Rags to Riches

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Glendal Leon Reeves, an Autobiography

It was a chilly night a few days after Thanksgiving, Tuesday, November 30, 1943. A fire was burning in the wood stove to keep the small farmhouse warm. Jeff and Helen Reeves were anticipating the birth of their third child. There was no doctor present, nor had there been, nor would there be. Helen had experienced this twice before and was sure it would work out.

My name is Glendal Leon Reeves and that is the way I entered the world. My parents lived on a farm in Southeastern Oklahoma, ten miles in the country from the tiny town of Stuart, Oklahoma. About seven miles of that was a dirt road (that means unpaved) which would sometimes become impassable after a few inches of rain. The closest grocery store was part of a gas station about seven miles away on a dirt road. The closest bank was in a town 30 miles away.

When I was born, my family had no electricity, no running water (which meant no toilets), no telephone, and none of the comforts that we think all people have now. When Emeril refers to the icebox, I know what he is talking about. That is what we had. We could not have a refrigerator because we had no electricity. In fact, I was about 6 years old before we had electrical power. I still remember the heavy machinery coming to place the poles before stringing the electrical wires.

I spent the first 17 years of my life on that farm. In all of those years, for some reason or other, we never had running water in the house, nor did we ever have a telephone. We got our first TV when I was about 15 years old. You can call it poverty, or give it any name you wish.

I started school at the age of five. Each morning the bus would pick us up and take us to school in the community of Gerty, Oklahoma. It took almost an hour for the bus to make its route and get us to school. The process was reversed in the afternoon. When weather conditions were bad, it took even longer. When I attended school, the elementary, junior high, and high school were in the same building. That is not so difficult when there is only one small class at each grade level. Most of my classmates were the same throughout my years of education. My high school graduating class had 16 students. Is that almost unbelievable?

Farm work at that time was difficult. A majority of the work on our farm was done with a team of mules. (I know, it sounds like the wrong generation!) We eventually got a small tractor. I knew at an early age that living on a farm was not something I wanted to do. Milking the cows, feeding the pigs and other animals before and after school was only part of it. The most difficult part was working in the cotton, corn, and peanut fields after school and on Saturdays. Almost never on a Sunday though. That day was reserved for attending church.