Wallingford/Jarlov Family Trees

A tribute to Donnie written by his nephew, Bruce Enloe

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Ogg

I have always been terrible at receiving gifts. As a child, my difficulty would manifest itself as my being spoiled: gifts would appear, and I would frown, even throw temper tantrums, ‘this isn’t what I wanted!’ It is not the givers’ fault, they can’t know that I was ruined by a gift giver with whom they would be hard pressed to compete.

As an adult, I have been taught well to have good manners; I am gracious and pleasant, I smile and think back over the process and the importance of the ritual of giving and receiving gifts and how sharing is a way for us all to express our humanity. In our rush to keep up with life, we don’t all have the time to pick the perfect gift for each of our loved ones, but even a simple gift says something. With this in mind, and well aware of my own shortcomings when it comes time to pick a gift for someone else, I do my best to be gracious.

But, in fact, I dread receiving gifts. I live in fear that in the split second after the gift is open I will hurt someone’s feelings with an involuntary eye movement, glancing quickly down or to the side before looking the giver in the eye and offering my thanks. In that briefest of moments, I still find myself removed, questioning the necessity of the expenditure, or even, I am shamed to admit, the quality of the product, but I know these thoughts are just adult manifestations of that childish tantrum. I am gracious, but it is a learned reaction, and rarely spontaneous. I find myself, instead, removed and thinking back.

Two weeks ago now, we lost my Uncle Don. As a young boy, I remember this strange and marvelous bachelor uncle who would arrive at family gatherings like Gandalf the Grey and immediately be set upon by all the children in the area. He never fought this attention, unlike the others of the ‘grown up’ persuasion; he would revel in it and give us all his time and careful, honest attention for as long as we required it.

He was a good man who had been forced to overcome challenges. From a minor birth complication in infancy to a learning disorder in his school years he was stalled a bit, a situation complicated even more by losing his father and having to grow up a bit quicker than he had hoped. In the end, he never followed the path that many others do, into a routine of marriage, static career and suburban ‘normalcy’. He served in the navy, worked for the university, but eventually settled into a life of occasional odd jobs and a series of inexpensive ‘home-like situations’ as opposed to the house, the car and the 2.5 kids that so many of us seem to seek.

He was creative and very good with his hands. He became a well loved and excellent teacher in the Boy Scouts. He was a ‘Mountain Man’, joining with a group of others who reenacted frontier era camping from the flintlock musket to the handmade clothes; in fact, the last time I spoke with him, he said that he and his group were planning to ride and camp along ‘The Continental Divide’ (aka, ‘The Great Divide’).

He had an uncanny knack for recycling (before it was fashionable) and could piece together just about anything one could imagine out of the odds and ends that made their way onto the grounds of his various compounds, storage sheds, campsites and trailers. He built a car, not once, but twice, out of spare parts from other vehicles, wood, scraps and even bits of worn-out appliances. Not ‘go-carts’, mind you, but street legal, registered and inspected ‘Ogg-mobiles’ (as in Donald Ogg) that traveled far and wide and provided, I’m sure, many a chuckle and smile, and perhaps, even a bit of admiration and envy along the way.

One Christmas, I’d say that I was about 7 or 8; there among the shiny papers and gaudy ribbons was a simple metal box, a gift from my Uncle Don. Like its contents, the box was fashioned by hand, cut with tin snips and folded to fit together like a shoebox. Inside were a series of puzzles and a handwritten note explaining rules. The puzzles ranged from a simple pile of nails with one nailed into a block of wood (the object is to balance all of the loose nails on to the fixed one, this puzzle alone took days for my brother and me to decipher), to a pair of horseshoes joined at the ends by welded-on lengths of chain with ring around the narrow part of the chains that could be removed and replaced without breaking a weld (although we considered that method many times in our journey to discover how). There were many others as well that, all told, provided hours of entertainment and joy over the course of the following weeks, months, even years, as they came back out to challenge new friends with their deceptive simplicity. Simple handmade puzzles that undoubtedly came together out of his legendary piles of ‘junk’ that my parents and his other siblings (unlike we, the nephews) simply couldn’t seem to understand were obviously piles of treasure. Simple puzzles that took time for us to solve and took time for him to fashion; even in his absence from us then, his attention spoke...speaks...volumes.

