Claude Feeman

 The man I knew:

One of one!

When I heard that Claude Freeman passed away yesterday, I found myself thinking back almost fifty years.

Claude was the uncle of my good friend Randy Smith. Back in the days before the big round bales, Claude ran a custom hay baling crew. Randy usually ran the tractor that cut the hay, staying a day or two ahead of us, so we didn't cross paths very often.

Claude's crew had a pretty slick operation. They pulled flatbed trailers behind the baler, and two men rode the trailer stacking small square bales as they came off the baler. When one trailer filled up, they'd stop just long enough to unhook it, hook on an empty trailer with another two-man crew, and keep right on baling. Meanwhile, the full trailer would be hauled back to the barn and unloaded. It was a constant rotation that kept everything moving.

I didn't work for Claude very much. I wasn't exactly the kind of young man he was looking for. I was a skinny kid who had grown up in town, not exactly known for spending all day doing hard physical labor. But a couple of times they were shorthanded, and I got the chance to work with them.

One of those days we were baling hay on the Killian farm outside Calico Rock—the same property where the state prison sits today. One thing I remember about Claude was that he liked his Budweiser hot. He never put it in a cooler. He just kept it in the back of his pickup. Every so often he'd pull the tractor over, grab another six-pack, put it in the toolbox, and head right back to baling. That was just Claude.

The funniest memory I have happened one afternoon when we got rained out. Claude needed to go to West Plains, about an hour away. Funny thing was, the rest of the crew suddenly found somewhere else they needed to be. I didn't realize until later they knew exactly what was coming.

Claude looked at me and said, "Steve, get in. You're driving."

So off we went.

I spent the whole day driving him around southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Every time we'd cross into Missouri, we'd stop at the liquor store so he could replenish his "supplies" before heading back across the state line. Looking back, it was quite an adventure.

But what I remember most about Claude had nothing to do with the beer.

It was that he never forgot people.

I only worked for him a handful of days one summer when I was about eighteen years old. Yet for years afterward, if he happened to run into my dad at the post office, the grocery store, or the drugstore, he'd always ask, "How's Steve doing? What's he up to?" That always meant something to me.

Claude was one of those old Ozark mountain men. He lived back in the hills of northern Stone County, around the Sylamore National Forest. Years of logging, farming, accidents, and just plain hard living had worn his body down. His wife had been sick for a long time and passed away just a couple of weeks ago. They never had any children, and I have to believe losing her broke his heart.

Claude wasn't a perfect man. None of us are. But he was a good man. He worked hard, treated people well, remembered folks long after they had forgotten about him, and was completely comfortable being exactly who he was.

Rest in peace, Claude. You were one of a kind.