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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert and Mary McCarty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Charles Lionel Klock, Sr
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0011-01_Charles_Klock.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration
between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the
OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the
“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Pinehill, Bristow, Oklahoma, fights, opossum, moonshine, Indian dance
OHMS Object Text
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5.4 OHP-011-01 Charles Lionel Klock, Sr OHP-0011-01 20:39 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Early childhood memories Pinehill, Bristow, Oklahoma, fights, opossum, moonshine, Indian dance Charles Lionel Klock, Sr Robert and Mary McCarty MP3 OHP-0011-01 Klock, Charles Sr.mp3 1:|71(1)|85(1)|101(1)|121(1)|133(14)|153(2)|185(14)|223(2)|240(2)|256(8)|277(2)|300(4)|309(13)|341(10)|362(1)|384(14)|397(8)|415(7)|424(7)|439(10) 0 http://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0011-01 Klock, Charles Sr.mp3 Other audio 0 Family Seventh - afternoon of June 7, 1977. We're talking to Charles Lionel Klock Charles Lionel Klock, and he's gong to tell us about his family. Lionel, what war you mother and dad's name? Charles Lionel Klock describes his family Beaumont ; brother ; family ; father ; Morgan City (La.) ; mother ; sister ; sisters ; Texas City Klock family 121 Pinehill school Did all of you children go to Pinehill school? No, just the three oldest - Daphine and myself and Vernon. I think that was the only ones that really went to the Pinehill school. How many years did you go? About two, I believe, because Lionel Klock describes going to Pinehill school. Annie over ; Mr. Thomas ; Pinehill ; school jumping gates ; Pinehill school ; riding a horse to school ; spankings 396 Chicken roasts Did you ever hear about - did you ever hear about those chicken roasts? Would you like to hear, would you like to hear a story - No, Daphine - Daphine, now I think Daphine - Would you like to hear the story about them? Yeah, I'd like to hear that. Interviewer Mary McCarty relates a story from Lloyd Bruce about stealing chickens and roasting them in a clay shell. chicken roasts ; Lloyd Bruce ; Lloyd, Bruce bake in clay ; chicken roasts 477 Opossum hunting and school spanking and fight with Bob Well, you missed the fun years out there, then. Well, maybe so. But I had plenty of fun. Going out to - going out in the - Do you remember the Christma - - you know, Dad' d take us out hunting at night. We'd go out and hunt opossum or it jsut so happened that many a times we'd - we'd run over with a old hound, we had an old hound that went out ahead of us. hound dog ; opossum ; skunk hound dog ; opossum ; skunk ; Striped skunk 537 School fight and fight with Bob You start talking about that fight, you said there was about eighteen of you: Oh, yeah, well - You told me while ago there was about eighteen of you got a whipping. How many of them was in school that year, if eighteen of you got a whipping? I don't know, I would say it was at least half of the school got it, but the fight really - I don't know exactly what Bobby's part of it is --- Lionel Klock and Bob McCarty reminisce about a fight and the switching they got from the school teacher. girl whipping ; school fight ; whipping school fight 785 Moonshine and a stomp dance Hey, Bobby, did you ever get up in the country there, especially up behind old Ellis Heads' house? You ever go up in there? You ever see those pigs laying up there in that mud - Yeah: - get so drunk on that sour, sour mash that tehm poor sows couldn't get up? Lionel Klock and Bob McCarty reminisce about a moonshiner and an Indian stomp dance. moonshine ; pigs ; sour mash ; stomp dance ; war party ; white lightening deputy sheriff ; Indian stomp dance ; moonshine ; white lightening 1146 Bobby can fight and Lena can dance What were some of the kids' names that went to school with you? Well, I really don't remember a whole lot of 'em. Naturally, Bob Imhousen, then Lena Hooky She must have been a pretty little girl. You keep talking about her. classmates ; dancing dances ; two-step In this 1977 interview, Charles Lionel Klock, Sr. (1927-2003) describes his very early childhood memories in the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma including fights with schoolmates, opossum hunting, the first time he ever tried corn mash alcohol (moonshine), and attending an Indian dance as a child. Interviewer: Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty (1929-2007) (MM) Interviewee: Charles Lionel Klock, Sr. (1927-2003) (CK) Other Persons: Robert L. " ; Bob" ; McCarty (1927-2007) (BM) Date of Interview: June 7, 1977 Location: Drumright, Creek County Oklahoma Transcriber: Melissa Holderby Organization: Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Original Cassette Tape Location: OHP-0011 Side ALength: 0:20:39 Abstract: In this 1977 interview, Charles Lionel Klock, Sr. (1927-2003) describes his very early childhood memories in the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma including fights with schoolmates, opossum hunting, the first time he ever tried corn mash alcohol (moonshine), and attending an Indian dance as a child. Preface: The following oral history testimony is the result of a cassette tape interview and is part of the Bristow Historical Society, Inc.' ; s collection of oral histories. The interview was transcribed and processed by the Bristow Historical Society, Inc., with financial assistance from the Montfort Jones & ; Allie Brown Jones Foundation. Rights to the material are held exclusively by the Bristow Historical Society, Inc. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a verbatim transcript of spoken, rather than written prose. Insofar as possible, this transcript tries to represent the spoken word. Thus, it should be read as a personal memoir and not as either a researched monograph or edited account. To the extent possible, the spelling of place names, foreign words, and personal names have been verified, either by reference resources or directly by the interviewee. In some cases, a footnote has been added to the transcript in order to provide more information and/or to clarify a statement. Some uncertainties will inevitably remain regarding some words and their spellings. In these scenarios, a (ph) follows a word or name that is spelled phonetically. The notation [indecipherable] is used when the transcriber has not been able to comprehend the word or phrase being spoken. The notation [inaudible] is used where there is more mumbling than words, or when interference on the tape has made transcription impossible. MM: Seventh--afternoon of June 7, 1977. We' ; re talking to-- CK: Charles Lionel Klock. MM: Charles Lionel Klock, and he' ; s going to tell us about his family. Lionel, what was your mother and dad' ; s name? CK: Dad' ; s name was Charles Ishmael Klock and mother' ; s name was Sybil Emmaline Klock. MM: What was your mother' ; s name before she married? CK: Williams. They was--had moved here to Drumright area and mother and dad married in that area. Followed the oilfields around here for a while and finally settled here in Bristow at the little pumping plant out north of town. MM: How many brothers and sisters do you have? CK: I have one brother and three sisters. MM: What' ; s their names? CK: Well, Daphine--do you want me to give their married names? BM: Yeah. CK: Daphine--Dorotha Daphine and her last name now is Holmes. She lives in Texas City, she' ; s a registered nurse. And Vernon Klock lives in Beaumont, Texas and he' ; s a retired--I guess you' ; d call him superintendent for the McDermott (ph) shipyard out of Morgan City, Louisiana. And we have Aline Sanders who is there in Beaumont, lives in Beaumont, her husband' ; s a butcher for the market [indecipherable]. And then my youngest sister which is Thelma Dean Ross (ph), and she lives in [indecipherable], Texas which is a little old town just about ten miles out of Beaumont. MM: Your mother and dad still alive? CK: No, mother' ; s living but dad died two years ago on Easter Sunday morning of a heart attack, there in Beaumont, Texas. MM: Did all of you children go to Pinehill school? CK: No, just the three oldest--Daphine and myself and Vernon. I think that was the only ones that really went to the Pinehill school. MM: How many years did you go? CK: About two, I believe, because--well, really, I went, I went--I started for three, but it just so happened that I was a little early in my going to school and so after about two or three weeks in school I can remember one day I got up behind the curtain on the stage and jumped out and hollered " ; Boo" ; at everybody and just immediately after that, Mr. Thomas sent a letter home to my momma and said, " ; Mrs. Klock, please keep Lionel home," ; says, " ; He won' ; t study and won' ; t let nobody else." ; So I had to stop and drop out that year and then I started again the next year. So hopefully that helps. MM: What kind of sports did you play? CK: Well, the only thing I can remember playing at Pinehill is that we had an excellent slide there, we got the old wax--paper wax off of the bread wrappers, off of the bread. And we put it as slick as you could possibly get it and then the only other sport that I ever really remember playing at the Pinehill was they could throw that ball over and catch it and then run around and hit somebody with it on the other side of the school. MM: Annie-Over. CK: What would you call that? MM: Annie-Over. CK: Annie-Over! Boy, we had a time with that, now. MM: Did you ever get in on any of those chicken stealing when you lived there? CK: No, no, I didn' ; t get into any of that, you know--we lived, when we first began to go to Pinehill, we lived over on the old Indian home. I don' ; t even remember what the Indian family was, but it was over close and had a neighbor by the name of Vann. We had five gates between us and school and we rode a horse. Daphine and I would ride the horse and mother and dad would always instruct us to be sure to stop at each one of those gates and open and close it when we went through. And so we did, we faithfully did our part--at least until we found out that the horse could jump and from that point on, I don' ; t believe we stopped to get any--to open any of them. But we--Bobby was showing me here, Minnie Davis (ph)? Is that where we was living? BM: That' ; s where he lived, yeah. CK: Out on the Minnie Davis (ph) place. Anyway, we never did stop to--from that point on, when that horse came to the gate it always jumped it and how we held on I don' ; t know, but we made it home safely anyway. MM: Did you mom and dad know you was jumping the gate? CK: (laughs) No, they didn' ; t. MM: Have you told your mother in later years? CK: Yeah, yeah. You know, I don' ; t know, we--in our going home, we had one place that we stopped off. I don' ; t know where [indecipherable] it was, don' ; t even remember the name of the family, but it was somewhere between after we turned off of a certain road going back over through to the house, we' ; d stop off at these people' ; s house and get warm! Well, I tell you, when we was coming home, it' ; d be cold, snow on the ground and our feet would get mighty cold and I tell you what, I didn' ; t particularly like the