Country Lifestyle
Keeping You Advised – Gary England
Long before the Thunder rumbled into Oklahoma, there was Gary England.
Whether or not you were born and raised in the Sooner State, there is a great chance you’ve heard of the famed weatherman. His skill and accuracy at predicting severe weather seemed at times omnipotent; more like a shaman than someone simply reading and reporting data.
Gary was, and still is, a household name in the Sooner state. Even if a person was more apt to turn to a different channel than KWTV News 9, the station he worked at for 41 years as the chief meteorologist, for entertainment, when it came to bad weather everyone wanted to hear what Gary had to say. The tagline “Stay with Channel 9 – We’ll keep you advised,” was as familiar to Oklahomans as the BC Clark jingle.
He became known for an off-beat sense of humor and a personality that’s genuinely country, peppering his weather reports with exclamations of “gosh”, “good gracious”, and “great God almighty!”
While people may familiar with his on-air persona, they likely do not know how his upbringing paved the way for his passion for weather or what a jokester he was as a young man, or how long he struggled unsuccessfully to find employment.
They also might not realize the depth of responsibility he felt for his fellow Oklahomans when severe weather struck, or the grief he feels remembering the bad days. “Everyone saw me on the television for all these years. They think I’m just some scientific guy; that I don’t have a past. They don’t realize I’m a normal person,” he shared.
Growing Up
Born in October 1939, Gary grew up in the northwestern Oklahoma town of Seiling. He was raised in a time when a television set was a luxury, so once each week, he and his family went to his grandmother’s house. There, with rapt attention, he’d watch legendary weatherman Harry Volkman.
“He was someone I really liked, and before all the fancy stuff. He had a 15 to 20 minute program on Sundays and I remember I would get right up to the TV, on my knees, to watch. One time when Harry came on, I pointed at him and said, ‘Daddy, I want to be one of those!’ My dad asked, ‘So what is he?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but I want to be one,’” England recalled.
Winter weather was particularly exciting for the young man. “When Harry would forecast snow, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. I’d watch the yard light by the window. We didn’t have too much money, and my breath would freeze on the window on the inside, but I didn’t care. I was waiting for snow,” he said.
The town of Seiling only had one siren, and advance warning only came from deputies and other spotters. “During severe weather season, it seemed like if we went to the movies on a Saturday night, we’d hear the storm noise increase to our southwest, and they’d turn on the lights and talk about a tornado coming that way. Everyone would run out of that place, jump in the cars, go home, and jump in the cellars; all for a tornado that never came.” He added, “We always had those abrupt things. We had a lot of tornado warnings, but very few tornados.”
Once, while cleaning out a chicken house, Gary and his father were caught in a storm. “I got in the middle of the place, which wasn’t too smart, and Lord, it went on a long time. I looked outside and it was ripping the roof off. It looked like there were chicken bullets going by,” he recalled. He remembered that his father wondered if people were ever going to be able to get a warning for the storms.
Many times, Gary and his family took shelter in his grandmother’s cellar. Once it was only the kids and his grandmother at home. “I’ll never forget it. The sirens go off, and we ran down to the cellar. All we had was a little candle, and we piled in there, and there was a damn snake in there! Boy did we jump out. It was like a covey of quail flying out of there,” he said. “I had so many experiences when I was younger that would shape who I became.”
While most of his tales are amusing, including one of his grandfather and uncle refusing to go in the cellar and getting pelted by mud, a few were more sobering.
He recalled the day of the Woodward tornado in 1947. His family was living in Enid at the time, but he and his father walked outside and looked at the clouds. His father predicted, “It’s going to be a bad storm tonight somewhere.”
That storm, the deadliest in Oklahoma’s history, killed more than 100 people. All night long, the sounds of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars flying towards Woodward kept residents awake. It wasn’t until the next day that the tragedy became public knowledge. “We moved back to Seiling right after that. There were a lot of men in Seiling that had helped Woodward people, and they had so many stories that, to a young boy, were so interesting. That influenced me a lot,” he said.