That precious box of puzzles is easily at the top of a very short list of presents I can even remember from my childhood. Uncle Don was not a wealthy man in the conventional sense, but he had a wealth of time and with that commodity, he was the most generous man I’ve ever known.

As I am now rapidly approaching fatherhood, I (and we all) would do well to remember his lesson: it’s not the gift that counts, it is the giving.

And please, if you should happen to give me a gift, and you do see that split second glance to the side, down, or even out across the Great Divide, please, don’t take it personally. It’s not your fault; anyone would be hard pressed to compete.

Thanks again for the giving, Uncle Don.

Song for Donnie by his nephew Bruce Enloe

here's a song for uncle Donnie
last time I saw you alive,
said that you getting ready
to ride along the great divide

well you always were an odd one
that's the kindest way to say
weird as a 3 cent penny
we all loved you just that way

canvas tents and flintlock muskets
a magazine mail order bride
boy scout camps and model airplanes
and riding on the great divide

you were a young boy's favorite uncle
homemade games you gave with pride
you never threw away a thing
you never knew what you might need
riding along the great divide

well you never were a horseman
but you'd learned how to survive
with your wits to keep you warm
and if you needed something more
you'd find it on the great divide

you couldn't stand to be a burden
so you learned to live life light
as man must travel lightly
riding on the great divide

so you learned to live so lightly
that the wind swept you aside
so if you're calling after Donnie
well, he's out there somewhere wandering,
riding on the great divide

Love, Bruce
here's a song for uncle Donnie
last time I saw you alive,
said that you getting ready
to ride along the great divide

well you always were an odd one
that's the kindest way to say
weird as a 3 cent penny
we all loved you just that way

canvas tents and flintlock muskets
a magazine mail order bride
boy scout camps and model airplanes
and riding on the great divide

you were a young boy's favorite uncle
homemade games you gave with pride
you never threw away a thing
you never knew what you might need
riding along the great divide

well you never were a horseman
but you'd learned how to survive
with your wits to keep you warm
and if you needed something more
you'd find it on the great divide

you couldn't stand to be a burden
so you learned to live life light
as man must travel lightly
riding on the great divide

so you learned to live so lightly
that the wind swept you aside
so if you're calling after Donnie
well, he's out there somewhere wandering,
riding on the great divide

Love, Bruce

from http://www.buckskinning.org/2008_ogg.htm

Don Ogg - A Remembrance

I remember Don Ogg from the first time I ever rendezvoused.

When I came back home and called all of my camping buddies about this new old hobby I had discovered, one of the first stories I told was of the man named Ogg - the self-described Oggliest man in camp - and how he didn't just camp in the woods - his camp became the woods.

I recall his camp, not in a tent or a bedroll, but literally carved out of a grove of trees - his weathered tarp strung-up between several trees, his blankets neatly laid out on the ground to fit between the bushes and brambles, and numerous candle lanterns hanging from branches here and there.

I asked him about his camping style - one of my typical newbie-journalist questions - and with dubious eyes he regaled me with the comfort of a camp built into the natural lines of nature (my words, Ogg would have laughed at me describing him in Thoreau-esqe terms). It was a weekend event - but Ogg looked ready to basically leave polite society and live right there in the trees.

He showed me his gear, his famous top hat with the firemaking kit secreted inside its stove-pipe top. For a new skinner, Don was a wealth of information, and his Dutch-oven cookery showed me that camping never meant starving and certainly didn't have to mean meager rations.

