A
couple of weeks ago, I saw a post on Facebook that was interesting.
A fellow named Kevin Heaton had written a book which sounded
interesting and was centered around my home town, Mannford, Oklahoma.
Although I didn’t know Kevin, I did know his parents and also
several of the people written about in the book. The subject of the
memoir was Opal George, Kevin’s mother-in-law, and the name of the
book is, appropriately, “Opal”.
I quickly ordered a copy from Amazon and
received it in a couple of days. When I read it, I was surprised to
see that one of my distant relatives, Raymond Wyatt, was mentioned.
He and Elva Workman were two of Mannford’s most unusual characters.
If you do genealogy long enough, the skeletons
are surely going to come out of the closet. In my case, I've
had several. Some people don't like to talk about certain of
their relatives but I think, in most cases, it's terribly funny.
Let's start with Alvie Workman. Elva W.
“Alvie” Workman was born in Miller County, Missouri, on March 16,
1892 to Richard Ellis Workman and Sarah Malissa (Gilliam) Workman.
They were both native Missourians and both had been born in Miller
County. Miller County is located in the south central part of the
state. Richard was a farmer all his life as were most folks in that
era.
Alvie was the oldest of three boys born to that
marriage. Sarah died in Miller County in 1926 at the age of 56 and
Richard died in Perry, Noble County, Oklahoma, in 1959 at 89 years of
age. He had moved to Perry to live with his son, Thomas, when he
became too old to work.
Alvie moved to the Mannford, Oklahoma area
sometime between 1900 and 1910. In 1917, he married Ida Jane
Ihrig, my father's first cousin. Alvie and Ida had a total of
six children, all boys between 1918 and 1928. In the late 1920’s,
he was arrested several times for “moonshining”, operating an
illegal whiskey still. This was not uncommon, however, for
prohibition was the law of the land from 1920 to 1933.
Ida Jane was the fifth child and third daughter
of Francis Marion Ihrig and Mahala (Stephens) Ihrig and was born in
1899 in Indian Territory. Mr. Ihrig was also a farmer in the
Mannford area. As a side note, one of Ida Jane’s siblings was
Ernest “Twenty” Ihrig, a well known cowboy in Mannford and a
“side kick” of Milton Walker “Cap” Alexander, the foreman of
the Wilson Ranch in that town. An article about that ranch appears
in a 2019 blog.
Sometime between 1940 and 1950, Alvie and Ida Jane separated. In
1950, he was still living in Mannford and listed his marital status
as “separated”. Ida Jane had moved to San Mateo, California and
listed her marital status as “widowed”.
In the early 1950’s, when I was about six years old, I became
aware of who Alvie Workman was. My father told us children about how
we were related to him. By this time, he had become one of
Mannford’s “characters” and was feared by most of the children
in the area. He was a tall, gaunt man who had extremely long hair
and a long beard.
The story goes that he was possessed by demons. He lived in a tar
paper shack down by Hazel Creek on the east side of town. Even with
his idiosyncrasies, Alvie was a hard worker and did a great deal of
labor, mostly for Raymond Holmes, the local hardware store owner. He
was also a very adept whittler and made many a cane for people in
Mannford. You could tell by his work that he had a great deal of
innate artistic talent.
In the late 1950’s, Alvie began to travel back and forth from
Mannford to Lebanon, Missouri. Hitchhiking and hopping freight
trains were his preferred modes of travel. He died in August, 1981,
and is buried in the Cemetery in Lebanon.
Raymond Wyatt was
born on April 12, 1905, in Bowie, Montague County, Texas, about 90
miles northwest of Dallas. He was the son of Albert Lee Wyatt and
Calvin “Callie” Horton Wyatt, both of whom were native Texans and
who had wed in Montague County in 1902.
Not long after
Raymond was born, the young family moved to Hazlip Township in Creek
County, Oklahoma. No reason for their move has been found, although
Albert had a half brother, Thomas Perry Porter, who had come to
Keystone, Oklahoma, nearby, in 1902. The Wyatt family lived in the
Mannford area for several years and Albert enrolled his son, Raymond,
at Flat Rock School at the age of ten. It is suspected that he
didn’t attend school for very long.
Sometime before
1935, Albert and another half brother, Doss Porter, left Mannford and
headed for California. Doss took his family but Albert left Callie
and young Raymond in Mannford. Callie worked at several jobs after
Albert left and even had her own grocery store at one time. Raymond,
without the influence of a father, began to drink heavily and got
involved with bootlegging and moonshining.
The great
prohibition “experiment” in the United States began in 1920 and
lasted until 1933. Even after prohibition was lifted, the State of
Oklahoma remained legally dry until 1959, with only 3.2% beer being
allowed. In practice, however, bootleggers and moonshiners kept the
State in alcohol.
It was sometime in
the mid-1930’s when Raymond received his nickname, “Slip” or
“Slippery”, so called either because of his ability to escape
deathor to elude law enforcement. He had many close calls. Also, at
one point, he admittedly ran a “still” up in “East Holler”,
just east of the town of Mannford.
Slip’s exploits
were many: In 1932, he stole a car from another Mannford resident and
fellow moonshiner, G.W. “Jack” Housley, and later wrecked it. At
the time, it was expected that he would never face charges for the
theft because he was critically injured when he wrecked the car.
Obviously, he did recover but the outcome of the car theft charge is
unknown.
In 1937, he was shot
in the stomach by Mannford’s constable, C. E. Woodruff after
resisting arrest for disorderly conduct. Apparently, he, Slip, had
gotten into an argument with Woodruff’s son where hatchets and
hammers were involved. Slip was, of course, very drunk. He was
taken to Oklahoma City where he recovered in a hospital there.
Charges against him were later dismissed.
At the time of the
1940 U.S. Census, Slip was incarcerated at the state penitentiary in
McAlester, Oklahoma. The reason for his stay there is unknown but he
did spend several stays there and in jails around Creek County.
In fact, in 1949,
Slip made the national news when he wrote a postcard from Phoenix,
Arizona to the Creek County Sheriff, Lee Johnson. Slip had walked
off his trusty job with 30 days left to serve on a public drunkenness
sentence. The card read:
“Dear Lee, do you
want me to come back? I am sorry I run off. Tell all the boys hello
for me. Yours truly, Slip Wyatt”
The sheriff
commented that he would spend no county money to bring Wyatt back.
When Slip had been booked into the jail on the public drunkenness
charge, he had listed his profession as “moonshiner”. Wire
services had picked up the story and it ran in many newspapers across
the country.
In yet another
event,in 1945, Slip was charged with grand larceny when he stole two
pairs of reading glasses and two sets of false teeth, along with $65
in cash. The outcome of this case is unknown, as is what he planned
to do with the false teeth. Again, the victim in this case was his
friend, Jack Housley.
In all, the number
of times he was arrested is more than can be counted. Charges
included public indecency, public intoxication, driving while
intoxicated and several others. In spite of all these run-ins with
law enforcement, Slip was regarded as a likable fellow around
Mannford.
In the early 1960’s,
Keystone Dam and Reservoir were being constructed and the town of
Mannford elected to move. Many of the residents moved to the new
town location but some went elsewhere. It was around this time that
Callie Wyatt decided to move to Oilton, about 16 miles away. Slip,
who had never married, moved with her.
On July 10, 1967,
Raymond “Slip” Wyatt passed away and is buried at the Drumright
North Cemetery in Drumright, Oklahoma. No cause for his death can be
found but, with the way he lived his life, anything would have been
possible. His mother, Callie, died in Oilton in June, 1973 at the
age of 91 years.
