The Building of Keystone Dam

The construction of Keystone Dam and the existence of the lake have had a profound impact on Mannford and the surrounding area for the past 50 plus years.  At the time we were growing up, however, it didn’t seem to be a big thing.  Didn’t all teenagers grow up with a major construction project going on in their backyard?

We certainly were excited to be moving to a brand new school and watching the new town sprout up was interesting but, at the time, these events didn’t seem to be monumental.  The important things were what our classmates were doing, getting our driver’s licenses, and all the other things that kids everywhere were doing.

The construction of the dam did provide a large number of jobs for the teens who wanted them.  In the summer of 1963, I worked on a crew which laid sod alongside all the roads in the new parks.  It was hard work but the pay was good.  Many of the kids I grew up with had jobs like this.

In August, 1962, we moved into the new school.  One of the highlights of that first year was a poorly designed boiler system which couldn’t keep the new school building warm on really cold days.  Why was it a highlight?  Because we got to go home if it got too cold!  Unfortunately for us, the administration got the problem corrected after that first year.

Another aspect of the construction of the Dam and Lake did intrigue me: the actual filling of the lake.  The Corps of Engineers had announced that it would take about six months to fill the lake but we had a lot of rain that year and it only took six weeks.  Almost daily, we would check to see where the water level was.

I’ve often wondered what Mannford would be like today if it weren’t for Keystone Lake.  I think I like it the way it is!

Grade School at the Old School

Do you remember all your grade school teachers?  Although it’s been 62 years since I was in the first grade, I can remember all my teachers, some, of course, better than others.  Mrs. Krute taught the first grade, Miss Unger the second, Mrs. Rhoades, the third, Mrs. McDonald the fourth, and Miss Moorman the fifth and sixth both.  Mannford didn’t have a kindergarten back then.

The elementary classes were on the north side of the school and, as I recall, there were four classrooms there.  Miss Moorman’s combination class was located upstairs in the center part of the building.  If my memory on this is faulty, correct me the next time you see me.

Mrs. Krute and Miss Unger both left after I completed their grades.  I don’t know whether I had anything to do with that or not, I certainly hope not!  They were followed by Miss Hart and Mrs. O’Kieefe who wound up staying at Mannford for several years.

Mrs. Rhoades, my third grade teacher, was the wife of Lester Rhoades, the Mannford Postmaster, and she was quite a disciplinarian (or so I thought).  By the time I reached 50 years of age, I got to where I could call her Sylvia.  In later years, after I was grown and had children of my own, my mother and father would go camping at New Mannford Ramp with Lester and Sylvia.

Mrs. McDonald, our fourth grade teacher, was extremely relaxed and easy going and all the children loved her.  She was the widow of Dr. Clarence McDonald, one of Mannford’s early doctors.  He had passed away in the late 1940’s so she had been widowed for a long time.

Miss Moorman taught both the fifth and sixth grades and did it quite well.  With two classes in one room, she had to be the ultimate disciplinarian and she was!  Once, during class, she grabbed hold of me, lifted me out of my chair and gave me a really good spanking.  While she was doing that, I was protesting that I hadn’t done anything!  Her response: “That’s just it, you weren’t doing anything!”

When I got my last report card of the year in the fifth grade in 1957, I was mortified to see a “D” in one of my subjects (I don’t even remember which one now) for the last six weeks.  I knew that when I got home with that report card I was going to be in trouble!  While we were waiting out in front of the school for the bus, I saw a big pipe at the gate to the school and I stuffed that report card down in it.  When I got home, I told my mother that I had lost my report card but that all the grades were OK (I wonder if she believed me).

In the summer of 1957, Dad found out that the company he worked for had been sold and was moving to Pampa, Texas.  So, I didn’t get to complete grade school in Mannford.  In preparation for the move, Mom told me that we would have to get a copy of my report card!  When we went up to the school office to get the copy, the secretary put down only the semester grades; the “D” I had gotten did not show up.  I was the luckiest kid in Mannford that day!

I don’t remember exactly how many kids were in each of our grades but it was in the area of 25.  The other day, we participated in a vision screening at the elementary school; there were five to six classes for each grade and each class had about 25 students.  My, how things have changed.

Mischief and More Serious Pranks

Like lots of kids, I managed to get into all kinds of mischief when I was a teen.  My brother, Gary, who was only eleven months younger than me, was involved in most of these as well.  In almost every case, there were others involved as well who shall remain nameless.  They may not feel the need to repent of their sins!

I can't begin to get these in chronological order since they all happened in a two to three year period when I was between 15 and 18 years of age.  After that, I began to settle down and grow up a bit.  Fortunately, none of these pranks involved any serious physical harm although they certainly could have.

I'll start with the worst, at least from a financial point.  It was Halloween in either 1961 or 1962.  The new bridge over Salt Creek had been completed but the highway was not yet paved.  A bunch of us young bucks were out prowling and looking for ways to cause havoc.  After tipping over a few outhouses (yes, we really did that), we decided to build a bonfire on the new bridge.  We rounded up a few old tires and carried them out to the middle of the bridge where we lit them on fire.  It was a spectacular sight!  What we didn't consider was that the tire fire would burn so hot that would actually damage the concrete on the new bridge.  The next day, Mother asked if we were involved in building the fire.  Although we assured her that we weren't, I'm sure she knew the truth.  We heard later that the cost of repairs was substantial.