Later, at my wedding, Don Ogg and Smoke-In-Face would always be remembered fondly by my family as those "two guys who came dressed in blackpowder clothes."

Ogg and I were invited in an AMM pack-in back in 2005 and I was glad to see him and some other familiar faces among the group of skinners I had always stood in awe of. Ogg had packed himself a pretty comfortable camp, while I - taking a clue from Mark Baker some of my Buckskinning reading - decided that I was going to sleep through the night with only one blanket.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I had to sneak back to my truck to get a second blanket and of course, Ogg slept comfortably through the night in his first-class pack-in set-up. I remember the next day as we were changing camps, Ogg was struggling a bit with his gear - I tried in vain to let me help him carry his pack - but he would hear nothing of it.

Years ago, when Melissa and I were just getting started in the hobby, Ogg invited me to a Boy Scout camp he was hosting with his troop up near Hearne. Melissa and I wanted to go and I brought my Dad to give him a glimpse of what Rendezvous was all about.

I had volunteered to help lead some of Ogg's Boy Scouts in a demonstration of shooting black powder rifles. However, when I got there I realized that "helpl lead" and my understanding of what that entailed was far off-base. Ogg took me to the riflery area - a clearing in the forest with rifles aimed down into a slight cliff - and quickly left me surrounded by a herd of pre-adolescent boys - all nervously groping for my rifle and trade gun. I could hear Ogg's laugh in the distance as I quickly came up with the firing line and the "circle of safety" around the shooter - improvised safety ideas I still use when teaching folks today.

Thankfully no one was injured and I learned a lot about showing patience and compassion when sharing your prized hobby - and weapons - with new skinners and green horns.

Walking back through the camp, I passed by diamond shelter after diamond shelter - each with its own cooking fire and brace of excited boys. They were excited because Ogg gave them the experience they really wanted - the feel of the old mountain man times and the responsibility of being on their own hook.

Ogg was further down the trail showing another group how to make rope using a twirling contraption that wound strand after strand of smaller twine into usable rope.

I was amazed that this was a Boy Scout camping trip. It had nothing of what I remember from my brief stint in the scouts - no nylon cots, $100 technical backpacks, or a gigantic trailer filled with all of the "necessities" needed for a weekend trip.

Had I met Ogg in an earlier time I am sure I would have been pushing aside everything to attend his scout camps. No wonder he irked those parents - they were probably jealous of his time - and shocked by the way he challenged each boy to . . . gulp . . . act like a responsible young man.

Some of my best memories of Ogg were at the Medina Apple Festival - back in 2003. The preacher who married Melissa and I was the chairman of a local festival down in Medina, that took place on the banks of the cool Medina River. We had folks coming in and out of our camp last weekend and Ogg's wonderful Dutch oven cooking kept us well fed and happy. I remember floating in the river with Ogg and Smoke and thinking I was truly experiencing "shining times."

And of course . . . there was the car.

Ogg rolled up to a rendezvous in Shiner in a vehicle of his own design and build. At its core, it was a Toyota truck - how it was registered down at the Gonzales County Assessor's office - he assured me - but in reality it was nothing of the sort. It was built of plywood, miscellaneous car parts, and even the door from a drier as access to the engine. Despite the obvious miracle of its conception, it was Ogg to the core; it had storage compartments specifically designed for Rendezvous-related equipage, including longer bays for tent poles - something never often found in those ill-designed "vehicles" that come off the line in Detroit.

Ogg will always be an indelible memory on my Rendezvous experience. I'll remember him for all of the bizarre moments over the years, watching him walking a cat on a leash through camp, and seeing him as the madcap - getting into his cups and hooting and hollering with the best of them over at Rowdy Camp.

But mostly, I'll remember him sitting across a campfire from me, always ready to listen, always ready to offer a kind word, and always ready to laugh.

I'll never forget Don Ogg.

• Paul "Many Rifles" Laster, July 20, 2008