"Our Family's Greatest Master Gardener" - Time Out #53

The ol' saying states you have a green thumb if you are able to grow anything well.

Having said that, Col. Breedlove, my late father, had 10 green fingers!

The story must have begun August 9, 1903, in Ardmore, IT (Indian Territory; prior to our 1907 statehood) when he was born. I'm sure the genetics ran extremely deep because I remember frequent boyhood visits to my paternal grandmother's home, and she always had a garden, either out back, on the side of her home or in some cases, both. I also remember going down in her tornado 'fraidy hole, dodging all the spiders and other crawly things, to get jars of everything she had preserved from her garden's past harvests. I'm sure I probably got the first taste of pickled okra from grandma's storm shelter.

Therefore, that's why young Clarence (my pop) had to have developed his love of Mother Earth from his childhood. The other obvious reason would be, of course, the money saved if he grew part of his food instead of depending on the few grocery stores back in the day, long, long ago.

So, as long as I can remember, my dear father had a deep desire to plant things. It wasn't just vegetables, but he would always challenge himself to grow the impossible plant, tree, etc in weather-challenged Oklahoma. He truly wanted to be the Johnny Appleseed of the Prairie. He absolutely loved to have friends or visitors over to his home, and give them a botanical tour of the Breedlove Estate. He was really in his off-stage element during these times, and if I would have filmed it then, I probably would have had a best seller at the box office today.

Gardening was so in his blood, he would think about it year round. He would winterize the soil and get his tools ready in the cold Oklahoma months, always picking up some spare items at local garage sales or wherever. Then, when the time was right for him which I'm sure required lots of thought and coffee talk among his peers over Our Town, he would break the ground and commence on that year's crop.

When he built our new home on West 9th Avenue in the late 1950's, he hit a home run regarding his horticultural potential; i.e., he bought a large lot. A large lot equated to lots of garden space on the north side of our home, and almost from the start after purchasing the lot, he started his quest to get his garden going.

Being a sub and early teen those first few years on our new place, I provided some labor, but couldn't touch his obsession with all things that grow. I barely recall, I had other things on my young mind then, too, but did occasionally help him. I marveled when something I actually placed in the soil early on really did, occasionally, come up and grow,

Well, our backyard land wasn't enough for my dad, so expansion was his Plan B.

And EXPAND he did!!

Land became available for sale west of our home at a very cheap price because the land was in the flood plane and, therefore, no livable structures could be constructed there. My father snapped the land up, had a water well drilled on it (struck water after on 9' of drilling due to the proximity of the creek), and built one of his many "out" buildings from scrape lumber. He was always expert in collecting this scrape building material, especially after OSU's homecoming each fall. He called his wooden structure his John Wayne House, and named his enormous garden he cultivated on-site there for years, The Horn of Plenty Farms (HOP), Stillwater Division. He even made a sign he placed there, and had paper labels printed and placed on his preserved products. Genetics being genetics, the HOP had a Rockville, MD, Division (my brother, C.H.'s labor of love), and a Little Rock, AR, later Greenbrier, AR, Division (my sister, Beverly's, operation). No, I never had a division; I must have lost some of the lust by too much early youth work?

My father raised so much stuff--tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini,squash, okra, green beans, melons, lettuce---he literally gave away full size, brown grocery sack after grocery sack to friends, acquaintances, strangers, etc. In fact, the joke was when folks would see him pull up in front of their homes with his bags of stuff, the homeowner would run out the back door to avoid taking any additional produce since they hadn't used all the stuff since the last time the Col. had paid an impromptu visit.

If I remember correctly, he would even take some of his produce to the red Douglas Big Country Store on East 6th Avenue, and either sell or barter it with the Douglas store owners. He would usually take me along with him on those outings.. Needless to say, as a youngster then, I was thoroughly entertained with this business friendships and the adult-to-adult interactions.

So, each time I have gone to a farmer's market, whether it be in Our Town or any location on Planet Earth, I get a twinkle in my mind's eye of my father's wonderful truck farming avocation.

He was simply the absolute BEST.................