There was a railroad underpass on the east side of Mannford, just east of Glen Tate's Phillips station.  It was a perfect place for kids to get into trouble and we did.  Our favorite occupation here was to drop water balloons off the railroad tracks onto cars passing underneath.  One night we were engaged in this pastime when a convertible approached!  This was beyond our wildest dreams so we let a balloon go just as he went under the bridge.  It was a direct hit!  The only problem was that, even though the driver was soaked, he was mad enough that he stopped the car and started chasing us through the woods.  If it hadn't been dark, he could have easily run this short fat kid down.  As it was, we got away.

As we got older, Gary and I became less concerned about what time we got home after going out to town.  One early morning as we were attempting to sneak in the back door at home, we met Dad coming out on his way to milk the cow.  He gave us a disgusting look and, in his most stern voice, told us to get our clothes changed because we were going to the hay field in an hour.  I know that he worked us harder that day than he ever had before.

Then there was the time we were practicing our fast draws.  I know its hard to believe today, but we all had firearms as teenagers back then.  On the other hand, there weren't any school shootings or other tragic events back then.  At any rate, two of us had revolvers (good to practice fast draw with) and one had a semi-auto pistol (NOT good to practice fast draw with).  The guy with the semi-auto made a mistake and pulled the trigger before the pistol had cleared the holster.  The bullet traveled down the leg just under the skin and lodged just above the knee.  It didn't even bleed, although when his mother found out, she was panic stricken!

My initiation into the FFA (Future Farmers of America) was interesting, to say the least.  We all met up at the school and the new kids were given their assignments.  Mine was to steal the hubcaps off the local Marshall's 1957 Chevy.  The Marshall was Lee White and back then, he was the perfect man for that job.  The kids all respected him and he didn't try to scare them to death.  I didn't relish my assignment but I left the school and walked the two blocks to his house.  I was kneeling down trying to get the first hubcap off when a deep, loud voice behind me asked what I thought I was doing!  Yep, it was Lee White.  Come to find out, the FFA officers had called him and warned him that I was coming.  Apparently, this was an annual prank.

OK, now the truth is out.  Please remember that this was 50 years ago and I don't do things like that today!   Fortunately, I think most kids today are better behaved than I was!

Old Town Grocery Stores

In the 1950's and early 1960's, Mannford (the old town) had at least three grocery stores.  Convenience stores had been created by that time but Mannford wasn't ready for them.  In fact, the first convenience store in the United States was opened in Dallas, Texas, by the Southland Ice Company in the 1950's.  It later grew into what is today 7 Eleven stores.

The grocery stores I remember were Varnell's Grocery, Mannford Trading Company, and Vaught's Grocery.  Varnell's was located on South Main Street on the east side of the street.  Earl Varnell ran the grocery store and my most vivid memory of that store was that he had a cream station.  Did Earl's wife work there as well?  I don't remember.

In the early 1960's, we had a milk cow who could out-produce what our family could consume so we would run the excess milk through a cream separator and sell it in town at Varnell's Grocery.  Running the separator was hard work and you had to crank like mad to keep the speed up.  The cream was hauled into Varnell's and, as I recall, they measured the butterfat somehow to determine how much to pay you.

Hugh and Ethel Vaught's grocery store was across the street and west of the Bank.  I don't remember a lot about it except that it was relatively new and always appeared to be extremely clean.  Mr. and Mrs. Vaught, like most of the people in Mannford at that time, were wonderful people and really contributed to the community.  Mr. Vaught had run a grocery store just west of the drug store but sold it to a Mr. Willetts when he built his new store in the 1950's.  Mr. Willetts later sold that grocery store to Alfred Hughes who turned in into a feed store.

The other grocery store in Mannford at that time was the Mannford Trading Company.  It was probably the biggest store in town as well as being the oldest.  F.M.  Coonrod, who had opened the Mannford State Bank several years earlier, opened the Mannford Trading Company in about 1925.  I'm told that he and his wife, Jessa, ran the Trading Company for many years until their daughter, Juanita, and her husband, Les Hinton, took it over.

As a youngster, I found the Trading Company to be a fascinating place.  It was "L" shaped with an entrance on the south to Highway 51 and another entrance to the east opening to Main Street.  The groceries were all located on the west end of the store and best accessed from the Hwy. 51 entrance while the dry goods were on the north side of the store.

It, by the way, was the ancestor to today's Phelp's Market.  When the town moved in the early 1960's, Les and Juanita moved their grocery store to the new town.  The store was located across the walkway from the Bank.  After a few years, they decided to retire and talked their daughter, Peg, and her husband, Jack McIntire into running the store.  Later, in about 1969, the grocery store was sold to Bill and Harriett Phelps.

When my brother, Gary, and I were in our early teens, we made extra money by planting tomatoes and okra and then selling them to Mr. Hinton at the grocery store.  I can still visualize him standing behind the counter in that grocery store!

Your First Job

Do you remember the first real job you ever had?  Not doing chores for your parents or grandparents but a real, honest to goodness JOB?  My memories of my first job are very vivid, but some of that may come with age.  As I get older, some of the stuff that may have happened becomes fact!  The good news is that there are few people around to challenge it.

