Dear Grandkids,

Recently, when we stopped in traffic for a garbage truck making rounds, my grandchild asked “how did they pick up garbage in the old days”?  My answer,  I grew up in Enid OK, we had alleys behind our house with a 55 gallon barrel for trash.  We would burn our trash (no city burn permits needed).  What did not burn, a man with his horse driven wagon would come by and pick up what was left.  I do not ever remember seeing a city garbage truck.

This conversation went on when I asked, do you know how we got our milk in the “old days”?  A horse drawn milk wagon would come to our house!  Mother would put a note in a metal basket with instructions on what we needed, whole milk (no skim milk in those days) and if we were lucky she would include chocolate milk.  He would collect our empty glass bottles and fill the order. 

These questions and answers made me start wondering,  where have all the wagons gone?   The above picture is your great- great-great grandfather, Elmer James Guernsey.  I believe the picture was taken in the red earth hills around Strong City, Oklahoma Territory, about 1902-3.    To my knowledge granddad never learned to drive a car, a true rancher who’s family transportation was always by horse and wagon.  He made the Cherokee Strip land run  by horse and staked a claim near Manchester, Oklahoma Territory.  Years later he decided to move to Strong City, OK.  This trip made with cattle and several wagons with furniture,  the trip took a couple weeks and went through Enid, Oklahoma Territory.  Today we would make this drive in three hours by car.

1887 Chisholm Trail Cowboys from Turkey Creek Ranch, West of Present Enid, Oklahoma.

Back when your gggg Grandfather Albert J. Anderson was driving longhorn cattle up the Chisholm trail from Texas to Kansas, the backbone of the cattle drive was the chuckwagon  that carried everything a ranch crew needed.  The first chuckwagon was customized from a surplus Army wagon, by cattle baron Charles Goodnight in 1866.

In 1994, I had the opportunity to relive the legend of the Chisholm Trail cattle drive from  Waynoka to  Enid. 

The Cherokee Strip Community Ranch team  (Foreman, Dr. Charles Ogle, Cooks Jim Anderson and Scotty Hurst and Wranglers Bill Shaw and Lew Meibergan  and many other cowboys, followed Longhorn cattle on a five day journey from Waynoka to Enid, OK.   Sleeping on the hard ground gave me great respect for what the early day cowboys endured.                                                                       

Even our wannabe  cowboys found s— happens on the trail.  Evening chow was late that day.

A beautiful day on the cattle trail.

H. Holden and friends enjoying the evening social hour.

The Chisholm Cowboys

End of the trail, time to go home to a comfortable bed.

OK grandkids, you may not understand the importance of  wagons  in your granddads day, but just wait 40 years when your grandchildren ask “did you really have cars that did not drive themselves?”

Papa Jim