The Vehicle Accident

An insurance claims adjuster told me once that the odds are you will have a minor accident every ten years and a major one every forty years.  I got my major one out of the way early, in 1967.

I was working as a welder's helper at National Tank Co. and was on my way home from work about 5:00 pm one December day.  I was in Fisher Bottom about three miles west of Sand Springs on Highway 51.  As I was often prone to do, I was "tailgating" the car in front of me.  Suddenly, he swerved into the bar ditch and there was a Mustang in my lane coming right at me!

Apparently, I thought I had a better chance of missing him by going left, because that's what I did.  Unfortunately, my maneuver wasn't successful and we collided.  The driver of the other car was Maurice Rogers McSpadden, a disc jockey for a local radio station, who went by the name "Boomer".  His car wound up on it's top in the bar ditch and my came to a stop on the highway, still right side up but badly damaged.  In fact, both cars were "totalled".

In those days, we didn't have EMT's or paramedics so the local funeral home ambulance showed up.  I sat in the front passenger seat holding my arm, which was broken, and McSpadden was on a stretcher in the back. I remember that the untrained attendant told the driver that he thought McSpadden was dead.  They transported us to what was then called Oklahoma Osteopathic Hospital (now OSU Medical Center).

Someone passing by the scene of the accident recognized my car and called Mom and Dad and told them about it.  On their way to the hospital, they had to pass by the cars, which were still there.  When Mom saw the shape my car was in, she was sure that I must be dead!

Later that evening, the highway patrolman who had investigated the crash came to the hospital to talk with me.  I told him what had happened and that coincided with his initial thoughts.  While I was laying there with a broken arm, however, he did chew me out for not wearing my seatbelt!  I was surprised to find out that, while McSpadden had suffered numerous facial injuries, he was not critically wounded.

I had to have surgery to repair my arm since the break was where it could not be set.  However, I had no problems with either it or the follow up surgery to remove the pins that the doctors had put in.

The accident did have a significant impact on my life.  It provided me with the means and motivation to go back to school at Oklahoma State.  I had dropped out in 1966 after two years of having fun!  The settlement I received from the wreck, $10,000, was a huge sum back then, at least to me.  It was enough to pay my tuition and living expenses till I graduated.  The motivation certainly was helped by having been a welder's helper for a couple of years.

I never talked to Boomer McSpadden after the accident.  I always wondered whether the wreck had as much impact on him as it did on me.  Some 20 years later, my wife, Louise, and I were at the Tulsa State Fair and KVOO radio had a booth there.  We walked into the booth and there he stood.  I walked up to him, introduced myself and Louise, and told him how we were linked.  He just stood there like he was unable to speak and after about 30 seconds of awkwardness, we turned around and left.  To this day, I don't know whether he was afraid I was angry at him or whether he was traumatized by hearing who I was.

Mr. McSpadden died in 1999 at the age of 54.  Did our accident somehow shorten his life?  It seems that the older I get, the more questions I want to answer.

Autobiography, Chapter 4

4-College, Part One

The reason this chapter is called College, Part One, is because it took me two hitches to get through school.  I know I have ruined the ending of this chapter by telling you this but you have a right to know.

In the fall of 1964, David Alsip, Donna Kellert, Rick Spess, and I all started to school at Oklahoma State as fresh Mannford High graduates.  David and I shared a room in a rooming house, Donna lived in a dorm, and Rick lived in another dorm across campus.

Our rooming house was at 301 South Duck in Stillwater.  A multi-story credit union stands there today but in 1964 it was an old two-story house with about four or five bedrooms upstairs.  I don’t remember the name of the woman we rented from but she seemed to be very old and very frail.  She occupied the downstairs part and rented out each of the upstairs bedrooms.  I remember coming in once and learning that her daughter had found her unconscious at the bottom of the steps going to the basement.  In a couple of weeks, however, she was back and seemed to be fine.

