This is part of a continuing series of chapters of my autobiography. I hope you enjoy it.
3-High School Days
Upon our return to Mannford, I was greeted as a kind of “big
shot” because I had gone off and lived in a “big” town. Most of the students I had gone to grade
school with were still there and it really was a homecoming. I was fourteen and in the ninth grade.
For the first two years back in Mannford, we attended school
in the old town. Keystone Lake was being
built and the town and school would move in 1962 about 3 miles to the south and
east.
Gary and I would often hitchhike into Mannford in the
mornings because we didn’t want to ride the bus and because we were still too
young to drive. We would go in early and
drink coffee in the café. On many
occasions, a man by the name of Tuffy Weaver, who was related somehow to Uncle
Albert, would pick us up and give us a ride.
He had been to Keystone to visit Mr. Kurtze, the bootlegger and was
returning. Every morning the drill was
the same. We would get into his car, he
would take off, and then he would ask us if we would like a little nip. Of course, we always said “yes” and he would
pass us the bottle of Old Crow he had between his legs.
My first job in Mannford was washing dishes at the City Café
for Callie Fields. She paid me 35 cents
per hour and I was probably overpaid.
She was a taciturn old woman and I was scared to death of her. Her husband, Gene Fields, seemed like a nice
enough guy and I found out many years later, after he had passed away, that he
was an expert in Masonic ritual. Callie
sold the café to Lily Hudson and I got a raise to 40 cents. As stern as Callie was, Lily was just the
opposite. I never met a nicer woman than
her.
Most of the time, I would wash dishes but occasionally she
would let me cook. I can remember the
pricing of some of our items: hamburgers, 35 cents; hamburger steaks, $1.25;
veal cutlets, $1.35; and t-bone steaks, $2.65.
I remember one time that the bank brought all their employees over for a
meal. We grossed over $65 that day, the
most the café had ever grossed.
Some of the memories I have of the old town include
Hendricks Drug Store, Varnell’s Grocery, the bank, and the mercantile
store. Mr. Hendricks was a
“curmudgeonly” old man and all of the kids called him “Baldy” behind his back. We used to stand at his magazine rack for
hours looking at the “Private Detective” magazines; these were about as risqué
as you could get back then. Mr. Hendrix
told us one time, “The trouble with you boys is that you have more brains
between your legs than you do in your heads”.
He was probably right.
Varnell’s grocery had a cream station and I can remember us
occasionally selling a can of cream to them.
More importantly, every Saturday night in the summertime, they would set
up a big screen in the street outside Varnell’s and show a movie. It cost 25¢ to watch the movie; I don’t remember how they made sure
everyone paid. Maybe it was on the honor
system.
Another vivid memory was of the bank. Soon after we moved from Pampa to Mannford,
Mom got a job at the bank so we were in there often. It was constructed of cut sandstone and, on
the outside, you could see pock marks where bullets had hit it during a robbery
attempt. Inside, there was a counter
where you could fill out your deposit slips and endorse checks. The counter was covered with a piece of plate
glass and under the glass were pictures of dead bank robbers lying there in the
bank. What a deterrent to potential
robbers!
As I mentioned earlier, Gary and I would walk to
school. We also walked to town on
Saturdays and walked home late at night on Saturday nights. Our house was two miles east of Mannford on
State Highway 51. Back then, however,
there was not nearly as much traffic as today.
More often than not, we would walk the two miles from town to home
without seeing a single vehicle. It was
a different, safer time back then; if you did see a car, you were almost
guaranteed a ride. Late one Saturday
night, we were walking home when a vehicle came up the long hill. We stuck our thumbs out as it neared and,
sure enough, it stopped just past us.
Unfortunately, it was a hearse!
When we finally got enough nerve up to open the door, we found out that
it was just some guys we knew who had bought the old hearse as a gag.
In the summer of 1961, Dad decided it was time to add on to
the house. It still only had two
bedrooms and Mary Sue was getting old enough that she needed a place away from
us boys. Mom, of course, still dreamed
about indoor plumbing. Because the town
of Keystone was going to be inundated by Keystone Lake, all of the buildings
were being torn down. Dad purchased an
old three-story hotel and Gary and I tore it down. We spent all summer down there, dismantling
this hotel piece by piece and cleaning the nails from the lumber. By the end of the summer, we had enough
material to add on four rooms to the house.
