GRANPA STEPHENS
Sarah Bell Stephens Moore was our Mommy, she was called Bell.
Sarah Elizabeth Bates Stephens was her Mother, she was called Sarah.
Our Mommy's father was Abraham E (Abe) Stephens..
He was a doctor and a 'hard-shell' Baptist preacher, now they are called 'Primitive Baptist'. He preached every third Sunday at the Briartown schoolhouse and every first Sunday at the Ross schoolhouse.
Porum had the only church house.
Granpa Stephens was a farmer too. It wasn't a small farm. There was a lot of woods and fields. Thelmer remembers that the well at their house, wouldn't give enough water for them to draw for their stock. There was another well, about a half a mile from their house. They drawed water there for their stock.
He would throw his leather saddlebags, with his medicine and supplies in them, across his horse, or in his buggy. Before Mommy was married she went with him on some of the hard cases. They said that she rode side saddle. Us kids never saw her use any thing but a regular saddle. All her life she helped when anyone was sick or had babies. Neighbors would send for her.
Years later, Lee lived in Porum. Orba Lee his oldest, remembers that she liked to play out front, on the sidewalk. She and her friends would spread their legs across the sidewalk and make people walk around them.
Old Man Howard come walking by. Orba Lee looked up at him,
"How come your ear is gone?" He said "Ask your Daddy."
Orba Lee thought of it that evening. "Daddy, Old Man Howard said for me to ask you what happened to his ear." Lee started laughing,
"Tee Hee,Tee Hee Hee--Granpa Stephens bit it off." Bill said, “Oh,
those old men were always fighting, I tried to stay away from them.”
Bell Starr used to ride to Grandpa's to get fresh milk.
Oh no---not Granpa Stephens. No one ever went to him for anything.
It was Grandpa and Granma Coleman, that Bell Starr got milk from.
Bell Starr rode all over Oklahoma, driving off peoples' cattle, sometimes after she had sold them to them. Later she was in Texas and accused of
stealing cattle. She reportedly raided chicken houses to survive. She went back to Oklahoma, where she was shot and killed in 1889.She is buried on top of the mountain (Bell Star Mountain?) just north of where the Canadian River narrows (where the dam is now). The canyon just north of the mountain, is called Bell Star Canyon.
TICK FEVER in cows, swept through the country in 1917. Three-fourths of some herds died. The wild longhorn cattle carried ticks. They were immune to the fever of the ticks that they carried. The longhorns were rounded up and driven up the long cattle trails to the northern markets. They carried ticks to other cattle, all over the country. A law was passed and in 1918, every cow in the country had to be dipped. Teams come through the country to dip them all. Poppy dipped all of his, except the cow in the lot---that gave milk for Alvin. The sheriff in charge, found that cow. Poppy wouldn't dip her, he said, "That cow has been kept separate and don't have a tick." The Sheriff said, "You'll dip that cow or go to jail." She was dipped.
Alvin had her milk in his bottle the next day and he died in the night.
Poppy threatened to take a gun and shoot the sheriff.
He said, “You killed my baby." We remember him as 'Little Alvin.'
He is buried in the family plot in the Coleman cemetery, no marker.
Welch Horner was just 19, his Daddy was dead.
He was drunk and 'showing out' in Porum. The Sheriff shot him, trying to handle him. He lived a mile and a half out of Porum. Poppy put his body in Poppy's wagon, and took him home to his Mother, dead.
Bill remembers us all going in the wagon, to a good place to pick up pecans. She was watching over the kids with Lee. The little ones were in a big box, where they could play or sleep. Several young Indian boys had on 'Indian clothes', they run their bareback ponies around them, 'chanting.'
Bill was, "really scared and started crying, Poppy come running. Mr Hull wanted to shoot them. Poppy knew how to talk to the boys, he said they were just having fun. Poppy said to forget it. His adopted Mother was Indian. None of us ever heard him 'talking Indian'.
We knew that he could understand it."
EAT POSSUM Years later, Thelmer remembers that, "Mr and Mrs Hull still lived in the next house north of us. He and his wife liked to eat possum. When we got one, to sell the hide, we cleaned it real careful. He usually gave us 25 cents for the meat. That was as much as we could ever get for the hide. Sometimes he would have us kill him a jackrabbit. Mommy cooked a possum one time.We all turned up our nose and she didn’t cook another one.
Animals fur grew long and thick in the winter, to keep them warm. That’s the only time we could sell hides, when they had a lot of warm hair. It was the only time that we trapped them. We sold skunk hides too, we were real careful, they never sprayed on us, but you couldn't skin one without smelling bad. We got behind them when they were in our traps and weren't dead. We killed them with our bean flips. Sometimes a coon got in our steel traps. If a coon was caught by one foot, it would chew it’s own foot off and get away. Very seldom did we get a wildcat hide to sell.
We caught wild house cats in our traps sometimes. We couldn't sell them."
I, Bill remember that some people got mad at Lawyer Hershelman; Poppy built a crate and shipped him out of town on the railroad.