In 1960 our family moved back to Mannford from Pampa, Texas where we had lived for four years.  Dad was working in Tulsa and Mom got a job at Mannford State Bank, working for L.R. "Dick" Jones.  I was 14 years old and it was time for me to go to work, too.  I don't remember how I heard about the job washing dishes at one of the local cafes, but I went up there and applied to the owner, Callie Fields.  She was the wife of Gene Fields and was a bit intimidating to a fourteen year old boy.  My starting salary was 30 cents per hour.  After a few months, Callie sold the cafe to Lilly Hudson.  Lilly was just the opposite of Callie, she was one of the nicest, warmest people I've ever met!  Life was good; plus, I got a raise to 40 cents.

The name of the cafe is questionable but I do remember that it was called Gene's Cafe for a while.  Other cafes in town were the White Way, the City Cafe and the Coffee Cup cafe.

Judy Shaeffer and I worked there for a year or so, I would guess, and took turns doing dishes, cooking the easier things, and waiting tables.  I also got to work with Ollie Farrow there.  She was the mother of one of my classmates, Jesse, and was one of the finest women I knew.

To this day, I remember some of the prices of the meals.  Hamburgers were a quarter, hamburger steaks and chicken fried steaks were $1.25, "veal cutlets" were $1.35, and T-bone steaks were $2.65.  To prepare veal cutlets, we took a tenderized raw chicken fried steak and cut it into two pieces.  We may have put it in a different coating, I don't remember.

Judy must have worked the morning shift because she talks about preparing sack lunches for the workers who were building the roads, parks, and bridges in preparation for moving the town.  On the other hand, it seemed that I was always working in the evenings.  The only lunches I remember packing were for Lilly's husband, Otis.  He had a job as a night watchman on some of the construction sites and Lilly would pack a lunch for him in the evening.

About once a month, Dick Jones would bring all the employees of the bank over in the evening for dinner.  Everyone ate T-bone steaks and had a good time.  That was kind of strange for me because I had to wait on my mother.  I couldn't begin to name all the employees at the time but they included Bobby Greenwood, Paul McCrackin, and Hazel Tate.

Just east of the cafe on the corner was a covered triangular area.  This obviously had been a gas station years before but was closed when I worked at the Cafe.  We used it for storage of soft drinks and other supplies.  Lilly used to send me down there to fetch supplies and I would read magazines while I was there.  Lilly knew I was goofing off but she was too nice to say much about it!

I think your first job is alway kind of special.  At least, mine was.  I think I enjoyed it more than my last one but that may just be the years fading my memory!

CB Radio

Those of you who are in your forties or older remember the CB, or Citizen Band, radio craze well.  This band, 11 meters, was designated by the Federal Communications Commission in 1958 as a place for private individuals to have access to radio communications.

Ham, or amateur, radio had been around forever; it was the beginning of radio communications.  CB required a license but it did not require proficiency testing like ham did.  I got involved in CB radio in the late 1960's and wound up with this license.

The licensing requirement was dropped sometime in the early 1970's and CB became so popular that it was a factory option for several years by the auto makers.  Truck drivers had been among the earliest users of these radios and they became the standard way of communicating between drivers.

CB became a place where profanity and filth prevailed.  I think this is what killed it with the average person.  I haven't owned or listened to CB in several years; I don't know whether it is still that way today or not.  I do know that there are an awful lot of former CBers who are hams now.

Eating Off the Land

If you know me, you know that eating is one of my favorite pastimes.  One of our favorite pastimes during our winter stay in South Texas each year is a discussion of where we are gonna have our next meal.

The other day, my friend, Carvell, posted something on Facebook about picking plums.  Well, if you are from around here you know that that means sand plums, not those great big plums you buy in the grocery store.  These are about the size of grapes and you have to pick them a bit early, before all the critters get them.  I can't tell you how many pints of plum jelly Mom made from those plums.  Because my siblings and I weren't really crazy about the taste of slightly unripe sand plums, Mom didn't have to worry about us eating most of what we picked.

Not true with blackberries, however.  My motto was always "One for the bucket, one for my mouth"!  In the early 1960's, we had a blackberry patch staked out that was amazing.  Dad said that these were tame berries and that a house had once stood right by where the patch was.  At any rate, the berries were huge and sweet, and we picked a lot of berries from that patch.  It was located on the south side of old Highway 51 west of Mannford; I've tried to find it a couple of times in the past few years with no success.  Maybe blackberry plants don't live 52 years.

There were a few hazards that came along with picking blackberries, however, including snakes and chiggers.  The snakes didn't really bother Gary or me but they did bother our sister and mother, a great deal!  The chiggers were worse; they ate on everyone.  And it always seemed that the hatching of chiggers coincided exactly with when the blackberries were ripe.  I can't remember for sure but it seems that Mom doctored our chigger bites with kerosene.  Whatever it was, it was one of those treatments where the cure is almost as bad as the disease.

In addition to the sand plums and blackberries, there was always a good supply of pears and apples.  Dad planted a small orchard right after we moved to Mannford, so our crop was close at hand.  However, there were enough trees in the area located next to abandoned home sites to feed anyone as many pears and apples as they wanted.

Because Mom and Dad had all the fruit they wanted or needed, a lot of it wound up on the ground.  Early one morning, Dad was looking out the window and called, "Sue, Come here and look at this!"  Out in the orchard, under a pear tree, was a drunk coyote.  He had happened along in the night, discovered the ground covered with fermenting pears, and proceeded to eat them till he could hardly walk!

