. I didn't necessarily ever see the projects we were supplying. I worked odd hours. Ready-Mix Concrete can be 24 hours a day. We might start at 5:00 in the morning and still be there at 10:00 at night, depending on the service we needed to provide. Businesses in those days were more service-oriented than is the case today. Need determined our hours and we still maintain an almost 24 hours a day schedule, although our hours have become more stable.

That is one of the changes I've noticed during the time I've been involved with concrete. Another is the different grades of cement that have been developed. Cement is very expensive to produce because it requires extensive amounts of heat to produce it. Large amounts of gasses and coal are used but waste products such as used truck tires are also burned. Kilns are long metal tubes lined with fire brick in which great amounts of limestone rock are burned at temperatures about 3200 degrees until they become clinker, which is then allowed to cool and ground into a fine powder in a mill with steel balls, mixed with clays, gypsum and other products to control set time and strength.

We have also started to produce "green" concrete using recycled materials. Recycled concrete, fly ash which is a by product of coal burning plants that produce electricity and ground slag which is skimmed off molten steel and quickly cooled with water and ground. All of these products are used in today's concrete. Concrete is very versatile. Our customers are involved in road construction, home building, streets, sidewalks and farm use. It is hard to look around and not see concrete, but it is not the same for all applications. Concrete is designed for many different applications for specific purposes. Concrete is now loaded into mixer trucks by computers, which store designed mixes and control the equipment which loads the correct amount of ingredients to fit different applications.

One of the primary themes of my story has to do with changes I have seen and our business reflects them. My life consists of sitting in a pickup several hours a day, then behind the desk at the computer. We depend so much on them! They have changed our lives, and how we think. What is coming next we haven't a clue. Technology today is so fast paced and everything changes in such a short span of time whenever dealing with computers, people my age are not as comfortable as younger ones. I'm terrible with computers. I've had one for several years. I know how to operate it, but in our office there are people who sit down at the computer and do things that just amaze me. I don't know what they are doing, let alone how they do it. And I'll never know because I am not good at it like younger people.

I have kind of figured out how to do the internet, which has increased our ability to find information on new products. In the past, products we sell requiring safety data sheets were hard to get. Now they can be printed from computer websites. The supplier is required to provide them to purchasers of products. Now millions of products are governed by them. This would include all the petroleum products. It used to be a hassle to get that information. We had to contact the company, they had to mail it to us, and it would take days to for it to reach us. There were times when they would forget or didn't want to bother with it. Today we can go to the websites, open up the ingredients in seconds and print them off ourselves. It has speeded up the process so much!

Going back to typewriters would be unthinkable. I took typing in high school. I wasn't very fast and my accuracy wasn't good so I didn't score well as far as words per minute were concerned, but the greater abilities of the computer over the typewriter is phenomenal. I don't even know what some of the keys are for. With computers, we can cut and paste, or move paragraphs wherever we want them. With typewriters, we put it on the page and there is was. Unless we could correct it with white-out, we retyped the page.

Computers have really increased abilities and lots of people have a greater understanding of them than I. With an automobile, if it needs a new starter or generator or alternator, I can put it on and make it go again. Computers — I haven't a clue. We have an I.T. division based in Brooklyn, Iowa, with five people working there. If something goes wrong with the computer we can talk to them over the phone, they can hook right into our computer, remote from Brooklyn. On the screen things begin popping up. Things are happening and I am sitting there wondering, "What are they doing?!" I don't understand it at all but they usually can fix it by remote.

It is all pretty amazing to me. I can't even comprehend what it is or how it works. I just know it does a lot of stuff. Even though I swore I'd never have one, I wouldn't want to be without it. About ten years ago, I finally gave in and probably should have had one long before. I waited too long. Shopping on the internet has become pretty handy. People who use it don't even have to leave the house, and they have the merchandise in a couple of days.

One of the main topics of conversation these days is the economy, and it has impacted our business to a degree. Five years ago we were much busier than we are now, even though we have a lot of ongoing projects. In my opinion, it will be a couple years before it comes back to what it was, because there isn't the ability to get the money we had in the past. My explanation of the cause of our economic dilemma is that for several years we have spent more than we've had. We've borrowed way more than we should have. We kept building houses people couldn't afford and we've outspent our income until now we are at the point of having to do something drastic.

We seem to be trying to buy our way out of poverty and I don't think it will work. Dollars today are probably worth 10¢ or maybe even 5¢ compared to what they were when I was younger. At that time, we had something to back up the dollar and today we don't. I'm not an economist but I don't understand the reasoning of what is happening. I think we are digging the hole deeper. I don't advocate that we go back to what it was when I was a child, although it wasn't that bad. I am thinking that we of the older generations will probably weather the storm, but I'm concerned about the younger people, kids who are five or ten years old now. They don't have very much to look forward to as far as us getting out of debt. Pessimism never solved anything and we all have work to do to remedy this.