The people hunted him but he was safe.
Uncle Curtis and his wife come, Mommy was in labor. Lawrence was born, in 1918. It was the first that I knew about babies, I was nine years old.
Grandpa Coleman had donated 20 acres of land, for a cemetery, on the corner, just across the road, from our house. It was so close to the cemetery--people were in our house during funerals.
SPANISH INFLUENZA swept through the whole country in 1918. More soldiers died from it, than all the battles in WWI. Flu liked to have wiped out our community. To not spread the flu, they tried not to have many people go to the funerals. Our family did not have the flu like the others. Mommy was always especially clean about cooking and our hand washing.
Poppy could make nice caskets. He would buy wide smooth boards at the lumber yard. He made coffins for all around. They used a quilt for padding and lace too. They were digging graves at all times of the day.
Once we saw a grandmother and grandson, placed in the same coffin.
Henry Harmon's Mamma, Mamie, died and was buried. She was to long for the casket. Her ankles were broken and her feet were turned in. Someone saw them and told him later. Henry dug her up and saw her feet.
He put her in a new casket and sued the funeral home.
Mommy knew that she was to long for that casket, she felt of her feet.
She knew what they did, she didn't say any thing.
Mommy said, "Well, she's feeling no pain."
Me, (Bill,) and Grandma Coleman heard a horse and rider coming down the road about dark. Another horse and rider was trying to catch it.
They were running hard. We hid in the corner of the rail fence. We were always careful of trouble from things like that. We didn’t hear more about it.
FORTUNE TELLERS were always coming around, usually older women, Gypsies, a different nationality. An old fortune teller lived on the corner under a tree. She had one horse and a buggy with a top. She slept in the buggy and hobbled the horse and always wore a long full skirt. Poppy and Mommy went to Muskogee on the motor, it was a railroad car. They told me, Bill, "Don't give that old fortune teller anything." She come and asked me for a bucket of water to drink. I told her, "No." Poppy and Mommy come back and asked if the old fortune teller had asked for anything. They got mad at me---for telling her, "No"---to a drink of water.
The witch would control you and scare you into giving her things.
"Give me this red chicken or it won't do you any good."
She would tie a string around it's leg, so it could peck around in the grass.
When she needed food, she would wring its neck and have a chicken dinner.
Two men come down the road.
She told them, "Give me your saddle blankets---or you will wish you had.
They won't do you any good." They laughed at her and rode on.
They got to talking, and come back and give them to her.
The two bright pretty saddle blankets hung there on the bush all summer.
I, Thelmer, remember the old fortune teller, living by the road under the tree.
GRANPA STEPHENS Thelmer remembers going to his house. They went to the cellar under the house and picked out a sweet potato that was just the right size. Granpa helped him fix the coals and put the potato in the edge of the fireplace. It had a good crust on the outside and then you put lots of butter on it. Sometime one of the baked potatoes would be half crust.
One time Granpa Stephens barbecued a beef and had a family reunion.
A lot of the family came and stayed over night.
Bill remembers that kid's didn't like to go to Grandpa's.
They would 'go in on needles' and 'come out on needles.' When Bill was 13 or 14 years old, She remembers that Granpa Stephens had a brother come to visit him, from ‘way up north.’
HOLINESS, a little different kind of religion that come in. Mommy and Poppy studied it and they changed to Holiness. The Sexton family changed to Holiness too, later it was called the Assembly of God. At first people made fun of the new religion and called them 'Holy Rollers'. Granpa Stephens was hard against the change. He disowned Mommy for three years. He told her, "Don't you come onto my place."
I, Thelmer can remember the tension, "Mommy 'walked the yard', at night."
Bill remembers her Mommy wearing little gold earrings. "She left the Baptist Church and quit wearing them. I don't know what became of them.
I would liked to have had them. Poppy never would let me pierce my ears.
CURLS Bill remembers when Thelmer had curly hair. "It was so pretty, Mommy couldn't bear to cut it. It fell in ringlets, she just couldn't cut them off---she waited to long." Just before Thelmer was six, Poppy and Mommy went to Muskogee on the 'motor'. While they were gone, Bill cut Thelmer's curls off, she knew that her Mommy couldn't. Bill cried, they all cried, he looked so different. He was ready to go to school. He does not remember his hair being long. He does remember trying to make his hair lay straight, with a tight sock-cap that he made. That did not work.
THE AIRPLANE Thelmer remembers, "being pretty young, and hoeing in the field barefooted. I heard a strange noise and looked up in the sky and saw an airplane. It fascinated me. I would have give my right arm to fly.”
(I kept on until I soloed in 1941 and was a licensed private pilot, in 1946, after World War II. I owned 3 small airplanes, a Tailorcraft, Aeronica Champ tandem 65 and a Cessna 150, side by side, with a 95 horse motor. It was the most fun to spin or stall the airplane. It was easy to stall on hot days.
