Date last updated 02/22/02 .
My beginning was sometime in March 1934. That was when I was conceived. On December 11, 1934 at 4:30 pm in Cache, Oklahoma, I was the first-born child of Merle Weber Wilcox and William (Bill) Wilcox. As was traditional in those days my mother the eldest child in her family had gone to her parent's home to give birth to the family's first grandchild. Now there were several significant things about the environment in which this thirteen-pound (yes, thirteen-pound) boy child was born. One was that the world was in the middle of a terrible depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been president for almost two years. At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the nation's total work force, 12,830,000 people, were unemployed. Wage income for workers who were lucky enough to have kept their jobs fell 42.5% between 1929 and 1933. It was the worst economic disaster in American history. Farm prices fell so drastically that many farmers lost their homes and land. Many went hungry.
My father, with a minimal education, had gone from one job to another
being laid off as businesses failed. Or,
in case of government jobs, being laid off because of his family situation. For example, only men with families were allowed to work.
One of his jobs was working for the U.S. Government at a fish hatchery in
Medicine Park, Oklahoma. A nice
job, but he was laid off because government jobs were limited to workers with
children. I didn’t come along in
time to save his job.
At my birth, he was a floor bouncer at a
dance hall in Medicine Park. Medicine
Park had been a very popular resort town during the roaring 20’s.
Some of the resort facilities still existed during the depression.
Along with the depression, Oklahoma was in the middle of an elongated
drought that ultimately brought on the name, "Dustbowl".
I once was describing the dustbowl to an easterner.
He said, “That dustbowl
was brought on by poor farming practices, wasn’t it?”
To which I replied, “Well the fact that
it didn’t rain for over five years helped”.
"Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production. . . . 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil. . . "
Oklahoma had several strikes against it economically. First there was the worldwide depression. Second, Oklahoma was mostly an agricultural state. Of course the drought decimated the farms, but worse than that, the federal government had encouraged the farmers during WWI to expand to meet what they thought would be a great demand for U.S. agriculture products after the war was over. The demand did not materialize and left farmers in a terrible state, heavily in debt and crop prices at an all time low.
My grandfather Weber was caught in this government guided SNAFU. He had a very successful dairy near Medicine Park, selling milk to Ft. Sill. Following the suggestions of his federal government, he went into debt and expanded his herd with registered Holstein cattle. Then the demand for milk began to dry up. With the reduced demand and some dirty tricks by the Borden Company, he lost his contract with Ft. Sill and went broke.
He was able to obtain some property in Cache, Oklahoma where he built a
home that also housed an auto repair garage, filling station, and snack bar.
The store was located across the street from the Cache High School.
This brought some customers for the sandwiches, soda, and candy that my
grandmother sold.
I remember as a child delighting in
getting to drink all the pop and eating all the candy I wanted. Interestingly, I recall that they didn’t have facilities to
sell ice cream. Ice cream required
refrigeration, which they did not have. They
kept their perishables cool using ice that was delivered daily by an iceman.
Electricity and refrigeration equipment was not readily available in
those days. We would walk down the
road with my teen-aged uncle Junior for ice cream to a neighboring store that
had refrigeration. As I think about
it, all boys should have at least one teen-aged uncle.
My uncle Junior (Godfrey Ray Weber) was like having a big brother without
all the problems of a big brother. Because
he did not live with us and only visited, it was the best kind of relationship.
Uncle June (we called him) met with a very sad ending, which I will
relate later.
Let me get back on track.
I have been known to digress greatly, see I did it again. J
When I was about nine months old, my father find out there was work to be had for a
farmer/rancher in Johnston County in a little community called Russett.
I once knew the details of how he found out about this work, but I have
forgotten. (A lesson here.
Better ask those questions and write down the answers while there are
still people alive to give the answers). The
farmer/rancher was Fred A. Chapman whose family owned most of Johnston County.
The Chapmans were a wealthy family that barely survived the depression.
My mother and father did not own any
private transportation and public transportation was practically non-existent in
rural Oklahoma. My grandfather
Weber agreed to transport us and our meager possessions from Cache, Oklahoma
to Russett, Oklahoma in his Model A Pickup.