As college freshmen are apt to do, we did do our share of drinking.  There was a pub called the Anchor down by the fire station and we would buy gallon jugs of draft beer in there.  We would then carry the jugs home to the rooming house and have a good time.  Its hard to believe now that someone like me, whose parents could not afford to pay anything, and who had to work to go to school, would “screw off” and party as much as I did.  It is a fact, however.

One morning, I woke up and discovered that there was no door on our room.  David informed me that I had come home drunk, couldn’t find the key to my room and had just busted the door off the hinges.  We managed to get the door repaired before the landlord found out about it.

I had decided to major in Chemical Engineering, since I had done fairly well in chemistry in high school.  Well, college wasn’t like high school; you had to study to get good grades and I wasn’t into studying.  At the end of the first semester, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake and changed my major to Mechanical Engineering.  This wasn’t enough, however, to save my downward spiral.

Sometime during my freshman year, Cabot Corporation decided to close down their service center in Tulsa and let their former manager, Dudley Jorden, open up his own shop to do their service work.  Dad decided to stay there and work for Dudley.  The impact this had on me was that my scholarship from Cabot went away after only one year.

Mom and Dad didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t help us with tuition or room and board but every time we went home we got the laundry done and managed to raid the freezer.  During my first year of school, I got a job sweeping floors in the university classrooms.  As I recall, it paid about 60 to 75¢ per hour.

Between the first and second years of school, I went back home to live with the folks and went to work at a “sweat shop” in Tulsa by the name of Creamer and Dunlap.  It was a fab shop that paid the minimum wage, $1.25, and the work was hard and dirty.  After about a month there, I got hurt on the job and spent the rest of the summer receiving physical therapy.  I got a rope wrapped around my left arm, almost cutting it off; in fact, the attending doctor told Dad that it probably would have to come off.  Dad told him to take it off when “it rotted off”.  Fortunately, I still have two arms, although the injury did paralyze my left thumb.  One year later, this injury was to affect my life in another profound way.

When I returned to school in the fall of 1965, there were some differences.  David, Rick, and Donna were still there but in addition to them, my brother Gary started to school at Oklahoma State.

Gary and I rented a small apartment together at 213 ½ North Husband.  It was on the alley between Husband and Main streets just behind Cooper’s motorcycle shop.  By this time, I was into a “no study” mode and should not have been in school at all.  I remember a lot of things about living in this apartment but studying was not one of them.

I did still have to work.  Instead of sweeping floors for the University, I got a job pumping gas for a fellow, Joe Lewis, who had a Conoco Station up north of downtown on Highway 177.  Joe was a prince of a guy and I really enjoyed working for him.

A couple of years later, Joe went into Burtrum Marine in Mannford to buy a boat.  He didn’t know that he was talking to Milt, my brother, and asked him if he knew Edd Alexander.  Milt replied that he didn’t think so until he found out that Joe liked me and then admitted that he was my brother.  Anything to sell a boat!

Probably the worst thing that happened to me while I was working for Joe was the day that Dr. Oliver Wilhelm, the President of the University, came in to get gasoline.  I wanted to impress him so badly that I opened the radiator cap too rapidly and almost burned him and me with coolant.  Fortunately, neither of us did get burned but I got really embarrassed.

By now I had switched my major to mechanical technology and the tech school was a lot easier than engineering school.  Still, though, you couldn’t pass the courses without studying at least a little bit.  My last major change was between the first and second semesters of my sophomore year, when I changed from Mechanical Technology to Aero Technology.  Alas, it was too little too late.  I had completely given up on school by this time.

I now had 60 hours of college credits but with a 1.6 grade point average on a 4.0 system.  Not a pretty sight!  David and Gary too were through with school and ready to quit.  Looking back, I don’t know whether I drug them down, they drug me down, or we all just self-destructed together.  I suspect it was the latter.  At any rate, we were done with Oklahoma State, at least for the time being.

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.