That beautiful white 'thunder head' (little cloud), it was piled high. Curiosity made me fly into it. There were strong winds, the plane shook, till the wings nearly tore off. I learned that lesson quick, and never flew into another cloud. I learned that 'the best pilot' was 'the oldest pilot'.
I retired from General Dynamics after working 32 years in ‘research and development'. I worked on the B-36, B-58, F-11 and the F-16. I watched the F16 make it's first flight. It was the best airplane, it still is.
I am still building and flying radio control airplanes, in 2006. I am the oldest man in three clubs, Fort Worth Thunderbirds, Plainsmen at Whiskey Flats and the Brazos Buzzards, at Granbury. At 91, I still look up when I hear an airplane and I watch it.
Bill remembers when she was little, "Old Indians would come and want Mommy to hold a funeral. She considered Indians as equals. Maybe just two or three would be there, at a graveyard or at home. She would sing 2 or 3 songs. Once she went all the way to the Fields Cemetery.
Poppy and Mommy loved all us babies before we were born. Lawrence was three. Little Alvin had been buried for just three years, Opal was soon to be born. Thelmer would be six and starting to school in the fall.
DECORATION was a permanent day set up in the spring, for each cemetery. Long ago, it started before there was a 'Mothers Day'. At the Coleman Cemetery, 'Decoration' was always the second Sunday in May. The day before would be 'Graveyard Working', people of the community would rake the leaves, weeds and grass. Afterwards, decorations, whatever anyone thought was pretty, were put on their loved ones graves. Most women made crepe paper flowers at home, kids made them too. Press the paper with our fingers and stretch it to make the petals, they were so bright and pretty. Sunday morning we put on our best clothes and go and put the flowers that we had made, on our family graves. There would be preaching and then 'dinner on the ground.' Our Mamas had brought lots of good food. And then there was singing after dinner. It was a good two days, for us kids.
It was in 1922, the next day after 'Decoration', Mommy took us up the road to see the flowers. (2005, to this day, this country cemetery has the most colorful decorations, that any of us have seen. One large stone of a 72 year old man has this inscription, 'So many women- so little time'.
Another big grave stone say's "I always wanted a big red balloon",
and it has a big red balloon etched on it.)
Bill was watching Lawrence, and the kids were all playing. Thelmer toppled a long loose shaft, off the top of the gravestone for Bud Kendrix's baby. It fell on his upper leg and broke the bone in two places.
Mommy put her arm under his leg and carried him to the house. Granpa Stephens was still mad about the religion. Dr Ferris and Dr Val both come. They said that he would loose his leg, if he was moved. Poppy whittled the splints. It took them a long time to get it in just the right position. There were weights pulling on his leg, he could not move.
Thelmer remembers, “I was to scared to move, I did not want to loose my leg”. Because he couldn't move, he got bedsores.
It was a long hot summer, we took turns fanning him.
The Doctors gave him paregoric, a pain and sleeping medicine.
(When paregoric 'first come out', Doc Val said, "I gave some to a sick baby, to quiet him. I was real happy when that baby woke up, three days later. I learned to give smaller doses.")
When Thelmer was sleeping---we all got quiet and stayed quiet.
He was in traction for six weeks. He got to where he couldn't eat. Pearl Goodner boiled a hen and made dumplins'. She brought him some and a leg. It was the best thing he ever ate,
He’s always remembered and it's still his favorite food.
Cake coloring had just 'come out'.
They made him a cake with pink icing, and made him laugh.
Then he was on crutches and had to learn to walk again and missed his first year of school. After he was up walking, on crutches, he fell off the porch, it was nearly three feet high. He fell onto a hoe, it cut and peeled a big piece off the side of his leg, the one that had been broke. The family had all been hoeing in the field and had brought their hoes to the house and were sharpening them.
It all healed back as good and straight as ever, and it has never bothered him. Doctors have told him to expect rheumatism, as he gets older.
Grandma Stephens found Granpa Stephens, fell, north of the barn with a stroke. Bill stayed with them a while. The whole end of one room was shelves, filled with his medical and religious books. He wouldn't eat carrots or chocolate, he liked cobblers. He had to be changed like a baby for two or three months. When he was real sick, at first, men would set up with him all night. Bill would get up in the night and bake hot biscuits and make coffee.
Grandpa didn't smoke, he chewed. He raised tobacco, for his own use, several of the neighbor men did. He would pull it up and hang it by the root. A layer, a bundle of tobacco leaves was a 'hand.'
Let it dry, then moisten, braid and let it hang down and dry again.
Thelmer remembers getting his sickest on a brown paper bag cigarette, that he made his self. "I wanted a cigarette and was afraid to get it from Granpa Stephens. Lon Arnet had a boy and he wouldn't let him smoke.
Us boys, stole tobacco from him and made sure that he didn't know it. I rubbed the big dry leaves with my hands, over a paper sack, into tiny pieces. Then we rolled us each a cigarette, using brown paper from the sack.
That was a strong variety of tobacco, "I got sick as a dog." After that, when I would take a drink of water, I would get sick again---for a long time.