Another way to get your belly full back then was to pick a mess of greens.  In the early spring, Poke was probably the favored vegetable.  Poke, or Poke weed, is most commonly found in late spring growing in wooded areas, preferably in rotted out tree trunks.  When prepared properly, it has a taste somewhat like spinach but with a little bit more bite.  We would take a burlap feed sack into the woods and load it up with tender poke leaves.  Mom would then par boil it, pour the water off, and then cook it with piece of ham hock or other pork in it.  That was mighty tasty!  We were always told that you had to par boil the poke and pour off the first juice or it would be poisonous.  I don't know today whether that's true or not but the last poke I fixed got the treatment.

The other popular vegetable dish we had when I was growing up was a salad made from all kinds of weeds.  I can't remember most of them but a couple were dandelions and lamb's quarter.  Grandmother Alexander could walk out into the weeds and pick a tasty salad!  It's interesting that dandelion has become a significant green in prepared salads you buy in the store today.

Even though we don't eat a lot of this stuff today, it was pretty good eating when I was a kid.

The Highway Revisited

I wrote the other day about State Highway 51 and some of our experiences growing up beside that highway.  I mentioned that it was originally designated Highway 33, was paved in 1924, and later became Highway 51.

One day I was talking to Dad and he was relating some stories to me.  He mentioned riding the train from Mannford to Keystone.  I asked why you would ride the train when it was only seven miles from one town to the other.  He pointed out to me that the highway didn't exist then and that you had to negotiate a long, winding series of dirt roads to make the trip.  A couple of years after he passed, I discovered this map on the internet.  It is from the US Geological Survey and is dated 1915.  If you look, you can see that there is no direct road from Mannford to Keystone, only the railroad.

To give you an idea of where everything is, the current city of Mannford is located just above and to the right of the "R" in what is shown of "Mannford" at the bottom of the map.

It's my understanding that the city of Mannford is getting ready to resurface the old highway from Basin Road west to the top of Gilman Hill.  It certainly needs it as the pavement is in really bad shape.  My only regret is that a set of animal tracks about 1/2 mile west of Basin Road will be covered up forever.  It has always amazed me that a dog or coyote ran across that concrete in 1924 and left his mark on that highway for many years!

The bridge over Salt Creek on Highway 51 was about 1 1/2 miles east of our house.  In the spring of 1957, there was severe flooding in the Cimarron River which backed up into Salt Creek and covered the bridge.  Dad was working in Tulsa and making the commute every day.  To get to work, he had to make a detour several miles out of his way to the south.  Fortunately, the flooding subsided after a few days.

We also had some neighbors to the east of us whose last name was Melton.  Their son, Chuck, had graduated from Mannford High in 1954.  He owned a Volkswagen beetle, the first one I ever saw.  They were touted as being so well constructed that they would float so Chuck rolled all the windows up and pushed his VW across the flooded bridge.  As a very impressionable 11 year old kid, I was awestruck that he could do that!

Another vivid memory I have of that era involved Mr. Kurtze's gasoline station on the west side of Keystone.  We would pull in there to get gas and Mr. Kurtze would pump it up into the glass bowl on the top of the old pump.  Then, while it was draining down into the car's tank, Dad and Mr. Kurtze would walk out to the well house behind the station.  Dad would return to the car with a paper sack containing a pint of whiskey. Oklahoma was still dry and Mr. Kurtze was the local bootlegger!  The State didn't vote liquor in until 1959.

In the summer of 1957, we moved from Mannford to Pampa, Texas, because the company Dad worked for, Franks Manufacturing Co., had relocated there.  Most weekends while we lived in Pampa we would load up and come to Mannford to keep the family home up.  Dad would put a big tool box in the trunk of the old '46 Ford which really weighted it down.  It seems that more times than not, we would get stopped by a Highway Patrolman, suspecting that we were carrying illegal whiskey!

The old highway held a lot of memories.  It was fun growing up beside it.

Kinfolk's Cookbook

In about 1983, Mom decided that she wanted to compile a cookbook, based on her mother's family in Mississippi.  Grandmother Nash, Lessie Hester, had five sisters and two brothers who lived to adulthood and Mom wanted to honor these aunts and uncles, as well as their mother, Nancy Ann.  Of the eight children, only one, Aunt Mallie, was still alive and she contributed several recipes to the cause.

Mom sent out an invitation for all the cousins to send her their favorite recipes.  She wound up with about 150 of them, ranging from pickles to snicker doodles.  In 1984 Mom had not embraced the computer age (most of us had not at that time), so she typed each page of the cookbook.  She wound up with about 54 pages of recipes.

At this point, Louise and I got drafted to help her publish the cookbook so we dove in.  I'm not sure but I think we may have printed 60 to 100 copies, all of which were given away to the recipe contributors and anyone else who wanted them.  Louise and I laminated the covers, collated the books and bound them with plastic binding combs.

The Kinfolk's Cookbook has been one of our favorites over the years and Louise and I wore our copy out completely.  A couple of months ago, Melissa, our niece, copied the cookbook and put it on a web site, which got me to thinking.  Perhaps it was time to reprint this family heirloom.

For the past couple of months, I've been entering the recipes from the original cookbook into a file.  That work is finally done and we are going to put it into a presentable format.  Originally, it was done in an 8 1/2" x 11" format.  This time we are going to print it in a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" style.  Also, its a lot easier today to have a commercial company print it than to do it around the kitchen table.  I think we'll go that route.

Before long, if you see my phone number on your caller ID, you'll know not to answer because I'm probably going to try to sell you a cookbook!