Summers then were especially nice. Mom and Dad ran around with another couple
back then, Mae and Glen Tate. Glen ran
the service station in Mannford and had adopted Mae’s three boys, Kenneth,
Jarrel, and Donald. We spent many an
evening either at their house in town or at ours in the country, eating
hamburgers and homemade ice cream. Glen
had a heart of gold but Mom would get so aggravated at him. Every time he would eat a bowl of her ice
cream, he would say, “Sue, that’s real good but it sure could use a bit of
(something) more”.
Our school in the old town was well past its prime. The gymnasium was underneath the auditorium
and had almost no seating for basketball games.
You had to climb up a narrow flight of stairs and work your way along
underneath the steel beams to get to your seat.
If there had ever been a fire in there during a basketball game, it
would have been devastating. Mannford
didn’t offer football, band, or other extracurricular activities; basketball
was about it. Since I was 5’8” tall and somewhat
wide, I didn’t bother to go out for basketball.
We did have the Future Farmers of America, FFA. Because the school board consisted mainly of
farmers, vocational agriculture was required for all four years of high
school. On the evening of my initiation
into the FFA, I was instructed to go to the home of the local town constable,
Lee White, and steal the hubcaps from his 1957 Chevy. I went down there and started the job. All of a sudden, a booming voice from behind
me said, “What are you doing there!?”.
Naturally, it was Lee himself. As
soon as I had left the school, my cohorts had called him to tell him I was
coming.
A.L. Steward was the
vo-ag instructor and the FFA advisor.
Dad and he didn’t get along very well and my grade in vocational
agriculture reflected it. One time, Gary
and I had a pair of registered Hampshire gilts, Mitzie and Ruby. Mr. Steward came out to look at them and
proceeded to tell Dad that we were feeding them all wrong. Dad disagreed with him vociferously and Gary
and I thought they were going to come to blows.
Another time, Gary and I each bought a registered Hereford
heifer to show. Grandmother Nash’s full
name was Lessie Hester and no one had ever named their children after her so
Gary and I decided to honor her. I named
my heifer “Lessie” and Gary named his “Hester”.
I’m not sure Grandmother was flattered.
During the early 1960’s, Dad was developing a pretty sizable
cow-calf operation. At one point, I
think we must have had about 40 cows and a bull or two, in addition to the
always present milk cow. Dad leased
about 240 acres from the government and some from the Bristow bankers. We had part of this put up in hay and Dad
contracted Sylvester Garrison from Silver City to bale it.
Mr. Garrison asked Gary and me if we wanted to work for him
and we agreed to, so we went and lived at his house for at least parts of two
summers. The first year, the hay crop
and business was good and we ate well; the second year, times were not so good
and we had to eat most of Mrs. Garrison’s laying hens. We had chicken for almost every meal every
day.
I had my first date while I was working for Mr.
Garrison. A couple that he baled hay for
in Hallett had a girl come to live with them to help take care of their two
children. She was about five years older
than me but very shy (as I was) and I took her on one date. I borrowed a 1960 Ford convertible from David
Ruscoe, even though I was only 15 and didn’t have a driver’s license. I think we went to the movie in Cleveland,
though I’m not really sure.
In those days, getting a car was a rite of passage into
adulthood and I talked Mom into taking me to get my license the day I turned
16. Dad had an old two-tone brown
Rambler hardtop which he gave to Gary and me.
Because the car belonged to Gary and me, he got to go along with my
friends and me even though he was younger.
One day, Roger Carter, David Alsip, and I were heading up toward Roger’s
house when something in the steering broke.
The car veered into a bridge abutment, totaling it but not hurting us.
Roger was known as “Wolfie” by all the rest of the
kids. One day, he, David and I were out
in the woods near Roger’s house practicing our fast draw. David and I were using revolvers but Wolfie
had a semi-auto pistol, an old Ruger.
Well, he made a mistake and pulled the trigger before the gun had
cleared the holster. The bullet traveled
down his thigh just under the skin and stopped just above the knee. You could see the bullet below the skin. He said that it didn’t hurt too bad so we
kept fooling around. Later, when we
returned to his house, his mother became hysterical when he told her that he
had shot himself.