It was a thrill to find two tin cans. I would nail each one onto a board, and walk on them, stilts.
I have chewed tar. When you get the right kind, you ‘spit brown',
just like you were chewing tobacco.
THE BLINDING LIGHT It was about 1920, just after dark one night, a blinding light streaked across the horizon. It lit things up, brighter than day. The Tom Goodners' lived about a half a mile away. They sent their kids running over to our house, to see if Poppy and Mommy were there.
Their first thought, was that it might have been the Rapture.
They knew that if it had been the Rapture, that Poppy and Mommy would have been gone. None of us have ever seen anything like that light again.
BRUSH ARBOR We had church for years, across the road from our house. About the time we moved from Dewar, we built a brush arbor on the east side of the cemetery, later on the west side of it. Poppy laid out a square and took our fence down. We worked and cut trees with forks, to hold the four corners. We lay long poles in the forks, and all across, until it would hold leafy limbs for a shade, and to keep the rain off. Every spring when it warmed up, we added new brush and hay on top. It looked like a haystack. You could stay dry a long time, if it rained and it was cool under it too.
Kerosene, 'coal oil' torches made the light at the brush arbor. A tank at the top, a pipe run down, and a little flame at the bottom. They were a lot of trouble, in the wind. Later there were lanterns with mantels.
We had to buy special fuel for them. Sometimes we would get a'holt of bridge timbers that we used for seats and would set them up on rocks.
If we didn't have them, we would drag up logs, with the team. There never were backs on our benches. Straw was always around the altar. Quite a few bums come walking along the railroad track. They could see the brush arbor and sometimes they would walk over and spend the night there. We built a little platform there under the arbor, and set Mommy's organ on it. When there wasn't church, we would tie a wagon sheet around the organ, to keep it dry. People would want her to teach them how to play it. She couldn't, because she didn't know music.
Mommy led singing at home and at church.
She could not pump the organ with her feet and have breath to lead singing at the same time. I would stand on a chair beside her and lead singing, sometimes the others would lead. The kids all tried to set by her to hear her sing. She could beat anyone from Nashville now.
One of her favorites was, 'Will There be Any Stars in my Crown'.
Poppy's favorite was, 'This World is Not My Home'.
We would help Poppy let our fence down and neighbors would bring their families and park their wagons around. There got to be a few cars that come. If a regular preacher wasn't there, Mommy would teach. She didn't claim to be a preacher. Sometimes during rush farming, we had Saturday night services and no Sunday Morning services.
CHURCH was going on, at the brush arbor on the west side of the cemetery. A young man was listening. He was setting on the side of a wagon, leaning over, with his feet on the wagon wheel. Another young man come by and knocked his feet off the wagon wheel, and he ran. The listening man, fell to the ground ---and come up---with his pocket knife open. He chased him and stabbed him in the back. They had to take him to the Doctor.
Some would walk or drive by the brush arbor, during church, after dark and make fun of our religion. They would yell and throw eggs and tomatoes. Some of it would get on Mommy. Lee and Trumon thought they knew who was doing it and were going to 'take care of them'. Poppy put his foot down on them. "We have to pray for those people." Later some of the troublemakers come and joined us and told what they had done.
Poppy helped build the nice big Holiness church building in Porum.
Him and Mommy went there for the first years and helped build the congregation up. Dave Harris, an Indian, he come there as preacher and stayed for years. When he first come there, he went to Poppy and Mommy, "Don't come to my church, you can break it up." They were 'Oneness' and he wasn't. They stayed friends and they went to funerals there.
They never talked about it, and many people wondered about it. They never knew why Poppy and Mommy always went to church at some other place.
ONE TIME DURING CHURCH Thelmer remembers, "Poppy went back and asked some boys to quieten down or to go outside. He walked back up front. I was standing near enough to hear one of the boys say, "I wonder if that old man has got time to go outside with me." I told the boys, "Well, if he don't, I have." When Poppy come out later, I was in a position where I could hit two of them---if one of them moved. They didn't."
We went to church at all the school houses around.
In the winter Poppy would put straw in the bottom of the wagon.
Us kids would lay down and cover up with the wagon sheet.
Coming back from church at night, the stars were low and bright. We could watch the big dipper and tell which way that we were going. The wagon was so rough and bumpy. The driver sat on the spring seat of the wagon, if it had one, or a bale of hay. Poppy hung a coal oil lantern on the front end of the wagon tongue, between the horses.
Nowater, Ross, Conley, Younger Bend, Sims, Briartown and Turpin. After I got a car, we went to the communities further away. There was usually a school house every three miles, all over the country.
Cole Younger was being chased in Porum, he hid. His friends built a chicken coop and shipped him out of town on the railroad.
The Oscar Hembry's were close neighbors, he had a patch of corn, right next to the cemetery. It was cemetery land, he was just using it. During a funeral one time, he was pulling a cultivator with a team, hollering "Gee, and Haw," to guide them, coming right on by the funeral services. Everybody at that funeral was sore at him for being so thoughtless.
