My Hometown

Although I was born in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and lived in Cromwell, Oklahoma for the first three or four years of my life, I consider Mannford, Oklahoma to be my hometown.  My mother was from Cromwell and just happened to be in Rock Springs when I was born.  My adoptive father was from the Mannford area and that's how we came to live there.

Mannford was a settlement on the banks of the Cimarron River and, prior to about 1904, didn't even have a name.  It was platted in 1904 and became a "for real" town before Oklahoma became a state in 1907.  Mannford was named after a gentleman who lived in the area and helped found the town.  His land included a low-water crossing on the river which became known as Mann's Ford, later shortened to Mannford.

For several years, Mannford was a growing area because of the railroad which ran through there, the farming and the cattle which were fed out in the area.  Eventually, the town reached a state of equilibrium and the population leveled out at about 500 people.  In 1951 when I was five years old, my father, with his new wife and two adopted sons, returned to Mannford.  Growing up in a small town was the best thing that could have happened to me.  Most of my memories of childhood are pleasant ones.

In the mid to late 1950's, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that a flood control reservoir would be built somewhere around the confluence of the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers.  The lake was to be an integral part of the Arkansas River Navigation System which was then being constructed.  The system was conceived to allow navigation from Tulsa to the Mississippi River.

I remember that Life Magazine called the system the "biggest pork barrel project in the history of the United States".  Senators Mike McClellan of Arkansas and Robert S. Kerr of Oklahoma each had a tremendous influence in Washington, D.C. and were able to get the spending, about $4.3 billion at the time, approved.

At any rate, the construction of the flood control reservoir, to be called Keystone Lake after the nearest town to the dam location, began.  Several towns were to be affected, Cleveland, Osage, Prue, Keystone, and Mannford.  Cleveland and Osage were right on the edge of the flood control pool so elected to protect their towns with levies.  The town of Prue was more impacted and moved a short distance to escape the lake.  Keystone was not so fortunate; it would be about 50 feet under water so a serious move would be required.  Unfortunately, no leaders stepped up to lead this effort, and as a result, Keystone died except for memories.

My hometown, Mannford, was going to be mostly under water at flood stages and the Corps of Engineers gave them the option to either build levies to protect the town or to move it completely.  Several of Mannford's leaders took this as an opportunity to take the town into a new position and elected to move the town.  The location chosen was two miles east and two miles south of the old town, about 2.8 miles.  This would insure that they were on the relocated State Highway 51 as well as having the railroad run through it.  Incidentally, our family didn't have to move; we had been two miles east of Mannford and now we would live two miles north of the newly-located town.

In 1957, my family moved to Pampa, Texas, and we were there until 1960 when we returned to Mannford.  Some construction on the reservoir and ancillary projects began while we were in Pampa but the majority of the work began about the time we returned to Mannford.  Many things had to happen before the lake could be impounded including construction of new highways, railroad tracks, parks and moving many houses, businesses and even cemeteries.

By August, 1962, the new school had been completed and I started my junior year there.  Jobs for young people abounded and I did my share of construction work on park roads in the area.  We got to see a huge project being built right in our backyards and it was an exciting time!

Mannford has survived several natural disasters since it's move, including a tornado in April, 1984, which destroyed the High School, several churches, and many homes.  A wildfire in 2012 burned 60,000 acres and about 400 homes in the area but didn't get into the town proper.

Today the "new" town of Mannford has matured into a thriving community with a lot of amenities and I believe that it's proximity to Tulsa will make it a high growth area for the next 50 years.  The population has grown from about 2000 people in the 2000 Census to about 3000 in the 2010 Census.

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!

Autobiography - Chapter 3

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.