boots that I had and I burned the soles off of them at those people' ; s house by putting my foot up close to the fire. It got warmed, but I burned the heel--the sole off of ' ; em, anyway. (laughs) MM: About how many spankings a day did you get when you was going to school? Bob tells how many he got. CK: Oh, I was a good boy. I don' ; t know, I know I got some but it was mostly hold your hand out and with a ruler on it, you know, and a lot of that kind of situation. Only one time I really did get a switching from Mr. Thomas, but I wasn' ; t alone in that one. There was several others that got a whippin' ; on that one. MM: You didn' ; t go, though--if you got up to the seventh or eighth grade like Bob did, you' ; d have got a few more. CK: Maybe so, maybe so. MM: You missed a few things-- BM: I didn' ; t have to [indecipherable] MM: Did you ever hear about--did you even hear about those chicken roasts? Would you like to hear, would you like to hear a story--CK: No, Daphine--Daphine, now, I think Daphine-- MM: Would you like to hear the story about them? CK: Yeah, I' ; d like to hear that. MM: They would go to various famers, usually the one that was the crankiest in the community, and they' ; d steal a chicken. CK: Oh? MM: And they' ; d take it down to the creek and they' ; d wrap it in--they had a certain place where there was good clay, and they' ; d make a thick layer of that clay, just wring it' ; s neck off and make a thick layer of that clay on that chicken-- CK: Yeah? MM: And just throw it in the fire and let it bake and then when it got done they' ; d just break that clay off and just eat it with their fingers. CK: Uh-huh. MM: So I asked Loyd Bruce on his tape, I said, " ; Loyd, did you remove any undesirable parts of those chickens?" ; And he paused a minute and he said he didn' ; t believe they did! But they said you can take the toughest old rooster or old hen and wrap it in that clay that way and it' ; d get tender and good. CK: I would suppose they would. (all laugh) MM: But they cooked it guts, feathers and all. CK: Oooh, boy! (laughs) BM: [indecipherable] CK: I think I' ; ll [indecipherable], I' ; ll tell you. MM: Did you steal any water--no, you wouldn' ; t even be big enough to steal-- CK: No, no, I, I didn' ; t, I never did really, I didn' ; t--let' ; s, let' ; s see, it must' ; ve been--so really first, second grade is about all that I really got to go there. Well, I tell you-- MM: Well, you missed the fun years. CK: Well-- BM: Then they moved up to Oilton. CK: Yeah, we moved up to Drumright and to Oilton in-between there. MM: Well, you missed the fun years out there, then. CK: Well, maybe so. But I had plenty of fun. Going out to--going out in the-- MM: Do you remember the Christma-- CK: --you know, dad' ; d take us out hunting at night. We' ; d go out and hunt opossum or it just so happened that many a times we' ; d (laughs) we' ; d run over with a old hound, we had an old hound that went out ahead of us. Instead of a opossum he found a, a good skunk. And run in on top of that skunk and it hit him right in the face. And I never (laughs), I never heard one dog holler so much and waller so much, throw his head on the ground and roll and squall and bawl and, you know? That ruined our hunt for that night. We didn' ; t get to go any further. (laughs) That old dog just--hooked him up and he went back to the house after that. MM: You start talking about that fight, you said there was about eighteen of you? CK: Oh yeah, well-- MM: You told me while ago there was about eighteen of you got a whipping. How many of them was in school that year, if eighteen of you got a whipping? CK: I don' ; t know, I would say it was at least half of the school got it, but the fight really--I don' ; t know exactly what Bobby' ; s part of it is, but I know I come home crying and dad said, " ; What you crying about?" ; and I said, " ; Well, somebody jumped on my back." ; And sometimes it was Bobby! Other times it might' ; ve been somebody else but that particular time it was Bobby. And he told me, he said, " ; Son," ; he said, " ; I' ; ll tell you what: If you come home tomorrow night and you' ; re crying because somebody jumped on your back and you hadn' ; t done nothing about it," ; he says, " ; I' ; m gonna spank you." ; Well, the next evening it just happened to be that Bobby was the one that jumped on my back. And for the next mile and half--next half a mile, really--it was either me on bottom and him on top or I was on top and he was on bottom, I don' ; t know how it all wound up like, but I assure you one thing, this is some--at least thirty-five or thirty-six years afterward and I' ; m still bearing the scars of those, that fight (laughs) in my face. MM: It' ; d have to be better than forty years, you didn' ; t go to school out there after you was ten. CK: Well, no, let' ; s see-- MM: Come on, now. CK: Well, five years--six years old, yeah! It' ; s got to be forty, forty-four years ago. About forty-four to--forty-three to forty-four years. That' ; d be it. But I' ; ll tell you what, I didn' ; t get a whipping when I got home, and I can' ; t say whether I got the best of the fight or Bobby got the best, or who got the worst, or what have you. I' ; ll tell you we both come out with plenty of scars, and not only us--you know, Alton (ph) and Daphine got into that, too. Alton (ph) wound up with a pretty good scar on his face over that rack--and Daphine had some pretty good nails and she shore did get him right across the face. BM: [inudible] CK: Clear from the forehead clear to the chin, I' ; ll tell you, he really got a good one. MM: And on top of all that, I believe your mother and Bob' ; s mother were best friends. CK: Ooo-hoo! (laughs) Yeah, yeah! And after