Muller twins celebrating 95th birthdays today!

Today, Wednesday, April 6. 2022, is a special day for Ray Muller of Fieldton, and his twin sister, Faye Joyner of Alamagordo, New Mexico, who are celebrating their 95th birthdays.

Ray has lived on the family home place at Fieldton, since his birth, with the exception of the 2-1/2 years he was in the Navy on the Pacific Ocean aboard the USS Antietan Aircraft Carrier 6V36, “running up and down the coast of China,” he explained.

He also spent 1-1/2 years on the Island of Guam. He said his only “Big Disappointment” in life, was when he didn’t get to go on the tour of Europe

The rest of his time has been spent as a farmer, until he quit driving the tractor 10 years ago.

He reported that all of his siblings worked on that farm, while growing up. They hoed the weeds from the cotton, irrigated from open ditches with the curved aluminum tubes drawing the water, or used the shovel moving dirt for different projects.

He and his wife, Jane Ann, have lived on the Fieldton farm since they married in 1952 at Jal, N.M. The Fieldton farm is where they raised their three sons. Ray and Jane Ann enjoy (when they get to see them) their five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

His twin sister, Faye, and her husband are parents of two daughters, grandparents of five grandchildren; to their 13 greatgrandchildren; and three greatgreat grandchildren.

Ray said he hasn’t seen his twin since 2018. (Before that, once or twice a year). They now keep in touch with each other about every two or three weeks, through telephone conversations.

The family has not had a reunion since 2017.

Longevity is evident in that family, since Ray and Faye have an older sister, 97-year-old Myrtle Altman, who lives in Warner Robins, Georgia.

Ray and Faye were the last of the eight children who were born to their parents, John and Lora Muller.

All together, there were five brothers and three sisters. and his wife, Jane Ann, mainly raised cotton and some milo, and always had a big garden, from which they enjoyed sharing their bountiful vegetables.

In recalling some memories about his childhood, he noted that the main thing about cotton was the times when he drug a long cotton sack down the rows of cotton, where he placed the cotton when he pulled it off the stalk.

When the cotton sack got too heavy, he unloaded it onto a trailer.

His first cotton stripper was a two-row stripper, that threw the cotton back into a “Box-like” container, from which the cotton was later transferred to a trailer, which took the load to the gin with a pair of horses.

Noting the difference from today, he mentioned: “Now, machines do everything, strip the cotton from as many as eight rows, and pack the cotton into bales.” (Modules).

Those modules are easily handled at the gins.

“There have been many of the Good Old Days” he said, as he closed his “memory box”.