Why I Couldn't Wait to Leave Cedar Vale

by Jay D. Mills

When I was 7 years old and in the first grade, my parents moved from the farm on Otter Creek into Cedar Vale. At the time it was great as we were just 2 blocks from the grade school. In a sense, we didn't so much leave the farm as we brought it to town with us.

The new place in town had been my grandparents place. On 12 acres at the northwest edge of Cedar Vale, it had a large 5 bedroom, 1 bath house; a garage, 2 barns, a chicken house, and a brooder house, for hatching chics. We had several horses, some cows, chickens and pigs on our "city" farm. This was the best of both worlds for a young farm boy. I continued to ride the horses into my early teens, and even later in parades. But I was never a real cowboy! I didn't rope or enter rodeos, except for barrel races.

I made new friends in town, and we spent many hours playing cowboys & Indians; or good cowboys & outlaws in and around the barns and in the hay bales. We later tried to light some hollow dry weeds to smoke them, but it really didn't work out so I never took up smoking. We roller skated down to the opposite side of CV to Hewins Park Pavilion, skated there round-and-round, then had to skate uphill to get home. These were the happy, carefree days of childhood.

Then it happened! My father was only interested and involved in farming and ranching, along with the livestock auction "sale barn" that he started with Fred Archer (Diane & Linda's dad) and Ralph Snyder. So, before I was even a teenager, my father applied all of the pressure that he know how (and he was good at it) to get me to join 4-H. It didn't happen, but my dad kept trying. Since we had the farm in town, someone had to milk the cow. As soon as I was 11 or 12, as I recall, I was assigned to milk the cow by hand. Not too difficult, but it took time away from my other activities and I resented the chore. Then my dad got me to help out at the sale barn in the summer by paying me. I spent the money on radios!

I just wasn't interested in the ranching life or farming, as I had discovered radios and electronic gadgets. And I was really interested in science and the new discoveries that promised to help us and change our lives. I didn't realize at the time that it was really the people running huge corporations who would profit the most from these innovations, not the users. Or that we would be made to believe, through advertising and news stories, that we wanted and needed all of these things to be happy and "to make our lives better."

So, although it disappointed my father greatly, I spent most of my time taking old clocks and radios apart -- and occasionally fixing one so that it worked again.

As I entered high school, I became increasing aware that my interests were not those of the "red neck" crowd who seemed to dominate the CV scene. From my viewpoint, they seemed to believe that being "dumb" and acting stupid was what the world was about. If it wasn't about cussin', girls, sports or fightin' they just were not interested. They were particularly hard on anyone like me who made good grades and was interested in other things. Oh, I tried basketball (B team bench), track where I excelled as a sprinter, and later did well in football after my father & the coach conspired to get me to "...just try it, you can quit anytime you want".

Although I had some good times in high school, they were not the best days of my life. My interests were in science, electronics and radio...subjects in short supply in Cedar Vale in the late 1950s. For better or worse, school in Cedar Vale was always very easy for me. So in high school, with a shortage of challenging subjects, I spent my study halls reading Popular Science, Science & Mechanics, and Aviation Week magazines. I was really up-to-date on the latest science and equipment of the day. Aviation Week was so far into the cutting edge that the Russians had multiple subscriptions to keep up with our latest military applications.

I had girl friends but I was really socially awkward and didn't understand what the boy - girl thing was all about. For me it involved raging hormones and little else. I must have been really, really slow at relationships because it took me 2 failed marriages before I even began to work it out. And, regrettably I let 2 (or more) excellent life-mates get away in my high school and early college years.

All of this is to say that I couldn't wait to leave Cedar Vale behind and join the much more interesting, wider world beyond. I though at the time, that I would have a career as an electronic technician of some sort. This would have been a logical and productive life, but my father had other ideas. No one in the family had ever graduated from college and he was determined that I would be the first. He even personally ran off a recruiter from a technical school that I had written to for information.

So, even though my father was in the hospital in Wichita with an inoperable brain tumor when I graduated, and passed away shortly thereafter, off I went to Kansas State in the fall to become an Electrical Engineer. It took me two years to find out what engineers really did all day. Then I immediately switched to Radio/TV Broadcasting and eventually graduated from Oklahoma State with a BS in Radio/TV. More BS than anything else, but who knew?

So, gentle reader, I escaped Cedar Vale to join the wide and exciting world of ...... everything else. Since leaving I have worked as a professional photographer, news film reporter, radio news reporter, entrepreneur - 3 businesses w/1 success, salesman, and finally into computers in Silicon Valley, CA. Throughout, I have maintained my avid interest in ham radio that began in Cedar Vale when I was a junior in high school. I finally got my license when one of my closest friends, Jim Hubbard, a class behind me got his license first! And I have continued to do photography throughout the years.

The final ten years that I spent working in the Technical Support and Software Testing end of computers brought me out of deep financial hardship into having some savings and retirement benefits. But not enough to live very well in the U.S. unfortunately. So I said goodbye to my daughter, her husband and her triplets in Nashville and moved myself to paradise. I expect to see them all here in Panama this coming summer. My simple Paradise Panama web site is up and running if you care to look.

-30-