that, Bob and I was pretty good friends, too! (laughs) BM: (laughs) MM: Our son that was killed and a boy got into it and knocked each other' ; s teeth loose and everything else and the next day they wanted visit each other and we said, " ; Mose (ph), we thought you were angry," ; and he said, " ; Why, just ' ; cause your fighting' ; s no sign that you' ; re mad at each other!" ; (all laughing) BM: But you know, Mr. Thomas didn' ; t like what he heard about that fight. He--the next day at school he begin to name off the ones that he wanted to talk to after school, and he kept the boys in one room and the girls in the other. The only thing is, he appointed Daphine and one of the other girls to go out and they was to pick the switch that we was to get switched with, and naturally for themselves they pretty--picked a pretty good, a very small little switch. But for the boys, I' ; ll assure you we got our--they got the right size. I don' ; t know if that was a peach limb or just what it was, but I' ; ll assure you--and when Mr. Thomas laid it on, he was--didn' ; t spare the rod. (laughs) I can remember it. Now, I also heard from other reports, though, that when he spanked the girls it--that just the skirt really got the blistering. It really never did get down next to the body on the girls. But the skirt really did get the blistered on. CK: I think everybody went down that south road and got a lickin' ; that day. BM: (laughs) Eighteen of us, at least. CK: I know' ; d it, anyway. MM: Well, you and the McIntyres (ph) got into it one time, didn' ; t you? CK: No, me and the Wilson boys got into it. MM: Wilson. CK: Hey, Bobby, did you ever get up in the country there, especially up behind old Ellis Head' ; s (ph) house? You ever go up in there? You ever see those pigs laying up there in that mud? BM: Yeah? CK: --get so drunk on that sour, sour mash that them poor sows couldn' ; t get up? (all laughing) BM: You know the last time, last time I talked to old Ellis--oh, before the lake was--had a lot of water in it. When I-- MM: Ellis died slow and hard with that cancer, he had a terrible time of dying-- BM: --I went out and bought some corn off Ellis to fatten out some hogs. And-- MM: --and Lord, that was twenty years ago. Almost twenty years ago. BM: --I got talking to him that afternoon, and " ; Say, Ellis, when is the last time you ran off a batch of corn?" ; He said, " ; Oh, Bob, it' ; s been a good long time." ; He said, " ; I' ; ll tell you what, I' ; ll tell you where there' ; s a twenty-gallon keg of it buried." ; He said, " ; I buried it and I runned it off." ; MM: I guess it' ; s still there! BM: As far as I know it' ; s still there. MM: So it' ; s--Bob' ; s been-- BM: You know, [indecipherable] CK: You know, I guess there might be others that would dispute it but I--according to my particular knowledge of it, he made some of the best that-- BM: That' ; s right! CK: --that was run off in our country. I know about the only time that I ever really got a good, I got exposed to it, so to speak, I think they come over to the house and three men and dad were standing out in the yard and they had the bottle and so they started off and tilt that bottle up, you know, and finally it went around to all four men and then finally dad handed it to me and says, " ; Here, son," ; he said, " ; Here, take a swig." ; Well, you know, I thought I had some sodee-pop. BM: Yeah? CK: And, boy, so I turned that thing up like I would a sodee-pop bottle and I got me a mouthful and I learned quickly that the white lightening didn' ; t its name just because it was a white, or clear. It had something else-- BM: (laughs) CK: It had a little fire! And I don' ; t know that I have ever been burned so in all my life. I think that did help me, though, to one extent--I never have touched the stuff very much since. BM: (laughs) One one of old Ellis--he always, when he was making, he had a few of ' ; em that would come around, he' ; d get ' ; em to come around and [indecipherable] with him, especially when he was running off a batch. And you could just almost tell when old Ellis would run off a new batch-- CK: (laughs) BM: --' ; cause there' ; d be some old boy around over the country throw a big dance that weekend. CK: Well, you know, this is a lot of memories that you can have about a place and I guess one of the things that I--stands out most in my memory, you know--Ollie Hooky (ph) was--I don' ; t know exactly how good he was at his particular trade in that area, but I do know he was pretty good at selling it, anyway. We went with him one night down to country out of--somewhere down below here, out on the--to an Indian dance. You know, called ' ; em Indian stomp dances. MM: They still have them. CK: And so--but unknown to us, the car was lined with white lightening, and he was selling it to the, to the different Indians there at the dance. Well, I' ; ll tell you, I had a ball! I had, I was just big enough that I could slip in and out of line and I' ; d get ahold of a fellow in front of me, I' ; d get ahold of his hip pocket and here I' ; d go around that bonfire, stomping and dancing. Well, if that fellow in the front of me happened to have a bottle in his pocket, I slipped out of line right quick. I didn' ; t stay behind him. I' ; d get behind somebody that didn' ; t have a bottle, anyway. But that particular night-- MM: Why would you do that? CK: Huh? MM: Why would you-- CK: Well, I wasn' ; t particularly wanting to--the man in my--he didn' ; t have a bottle in his pocket, but I didn' ; t want--I was trying to get somebody that was maybe, may not have been quite so drunk as the other one (laughs), but that night we, as we' ; s sitting--and sitting there, or as the stomp dance continued, the deputy