Mr. Chapman (everyone called him Mister
Chapman) had a large farming and ranching enterprise.
He had hired hands to do the ranching and some of the farming.
Sharecroppers performed most of his farming activities.
He actively recruited sharecroppers with large families to populate the
community and to maximize enrollment at the Russett public school.
He generally furnished housing for the sharecroppers and his hired hands.
My father had been a cowboy on a ranch
near Cache, Oklahoma before he ended up as a floor bouncer at the Medicine Park
dance hall. His cowboy background
made him well qualified for his first job as a muleskinner. Mister Chapman was mechanizing his farms and ranches as best
he could. However, a lot of the
farm work was still done with mules. Not
only did they plow, plant and harvest crops with mules, they also did other
projects with mule power. Using a
tool called a Fresno, they dug a lot of stock ponds as well as other earth
moving projects. Interesting
sidelight. The movie industry
almost always shows farm and ranch work being done with horses.
Most agreed that mules were stronger and more intelligent than horses and
were the preferred work animal. Their
main negative characteristic was their stubbornness.
Many stories have been told about getting a stubborn mule to do what the
muleskinner wanted done and not what the mule wanted done.
One of my favorites is the story about the muleskinner that hit his mule
upside the head with a wooden 2X4. When
asked why he did that, he replied, “Well if you want them to do something,
first you have to get their attention.”
Although I was too young to remember our
first home in Russett, I was told later and shown where we first lived.
It seems that Mister Chapman had acquired a number of old boxcars from
the railroad that used to run through Russett.
He used these old boxcars as barns; storage sheds and even modified some
for people to live in. That was our first home in Russett. It was a cargo boxcar with a hole cut in one end for a wood
stove pipe to extend out. As I
recall it had a few windows that had been built in.
Of course the sliding cargo door had a regular door built into it.
I don’t know the exact length of time we lived in the boxcar, but we were still
living there when my brother Thomas was born.
He was born on June 10th, 1936.
So, we lived in the boxcar at least nine months.
We later lived in a house just north of the boxcar and it is there that I
have my first memories when I was about two years old.
To the west of the house there was an old
depot that Mister Chapman had moved into Russett from Randolph a nearby
community.
We later lived in the east end of this rather large building.
On the west side of the depot was a sawmill.
I used to play in the huge piles of sawdust produced by the sawmill.
One day after it rained, I played in the sawdust piles and got my brand
new shoes wet. I recall my mother
being quite perturbed with me getting my new shoes wet and told me to put them
under the oven in the wood cook stove so they would dry out from the mild heat
generated from her cooking. I
misunderstood her and thought she said to put them in the oven.
Well, the next morning she fired up the wood cook stove to cook breakfast
and when she opened the oven door to put in the breakfast biscuits, she found my
brand new shoes had been baked rock hard and ruined of course.
Needless to say she was very upset with me.
One other thing I remember while living
at this house was seeing a steam locomotive going through Russett.
It wasn’t long after that they abandoned the railroad and pulled up all
rails and cross ties leaving a right-of-way that I was to spend many a day
playing on and living near by.
Why we moved from the house, a real nice
house with a well and a windmill in the backyard to the old depot nearby, I
don’t know. I am told a story
about me while we lived in the house that I don’t recall except for it being
told to me. The windmill tower had a
ladder bolted on the side to allow people to climb to the top of the tower to
service the windmill. My father was
concerned that even though he had told me not to climb on the windmill, he
removed two rungs off the ladder. Even
so, one day my mother walked into the back yard to find me calling to her from
the top of the windmill tower. One
other event that I recall occurred at this house.
Evidently my mother and father had a rather prosperous year or had
decided to spend well for my brother’s and my Christmas toys.
The story that my mother loved to tell was after we played with the toys
for a while, my brother went behind the wood heater and got the old stove poker
and used it as a “stick-horse”, a story that would be repeated many times at
many following Christmases.
I recall a couple of more things
that happened while living at
this house. My father had a Colt
Six-shooter that he had inherited from his uncle.