The Highway

We grew up beside the highway.  To be more specific, our house was on State Highway 51, two miles from Mannford and five miles from Keystone.  Highway 51 extends from the Texas state line near Arnett, Oklahoma, to the Arkansas line just east of Stilwell.  It had been Highway 33 many years ago, then 33 was moved south and this became 51.

According to my father, who was around at the time, the highway was put there in 1924 and served us well until 1962 when the new highway was built (because of the construction of Lake Keystone) and this became known as the old highway.  I've spent more time walking that stretch of pavement, first as a teenager and now as a retired person, than any other piece of real estate I can think of.  As teenagers, my brother and I used that road to get to town; as an oldtimer, I walk it for the exercise.

Let me give you a brief description of what I remember about the highway.  As it left the old town of Mannford, it went under the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad overpass first.  It then crossed over Hazel Creek, a small stream on the east side of town.  You can still see the remnants of the bridge if you drive west up the old highway from Basin Road.  After a couple of curves, the road went up Gilman Hill.  I have no idea how Hazel Creek and Gilman Hill got their names.  If you know, I would be very interested in hearing from you.  At the top of the hill was a dirt road which turned off to the north; I don't remember whether anyone lived down there or not.  That road many years ago provided access to the Basin area.

The highway then proceeded east up and down three smaller hills to our house which was on the dirt road on the right.  From there it went on down the hill to another AT&SF railroad overpass and then down to the Salt Creek bridge.  Eventually, it ended up in Keystone.

As I mentioned earlier, my brother, Gary, and I, walked from Mannford to home many times before we got our coveted driver's licenses.  Many of these walks were late at night after we had been carousing around Mannford.  It was not uncommon then to walk the entire two miles from Mannford to our house without seeing a single car!  Compare that to the traffic on Highway 51 through our town today.

Once we were walking home late at night (probably after midnight), when we saw a car coming up Gilman Hill traveling east.  Of course we stuck our thumbs out - getting a ride home was very unusual.  As the car approached us, we saw that it was a hearse!  Of course, he pulled over up ahead of us.  This was a scary situation; did we want a ride home bad enough to get into a hearse late at night?  As it turned out, the hearse belonged to another teenager and we enjoyed the lift home.

Mae and Glen owned the Phillips 66 station on the east side of (old) Mannford.  Mom and Dad were very good friends with Mae and Glen and we spent a lot of time at each others houses.  At one point, they had a female greyhound whose name was Slim (of course).  Every once in a while, when we finished buying gas at the station, Slim would take off behind us.  When Mom or Dad saw this, they would drive slowly, about 20-25 miles per hour.  Slim would run that entire two miles to our house.  After a day or two of visiting, she would then follow us back into Mannford to the station.

Looking back on it, the highway provided us with a lot of experiences as well as a means to get to Mannford or Keystone.  I've got a lot more stories about the highway that I'll share with you some day.

Hip Replacement Revisited

I had my hip replaced on March 26 so it has now been 2 1/2 weeks since the surgery.

I went back to the surgeon's office Friday for my first follow up visit and was told that everything was just as it should be.  My driving "privileges" were restored and I'm back on a walking regimen.   Its kind of interesting that I have had no significant pain in the hip.  For about four days right after I came home, however, I was tortured by a severe headache.  I'm going to blame that on the anesthesiologist just because it seems like the right thing to do.

One thing I would like to comment on is the trend toward the increasing use of Physician's Assistants, or PA's.  I have only met the surgeon who did this a couple of times.  All the rest of my interaction with him has been through his PA.  As an old "fuddy duddy", I would like to complain about this but the truth is that I was probably shown more care, concern and compassion than I would have seen in the old days.  It didn't hurt, either, that the PA was a young attractive woman!

Louise has been an able "nurse" throughout this process.  I have no idea how someone would get through this without having a partner to help them.  She tells me that it will be my turn next to take care of her!  Also, a couple of friends felt compelled to send me this cartoon:

Well, I think its time for my walk.  Later!

Close Relatives

One of the things that is always in the back of your mind if you do genealogy is that you may find a close relative that you didn't know you had.  I've wondered if I had a half brother or sister I didn't know about, or a first or second cousin.

That thought is at least a small part of the reason I decided to have the DNA test done, along with the DNA from my wife, Louise, and brother, Milt.

Well, yesterday it happened.  I got an email from a second cousin who I had no idea even existed.  Her grandfather and my grandmother were brother and sister.  I am extremely excited to find out more about these people.  Milt, my brother, is too since he was closer to Grandmother Alexander than the rest of us.

This picture shows my grandmother and me many years ago, probably about 1957 or 1958.  She died in 1967 so my memories of her are distant.  I can't wait to find out more about her brother's grandchildren!

Purple Martins

The other day I put up our martin houses.  I have two poles with twelve plastic "gourds" on each pole.  I know that, when we return from South Texas in early March, its time to get the martin houses up, even if I haven't seen any of the birds.  Sure enough, I got the gourds on the first house and before I could get the second one up, there were martins sitting on the first one!

Were they just lurking around somewhere out of sight, waiting for me to get their houses put up?

Martins are part of the swallow family and among that family's largest members.  They are migratory birds and spend their winters in South America, returning to our area in the spring.  Interestingly, they depend almost entirely on humans for their nesting places, using only gourds or houses put up by us.  They do have several enemies, including starlings, sparrows, snakes and hawks, and I have fought them all.