They had 5 children, They had diphtheria and the county had them in the hospital in Muskogee. Three of them died. Two little girls lived.
He said, "I had just as soon, they had all died."
Some of the neighbors wanted to whip him.
All of the neighbors took the shots after that, and no one else had it.
I, Thelmer, fed and watered their stock while they were at the hospital. All of us neighbors knew that they had lots of cats, and the kids carried them around all the time. Some of us believed the cats had something to do with their being sick. I 'took care' of some of those cats.
RAT TAILS That same year there were lot's more rats and mice than usual. They got so bad that Porum gave a bounty on 5 rat tails.
Anyone bringing in 5 rat tails, got a kite and a ball of string to fly the kite. We caught rats in steel traps.
I would sit quiet in our barn and wait for a rat to stick his head out.
Then shoot it with my .22 or bean flip. When I would get 5 rat tails, I would tie them with a piece of string and put them in my pocket. When I went to town, I would get me a kite. I don't know how many times I went back. Lots of people did, kite flying was real popular around Porum.
‘RABBIT’ was what they called me, for eating out of the garden.
I was really skinny. I liked carrots, potatoes, and turnips, I would pull them up and brush them on my pants leg and eat them. I would take a biscuit or a piece of cornbread and go to the garden and eat a green onion. I would take a salt shaker in my pocket and go and eat tomatoes and little okra too. I liked raw corn, out in the field. I would go down the row in the early spring, and find it beginning to tassel. I liked to eat that tiny corn, cob and all. It was as sweet as candy, then I would eat the grains, later, when the corn got bigger, and the cob got hard. I ‘had the belt used on me’ for messing up the corn and ‘grabbling’ the little ‘new potatoes.’ And I got in trouble because I wasn't hungry at mealtime.
(I have always looked young. When I joined the army, I thought they were going to turn me down because I was so skinny. I was even turned down at Camp Wolters, to buy a bottle of beer, I was 26. I was 5 ft 10 and weighed 140 pounds.)
Our orchard had apples that started ripening real early and then on to real late. We all loved fried green apples and lots of butter on a hot biscuit.
In the fall we would dig a hole and put hay in it. Potatoes, turnips and sweet potatoes and more hay was put in. They would not freeze there.
AN UNUSUAL TRAIT, Jack Rawlings had one. When someone punched him he would say---out loud---whatever he was thinking.
At church at the Turpin school house, the preacher loudly asked,
"What are you going to do---when the world's on fire?"
Somebody punched Jack Rawlings and he hollered,
"I'm going to run like hell-----for a big hole of water!"
Poppy always invited them to come, and him and Mommy accepted them as Christians, 'Brother and Sister Fields'. She was big and fat, I can still remember how beautiful that she sang. Lee and Trumon couldn't hardly stand it, that they were welcome in our home. Poppy had to put his foot down, again. He knew that there was talk of ‘running them out of town’. He told us boys, that we better not join in any of it.
They never were bothered, that I knew of.
Poppy always burned off our meadow in the fall.
It burned the old stubble off and the grass come out better in the spring.
He would ‘back fire’around the house and barns. A good ‘fire guard’, for us.
MOONSHINE Me, (Thelmer) and Lawrence found 4 barrels of corn mash in our pasture. That was whole kernel shelled corn, it was soaking in water. It was for making moonshine. We ‘run off’ about 3 quarts of it, at the still. The heat made the steam go up the ‘worm’. The condensation was the
moonshine. It dripped into something glass, you couldn’t use metal. Three swallers of it, and you got to feeling warm. Then me and Truman run off a gallon and let it down in the well to keep it cool and to hide it.
Poppy found the mash before long and knew there had to be a 'worm' around. He kept looking and saw a piece of bailing wire, coming out of the water in our tank. Poppy pulled on it and there was a copper coil, used to make moonshine. The 'worm' was the most expensive part of a still. Poppy went to the Goodner house and told Tom and Frank to come and get the worm and mash off of his land. He knew it had to be theirs.
Their Mama said, "Brother Moore, I'm ashamed of you, accusing my son's of making whisky." They denied it---wouldn't claim it.
Poppy put it all in our shed. In the night he heard something and got his gun and went outside. They were prying the back of our shed off. He marched them to the house. At daylight he told them to get their wagon and take the things home. And if he ever found it on his land again, he would call the sheriff. And he wouldn't let their stock graze on his land any more.
There were no hard feelings. Times were real hard and it was a way of making a living. The Law didn't hunt very hard, for anyone making moonshine. They did stop cars that were bringing loads of it in.
In 1925 there were 40,000 bootleggers in Texas.
There were 40 federal agents to cover both Texas and Oklahoma.
If the weather was cool at all, Frank Goodner wore his big overcoat on the streets of Porum. The bottles of moonshine that he was selling, they wouldn't show in the big pockets of his overcoat.
We had a log corn crib. Me and Lawrence saw where some one had been reaching through a crack and stealing corn. We set a steel trap where it would catch the next arm that reached through. Poppy found it and he made us take it out. He said, "I know about the crack and the corn.
