Wauneta Breeze

    By Tina Kitt
    The Wauneta Breeze

     On a hot, humid June afternoon, 90-year-old Gus Bartels calmly takes the previous night's hail storm in stride. A sizeable area of a field of dryland corn south of his house took an icy blow. Bartels is unfazed.
     Does it get easier to deal with disappointments like hail?
     Yes, says Gus with an easygoing smile. "You learn you can't do anything about it so you might as well just accept it."
     Good advice from a solid source. As a man who has been actively involved in farming for more than eight decades, starting out as a herdsman as a young boy, Gus knows well the ups-and-downs of a life on the land.
     Gus was born June 15, 1915, on the family farm south of the Chase County/Dundy County line. He was the seventh of nine children born to Carl and Doris Bartels.
     It didn't take long before he was put to work on the family farm. Oh, the changes he has seen in agriculture in his 82 years of farming!
     When he was around 8 years old he began herding cows with his older sister Elsie. He graduated to field work within a few years, driving a team of four horses pulling a cultivator when he was 11.
     "My legs were too short to reach anything to rest my feet on, so I just sat there with my legs dangling," says Gus. When he reached the end of the row, Alfred, his older brother who was working in the same field, would over and take the cultivator out of the ground, turn the horses around, put the cultivator back in the ground and send him down the next two rows.
     As a boy Gus attended school through the eighth grade at St. Paul's Parochial School south of Wauneta, with an hour each morning devoted to religious studies. He was confirmed in the Lutheran faith at St. Paul's in 1929.
     According to a Bartels family memoir, confirmation was a significant day for the boys in more than one way. It was the time they graduated from having to wear knickers to wearing long pants.
     Baseball and music were among the simple pleasures enjoyed between school and work. Gus played catcher on the diamond and alto horn in the Bartels Family Band.
     When Gus was 15 he planted his first corn crop with four head of horses and a single-row lister.
     "Eight acres a day was a good day's work," says Gus, noting that equalled 20 miles of walking for the horses.
     In 1919 Gus' dad, Carl, bought his first tractor, a Samson Model "M," and by 1921 he added a Deering combine. In 1936, when he was 21, Gus started farming for himself on land he rented from his parents. He raised 30 acres of wheat; he doesn't recall what it yielded. Though his parents had modernized, Gus kept things simple, using four head of horses on a 7-foot disc to summer-till the ground.
     The 1930s were tough years for wheat farmers, recalls Gus, as they planted their winter wheat in dry, dusty fields in the fall, without enough moisture to sprout the seed before winter. With spring moisture it would grow in the spring, but wouldn't produce grain. For several consecutive years there was no wheat crop. "But we always managed to raise corn," said Gus, noting there was almost always moisture in the spring.
     During the trials of the dry dusty 30s in southwest Nebraska, wheat farming went through a significant period of transition, almost by accident, said Gus.
     Due to overproduction in other parts of the country and low prices, the government dictated that a certain number of acres of farmland had to be idled. Crop acreages were cut substantially, with the idled ground summertilled. Much to their satisfaction, area farmers found they could raise a decent crop every other year - a big improvement over the back-to-back crop failures on their continuous acres.

    War years
     Gus had expanded his original 30 acres to a quarter section of ground when the winds of war began to blow across rural Nebraska following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
     In 1942, Gus answered Uncle Sam's call. On Feb. 19, 1942, the 26-year-old Nebraska farmer was inducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. He underwent seven weeks basic training in Arkansas at Camp Robinson at the 107th Medical Replacement Center.
     "In early May we loaded onto the U.S.S. Evangeline in New Orleans, Louisiana, bound for Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico," says Gus. "We had no choice in the branch we were inducted into or our assignments."
     Gus spent his early years of military service in medical supplies. Later he was a hospital mail clerk and also served a short time in Presidio, Calif., and Fort Ord, Calif., before being discharged in October 1945.

    The farmer takes a wife
     He had met Margie Hansen who lived northwest of Benkelman shortly before he entered the service. While home on a month's furlough in 1944, Gus said he took up with her again.
     Once his wartime stint was through, and he had returned to farming in late 1945, he and Margie kept steady company. At that time Gus' mom had a good-sized flock of laying hens and would sell hatching eggs in Benkelman. Doing double-duty, on Saturday nights Gus would load up a couple of 30-dozen cases of eggs and head for Benkelman, swinging by the Hansen place to pick up Margie on the way into town where they would take in a movie.
     On June 8, 1947, Gus and Margie were married at St. Paul's, the beautiful country church which has long been a fixture in Gus' life. After a honeymoon trip to Colorado, the young couple set up housekeeping on a Hitchcock County farm 18 miles southeast of Wauneta where "it seemed the wind blew harder on this spot than anywhere on earth."
     They lived in a remote area, between Wauneta and Stratton, where encounters with rattlesnakes were the norm. And it was a close-knit neighborhood. "That was back when people did a lot of neighboring," said Margie. They got together regularly to play cards and visit with neighbors like the Lorances, Hagers, Wests, Burks, Daileys and Lines.
     When they were first married, there was no electricity on the farm, but by the early 1950s REA had reached their place.
     "Having a light in every room was wonderful," exclaimed Marg-ie. "It sure beat having kerosene lights in the house and a lantern in the barn," agreed Gus.