sheriffs in this county happened to find one of the men that they were looking for, and they couldn' ; t catch him. And he had jumped on a truck and was taking off and so the deputy took his gun and fired and shot the man, really. The leaves that--he shot through the tree and the leaves that fell off of the tree fell right down in mother' ; s lap. If the bullet had been just a few inches lower she would' ; ve--well it probably would have hit her instead of the man. But I' ; ll assure you one thing: when that shot rang out, that stomp dance no longer was a stomp dance but it turned into a war party. Those Indians jumped out, went to their teepees and they come out with knives and guns like you never seen. Well, Ollie (ph) and dad beat it to that car, throwed us kids in the back seat and I want you to know, that was one wild ride out of there that night. Now that' ; s one thing that stands out in my memory about that. MM: What were some of the kids' ; names that went to school with you? CK: Well, I really don' ; t remember a whole lot of ' ; em. Naturally Bob Imhousen (ph), then Lena Hooky (ph)-- MM: She must' ; ve been a pretty little girl. You keep talking about her. CK: Well, Lena (ph) was--she was my dancing partner at the different dances and I' ; ll assure you, we could cut a pretty good rug, I guarantee you. We' ; d--especially when Lena (ph) and I got started dancing, well, the whole dance floor cleared off and I' ; ll assure you we did the two-step. Now, if you had it today--I don' ; t know what you' ; d call that dance today but I' ; ll tell you what, I sure did enjoy those few times that we did get to dance together. (pause) But now, really, some of the others, I' ; m sitting here trying to remember, but I--the names of many of those children, or young people at that day, I guess just doesn' ; t--you know, that' ; s forty-four years ago, it doesn' ; t stay with me. Or it didn' ; t stay with me. BM: That' ; s right. CK: They didn' ; t make an impression on me like Bobby. (laughs) MM: And Lena. Bobby can fight and Lena can dance, huh? BM: There you go! There you go! (all laughing) end of interview audio 0 bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/app/Ohms/interview/Version3.phpOHP-011-01_Charles_Klock.xml OHP-011-01_Charles_Klock.xml
Duration
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20:39
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4500
Dublin Core
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Title
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Charles Lionel Klock, Sr
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1977 interview, Charles Lionel Klock, Sr. (1927-2003) describes his very early childhood memories in the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma including fights with schoolmates, opossum hunting, the first time he ever tried corn mash alcohol (moonshine), and attending an Indian dance as a child.
Identifier
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OHP-0011-01
Subject
The topic of the resource
Early childhood memories
Date
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1977
Format
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audio
-
https://bristoworalhistory.org/files/original/f46113fbec414894ffd66d03e610e7eb.jpg
3fc831f302d7bf4708bb7f2aa192eb57
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
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Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
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Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert L. "Bob" McCarty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob Moore
OHMS Object
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https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0002-01_Bob_Moore.xml
Interview Keyword
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between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the
OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the
“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Pinehill, tool dresser, oil rigs, wood rigs, steam engine, dances, square dance, Two Little Sisters
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5.4 October 18, 1976 OHP-0002-01 Bob Moore OHP-0002-01 43:20 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Parkhill Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Drilling in the early 1900s in northern Oklahoma Pinehill, tool dresser, oil rigs, wood rigs, steam engine, dances, square dance, Two Little Sisters Bob Moore Robert L. "Bob" McCarty MP3 OHP-0002-01 Moore, Bob.mp3 1:|26(1)|52(1)|79(3)|96(10)|109(16)|129(7)|141(49)|152(9)|178(2)|197(1)|219(2)|232(9)|246(11)|271(2)|275(66)|287(7)|313(2)|332(2)|360(18)|374(2)|394(58)|409(5)|416(8)|439(3)|457(10)|469(8)|473(40)|481(1)|493(17)|514(2)|537(9)|558(24)|572(1)|597(2)|619(9)|634(15)|645(12)|664(2)|675(4)|696(15)|735(2)|765(2)|788(3) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0002-01 Moore, Bob.mp3 Other audio 0 Drilling in the Pinehill community B: …in your home on the Pinehill community. The date is 10/18/1976, time five o’clock. Now then, Mr. Moore. BM: Yeah. B: They tell me that back in your younger days that you drilled, helped work, or helped drill wells in this community, is that right? BM: That’s right! B: Where did you work at in this community? BM: Well, I worked on the Albert Biggs (ph) Mosquito allotment, right on the side of a crick. B: That would be on the side of Mosquito Creek. Bob Moore discusses drilling for oil in the Albert Biggs freedman allotment near Mosquito Creek in the Pinehill area near Bristow. Albert Biggs ; allotment ; Charlie Lowe ; Mosquito allotment ; Mosquito Creek ; Pinehill 35.950855, -96.375456 17 Pinehill Community NE