He kept it loaded and under his pillow.
I am told that he carried the pistol in a shoulder holster back in Medicine
Park and that I used the holster as a teething ring. The story is that he had been working nights and was sleeping
when he awoke to be looking down the barrel of the pistol that I was pointing at
him. When he told the story, he
always said it was like looking down a 55-gallon barrel with tombstones floating
all around. I don’t recall this
incident, but I do recall my father’s constant advice about guns.
“Guns are dangerous, lock, stock and barrel.
An old lady beat her old man to death with a ramrod.”
I picked up this cue from my father.
I used to ask my children if a gun was loaded.
When they would reply “no”, I would admonish them that a gun is
always loaded, even if you just unloaded it.
And, you never, never point a gun at anybody or anything unless you
intend to shoot whomever or whatever you are pointing the gun at.
As I began to think about the next location we lived at in Russett, it had to be the old depot. I tried to remember why we moved from the very nice home to the end of this old dilapidated building, it occurred to me that my father and Mister Chapman had a "fallen out" and my father quit and we moved to a small house near Lawton, Oklahoma. I recall several things while living in this small shack that was in the middle of a cow pasture. The year was approximately 1938. Although I don't recall it happening, but it was here on December 7th that my sister Helen Juanita Wilcox was born.
One of my memories of living in Lawton, and it is one of the reasons I recall the shack was in a cow pasture, was mother would send me out with my little red wagon to pick up dried cow chips which she would burn in a wood heater to keep us warm. Many years later mother pointed out this shack that was covered in vines and was in the middle of a subdivision. It had not been torn down because the property was hung up in some estate litigation. Another event I recall while living in Lawton was I saw my first motorcycle. The fellow who delivered the newspaper did so on a motorcycle. My chore was to go up to the highway and get the newspaper for mother. I was amazed to see this strange two-wheeled vehicle swishing by. It was here that my mother had a kitchen fire. I recall the fire engines outside and the charred kitchen.
As I was writing this another memory comes to mind. In Oklahoma there is an edible weed that grows in the springtime. This plant is called Pokeweed but we always called it Poke Salad (Sometimes it is called Poke Salet). I recall one warm spring day my mother and us kids along with another lady (seems like it was my aunt Wanda) went on a Poke Salad gathering adventure. We took along several burlap bags into which to put the plant's leaves. Of course we never called them burlap bags but called them Toe Sacks. I believe the Toe was a shortening of a southern term "Tote". Because the weed grew wild and was free, it was a boon to poverty stricken people of dustbowl Oklahoma. I for one didn't like Poke Salad very much. My mother tried everything to make it taste better. She would mix in eggs and other things to make it more palatable. Many years later I learned to like Poke Salad. My wife would repeat her heritage and gather the pokeweed when we lived in New York state. Somehow, her Poke Salad was much better. I am afraid that my mother gathered it when the leaves were large and tough. Another thing one has to do when cooking Poke Salad is to pour off the first water. The pokeweed is poison unless boiled twice and the first water discarded. I wonder if my mom did a good job of pouring off the first water. I really believe that she wasn't too careful in only picking the small leaves and the older and larger leaves are more bitter.
One other recollection from our stay in Lawton. My father worked as a truck driver for some distance relation named Clingin. Mr. Clingin owned dump trucks that my dad and my uncle Lynn Weber drove to haul gravel. I recall going with my dad one night. It seems he drove at night. The gravel was loaded manually with scoops. One of the people whose job was to load the trucks was a Negro person who was called Pepper. He was the first black man I ever saw. I asked my dad why his skin was so dark. I don't recall his explanation, but I was always proud of my dad in that he was not a blind prejudiced person as most white people in our part of the country. After a year or so living in Lawton my father and Mister Chapman must have come to amicable terms and we moved back to Russett.