That man's family is hungry, and we can spare the corn."
CHICKENS roosted on narrow boards in the chicken house at night. Sometimes an owl would get on the roost with the chickens.
They would get a chicken between them and the end of the roost. They would crowd the chicken and slowly push--- until the chicken fell off the end of the roost.
The owl was quick. It would catch the chicken---before it hit the ground.
I never saw where an owl had eaten any part of a chicken--but the head.
The owls didn't make any noise, the chickens did. Sometimes Poppy went out at night with his shotgun and shot and killed an owl. One kind of owl was big enough that it could carry off a grown hen.
On the wall of our chicken house wall, about waist high, a row of hen nests had been built. Between two of the nests, a dividing board had a knot hole in it. I was gathering eggs, and found a black snake there in the nests. He had swallowed an egg and started crawling through the knot hole--and he swallowed another egg. He was hung there, an egg on each side of the knot hole.I took 'care of him'.Sometimes they would swallow a whole baby chick.
Bull Durham was five cents a bag, a little string closed the top. R J R was a 'way bigger', it was ten cents. Prince Albert in the can, tasted better, and cost a little more. I would saw and split a rick of wood, and peddle it, now and then, to buy smoking tobacco. You could steal an egg out, until you got a dozen and sell them. That was the first thing I bought when I got money. Then clothes, Coke and Milky Way, it's still my favorite, 5 cents each. Those nickels were hard to get. When Poppy could give us a quarter on Saturday, it paid for the show, coke and candy.
Fifty or seventy five cents was a good day's pay. If a man worked half a day, he might get ten cents. And there was no place to get a job. A farmer usually had enough kids and his wife, to do their own farm work.
Poppy planted two acres of tomatoes. We sold them for a dollar a bushel, until people quit buying them. Then they would go to waste in the field. Once me and Lawrence traded two bushel of tomatoes for an old goat.
She jumped in the window, into the bed where Lawrence and I were sleeping. She had twin kids, I played with them every day. When they killed one of them to eat, it tore me up completely. I haven’t been able to eat a bite of goat since.
CORN SMITH was a neighbor, he would come by on his horse---like he was going to fish. He would walk in a corn patch about three rows and start gathering corn. Somebody got tired of it and brought him before the Judge. The Judge made them ashamed of their self. "Don't you know that's all his family has got to eat." And the Judge turned him loose.
One of his sons was lost in the woods across from our house. He was about 5 and he had been gone all day. It was hot, everybody was looking for him. Thelmer remembers that he found him, and the boy was scared of him. "I hollered and Corn Smith come. He picked his Son up, him so hot and dry and gave him a whipping. I wanted Poppy to do something about it. Poppy said to ‘Let it go.’ Corn Smith had 26 children. He got his picture in the paper & a certificate, because he had more children than anyone else in Oklahoma.
The crops were 'laid by' in the late spring. The rain stopped and they didn't need plowing. We were waiting to pick the cotton and gather the corn. We would go camping on the Canadian river or friends land, that we knew.
FIRST MOTOR HOME IN THE MOORE FAMILY We lived at Dewar and piled everything that we needed---on the truck that Poppy built the wooden bed on---and went fishing. Mommy loved to fish, we all did.
Living back at Briartown, we went fishing in the wagon. Sometimes Poppy would ride one of the horses and go back home and take care of the work and leave us there fishing. One time it was hot and the mosquitoes were big. Us boys went out on the sand bar to sleep. There was a little breeze out there, to keep the mosquitoes off of us. A little rise come up in the night and water was lapping at us before we knew it.
Imogene remembers part of the fun of going fishing, "Annie would let us kids cover her up---to the neck, in the sand."
THE HOGS One fishing time, me and Lawrence had to stay home to keep hogs out of our corn patch. We were watching our corn patch.
I decided to bake a cake. I mixed it up and put it in the hot oven. I thought it might be done. I peeped in the oven door at it---and it was boiling. After that Mommy got to showing me how to cook.
Sure enough the hogs got in. A big old hog would straddle a stalk of corn and ride it down, and bite that ear of corn. Maybe just take one bite, and grab another ear for another bite. That neighbors hogs had 'run out and fattened’ on other people's stuff. Me and Lawrence was mad about missing fishing. We set the dogs on them. Our big old bulldog would grab them by the hind leg, and hold them. We were mad about not going fishing,
We got our knives out, we cut their tails off and cut their ears. They sure did squeal as they went home. The neighbor lived a half mile, he heard them squealing all the way. Blow flies would have started maggots on each cut, by supper time. He had to put them in the pen and put medicine on each cut. He had his work 'cut out for him'. He come to tell Poppy what happened to his hogs. Me and Lawrence were scared to death, we knew that we were 'in for a whipping'. We knew that we shouldn't have cut those hogs.