I moved to Osceola to be closer to my work in 1975, and the family followed in 1976. Glenda worked in several nursing positions and decided to become an LPN. She went to work for Dr. Lower and in the 25+ years she has been there, we have become good friends. In 1986, we spent a week traveling with them and two other couples, who were also Tom's employees, to Germany and Austria. Beautiful! We were in Salzburg, Vienna, and stayed at a lodge where the Olympics were held in the 1960s. We have done most of our traveling since then within the States, although we have been to Mexico twice, and spent a week each time. To really be away, uninterrupted, our favorite place is an isolated area there right on the beach. No phones, nothing to do but relax and goof around.

It is quite natural for Glenda and me to be active in the First Christian Church. Her dad was a Christian minister, who died in 1970. We have held and do hold various offices, have both taught Sunday School, both are deacons, which includes taking communion to shut-ins. We rotate month by month, serving together in a group of about eight.

Three or four years ago, the need to remodel the dark and dingy church basement became apparent. It is a general-purpose facility, the floor was old, heaved in the center. There were also problems with asbestos in the tile on the floor. I was Property Committee chairman and we decided to fix it. We spent two years trying to figure how, and I asked a floor company in Des Moines to come down and look at it. The gentleman said they could put a floor on top of the old one and not have to take the asbestos up. It was going to cost about $20,000, just to get the old tile off the concrete, and then we still had to do something about the concrete. We didn't have that kind of money. The final solution was to put a new tile floor on top of the old one. We did a lot of painting and cleaning. Bob Schader volunteered a lot of plumbing. We put in a new kitchen. It is pretty nice.

We also have a new parking lot which became available because a factory building had burned. Before it was a factory, it was the site of the Methodist Church, which had been replaced. We badly needed the space. We went for years with on-the-street parking. To attend services, we parked in the driveway of a business building across the street, and in the funeral home lot. It was a difficult for all people, not only the handicapped, to get to church. It was a tragedy that the factory burned but it is a nice asset for us. It is kind of ridiculous that our society walks for exercise but if we have a need to run errands, shop, or attend church, we feel inconvenienced if we must walk a half block. Glenda and I could walk to church by starting five minutes earlier but we don't. We jump in the car.

We also have a change in leadership. It had probably been more than a year since our last minister, Phil Coe, retired, and a search committee was appointed. In our denomination, the congregation votes on hiring a new pastor. We had several interim ministers, including Rev. Duane Churchman, a retired United Methodist minister, but about Thanksgiving 2008, we hired Rev. Robert Miner, with whom we are very pleased. There are always some issues to discuss and agree on, but this time there was a new one — housing. The parsonage stood next to the church on Main Street, and was in need of renovation. The consensus was that ministers probably shouldn't be required to live in a particular house. It might be better if we gave a housing allowance and let them choose where to live. We have torn down the parsonage.

This may open the way to make our church more handicapped accessible. At this time we meet qualifications. Twelve or fifteen years ago, we put in an elevator that will take people to the lower level from the main floor, and we've changed the entrances so they are handicapped accessible, but people still have to negotiate the distance from the street to the church and back.

Glenda and I are beginning to think and talk about retiring. My guess if she would like to have more time for herself, to do the things she enjoys but she hasn't time to do. I am thinking I may retire at the end of this year. I will be 70 in August. What I do is pretty fast pace work. I have to be in charge of lots of projects. I am feeling the pressure of knowing that if something were to be done wrong, it could cost the company a lot of money. I've been doing this work for a long time and I'm thinking it may be time to kick back and look at something else — like playing more with the horses.

We began about five years ago to get involved with horses, more or less accidentally. Glenda wanted a horse to ride so we bought a mare and arranged for her to be kept at Bud Jones' farm. He went into partnership with us. The mare, we discovered, happened to be a thoroughbred with a background of some pretty good breeding. One thing led to another. We decided to have her bred, so we did some checking and found a place called Rocking River Ranch at Winterset, Iowa. We have added to our herd, and have been using that facility to have them bred.

We are hopeful the oldest one of the thoroughbred race horses will be at Prairie Meadows this year. They have to meet criteria to be able to do that. No one can just take a horse up there and have it run. There are qualifications to be met. They have a category called "Iowa Bred," and they have to be registered through the state and the thoroughbred association. It is a little expensive by the time all that is done. The one that is to run this year is pretty young, she will only be two. She is being trained now at Dodge City, Kansas. Training consists in breaking them to ride, if they are not already broke. This is different that breaking them for pleasure riding but riding for racing. They are trained to start out of the starting gate and several other points they must learn.

She will be coming home in March. We now have a colt, born April 5, 2009, named Lord of the Breeze. He's a big boy! This hobby becomes addictive. My greatest desire is to stand in the winners' circle one time and actually say we've won. This pursuit can't be done for the money. We may never win anything, and even if we were a winner (I think at Prairie Meadows $30- or $40,000 is a pretty good purse), it doesn't mean we would get all that. A lot of people — the breeder, the jockey, the trainer — get cuts out of that.