Bristow 103 Drilling for Barnes and Freeland B: Naw. Where else in the community did you help drill? BM: Well, we drilled one over on, you know where this forty-eight runs up there. For Freeland. B: For Freeland. BM: Yeah. B: Do you remember the Indian allotment that that would drill on? BM: Oh, let me see. Yeah! The Morrisons (ph). B: It was on the Morrisons (ph)? BM: Yeah. B: You know that that Morrison (ph) was the freeman, didn’t you? BM: Yeah, yeah. We—that was the first well we worked on that had electric power. Bob Moore talks about working for various drillers and oil men. Bob McCarty reads from material provided by George Krumme about a gas well drilled to 900 feet. 1925 ; Albert Mosquito ; Barnes ; Big Mosquito ; Brick Kirchner ; Claude Freeland ; electric power ; Glenn Freeland ; Hoppy Toad ; Indian allotment ; Morrison 512 Hoppy Toad Oil Company and cable tools B: This was pub—this information that I have was published in 1925, although I do have records here of the Hoppy Toad Oil Company. BM: The who? B: The Hoppy Toad Oil Company. BM: Oh, yeah. B: Here is some of the Hoppy Toad and here is the C.L. Freeland Oil Company. BM: Yeah. B: Does that bring back memories to you? BM: That does, yeah. Well, Glen worked on this Hoppy Toad, dressed tools up there. I remember him talkin’ to me about it, and that was before I was—well, I was, had worked the oilfield a little but then since then I hadn’t. For a while I was— B: I just, this log here that I have in my hand is a log of a well “C.L. Freeland Oil Company Mexi-Farm.” Now where would that be? Bob talks about the Hoppy Toad Oil Company and early drilling with cable tools like a tag line or manila line. C. L. Freeland Oil Company ; cable tool rigs ; Ernie Moore ; Hoppy Toad Oil Company ; Manila line ; Mexi-Farm ; rag line ; tag line Drilling lines ; The Hoppy Toad Oil Company http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/pages/String/rope.html “Manila” line is made out of hemp or sisal 840 Dressing tools B: You mentioned a while ago about dressing tools? How was the old tools dressed or sharpened or whatever you might do? How was that done? BM: Well, dressin’ tools is, uh—a driller and a tool dresser work together on a tower, and a tool dresser, he assisted the driller. The driller’s supposed to know more than the tool dresser did, but lots of times they didn’t know as much. I dressed tools for about twelve years before I started drilling because it was much easier on me and no responsibility. Well, I guess where they got the name “tool dresser,” when they dress a bit they’d put ‘em in a forge, they’d heat ‘em up to white heat and then dress ‘em out to gauge. They had a gauge that you’d dress ‘em out to. B: You had a gauge that slipped over the end of that bit, is that right? BM: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. When a bit got in sand formation or after drilling so long, it’d wear out and make the hole small so that the pipe wouldn’t fall, so when it got out of gauge we had to pull the bit off and put it in a forge and dress it, but they always had another bit they put on and we’d be drilling while the bit was heatin’. B: What kind of point was on that? BM: Well, we’d dress it to both sides and would come right out the gauge in a side of a circle on the gauge [indecipherable] and we’d work it out the gauge and pound the worn surface off and it was kind of a bevel on a point and a bottom. Bob talks about dressing, or reforming, the drilling bit. Different ways of heating the bit and reforming it are discussed. dressing tools ; driller ; ram ; sand formation ; tool dresser Dressing the bit on a drilling rig 1114 Steam engines and wooden derricks B: This here is the old boiler that— BM: That’s the boiler, that’s the boiler. B: That is what, now then—you said this boiler, what part did this boiler play? BM: That made steam to run the engine on! (laughs) B: Oh, it was operated by an old steam engine? BM: Oh, yeah! That was fired with oil and sometimes they fired it with gas. Gas was much better because it was cleaner. B: It was cleaner than the oil? BM: Yep. It carried about 120 pounds of steam and the boilers were rated anywhere from thirty to forty-five horsepower boilers. That was the way they rated them. B: Well now, then, go just a little bit further. What happened, say you’re moved into an area that there wasn’t gas and there wasn’t any oil, how did you fire—what did you use to fire that— BM: We used to fire with wood or coal. Whichever one they get, which was the cheapest. B: If coal was cheaper, why you’d fired with coal. BM: Yeah. They [indecipherable] fired with wood. But boy, that took a lot of wood to heat that water up to where you get 120 pounds of steam. B: What was this well here made out of? Bob talks about the steam engines used in early drilling, the fuel used, different beams in the wooden derricks, and how these beams and cranks and belts fit together to drill. bandwheel ; boilers ; bullwheel ; generator ; Nowata ; rig builder ; smudge pot ; steam engine ; wooden derrick ; yellow gold Steam engines used in early drilling for oil ; Wooden derricks used in early drilling for oil 1359 Working conditions B: Now they had all this drilling, whenever they started drilling the wells before electric came in here, they just drilled in daylight, did they or did they not? BM: No, we drilled night and day, twelve hour shifts. B: What kind of light did you use at night? BM: Oh, we had a generator that made electric light. B: You made electric light with a generator that operated off of this steam? BM: Yeah, on the steam. But the first, before they had the generator, we used what they called the “yellow gold.” That was an oil pot come up with two spouts and a piece of hemp