Poppy said, "Now, Jess, you knew that your hogs were getting in our corn. I asked you to fix your fence. Thelmer and Lawrence had to stay home from our fishing trip to keep your hogs out of our corn. I don't think we ought to blame them to much." We were glad when they moved out of the country.
A REAL GOOD POSSUM hide brought twenty cents, mostly ten cents, sometimes nothing. Once we caught a possum that had eleven little ones in her pouch. They were about the size of a thimble. We let her go. Possums don’t range far, we figured that we could catch them again, after they grew.
If there was a little hole in the hide or the hair wasn't very thick, they would 'turn it down'. That's why we only hunted hides in the winter. Then they would have lots of hair grown, to keep them warm. We got a little more for skunk hides---you could smell them a mile away.
You would catch them in a steel trap, and kill them with your slingshot. We baited our traps with rabbit entrails or anything the varmint would eat. We had wood forms that we stretched the hides on to dry.
When we got out of tobacco, we would go and sell a hide or two.
If you saw a rabbit or a squirrel run into a tree hollow or a log or you felt the fur of a rabbit or a squirrel, you twisted him out. Find a stout forked stick and twisted it in his fur and hide. When it got solid, you could pull him out. Mommy always cooked whatever we brought in.
There was something white and he reached into a hole, thinking to pull a rabbit out. A possum bit his finger. He got the possum out and then had to hold the possum between his knees to pry its mouth off his finger.
Some coal-oil, poured on his finger was good medicine.
COON’S live in hollow places up in tree trunks. Or they might make a nest up in a tree. We would try to shake them out, or one of us might have to climb up and ‘club’ them out. Someone would have to hold the dogs off.
They wouldn’t buy a hide if it had a hole chewed or shot in it.
Lee and Truman really liked to hunt, more than the rest of us. They always had hunting dogs. Lee was ‘the worst person in the world’ to keep 3 or 4 old hounds in a pen or tied. He favored the ‘black and tan’ hounds.
They would stay out nearly all night and then work the next day, if they had to. Piney Creek and Dirty Creek were favorite places, those creeks run into the Canadian River. The dogs would sniff around and then start trotting and then running and barking. Lee would say. "Oh I can tell from the sound, (of his barking and 'baying') that he's after a coon". Lee and Truman would scramble through the woods, to follow the dogs. They get to the dogs and they would be eating a rabbit. Or the dogs might have the coon ‘tree’d’ and be jumping and baying at him.
The coon might jump out and get away from the dogs. If several dogs caught the coon, you had to be right there, before they had a hole in his hide. It took an experienced dog to get the best of a coon.
If a coon and a dog got in a fight, and got in the water, the coon would get on the dogs back. The coon scratched and clawed---the dog had to swim.
Unless it was a big dog, the coon could usually drown the dog.
(Years later there was an illegal gambling place near Fort Worth.
They would put a coon and a dog in the water---and you could bet on which one would win.)
Lee was hunting on Piney Creek and his favorite dog got so far away that Lee had to go home, before he found him. Lee hunted his big old white dog with spots, for two weeks. He drove up to a man's house and there he was. The man said it was his dog. Lee opened his car door and the dog jumped in and Lee drove off. The man was yelling, "You'r stealing my dog." Lee thought there would be trouble over it, but there wasn't.
'Jackie' was another dog of Lee's that got lost. A man found her away off on Piney Creek. The man wouldn't give her up.
He tied her up, in his barn loft. Jackie jumped and hung herself.
Lee and Truman were trotline fishing on Georges Creek, it was north of Porum, nearly to Webber Falls. On a hook was a big hardshell turtle. They got it out on the bank, you could stand on its back. It would crawl along with a man standing on it. They let it go, back in George’s Creek.
LEE MARRIED Martha Anne (Annie) Raimer, a neighbor girl in 1921. She was a healthy baby, until she was 10 months old. She woke up one morning and they found her sick with polio, infantile paralysis. They never knew anything to do for it---except to rub her legs when she cried.
Her health was not good, she did 'poorly' for years. When they married, Mommy said, “ We did not think that she would live more than two years.” (She lived to be 100, outlived Lee by 14 years.)They lived in a tent at first. It was in our pasture across the road from our house.
Thelmer remembers helping them fix it up. ”It was pretty nice, it had a wooden floor, and 1X12 boards come up the sides for three or four feet. A fly went over the top of the tent. They had a wood stove to keep warm and to cook on. They drawed their water from the well on that side of the road.”
THE SMELTERS Poppy knew Ed Sish, he and Mommy grew up knowing his parents. He was the head at the big zinc smelters at Dewar (Dure.) Poppy got Lee a job there. It is 50 miles west of Porum. Ed Sish sent word for Poppy to come and see him. Before long, Poppy took a job there too. He rented out our house and 80 acres. Us kids could go to better schools and not have to stay out of school and do the farm work. Thelmer's leg finally healed good and he started to school there when he was 8.
We lived up the hill from the smelter ponds, and bought our water off the wagon. After Poppy got off work, we would go south of the house and wash clothes at the pond. There was a big black kettle that we would boil them in. One of us would stand and punch the clothes down into the hot soapy water, with a long stick. We played in some great big pipe.