Also impacting Gary was a documentary television series called Victory at Sea, which detailed how the Navy helped win World War II. He loved the ships and the uniforms, and, one other factor of Navy life. “There would always be a couple sailors walking down the street with a girl in each arm,” he said with a chuckle. “I found out that it didn’t happen like that!” But somehow the combination of watching Harry Volkman and Victory at Sea created his future. “That’s all I could think about.”
That future began quickly. “I got out of school when I was 17. Not because I was overly smart, but because I started really early. Momma signed the papers, and I joined the Navy,” he said.
In the Navy, Gary went into the weather service. He said, “All the things I had been dreaming about all those years happened in the Navy.”
After his stint in the Navy, he spent a year at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Okla., a choice that would shape the rest of his life. While there, he met “the cutest red-headed girl you’ve ever seen. Her name was Mary.”
At first Mary was less than impressed. Undeterred, he pursued her. He even resorted to throwing rocks at the second story window of her dormitory room to get her attention. Then he tried climbing up on a ladder and tapping on the window, still to no avail. Once, when he was using a friend’s shoulders as a ladder to reach the second floor, the campus police came by. “My friend ran out and left me hanging onto the ledge,” Gary shared. “I left pretty quickly after that.”
Eventually his tenacity paid off, and Mary and Gary were wed a year later. “I don’t know what I’d do if I hadn’t met her. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. She was trying to change me into the person she wanted me to be, and I didn’t even know it was happening,” he said. “She gradually changed my clothes, got my language under control, and I didn’t drink quite as much beer. She morphed me into the person she thought I should be, which was a lot better than I was.”
After Southwestern, Gary went to the University of Oklahoma, where he earned a mathematics/meteorology degree. He graduated in 1965, and because he’d already been in the Navy, he didn’t have to worry about being drafted to go to Vietnam.
Eager to pursue his dream of being a television weatherman, he sent letters to weather stations in Oklahoma and surrounding states. He received responses, but not the ones he wanted. “They’d send me a letter back to say they’d keep my letter ‘on file,’ which is code for, ‘Don’t contact us anymore.’” he shared.
In the meantime, Gary and a friend started a forecasting business for agriculture and aviation, setting up shop at the Wiley Post Airport. Unfortunately, the business did not flourish. “It wasn’t the smartest thing I’d done, but a great part of my life,” he said.
Once again, Gary sent out a round of letters across the country, this time asking for a job forecasting. “Only one person responded. His name was A.H. Glenn, and he was from New Orleans. Thank God he called. By that time Mary was pregnant with Molly, and I needed a job!”
In New Orleans, Gary spent his time forecasting oceanographic and meteorological conditions for Glenn’s private weather service. “It was a learning experience. He was the greatest teacher I’ve ever had in my life. Even though I didn’t’ like him, I learned so darn much from that guy. It was the first time I learned discipline, because he didn’t put up with any crap. If it hadn’t been for him, I would not have succeeded in life,” he shared. “He taught me about science I’d never dreamed of. We did hurricanes, tornados, floods, (ocean rig tows) – a little bit of everything.”
But England still longed for a television career, and for his home state, where tornadoes ravaged the state and people had little warning. So, he, Mary, and their daughter Molly went back to Oklahoma even though he had no employment prospects.
He continued to look for a weather job, but knowing he had to make a living, did a stint selling typewriters; something he was woefully unsuccessful at. That was followed by a job selling advertisements. “I couldn’t sell anything. The only thing I sold was bad debts. Someone would buy a big, beautiful two page full color spread, and then wouldn’t pay for it.”
Luckily Mary got a job with the radio station KTOK. One day he noticed the station was putting in a weather radar, so he tracked down the general manager. “I told him he’d need me when they finished it, but he didn’t believe me,” Gary said.
The young couple was very poor at the time, and Gary, with nothing else to do, would stop by the station regularly to help himself to free coffee. “So, I’m there one morning drinking my coffee after they’d finished the radar, and a storm came up. They had an engineer there to run it, but he didn’t know how to read it, so they hired me on the spot. When you’ve been hanging around a job so much, they don’t have to pay you much, but they gave me a little office upstairs. It was tiny, but I had a microphone and a lightbulb – I thought it was great!” he shared.