There were no black people living in Russett. I recall as a child visiting Tishomingo, Oklahoma and riding by an old dilapidated wooden building and asking the purpose of the building. I was told it was where the "Colored" people went to school. A while later we drove by a very fine brick building and asking about it, I was told it was where the white kids went to school. I asked why there was one school for Colored and one for Whites. I was told, "Separate but equal". Right then and there I knew something was wrong. Many years later, I recall the Colored people having to sit in the balcony at the local movie theater. The white folks could sit in the balcony if they wanted, but the black people could not sit in the main part of the theater.
4 to 5 years.
I recall several incidents while living in the east end of the old depot building. I was somewhere around four years old at this time. The first incident that comes to mind has to do with my fascination at the time with fire. I was disciplined several times for playing with kitchen matches. I recall vividly on a nice sunny spring day my mother was out back of the depot near an old stock pond. I am not sure why she was there. I seem to recall that we had a pen of pigs there. Anyway, I thought wow, now is my chance to play with fire. I took the wrappers off of two or three old P&G bars of soap and made a nice little pile in the middle of the bedroom floor. Then I struck a match and lit the pile of wrappers. Then as the paper began to burn, I heard my mother coming into the house. I quickly stamped out the fire and swept the charred remains under the bed. Later my mother found the partially burned P&G soap wrappers and called me to her. I don't recall her words, but I am sure they were along the line of: "Haven't we discussed this before and you are not to play with matches". Then to my surprise and pain, my mother struck a kitchen match and stuck it to my leg on the side near the kneecap. I still have a tiny scar there to remind me that playing with matches can be painful. Years later I used to tease my mom by showing her the scar and try to elicit some remorse from her for doing such a dastardly thing to a four year old child. Her response was always, "Well you stopped playing with matches didn't you?". Indeed, it worked! I now wonder in our current day and age what a social worker would do if she/he heard about such a thing.
The next incident I recalled that happened while living in the east end of the old depot follows. Incidentally, if you were wondering what was in the west end of the depot, I'll tell you. There were several rooms in the middle that was used for storage but the two end rooms on the west side was used for grinding feed. In the west most room was a large hammer mill that was belt powered by a tractor that sat outside. Workers, we called them hands, would drive up on the north side and scoop corn and other cow feed into a hopper that ran into the mill. There was also plenty of room for material to be stored in the room with the mill. As the material was ground by the hammer mill, it was blown into another room where it piled up and was scooped into a wagon or truck to be hauled away and fed to the cows. Or, several men would catch the ground material into toe sacks (burlap bags) and sew the tops of the filled sacks with binder twine. The reason I remember the details of this grinding facility is because ten to fifteen years later I would spend many hours working in this extremely dusty environment.
To the south of the old depot about two city blocks (of course this was in the country and there were no city blocks) was the headquarters where men reported for work every morning. There was fuel, oil and supplies for the farm vehicles. I recall one day being near the headquarters when my father called to me. I was playing with my brother Thomas and my friend Wayne Easterwood. We went to see what dad wanted. He had two small watermelons that he wanted Thomas and me to carry to the house. Well when we started for the house, Wayne wanted to carry one of the watermelons. I didn't want him to carry mine, so I took Thomas' watermelon away from him and gave it to Wayne to carry. Well, this upset Thomas very much and he ran crying to dad. I looked up and here came my father running toward me. I could tell that I was in trouble. So, I laid down my watermelon and ran for the house for I knew I was going to get a "lickin". I recall running up to the screen door and it was latched. Banging on the door I screamed for mother to let me in. She ran to open the door not knowing what was happening. I dashed in and dove under the bed. By this time my father has pulled off his belt and told me to get out from under the bed. I knew what would happen if I did, so I refused. Then my dad would try to hit me under the bed with his belt. Each time he would swing I would roll to the other side of the bed out of reach of the belt. He would then go to the other side of the bed and try again. Finally, he gave up swishing on each side of the bed and went back to work. I do not recall anymore about this incident.
The final memory I have of living in the old depot was actually our last day there. Somehow dad had gotten us permission to move to a new place. It was called "The ole Doggit Place". I understand it was once owned by a family named Doggit. Dad had borrowed one of the farms trucks to move us. I recall we were all loaded up and ready to go. My brother Thomas and I had a kitten each. We were sitting on the back of the truck holding our kittens and just before dad got into the truck's cab, he advised us to be sure and hold onto the kittens because when the truck's engine started and we started moving, they would be scared and try to get away. Sure enough, the kittens started squalling and scratching. Tom held onto his kitten but I let my get away. My little brother was tougher than I. Needless to say, my kitten didn't make it to our new home.