Some hills looked like solid gray slate. Those hills were dug off, and hauled to the smelter, in big trucks. The kilns were burning, red hot. A rake pulled by a motor, stirred the oar in the kiln. Zinc would melt off.
They would catch it and mold it in foot-long bars. It was pretty heavy.
Coals or ashes fell down into big flat pans 3 X 8 ft. Poppy's job was to hook a mule onto the pans and pull them out, like a sled. He wore heavy gloves and went to work at 4 a m, to try to miss the heat. The whole place was dusty and dirty, it was like walking into an oven.You come out wringing wet. His job for the day was over when he emptied and replaced all the pans. When Truman helped him, sometimes his job would be over by 12:00.
NEW TRUCKS Thelmer remembers, “Poppy bought a new Ford Model T truck in 1923. I was not yet 10. Poppy had the ‘Grey Wagon' franchise, to move people in Dewar, Okla. He built a bed on the back.
I stayed out of school and drove the truck and hauled things and
moved people. I was proud to drive the new truck, any kind of truck.
I always liked school and did not like to miss any. Poppy bought another
new '23 Ford truck. There was not enough hauling-work, to make a living.
“Poppy never was a good manager"
Just before we moved to Dewar, an Italian family moved in, their house burned. No one came to help them. Their faces looked like everyone else, but no one was friendly to them---the community 'run them off'---
just because they talked ‘different'.
K K K , 12 of them come to the principal's office, when I, Thelmer was in the second grade Then some of them come to my room. They wore white sheets over their clothes and white masks over their faces and tall pointed white hats on their heads. Some of them went to every room in the school with a bible. They laid a bible on my teacher's desk and told her to read it to us every day. After that time, we all heard the bible read every day.
A man working at the smelters had a wife and children. He lived in the little neighborhood of Sunset, between Dewar and Kusa. He spent his paycheck on booze and other women. The neighbors had to feed his family. It was pay-day night and he was walking home from work. He got to the foot log across the little creek. The KKK caught him, turned him over that log and whipped him with a wet rope. They promised him a better whipping, if he didn't provide for his family. They 'made a believer' out of him.
There was an old man in Kusa that pushed a little cart and sold home-
made hot tamales. He called out,
“Hot Tamales fresh and fine. One for a nickel---Three for a dime”.
He kept them hot and we really liked them.
Sometimes Poppy would buy us a bunch.
We lived in a row of houses that were real close together. Lee and Annie lived two doors down. We had a back yard, big enough to keep a cow. We always kept a cow, there was always a baby that needed a bottle.
Our next door neighbor was a teacher. He was picking on Truman.
Truman shot him with his bean flip, and the teacher come to Poppy.
Truman was quiet, and so likeable, but he was always 'starting something' or finding things to get into. Years later Truman was telling a wild tale on his self. He was asked if his kids knew about that. “Lands, it wouldn’t do for my kids to know about the things that I used to do.”
GRANPA STEPHENS We were setting on the back porch at the table getting our lessons. There was banging on the back door. Poppy went and no one was there. Again banging. The third loud banging, Poppy jumped up and grabbed the poker. Then he set down. Mommy said, "Pa's died." We started getting ready to go to Porum. Mommy's brother, Uncle Bob Stephens lived in Henrietta, just two miles down the road. He had a telephone and in a little while he come and told us that Granpa Stephen's had died.
We went to his funeral, in our truck.
The Foley boys had come and 'laid Granpa Stephens out.' They washed and dressed him for burial. They lived just across the road from him. They were Catholic, a priest come out to see them, ever so often.
Bill remembers, "I stayed with Grandma Stephens for 3 or 4 months. She was ailing and lived five more years.
I had Granpa Stephens 1900 Ledger of Patients Record's. Uncle Burl come and borrowed it and I never got it back. Some entries are in 1903.
He had no Oklahoma medical license and did not practice after Oklahoma became a State. Most 'visits' were $1. Tablets, tonic and mouthwash was 25cents---prescriptions, the medicine that he handed them, was 50 cents. One bill was 'paid in hogs' $10. It does not show many of the bills paid.
Some patients listed were, Dave the blacksmith, Old Man Briant and Old Man Young, Cherokee Jones, Blue Head Tom Starr, Mister Little Man, George Howard, Sisstucksy Starr, Mrs Sallie Starr, Alice Starr and
Old Ladie Starr. They were listed as living in Texhana, Briartown, Younger Bend and Starrvillia.
The words ‘Oklahoma and Porum’ are not in his patient record book. There was no Oklahoma, it was ‘Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory’. There was no Porum. The town of Porum, grew up on the railroad and the railroad did not come through until 1904.
Wilma Dean was born January 12, 1924, in Kusa, Okmulgee County.
It was a tiny town, right next to Dewar, at the smelters. Poppy made good money and we had plenty of clothes. The schools were good and everybody went to school regular. Thelmer missed school to drive the truck.