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• Widowhood Happens
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Description

From Thunder to Breakfast is taken from a Texas expression, from hell to breakfast. Hube Yates, being a preacher’s son, didn’t say hell. He would say, “We were in a thunder of a fix.” The first chapter is about the arduous adventures the Yates family on summer-long trip by two covered wagons from Oklahoma to Arizona. Hube was a horseman from the get-go. He took responsibility well, was an athlete, and as a young man became a firefighter, then Captain, of the Phoenix Fire Department. He had his share of heroic moments and received the Carnegie Hero Medal for a particular act above the call of duty. It was on a dark night on Friday, February13, 1931, on his day off. The Salt River at flood stage was about to claim the life of an old man who lived in a shack on an island. That little piece of land was about to disappear, along with frail old fellow. Hube’s persistence, bravery, compassion, and avoidance of a police officer who didn’t want him to try to swim in the ice-cold water, actually saved the would-be victim. Hube wasn’t all heroism and sports. Fire and Police Department personnel were heavily into outrageous practical jokes for a while. Their exploits were the topic of many stories told around a campfire. Hugh Downs thought so much of him that he wrote the foreword to the book for Hube and writer Gene Garrison. Downs wrote, “Hube Yates was not among the surprises I expected when I moved to Arizona. I had certain sets of ideas about what I could encounter on taking up residence here. I knew there were rugged individualists and reliable, honest men embodying old-time virtues now somewhat eroded in other parts of the country. Hube is all of these, but this is not all of Hube. When you first meet him you can see he is rugged. You would judge him to be dependable in a pinch, because he looks like he must know the land; and a look I his eye steers you to the notion he is probably pleasant to be around. You might conclude that he is the strong silent type. On this you would be exactly fifty percent right. He is no weakling. But “silent” is not an adjective that easily adheres to Hube Yates. To our considerable good fortune he has no reticence to loquate. Every subject or event that intersects his life, every experience he files in his almost computer-like memory is stamped with the grace of an outlook that is humane and helpful, devoid of self-centeredness or bitterness, and amused by most of the cosmic panorama. These are the attributes of large-souled people and if the shoe fits, knowing Hube, I doubt he’ll trade one of his boots for it. On top of all this he can be as funny as any narrator I’ve listened to.”

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