5 to 9 years.
The Doggit Place was a nice place with a small house and a nice big barn with a hay loft where my brother and sister spent many an hour playing. The water source was a pitcher pump in the back yard at least a hundred feet from the back door. I recall one of my household chores at this home was caring water into the house for my mom to cook and wash. I recall making many trips carrying the water in a small tin bucket that had once held syrup. I believe the syrup bucket only held half of a gallon.
When we first moved to the Doggit place, I recall the first time I met my friend Jack Cumbie. The Cumbies were good neighbors that lived maybe a hundred yards away. I recall first meeting Jack (Jackie we called him). I asked him his name and he said "Silver" and pretended to be riding a horse around in a circle. I recall thinking what a strange kid. Turns out he was okay, just a very humorous guy that I grew up with. I was to spend many an hour playing with Jackie. There was a creek that ran behind his and our house. It was called Lattie creek and we were to spend many hours playing in the small swimming holes. Probably one of my favorite memories was being invited to lunch by Mrs. Cumbie. I now wonder if I didn't scheme to be there at lunch time and get a welcomed invitation from her. She was a great cook!! I especially remember her biscuits. There were out of this world.
My mom was not much of cook except for a few dishes. My father used to tease her about her biscuits. He would say, "Now don't go near any deep water after you eat her biscuits." I recall several years later my mom had to go visit her mom or someone in the family and left dad and us kids to fend for ourselves. My dad sent me to a neighbor's house to get the lady's biscuit recipe and I couldn't believe how great my dad's biscuits were! Interesting thing bread. We almost always had biscuits and cornbread. Occasionally, we would get "store bought" bread now called plain old white bread. We called it light bread and thought we were eating cake.
There were a few things that my mom could cook well. Her fried chicken was the best you could ever eat. I have heard a lot of people brag on her fried chicken. I think she had her own version of the Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. A couple of other of her dishes that were my favorites was she made a fantastic minced pie and her stew. She called it Slomgullen.
It was while living at the Doggit place that I started school. I think I had a head start at school because my mom would spend hours reading to us. I was only five years old when my mom enrolled me in school. The state requirement at the time was that you be six years old. Of course the school would get no state funds for me. So, the superintendent complained. However, I had gotten my first report card with all A's and my father took it to Warren Jones who was the school board chairman. When Mr. Jones saw my report card, he said leave the kid in school. I had a classmate, Joan Boyer who also was underage and she also made great grades and was kept in school. I am told that there is no record of our first year in school.
In those days you started to school at six years of age in the Primary grade and then after a year went onto the first grade. Joan and I were promoted to the first grade our first year. And so began my scholastic career.
I rode a school bus to school while we lived at the Doggit Place. I had to cross a cow pasture to catch the bus on an old gravel road that went all the way down to a remote community, long since abandoned, called Randolph. It was to this very remote place that local politicians were supposed to go after they lost an election.
I recall my first days at school. My teacher was a lovely lady named Maple John Smith. As a barefooted country boy, I could hardly stand this newly applied discipline of having to stay seated and not being able to move from your desk without permission. The school had outdoor toilets and to get permission to go to the bathroom you had to raise your hand. So as a restless five year old I noticed some of the older classmates getting up and going across the room and sticking their pencil into this machine looking device and turning the crank. AND, they didn't have to go through the raising hand and getting permission routine. So, one day when I thought I couldn't stand sitting at my desk any longer, I decided to give this newly found freedom a try. I slowly walked toward the window where the shiny machine was fastened to the window sill. I inserted my cedar pencil and turned the crank. When I pulled my pencil out the imbedded eraser was quite sharp. Oops!