While on air, Gary would do segments on the “thunder lizard,” which he described as an 805-pound creature that changed color with the weather. It was completely fictitious, and viewers, in on the joke, called in with tongue-in-cheek reports about run-ins with the beast. “You’d be surprised how many people would call me and tell me they saw it. It was great stuff,” he said. “I was there a year, and they fired me four times. After the storm season they thought they wouldn’t need me, but I reminded them about the people fishing, so they kept me. The same thing happened when they tried to fire me in the fall, when people would be going to football games. I made sure they kept me around.”
Gary grew in popularity, so much that he got a call from the KWTV Channel 9 general manager asking him to come in for an interview. “He said, ‘You sound a little crazy, but I’d like to talk to you.’ I had to do an audition two days later, and I didn’t have a suit. I went out and got myself a pair of powder blue bell bottoms. Oh, they looked good! And a maroon jacket, with a white shirt, and a multi-color tie and boots. I was stylin’, baby. I went to that darn audition and they hired me, and the rest is history.”
On Oct. 16, 1972, Gary England finally became a television weatherman.
Read more about Gary in the May 2020 issue of Oklahoma Farm & Ranch.
I am a mother. I do not know about the rest of you mothers, but the second I became “Mom,” my life became a constant state of wondering if I am doing a good job.
That is especially hard to tell when you choose to homeschool. I have no feedback from anyone that is not family. No teacher conferences telling me the little girl talks too much or the oldest boy can not sit still. Sure, I could ask my husband how he thinks our kids are maturing emotionally and intellectually. Still, he would most likely look out the window and see the aforementioned children running around in the sand with only socks on. He would then look at me and ask me to make him a quesadilla. I would say yes, we would joke about socks, and life would go on. See? Zero feedback to go on here.
So, you start to rely on personal experiences. You come up with little tests throughout your days to rate your kids “ready for society” level.
Example 1: A trip to the big city where the kids treat the grocery store as their personal snack depot. They successfully eat all the grapes and a whole block of cheese in your basket before you can check out. As you leave, they tell the door greeter, “Have a nice day.”
Example 2: Your husband enters an indoor rodeo. You are bouncing the baby and notice your oldest child is eating a bag of dippin dots. First, you smile and then remember that she has no money. Come to think of it, the concession stand is not even open. You have now concluded your firstborn has broken into the closed concession stand with her posse of four-year-old convicts and has helped herself to some ice cream.
Example 3: You are in church. The children have managed to be nice and quiet the entire time. After the message and the closing “Amen” is said, your three-year-old turns to you and says, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
After a little while, you start to question your “Ready for Society” tests. Are they productive? Are they accurate? I figure the answer to that question is better left unanswered.
One evening this summer, after I had quit conducting all these tests, I was mourning the loss of my children’s place in society when I looked up and noticed all our horses running down our driveway, headed for the neighboring pastures. For a minute, I just sat there wondering what I should do. I was holding the baby and wearing the ever-practical slip-on loafer and had absolutely no idea what was for supper. That had nothing to do with the horses being out, but that is part of being a housewife, I guess. You always wonder if you left the iron on and what is for supper.
While I sat there stunned, pondering life’s biggest questions, my husband and my daughter yelled at me to get a move on as they were already springing into action. My husband ran to stop them, and my daughter was on her way to the barn for some halters. Meanwhile, I was tripping over my loafers, scaring the horses and making already stressful matters much worse.
My husband finally got the horses cornered at the far end of our neighbor’s pasture and waved at me for some assistance. I handed the baby to my daughter and told her to watch the boys and stay in the house while I headed to help.
Within 30 minutes, we caught the horses and led them back to the corrals. I was in a near state of panic, wondering how long the boys had been crying and what state of mind my daughter was in, having just witnessed her dad nearly sweat to death and her mother make terrible fashion choices.