I used to have the familiar hexagonal houses with round entrance holes in them.  The starlings loved these things and I couldn't keep them out.  The gourds I use now are equipped with starling resistant entrance holes, or SREH.  These holes are slightly smaller than a semi-circle and the dimensions are critical to keep starlings out and let martins in.  The change to these gourds did solve the starling problem.

Sparrows are not so easy.  They, like starlings, are prone to evict martins and take over their houses.  About the only way to keep them in check is to clean out their nests on a regular basis.  The use of gourds does make it harder for snakes and hawks to attack them but I have seen it happen.  In fact, one night I caught a snake which had climbed the steel pole and gotten his head into the opening of one of the gourds.

For decades we were told that the martin was a mosquito eater and, because of that, we should do all we can to keep them around.  That story has been almost completely debunked now - martins do eat flying insects but mosquitoes are a small part of their diet.  In spite of that fact, the martin is a very gregarious creature and I love to watch them fly, sing, and interact with each other.  I think I'll continue to be a martin "landlord".

Drag Racing

I'm one of those people who had been to a few drag races as a spectator but who had never been involved with the sport.  In 2000, however, at the urging of my neighbor, Jess, and my son, Dan, we finally decided to try it.  Some people would think 54 years old is a little old to start something like this but I didn't.  After all, Warren Johnson, a professional drag racer, was way older than me!

We had a little '63 Nova street car and we put a mildly warmed up small block engine in it, a powerglide tranny behind that, and a pair of 9" slicks and 4.56 gears in the rear.  We didn't have any idea what we had but we went out and tried it.  I was convinced that it would run in the high 11's; low 13's was more like it!  After a torque converter change, it did get down into the mid-12's on a consistent basis.  For you non-racer's, that number is the elapsed time in seconds to run a quarter mile distance.

My first real racing, after several weeks of test and tune, was at the Spring Nationals in Tulsa.  Believe it or not, I won my first two rounds in the No E (no electronics) class and began to believe that I could go all the way.  On the third round, I pulled up to stage and the flagman waved me off, saying I was leaking fluid.  As I got out of the car and headed up there to have a gentlemanly conversation with him, I glanced back at the car and noticed the stream of antifreeze pouring out.  End of conversation!  After tearing the engine down, we discovered porosity in a head which had to be welded and machined.

The Nova had been running hot so we used this as justification to put it on alcohol.  As my engine building buddy said later, "Wait a minute – the engine was running hot so we changed the fuel we are burning instead of addressing the cooling problems?"  Well, why not?

We found out that the learning curve on getting enough alcohol to the carburetor is much steeper than we had imagined.  We spent several weeks, and several hundred dollars, on fuel logs, regulators, pumps, AN fittings and other miscellaneous stuff getting the car to run right.  Meanwhile the season was dwindling away and all I could do was go to test and tune!

Finally, we had the old Nova back to about as quick as it had been on gas.  We then decided that we needed bigger jets.  If a little fuel is good, then more is better, right?  In went the new jets and back to test and tune we went.  In the meantime I should tell you that my son and I had been trading off the driving because we both wanted to drive the car.  Obviously, my reaction times were much better than his because age and wisdom outdoes youth and exuberance any time!  Anyway, the night we went back to test and tune with the bigger jets, my 25 year old daughter, Rachel, who is a mother herself also wanted to drive.

That night, I made two passes, my son made two, and my daughter made five.  Her first one was a 17-something at about 80 miles per hour.  Her last one was a 13.32 at 102 mph.  She was beginning to catch on!  In the meantime, none of the passes any of us made was within a half a second of our old times!  Apparently, the new bigger jets just killed the engine!

Although by now, I had invested considerably more money in drag racing than I had promised my wife I would, I decided to play my hole card.  Telling her that the '63 was unsafe because it didn't have a cage and only had lap belts, I began to shop for a better car.  A friend of mine, Kent the engine builder, gave me a lead on a '71 Nova "roller" which was for sale and I went to look at it.  I knew before I even got out of the truck that I was going to buy this car.  In keeping with the story that I had told Louise, I told the guy who had the car that I didn't really want to go faster; that I was just looking for a safer ride.  He looked me in the eye and said, "You can lie to your wife but don't lie to me!".

Anyway, I wrote him a check and carried the '71 home.  My son and I pulled the motor and tranny out of the '63 and began the task of putting it into the '71.  In the meantime, I had ordered new, smaller jets for the carb.  Remember, the big ones had killed the performance of the engine.  So we were hooking up the throttle linkage in the new car and I told Dan to watch the butterflies to make sure everything worked as I pushed the throttle.  He hollered, "Hey, Dad, the back two barrels aren't opening!"  To make a long story short, when I put the bigger jets in the carb, I had gotten the accelerator pump in a bind and the back two barrels were indeed locked up.  I don't know which feeling was stronger, the one of relief that the problem had been found or the one of stupidity that I had done such a boneheaded stunt! I told Dan that, if he had done something like that, I would have kicked his #@%*.

In spite of all of our trials and tribulations that year, we thoroughly enjoyed drag racing as a participant sport.  One of the neatest things is to meet new people and share experiences with them.  Sometimes I'm tempted..........

Total Hip Replacement

For the past year or two, I've noticed that my range of movement in my right leg was declining.  I began to think that I might have to wind up wearing the dreaded Velcro fastening shoes just to get them on!  Finally, in October of last year, I went to see the doctor.