Beyond that, we have to take into account they have to be two years old or almost that, so we feed them and take care of them here, then bide our time imtil they get old enough to start developing. Then we see what happens. We've contacted Dick Clark who is one of the leading trainers. I thought we did pretty well getting him the first time out because we don't know what we're doing. We're just raising horses hoping we can find one that will run. I expect as owners of the horse, if we won $10- $15,000 a race we'd be pretty fortunate. We've never won one so I don't really know.

I go feed the horses about 6:00 in the morning and head off to work. We now (May, 2009) have a gelding just to ride. His name is Brodie and that is what Brodie is for. Glenda and Bud's boys, who are 12 or 14, bought him. We have two that are eligible to race at Prairie Meadows. The mare will go to Winterset the end of this month and she will be delivering hopefully about the end of next month. By the end of the summer, if we haven't made any money, it will probably be time to quit. It is an unknown field for all of us but it was something we've always wanted to do, and I guess we have the money — at least we are doing it.

The irony is, I'm not a horse lover. When I was young and we were on the farm, Dad had a couple old work horses. We lived on a dirt road, and when it rained enough we couldn't get the car out, Dad would get the team and wagon and we'd go to the store three miles away. I hated those horses! Every quarter mile they would have to stop and rest. I'd have been able to walk faster than  we were going. So I'm not much of a horse lover and I don't ride anymore, but I like playing around with these horses. It is totally different. This is fun.

As I think about retiring, I remember a lady named Stella Wickersham, who went to our church in Cainsville, Missouri. She lived to be over 100. She had been a one room rural school teacher and when she was nearly that age, she still taught Sunday school. She could stand up and recite poetry. I couldn't recite anything, never could, even when I was in school. But that lady had a phenomenal mind. She walked several blocks to church almost to the end. I really don't anticipate living that long, but I'd like to stay that sharp as long as I'm here. I'm not much for sitting around. I like to be doing something. I like yard work. Our lawn and flowers are a pride and joy. I'd like to have more time for them. I don't have hobbies. I used to like to hunt but I haven't done it in years, and have no deep desire to do it now. I never fished, never did wood­working, never golfed a game in my life. I've hit a few buckets of balls to see if I could hit them and couldn't, so that took care of golf. Maybe I could find something where I would work a few days a month, driving vehicles or something.

We might find time to visit our daughter, Joni, and her husband, Rick Loomis, who live in Pasadena, California. Joni is a nurse at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. Rick is a lawyer for the city of Los Angeles. Their son Matthew is eight years old and attends a private school in Pasadena. That is a beautiful place but I have no desire to live there. Too many people.

Our son Randy graduated from high school in 1979, enlisted and served in the Marine Corps for six years. He was an embassy guard in Saudi Arabia, and Vienna, Austria. We have a picture of him in uniform, shaking the hand of President George Bush. Randy and his wife, Ronda, live just outside of Osceola. Randy has his own business, which he enjoys. Ronda is a teacher in the Clarke Community School system. Their son Drew is 13 and in 7th grade, Grant is 11 and in 4th grade. All three grandsons are too quickly becoming young men. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful family.

My brother Jim lives in Washington State, married to Carolyn. When we retire, we could visit them, also, and my sister Aleta, who lives in Trenton, Missouri, where my mom lives. Mom is in a retirement complex made of individual residences. She still lives alone. She will be 92 in June, and although she doesn't see very well, she is in pretty good health. Her memory is better than mine. I think the people who live a long time have an interest in living.

I suspect we might do more biking. We have bicycles in the garage and last year I got mine out, pumped up the tires, cleaned it up, rode three or four times and that was that. We have a wonderful Hembry bike and walking trail out by the high school, and there are lots of others. We could go to Indianola and ride the Summerset Trail. There is a developed trail from Chariton to Derby, and if we get really ambitious, we could go to Waukee and ride the one that must be 50 miles long or more. There is no lack of things to do if we choose to do them.

That represents another change. When I was growing up, our parents didn't need to be provided with recreational opportunities. On the farm there was always work to be done by each family member. We don't have that now, and we couldn't imagine going back to live in a world without electricity and all the conveniences it affords. But we have lost some advantages we had then. There is a price tag and increased cost of living is only one of them. We've lost closeness of families, friends, and neighbors. Card games — I remember when I was a kid, it was a standard thing on Saturday nights we'd get together at somebody's house, and play Pitch or some other game. We don't socialize much anymore. We used to know everybody within miles. We didn't necessarily see them that much but we knew who lived there, and we knew in a general way how they were faring. If they needed help, we were available. I'm grateful for having lived in those days and wish we could give some of those simple pleasures to young people growing up today.

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