To my surprise, as I walked up to the house, I saw three happy children on the porch eating a supper of plums and peaches. The boys laughed at their sister as she shuffled little cars and cows around for them to play with. Not only had she fed and entertained her brothers, but she had also cleaned the house and fed the chickens to boot. I just stood there quietly watching for a while, not wanting to disturb the moment.
After the kids passed their first ever Ready for Society test, I realized that society’s standards versus my own were probably quite different. Society tells me that my kids need to be clean and quiet. Seen but not heard. Able to recite the ABCs on command but have no opinion on political matters. To be kind to everyone but never bring up God’s name and what He has to do with it. Society says my kids should fall into the assembly line and attend a good college someday to get a good minimum-wage job.
Why would I want my kids to fit into society when I do not even fit into society? No, I think I will keep my dirty little misfits all to myself. I think I will continue raising them to know how to care for themselves and each other. I will continue to show them how to serve God and work hard. I will continue to raise them never to wear slip-on shoes in the pasture and that plums and peaches are a totally acceptable supper on a warm summer evening.
By
Norman Winter
Horticulturist, Author and Speaker
National Poinsettia Day just passed, December 12 to be exact. While I am sure the powers to be wanted a celebratory type day, from what I have been seeing this year is this may have been a deadline day. This most likely applies to poinsettia partners too! If you are asking what a poinsettia partner is then put on your thinking cap and gather around.
Proven Winners got most of us to thinking partners when they introduced the concept of combining poinsettias with Diamond Frost euphorbias. This is one of the best ideas ever and we now actually have three choices, Diamond Frost, Diamond Snow with double flowers and Diamond Mountain that is the taller of the three.
To a horticulturist like myself this combination is so special because both the Poinsettia and the Diamond Frost are Euphorbias. That’s right, they are cousins. Just like Christmas, families visiting and long-lost cousins getting together. Of course, the main reason we like this idea is that the red, pink, or variegated poinsettia looks incredible, it’s as though it is sitting on a bed of snow or frost. I have found these to be more available at fine florists.
But if you are going to create your own and go plant shopping then keep in mind some other options you might want to-try. For instance, a couple of years ago Jenny Simpson of Creekside Nursery in Dallas North Carolina introduced us to not only using caladiums at Christmas but even in combinations with poinsettias. She used the Heart to Heart White Snowdrift caladiums which turned out to be a perfect partner with red poinsettias.
My time as Executive Director at the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens in Savannah GA taught me there are opportunities for outside use with poinsettias, particularly if you are astute at long range weather forecasting. First consider that Savannah is technically zone 8B with a proclivity to lean into zone 9. We used poinsettias in large planters surrounded by Silver Bullet Dusty Miller or artemisia.
A similar application gave me the opportunity of photographing pink poinsettias mass planted in an atrium-like setting and surrounded by gray leaved Icicles helichrysum. But the most obvious and perhaps easiest if you are getting a late start is to combine your poinsettias with another Christmas plant like cyclamen. White cyclamen around a red poinsettia can be simply breathtaking.
This year I have also been watching what I call the professional garden club ladies walking out of both florists and floral departments with holly berries. We all think of hollies on swags above the fireplace or front door, but two or three preserved branches loaded with red berries stuck in a pot of white poinsettias is quick, easy and unbeatable.
Red berries for Christmas, landscape beauty, and of course feeding the birds is a prime reason to grow winterberry hollies like the compact Berry Poppins. Consider also growing Berry Heavy Gold winterberry holly. Cutting branches of the gold berries to be used with red poinsettias makes a stunning partnership. Go to Proven Winners site, Winterberry Holly: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Colorful Berries. If you don’t have poinsettias yet make today your shopping day! Follow me on Facebook @NormanWinterTheGardenGuy for more photos and garden inspiration.
Homesteading, once a way of life for our ancestors, is experiencing a resurgence in today’s world. As people seek greater self-sufficiency, a deeper connection with the land, and more sustainable lifestyles, homesteading skills have become not only practical but also deeply rewarding. In this article, we’ll explore the essential homesteading skills that can empower individuals and families to live more self-reliant and sustainable lives.