After talking to me for a bit, he sent me down the hall for x-rays.  In a few minutes he came back in and told me that my right hip was completely shot and needed to be replaced.  I swear to you that that hip had never hurt until that moment - suddenly it started hurting!  He gave me a referral to a hip surgeon and I went to see that doctor on November 15.

The hip doctor confirmed that yes, my hip was completely worn out and needed to be replaced.  He did dwell at some length, however, on my weight and suggested that I should get some of it off before we did any surgery.  He made an appointment for me to see him again on January 2.

I guess I've taken these events as a kind of wake-up call.  I was able to lose twenty pounds between November and the January office visit.  I'm convinced that, had I not lost the weight, he would have not scheduled my surgery.  He did, however, and I'm supposed to get a new hip on March 26.

In the meantime, I'm now down 35 pounds and walking two miles every day.  Surprisingly, even the hip doesn't hurt as badly as it did at first.  I really feel that I'll be able to reach my goals this time!  I'll keep you posted.

August: Osage Moon

As Louise will tell you, I rarely go to a movie.  I couldn't tell you why, I just don't.  Its probably for the same reasons that I seldom watch television.  However, the other day we decided to go to the movies.

We were trapped in the motor home and the weather was horrible for south Texas (still a lot better than at home).  We had heard some PR about August: Osage County and since it was filmed in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, about seventy miles from our house, we decided to go see it.

It has been about a week now since we went and I still can't tell you what I think about it!  The profanity was terrible but I guess thats pretty much normal for Hollywood today.  The movie did not need it to develop the characters and plot however.

Without giving the movie away, I'll try to tell you a bit about it.  Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, two amazing actresses, developed their roles perfectly.  I don't know a thing about movie making but I suppose that the director, John Wells, had a great deal to do with this as well.  Several other actors and actresses played outstanding roles as well.  One of my favorites was Misty Upham, who played the role of Johnna, the Indian girl who was hired as a housekeeper.

The entire movie was a dark one; if you are looking for a "feel good" show which will make you happy, don't go to this one.

Of interest to Louise and me was the location shooting in Pawhuska.  Many of the buildings were recognizable, including the unique triangular shaped multi-story building in downtown.  Being a car guy, I kept an eye out for unusual vehicles - the two most memorable were a Ferrari and an old F250 Ford pickup.

I usually measure movies by how often I get up to go to the restroom (perhaps out of boredom).  In this case, I stayed in my seat.

The Pierce Family

As I have mentioned earlier, my biological father was Roy Moses Pierce, Jr. He left my mother when I was less than a year old and I never saw him again until 1999, some 53 years later. Roy was called “Junior” by his family. Junior was also the father of my brother, Gary but never saw him. Mom and Dad (Tommy) never kept this a secret from us but we didn't talk about it a lot either.

When Junior was a very young man, he had a severe accident which impaired him for the rest of his life. He was working on the railroad back east somewhere (I believe I was told in Massachusetts) and was critically injured. He was not expected to live but somehow did and his family brought him back to the Cromwell area, where he had been raised. Mom and he got married in late 1945, a couple of years after his accident. For the rest of his life, his family used the accident as the reason for his challenges.

Junior had several brothers and a sister, most of whom lived in the Bakersfield area where their parents had moved in the 1940's. As a child and young man, I never had any contact with any of them except for once when I was about 18. I was working at Ted Norwood's service station in Mannford when, one day, Ted came back to where I was working and told me that Pete and Bessie Barton were out on the drive and wanted to talk to me. Pete and Bessie were long time Mannford residents but I hardly knew them and found it strange that they would want to talk with me. When I went out to their car, Pete and Bessie were in the front seat and an unknown couple were in the back. We had an awkward two minute “how do you do?” conversation and I went back to work. That evening I was relating the meeting to my mother and she told me that the woman in the back seat was my aunt, Ninah Melton, Junior's sister. She had known that the Bartons knew Ninah and her husband somehow.

Many years later (35, in fact), I was talking to Mom one day and she told me that Ninah had contacted her and asked if Gary and I would have any interest in seeing any of the Pierce family. Since I had just retired and was somewhat curious anyway, I called Ninah and talked to her. Eventually, Louise and I decided to make a trip to California to see the Pierce's. I talked about this with Gary and he had absolutely no desire to meet any of them. In fact, I think he was somewhat upset with me that I would consider seeing them. I was concerned about hurting Dad's feelings; he was my true father even though he had adopted Gary and me.

Eventually, Louise and I did go to Bakersfield and meet the Pierces. Ninah, being the only girl in the family, was kind of the “hub” of the group. Junior had had a stroke and lived with another brother, Lloyd, in Bakersfield. Lloyd was a widower and enjoyed Junior's company, I think. The whole time we spent there was kind of surreal; they didn't quite know how to treat me and I was probably a bit of an ass to them, wanting to remain aloof.

While I was there, I did learn about one of my uncles, Larry Stanley Pierce. He had served in the Army in Viet Nam and had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. He had thrown himself on a grenade to save his platoon. He was one of the first Viet Nam era recipients of the Medal and his family was flown to Washington, DC, to have the Medal presented by President Johnson. Larry was married and left two small children behind. I have never met his wife or children. Today, both a street and a post office in Taft, California are named after him.

