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..........