I recall that mom had made some kind of arrangement with Mister Chapman to raise cattle. The barn at the Doggit place was a dairy barn. The ground floor was poured concrete with stanchions to hold the cows while they were milked. There was a trench in the concrete behind the cow as she stood with her head in the stanchion to catch her urine and manure. This made it quite easy to clean the barn. As I recall my mother milked around 10 to 12 cows by hand. We had a cream separator that separated the cream from the milk. The skim milk was feed to the hogs and she sold the cream in town. I recall that another of my chores was to turn the crank on the separator. It was really a hand operated centrifuge that swirled the heavier butterfat (cream) up through a series of disks and out a spout. The skim milk came out of a lower spout. The skim milk was so white that it had a bluish tint to it. Thus the name "Blue John" for skim milk.
I recall a situation that my mother loved to tell about me. She once made a remark that we had so much milk we could take a bath in it. One day at school the teacher was teaching health and asked if we drank milk. I quoted my mom by telling the teacher that we had so much milk that we could take a bath in it. The teacher later told my mom what I said. I do recall mother's older sister, my aunt Wanda visiting us and using the milk to wash her face. It seems it was supposed to have some cosmetic advantage. Even though the great depression was on and my father was working 10 to 12 hour days, six days a week, we did not go hungry.
The Doggit place was a nice place to live. Of course it had no electricity, no running water (except when I ran from the pump to the house), we heated and cooked with wood. Our lighting was with a kerosene lamp. My mother did the laundry on a rub board. I don't think the house had screen doors. I recall one summer the ceiling being covered with houseflies. If insect spray existed in those days we didn't have any. I recall my dad trying to kill the flies with a lighted newspaper. A rather dangerous thing to do, I guess.
It was while living at the Doggit place that we got our first dog. He was a saddleback hound. We named him Oscar for reasons I don't recall. Oscar had been a foxhound but had gotten his wind broken, whatever that means. I guess it means that he couldn't run well enough hunt foxes and the owner gave him to us. We loved Oscar, but I don't recall what happened to him and don't think we had him when we moved to our next house.
One other incident I recall happened while living at the Doggit place.
My brother Thomas and sister Helen and I were playing in the loft of the
barn. My sister for some reason had a paring knife in her hand when she
jumped out of the hay loft. She landed on her stomach with her hand beside
her head and it was holding the paring knife with the blade pointing up into the
air. A tragedy that never happened. 
Someone had stored some personal possessions in a section in the barn and had wired the section off. I recall we managed to get into the section and check it out. I found a whiskey bottle that still had some whiskey in it. My first smell of whiskey. I think it was Scotch.
9 - 17 years.
We moved from the Doggit place to a house just below the hill from the
Chapman Farm headquarters. We only lived there for a short time before
moving to the house about a quarter mile west of the Russett School house.
One incident I must relate happened while we lived at the house below the
hill. My brother and I was messing around the woodpile when we got into a
struggle over who should have the double bit axe. As we were swinging the
axe up and down, Helen ran up to join in the struggle and got hit below the chin
with the axe giving her a scar that she wears to this day.
We moved from the house below the hill to the house that I consider
to be the
place I lived during my formative years. The house was located about a
hundred yards from the then US 70 highway. Between the house and the
highway was the old railroad right of way. Russett used to be a thriving
little frontier town complete with bank, post office and saloon. The
foundation for the former cotton gin was in our backyard. Towns were
founded in the Indian/Oklahoma territory days about a days horse ride apart,
which is about eight or ten miles apart. As highways were built, the
horseless carriage came into being and coupled with the depression and dustbowl,
these frontier towns began to dry up (no pun intended). The story of the Okies and the
migration to California is well known. I had friends whose family moved to
California and back to Oklahoma several times. Interestingly, each time
they moved to California they were moved up a grade in school. When they
moved back to Russett, Oklahoma, they were moved back a grade. At the time
California was noted for his progressive education.
Our school was a consolidated school. As the little towns began to dry up and transportation became easier, small schools were consolidated into larger schools. I am not sure what other schools were consolidated with Russett except for Norton Bend. This was a community located north of the Washita River. Students were bussed to Russett from Norton Bend.
Stay tuned, more to come.