1. Gardening
At the heart of homesteading is the ability to grow your own food. Gardening is the foundation of self-sufficiency, and it’s a skill that can be cultivated no matter the size of your property. Key gardening skills include:
Soil preparation and composting
Seed starting and transplanting
Crop rotation and companion planting
Pest and weed management
Harvesting and food preservation techniques like canning, freezing, and drying
2. Animal Husbandry
Raising animals for food, fiber, and companionship is a fundamental aspect of homesteading. The skills related to animal husbandry include:
Care and feeding of livestock, such as chickens, goats, cows, or pigs
Breeding and reproduction management
Livestock housing and pasture management
Animal health and basic veterinary care
Dairy and meat processing if you’re raising animals for consumption
3. Food Preservation
To make the most of your garden’s bounty or the harvest from your livestock, knowing how to preserve food is essential. Food preservation skills include:
Canning fruits and vegetables
Fermentation for foods like sauerkraut and kimchi
Dehydrating fruits, vegetables, and herbs
Making homemade jams, jellies, and pickles
Smoking, curing, and other methods for meat preservation
4. Foraging and Wildcrafting
Homesteading often involves making the most of what nature provides. Learning to identify and use wild edibles and medicinals is a valuable skill:
Identifying edible wild plants and mushrooms
Harvesting herbs for teas, tinctures, and salves
Sustainable foraging practices to protect local ecosystems
Preserving wildcrafted items for later use
5. Beekeeping
Keeping bees not only provides a source of honey but also contributes to pollination on your property. Beekeeping skills include:
Setting up and maintaining beehives
Handling and managing bees safely
Harvesting and processing honey and beeswax
Identifying and addressing common bee health issues
6. Food Self-Sufficiency
Beyond gardening, you can work toward greater food self-sufficiency by learning skills like:
Seed saving to preserve heirloom and open-pollinated varieties
Raising and harvesting small livestock like rabbits or quail
Cultivating perennial food crops like fruit trees and berry bushes
Aquaponics or hydroponics for year-round food production
7. Basic Carpentry and DIY Skills
Homesteaders often find themselves needing to build and repair structures, tools, and equipment. Carpentry and DIY skills include:
Building raised beds, chicken coops, and animal shelters
Basic woodworking for constructing furniture and farm implements
Repairing and maintaining machinery like tractors and generators
Fencing and infrastructure construction for property management
8. Water Management
Managing water resources efficiently is crucial for sustainable living. Key skills include:
Rainwater harvesting and storage
Drip irrigation and water-saving techniques for gardening
Proper well maintenance and water testing
Building and maintaining ponds or water features for livestock and wildlife
9. Energy Independence
To live off the grid or reduce your environmental footprint, consider energy independence skills:
Solar panel installation and maintenance
Wind turbine installation and maintenance
Energy-efficient building design and retrofits
Off-grid living strategies for reduced reliance on public utilities
10. Soap and Candle Making
Homemade soaps and candles can reduce reliance on store-bought products. These skills include:
Making soap using cold or hot process methods
Crafting candles from beeswax, soy, or other materials
Adding scents and colors naturally
11. Herbal Medicine and Remedies
Homesteaders often turn to herbal medicine and remedies for self-sufficiency in healthcare:
Growing and harvesting medicinal herbs
Making tinctures, salves, and herbal teas
Natural remedies for common ailments
Basic first-aid and emergency care skills
12. Sewing and Textile Arts
Basic sewing skills are essential for making and repairing clothing, linens, and more. These skills include:
Hand and machine sewing techniques
Mending and darning clothing
Knitting, crocheting, and other textile arts
Crafting items like blankets, rugs, and quilts
Homesteading is not just a return to simpler times but a way to embrace self-sufficiency, sustainability, and a deeper connection with the land. While mastering all these skills may take time, the journey itself is a rich and rewarding experience. Homesteading is about learning, adapting, and continually improving your ability to live more independently and in harmony with the environment. Whether you have acres of land or a small urban plot, these essential homesteading skills can empower you to live a more self-reliant and sustainable life, fostering a sense of fulfillment and purpose in the process.
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