In the fall of 1962, we started classes in the brand new
school in the new town. Everything
worked good except for the heating system.
That first winter, it would get really cold in the classrooms and the
superintendent would have to cancel classes.
We missed several days that year because of the heating system.
That same fall, we had a new English teacher when we arrived
the first day. I don’t remember her name
but I do remember that she was terribly nervous and tense that first day and we
were like a bunch of jackals smelling blood.
By tormenting her, we were able to run her off before the first semester
of school was over. I would only hope
that my children never did anything like that.
One day in 1963, I took Mom’s car up to the service station
to have it worked on. I had worked for
Ted Norwood before but that day was just there with her car. There were a couple of people around; one of
them, a tall thin man, was talking to Ted.
I found out later that his name was Ted Hix. All of a sudden, Willard Oller, one of the
town bullies, came through the door and he and Mr. Hix started fighting. Well, Ted Hix whipped him pretty good and
Willard got up and went outside to his Cadillac.
I saw him get a pistol from inside the car but did not
believe he would use it. Boy, was I
wrong! He stepped back inside the
station and started shooting. He hit Ted
four times, twice in the shoulder and twice in the leg. After being hit, Ted took the gun away from
Willard and tried to shoot him with it but it was jammed.
Lee White, the local constable, came down, calmly arrested
Willard and took him to jail in Sapulpa.
Later that afternoon, after I had returned home, two of Willard’s hired
hands pulled into our driveway. Dad saw
them and knew they were up to no good so he got his 12 gauge double barrel and
met them in the front yard. They said
that they just wanted to talk to me about what I saw; he told them to get back
in their truck and get out of there!
I wound up testifying four times over that deal, twice in
the criminal trial and twice in the civil trial. Oller got off on the criminal charge; he
swore that he bought off the jury and, since it was in Creek County, he
probably did. At any rate, it was pretty
nifty to have the deputy come up to school and serve me. At least, I thought so at the time.
High school was a lot more fun because of the things that
happened outside the school, rather than events at school. Gary and I, being full-fledged drivers, were
free to get into all kinds of mischief and did.
One night, after we had consumed a few too many brews, we got home and
got into our beds next to each other.
After a few minutes, I heard him get up, throw open the window, and
heave up. I laid there a couple of
minutes longer thinking about this and I had to get up and do the same
thing. The next morning, bright and early,
Mom woke us up and told us to get outside and clean the side of the house
off. I almost lost it again.
Once, in the summer, we were out extremely late and, as we
were sneaking in the back door of the house, met Dad. He was coming out to go milk the cow. He didn’t say anything about us getting home
so late; he just said to get our clothes changed and get ready to go to the hay
field. That was one of the longest days
I can ever remember.
One of my bigger regrets is that I didn’t really apply
myself in high school. I did manage to
finish third in the class behind Rick Spess and David Alsip but I could have
easily done better, had I set my mind to it.
Our little class of twenty five students was really a microcosm of the
universe. Marilyn Fisher was the
stunning beauty and she is still today a very attractive woman. Rick Spess was the guy who always made an “A”
in class and was destined to be President of the United States or something. He wound up running a car dealership for many
years in Cleveland, Oklahoma.
One of our classmates was a fellow by the name of Lee
Sweatt. Lee’s father was an engineer for
KRMG radio and worked out at their broadcast towers, keeping the station on the
air. Lee was the biggest, meanest hell
raiser any of us had ever seen or been around.
If there had been a category in our senior year for “most likely to wind
up in the state pen”, Lee would have won it hands down. Several years ago, about 30 years after we
had graduated, I was watching television one Sunday morning and a show entitled
“Lee Sweatt Ministries Presents” came on.
Sure enough, it was the Lee Sweatt I had gone to school with! I met him later at a class reunion and he was
the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet.
During my senior year in high school, I applied for a
scholarship with Cabot Corporation. Dad
was still working in their service department out of Tulsa and they had a good
scholarship program. After I took a
battery of tests, I was informed that I had won a $2000 scholarship, to be paid
out at $500 per year for four years.
Since Mom and Dad had three smaller children at home, this was good
news, for they certainly could not afford to help me much.
David Alsip and his girl friend, Donna Kellert, and I all
went off to Oklahoma State University together, which is another story.