I was surprised to learn that Junior had never remarried and had no other children. I had really expected to find that I had some brothers and sisters. Because of the stroke he had suffered, he had a speech impairment and was extremely self conscious about it. After a couple of days, Louise and I returned back home. About a year later, Rachel, my daughter, indicated that she would like to meet the Pierce family as well so she and I flew out to Bakersfield. Again, it was a somewhat awkward meeting. Dan, my son, never had any interest in meeting them, not because he harbored any ill will; he just was not interested. I wonder today what Junior thought about us showing up. I don't know whether he was truly glad to see us or whether the whole deal was Ninah's idea and he wished we had just not shown up.

Ninah died in 2002 and Junior in 2003. We had not stayed in contact and I didn't know until sometime later that they had both passed.

In about 2000, I became interested in genealogy and did a lot of work on the Alexander and Mooneyham families. My mother's mother was a Mooneyham. I didn't spend a lot of time on the Pierce's (since I didn't know much about them) or on the Nash's, my mother's father's family.

In about 2010, however, I began to do some study on the Pierce family and quickly found a cousin, Sharon Pierce, who was also into genealogy. Sharon lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with her son Christian, and her father, Coy. I had talked to Coy on the phone back in 1999 but had not gotten any feel for what kind of person he was.

In October, 2013, Louise and I were going to meet Dan and Dorinda in Atlanta where they lived and spend a long weekend in the mountains of North Carolina. I decided that, since we were already in the state, we should go on over to Fayetteville and meet Sharon and Coy. I called her and made the arrangements. When we met them, we were immediately comfortable and at ease with them. I supposed I had gotten over my desire to distance myself from the Pierce's.

Coy had been a career Army guy and the reason they lived in Fayetteville was its proximity to Fort Benning where he had been stationed for a long time. He moved in with Sharon in about 2012 to help her with her house and provide some company. Sharon is a sales person in the food service industry and has done that kind of work for many years. Louise and I enjoyed ourselves and were glad that we had made the decision to go visit Coy and Sharon.

If I had a “do over”, what would I change? Probably nothing except that I would have been more responsive on those two trips to California. Roy Pierce, Jr. could never replace Tommy Alexander as my father but I still would like to have known a little bit more about him.

Sons of the American Revolution

If you've read any of my posts, you know that I have been interested in genealogy for a long time.  Its a wonderful hobby and its addictive; the more you learn the more you want to find out more.

One of the many aspects of genealogy is organizations which are based on a person's lineage.  The most widely known of these groups is the Daughters of the American Revolution, or DAR.  It shouldn't have surprised me that there is also a group called the Sons of the American Revolution, or SAR.  There are also organizations dedicated to lineage from the Mayflower, from the Civil War, and who knows how many others.

As I worked backward in my family tree, I found a couple of ancestors who had fought in the American Revolution.  If you think about it, this isn't really remarkable since the number of potential ancestors grows exponentially as you travel back in time.  My fourth great grandfather, Andrew Rish, was the person I used to prove my lineage for the SAR.  In a typical family tree, you would expect to have 32 fourth great grandparents, 64 fifth great grandparents, and 128 sixth great grandparents.  These three generations, having a total potential of 224 ancestors, are the pool that you might have to work from, since we are about six to eight generations removed from the Revolutionary War.

To put this into perspective, I realized that Andrew Rish was the great-grandfather of my great-grandmother, Nancy Huffman.  Although I never met her (she died in 1940, six years before I was born), I do have many pictures of her and feel as though I knew her.  By looking at my family tree in this manner, it tended to personalize my ancestors.  This picture of her with a calf was taken in 1935.

A bit about Andrew Rish - He was born in South Carolina in 1756, twenty years before the Declaration of Independence was signed by our forefathers.  He fought in the war as a part of the South Carolina militia, somewhat akin to our National Guard today.  He died in 1818 at the age of 61, still living in South Carolina.  Many of his descendants wound up in Mississippi where they became members of the DAR and SAR through his participation in the Revolution.  I don't know the exact number of DAR and SAR members who used him as their patriot ancestor but it is substantial.

It is an old adage that you never get finished with genealogy.  I'm now working on additional SAR lineage through the Pierce family and I'm about ready to submit it.  We are also working on Louise's DAR membership through her mother's side, an ancestor named Darby Shawhan.  He is an interesting study and might be the subject of a future blog.  Many of his descendants became famous whiskey makers.  Louise's application has been submitted and is waiting approval.

I should point out that both the DAR and SAR have extensive genealogy libraries and are more than happy to help you complete a membership application even if you are not into genealogy.  Both are great organizations and I'm looking forward to more activities with them.

The Carnival is Coming to Town

Every year, just as surely as the swallows return to Capistrano, the carnival comes to the vacant field next to our RV park in La Feria.  This morning there was no sign of them; this afternoon the lot is filled with trucks and rides which need to be set up.

This carnival winters a few miles south of La Feria and their first outing of the year is right here in town.  I suppose its kind of a "shakedown" trip for them where they can see what works and what needs to be fixed.  Another thing we have observed about this carnival is that it is almost always accompanied by rain.  This year promises to be no exception since the forecast calls for rain off and on for the rest of the week.

From our standpoint, there are not too many problems with them being there.  We have lost our "dog walk" for the week but there is plenty of room in the park.  They generate quite a bit of noise but it always seems to wind down about the time we go to bed.  One concern we do have is the possibility of theft or vandalism with all the kids being over there.  There is a gate between the park and the lot where the carnival is but park management keeps the gate locked for the week.  So far, we've never had any problems.

We have never talked to any of the people who work there but it would be interesting to find out how far and where they travel to.  I wonder if kids still wander off and join the carnival or circus.  Probably not!