Ralph Dozier leans back on his pickup’s tailgate, a light breeze and shade from a big, old walnut tree making it seem cooler than the 90 degrees of the current warm spell.
He studies the recently rehabilitated barn on the Dozier home place north of Moran, sighs and allows that “hard work probably killed Dad.”
His father, Harold Dozier, died at age 59 in 1970, less than 30 years after he single-handedly built the barn, which showed then, and still does today, that he was skilled in carpentry, masonry and all other things he did, including his lifelong dedication to farming.
“He worked daylight to dark every day,” Dozier said. “He never went hunting or fishing. We never took a vacation. He would say he didn’t have time, that the crops weren’t good enough, or he hadn’t gotten the crops in yet.”
Harold Dozier’s addiction was work, and he was good at it.
The elder Dozier had a Farmall F-20 tractor.
But, adding to his labor, he also employed horses when he mowed hay and planted crops on 240 acres, long after most farmers had switched exclusively to conventional equipment.
DURING THE past six weeks, with the help of Geoffery Meiwes, who rents the farmhouse a stone’s throw from the barn, and a friend, Garen Sager, Dozier put the old barn, nearing 70 years old, into as fine a fettle as it was when brand new.
The imposing structure is 50 feet long, 36 feet wide and the beam of its roof is 36 feet above ground level. Updating mostly consisted of new handmade wood doors and modernized windows, obtained from Columbia Metal in Iola.
Often in nostalgia’s grip, Dozier recalls when he was five years old helping when he could, but mostly watching his father, with strong calloused hands from a lifetime of hard labor, dig the barn’s foundation.
“He dug down to solid rock, about three feet,” for the foundation’s footing, which also is about three feet wide, he said.
Concrete was made up in a small, electric-powered rotary mixer. The process must have taken weeks, Dozier allowed, with all the barn’s floor, save a small area where work horses were stalled, also of concrete.
“There’s not a crack anywhere in the foundation, or the floor,” Dozier added. “Walk around it and you’ll see.
“He didn’t want the horses to hurt their hooves by standing on concrete all the time, so he laid railroad ties in their stalls.”
The barn’s walls are of clay tile, grouted with concrete and, as is everything else, they are corner to corner as straight as a string with plumb bob attached.
The roof originally was shingled, but Dozier in recent years put on tin, with a classic vent at top.
“It used to have a door on the front (south) side of the loft,” he said, pointing to large wooden panel, resting in a nearby shed, that was sucked out so much by a 1974 tornado that it was replaced with a solid metal facade.
“Right after the barn was built we put loose hay in the loft,” a chore that required four men working in concert— three tossing in the cured forage and a fourth compacting it at the other end.
The Doziers milked 11 cows — that’s how many milking stanchions were included in the barn’s construction — with one concession to modern farming, an electric milking machine.
A separator yielded cream to sell, with the skim milk going “to the hogs and us kids,” Dozier said, of himself, brother Jesse, who died at age 38 in 1971, and sister Betty McVey, Paola.
“On a cold winter day, there’s not much of anything better tasting than warm milk just out of the separator,” he said.
“Dad and Mom (Mae) were proud of the barn and right after it was finished in 1944 they had a couple of dances in the loft,” Dozier said. “Each time we had a yard full of cars and trucks, with others parked on each side of the road between here and the highway (U.S. 59 a quarter of a mile to the east). I can’t remember who played for the dances, but the music was good. Everyone had a good time.”
He also doesn’t recall whether a temporary staircase was put up for the dances, or whether attendees, including women coming in their Sunday best, just climbed a ladder into the loft.
After the barn was an everyday amenity on the farm, Dozier’s father dug a well and extended lines to provide fresh water to the house — he and his father built it in 1959 — the barn, and hog and chicken lots.
“Water’s still good and flowing,” he said.
Across the section south is Katy Lake, with cabins along its east shore. Today, brush hides it from view at the Dozier farm.
An early feature of the barn was a stenciled sign on the loft door, “Lake View Farm.”
“Then you could see all of Katy Lake,” Dozier reminisced.
THE BARN’S remodeling is a tribute to his parents, Dozier said with a tinge of emotion, and a catalyst stoking memories of the 1950s.
“That was the best of all times to grow up,” he added.
He retired from a vice principalship at Burlington High in 1998, and he and wife Connie were married in 2003. Today they live “a short half mile” east of the home place. She raises dogs, he raises cattle.
“I don’t farm anymore,” Dozier said, “just have pasture and hay.”
Through the years, including nearly 25 in education after he decided to forego farming when his father died in 1970, Dozier always has had a soft spot in his heart for the home place. He was there in later years to help his mother, “who worked like the dickens all of her life.”
“She worked as hard as Dad,” he continued. “I remember going into the cellar and there’d be hundreds of jars of canned food.
“Mom wanted to live here and I helped out. Her only income was a little over $200 a month in Social Security and there’d be times in the winter the electric bill would be $300 to $400.”
Dozier’s financial assistance was figured toward him eventually taking over the farm. That occurred altogether in 2003 when his mother — known far and wide for her pleasant disposition — died at age 90.
“It was a great place to grow up, and now it’s a great place to be,” said Dozier, with a look of contentment that said as much.
A monument to hard work Family barn sees renovation, brings back fond memories