    Two girls and a boy
     While living "over south," their young family grew to include three children: Kathleen, Glenda and Stuart.
     Initially the girls went to country school at Ash Grove, but when it closed all three youngsters rode the bus into town, with Stuart starting kindergarten in Wauneta. In 1961 Gus and Margie made the decision to move closer to Wauneta and closer to St. Paul's.
     "When we were living at the south place the kids were riding the school bus 50 miles a day," said Margie. The kids were active pursuing a number of interests and kept their parents hopping. There was 4-H, music lessons, swimming lessons, school and church events.
     The kids have since grown up, with both daughters moving to Colorado and Stuart joining his parents on the family farm.
     Gus and Margie's children and grandchildren bring great joy to their lives.
     Kathleen and her husband, Lloyd Wicke, are enjoying their retirement in the Denver area where Lloyd worked as an accountant for the State of Colorado and Kathleen worked in a library until recently. Glenda also lives in the Denver area and works for the State of Colorado in the Workmen's Compensation Department.
     Stuart and his family live south of Wauneta, across the road from Gus and Margie. Stuart has his own farming operation and manages the family farm corporation. His wife, Kathy, is a pharmacist.
     There are five grandchildren - Kathleen and Lloyd's three kids and Stuart and Kathy's two sons. Kristine is married to Randy Orton, a Colorado State Trooper. They live in Aurora, Colo., and have two children, Tim, 7, and Teryn, 15 months.
     Gus and Margie said the family was saddened when their second grandchild, Garrett, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He lives in a group home for disabled young adults in Littleton, Colo.
     Kathleen and Lloyd's youngest son, Jon, is an engineer for the Denver Water Reclamation District.
     Stuart and Kathy's two boys, Joe and Chris, have grown up next door to their grandparents. Joe will be a senior at Wauneta-Palisade this fall and Chris will be in seventh grade.
    Diehard farmer and fix-it man
     While 90 years of living has slowed Gus a bit, it hasn't stopped him. He has had eight surgeries plus two knee joint replacements, survived a heart attack and been hit by a car. And still, as the season calls, he heads to his tractor and climbs aboard the combine when there's work to be done.
     "Winter's hard, but when spring rolls around he perks up in anticipation of another farming season," said Margie. Gus smiles and nods. "I get a lot of satisfaction out of being able to do something useful."
     With Gus' "fix-it inclination," as Margie puts it, there is no doubt that he is always being useful.
     "Mom always complained that she never got anything new because Dad always fixed the old stuff," his kids wrote in a tribute. "His philosophy was when something breaks, there's no need to throw it away - we'll just fix it. His fix-it ability was applied to just about anything: mixers, mowers, washers, dryers, clocks…." At 90, he even does e-mail and dabbles with the computer, but notes that it takes too much time away from work to get serious about it.
     How was his big day on his 90th?
     "I was up and going, that's a pretty good birthday," said Gus.
     He has been looking forward to wheat harvest, to running tractor and grain cart. "My grandson Joe does a better job on the combine than I do," said Gus. "All the changes in machinery have made it easier for the farmer. Those old tractors had no cab. You had to stand up and sweat it out in the dirt. Now even an old man can sit there in air conditioned comfort. It's the best place he can find."
     One part of farming Gus has missed out on in his 90 years is the hustle and bustle of Wauneta during wheat harvest. "It's hard to believe, but I've always been in the field during harvest. I've never been in town to see the trucks all lined up at the elevator. Maybe I will when I retire," said Gus.

    A Nebraska Life
    Gustav Heinrich Dietrich Bartels was born June 15, 1915, to Carl and Doris (Fortkamp) Bartels. Gus was the seventh of nine children born to the Bartels family who grew to adulthood. Gus was born in the family home 1 mile south of the Chase County/Dundy County line.
    Brothers: Arnold Bartels, Otto Bartels, Reinhold Bartels, Alfred Bartels, Walter Bartels, Rueben Bartels. All are deceased.
    Sisters: Elsie Bartels Becker of Wauneta and Frieda Bartels Crosson, who is deceased. Frieda's daughter, Bonnie Crosson Majors, grew up in the Bartels household.
    Gus was confirmed at St. Paul's Lutheran Church on March 24, 1929. He attended school through the eighth grade at St. Paul's Parochial School south of Wauneta.
    On June 8, 1947, Gus married Margie Hansen of rural Dundy County. They recently celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary.
    Children: Gus and Margie have been blessed with three children: Kathleen and her husband, Lloyd Wicke, of Littleton, Colo.; Glenda Bartels of Denver, Colo.; and Stuart Bartels and his wife, Kathy, of rural Wauneta.
    Grandchildren and great grandchildren: Gus and Margie have five grandchildren: Kristine (Wicke) Orton, Garrett Wicke, Jon Wicke, Joe Bartels, and Chris Bartels. They also have two great-grandchildren, Timothy and Teryn, who are Kristine's children.
    90th birthday celebration: For his 90th birthday, Gus and Margie's family gathered at the Bartels home over Memorial Day weekend to celebrate together. On the evening of Gus' birthday on June 15, he and Margie took in their grandson's baseball game in Wauneta.