in each one of ‘em and we’d light that to work by. B: Worked by that smudge pot— BM: Yeah. Drilling through the night and smudge pot lighting " ; yellow gold" ; ; electric light ; shifts ; smudge pots Drilling shifts ; Light from smudge pots 1469 Time to drill a well, fishing tools, casings, building the derrick, moving in the tools B: About how long did it take to drill one of these wells? BM: Here? In this area? B: Yeah, in this area. BM: Well, ya done well to drill one in about thirty-five days if they didn’t have a fishing job losing tools. B: Uh-oh, now then, how did that come about? How did that— BM: Well, sometimes the lines would break, you know, and sometimes they would lose the tools by breaking the line and then they’d go in there and fish ‘em out. B: What kind of a deal did they use to fish ‘em out with? BM: Oh, Lord, they had a lot of fishin’ tools. The one thing that, if they had the line on it, they had what they called a three-prong grab. It was a tool that screwed onto the end of a stem and it had three long prongs on it with little wickers that come up. Oh, they were big as, oh, couple inches big. And they’d get ahold of the, try to get ahold of the line and pull them out. B: How much, how deep where they, or have you ever helped fish out one? BM: Yeah, I’ve fished one out over at Yale about thirty to a hundred, and I fished one out at Utah, was about two hundred feet. Now that was a fishin’ job. We was out there seventy-nine miles from any town, forty miles from any neighbor, and they hauled the groceries out in trucks. We used what they called a Clark engine. That was operated by gasoline. Didn’t use a boiler there. That was all sand formation and sand would drill close and would sometimes stick the tools. And we stuck the tools about, oh, I guess about two hundred feet deep, and the sand and gypsum around ‘em and we couldn’t pull ‘em out. So we cut the line and filled the hole with tools—stems after stems—and put all forty sticks to drill by it first, with the small tools. We started a twenty-inch hole there. We drilled by it with the small tools and put all forty sticks of dynamite on it. Bob talks about losing tools in the well, fishing them out, how long it took for the derrick to be built, and how long for the tools to be brought in. build a derrick ; dynamite ; fishing tools ; grasshopper derrick ; rig builder ; steel derrick ; wooden conductor Drilling a well in 35 days ; Losing tools and fishing jobs 2017 Early pay for drilling work BM: But about four days. And we worked twelve hours a day and when we was rigging up, all four of us would go out the last day and finish rigging up and the driller and tool dresser would stay there and start, they’d work about eighteen hours that day. B: What was the pay during that time, Bob? BM: Well, I was getting’ about eight, nine dollars a day. B: Eight or nine dollars a day? BM: Yeah. B: Now today their wages’d be— BM: Quite a bit more. B: Yeah, I’d say, what—what would you say the wages would be today on a modern-day rig? BM: Well, I don’t know what they’re gettin’ now, but when I quit drilling, that was about, oh, I was getting’ twelve, thirteen dollars a day, but I was only workin’ eight hours. Well I started workin’ eight hours about, oh, about 1930. B: You started workin’ eight hours a day runnin’ three shifts. BM: Yeah. Pay for oil field work in the 1910's, going to World War I, coming back to work in the oil fields, and the price of oil then. driller pay ; early oil worker pay ; shifts ; tool dresser pay ; work day 2444 Oil field workers fun MM: What did they do for fun, them oilfield guys? B: What did they do for fun, you oilfield boys workin’ out there in the oilfield, what did you guys do for the fun? To have fun? BM: Oh, we’d get—not me, but most of ‘em ‘d get drunk and get into a fight, and something like that. Play craps and play poker and run around with the women— UW: When you stayed, lived around Yale? BM: What? UW: Lived around Yale and worked, what did you all do for fun there? BM: When? B: When you lived around Yale, what did you guys do for fun up there? BM: Oh! I went to dancin’ about twice a week. B: About twice’st a week?? What oil field workers did for fun and Bob square dance calling of " ; Two Little Sisters" ; . dancing ; drunk ; fight ; play craps ; poker ; square dance calling ; square dancing ; women ; Yale In this 1976 interview, Bob Moore discusses working as a tool dresser on oil rigs in the early 1900s in northern Oklahoma at a time prior to electricity, when rigs were built of wood, powered by a steam engine, and lighted at night by burning pots of crude oil. He also describes going to dances in Yale, Oklahoma in his spare time and calls a square dance named “Two Little Sisters” for the interviewer. B [Bob McCarty, Interviewer]: --in your home on the Pinehill community. The date is 10/18/1976, time five o' ; clock. Now then, Mr. Moore. BM [Bob Moore, Interviewee]: Yeah. B: They tell me that back in your younger days that you drilled, helped work, or helped drill wells in this community, is that right? BM: That' ; s right! B: Where did you work at in this community? BM: Well, I worked on the Albert Biggs Mosquito allotment, right on the side of a crick. B: That would be on the side of Mosquito Creek. BM: Yeah, that, that' ; s right! B: Right on the side of Mosquito Creek. BM: Yeah. And I worked for Charlie Lowe he was drillin' ; a well there. He was a contractor. B: Charlie Lowe was a contractor. BM: Yeah. B: Uh, do you remember, Mr. Moore, do you remember the depth that that well was? BM: I think it was about 3,200 feet. B: Did you get oil at that time, or did it-- BM: Yeah, yeah. We got oil there. It was a small well but it was a producer. B: It was a producer. BM: Yeah. B: Roughly what would you say that that well would make a day? BM: I' ; d say about fifty barrels at that time when we brought it in. B: You dug, when it came in, it came in at fifty barrel a day? BM: Yeah, something like that, yeah. MM [Mary McCarty, Interviewer]: Is that too strong? (sound of cups clinking) B: Naw. Where else in the community did you help drill? BM: Well, we drilled one over on, you know where this forty-eight runs up there. For Freeland. B: For Freeland. BM: Yeah. B: Do you remember the Indian allotment that that would drill on? BM: Oh, let me see. Yeah! The Morrisons. B: It was on the Morrisons? BM: Yeah. B: You know that that Morrison was the freeman, didn' ; t you? BM: Yeah, yeah. We--that was the first well we worked on that had electric power. B: The Morrison well was the first one that you had electric power to? BM: Yeah. B: What year was that, Mr. Moore? BM: Oh, let' ; s see--that must' ; ve been about 1925. B: Nineteen-and-twenty-five? When you first went to work in the oil field working the drilling, was there any other wells located around in that part of the country? BM: Yeah, there was a well or two around in there. Freeland had some production over in that part of the country. B: Do you have any idea where that production was? BM: Well, it was right around in there, quite a little bit of it, and then, oh, Glen Freeland, he' ; s still alive, he could tell you where it is. B: Now I talked to Glen the other night-- BM: You did? B: --and I found out from Brick Kirchner that Glen Freeland has had an eye surgery and his thinking at the present time is not very much. It' ; s pretty weak, he doesn' ; t remember. When I asked him about it, he said, " ; I don' ; t remember. I just don' ; t remember." ; BM: You know, I' ; ve known Glen Freeland for practically all his life. When he was about--when he first come from West Virginia, up around Nowata. B: Did you know Claude Freeland? BM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I worked for Claude Freeland once. B: Our deed according to the records that we have on the, this oil survey that was made through here, Claude Freeland and--where' ; s that notebook at? (pause ; sound of pages flipping) Uh--it was drilled-- BM: He drilled a well right up here about a half a mile called the Hoppy Toad. B: There you go, now we' ; re gettin' ; somewhere! BM: Yeah. B: We' ; re getting' ; somewhere now! BM: Yeah. B: This is some stuff I got from Albert--or George Krumme-- BM: Yeah. B:--and it gives in here the first well that was actually drilled in this community. It was Barnes and Freeland, was it or was it not? BM: Yeah! Barnes and Freeland. Yeah. I knew Barnes. I knew Freeland, too. See when I first come to Bristow in 19-3. I was just a small kid then, then I come in 1911. B: See, this thing here, (referencing publication) " ; on April 11 one-third of a mile to the northwest in section thirty-six," ; which would be way over here, " ; township seventeen north, range nine east, with a depth of nine hundred and ninety feet to a thousand ten feet, it was encountered of the initial flow of seven million cubic feet per day." ; BM: That' ; s gas. B: Gas. BM: Yeah. B: (continues reading) " ; This well' ; s flood was turned into a twelve-inch line of this company, which at that time carried gas to the Oklahoma City area until the pressure decreased to a flood of which it would no longer force gas into the pipeline. The well was again connected to the pipeline in February 1917 when its open flow capacity registered 350,000 cubic feet a day with a rock pressure of 375 pounds." ; Alright, now then, on this rock pressure, what did they mean by that rock pressure? BM: That was, I don' ; t know. I don' ; t know what they meant by that rock pressure. You see, we never drilled very many gas wells. We were drillin' ; for oil, mostly. B: Drillin' ; for oil, mostly. BM: Yeah. B: Now, this well that you were talkin' ; about, what year was it--what year that you drilled here on the Big Mosquito--Albert Mosquito, what year was that? BM: Let' ; s see, oh, must' ; ve been about 1930, 19--, let' ; s see, about 1920-25. Between 1925 and 1930, I' ; d say. (woman talking in background) BM: You got a record of that, haven' ; t you? B: No, I don' ; t have a record of that one. BM: No, you don' ; t. B: I' ; ve got ' ; em up to, uh, oh, looks like about-- MM: [Indecipherable] published that in ' ; 23 so he wouldn' ; t have anything on ' ; 25 [indecipherable], remember? B: This was pub--this information that I have was published in 1925, although I do have records here of the Hoppy Toad Oil Company. BM: The who? B: The Hoppy Toad Oil Company. BM: Oh, yeah. B: Here is some of the Hoppy Toad and here is the C.L. Freeland Oil Company. BM: Yeah. B: Does that bring back memories to you? BM: That does, yeah. Well, Glen worked on this Hoppy Toad, dressed tools up there. I remember him talkin' ; to me about it, and that was before I was--well, I was, had worked the oilfield a little but then since then I hadn' ; t. For a while I was-- B: I just, this log here that I have in my hand is a log of a well " ; C.L. Freeland Oil Company Mexi-Farm." ; Now where would that be? BM: The Mexi-Farm? B: The Mexi-Farm Well Number One. Where would that be located? BM: [Indecipherable.] B: (reading) " ; Township seventeen north, range nine east, section twenty-nine." ; BM: Well-- B: Section twenty-nine. MM: Bob, why don' ; t you question him about the rigs, that was something, you know, ask him another [inaudible]. B: Now this, this picture here, is--that is one of the first rigs that operated, the old cable tool rigs, is that right? BM: Yeah, that' ; s right, I remember rigging up [indecipherable] in Kansas. B: That was in Kansas. BM: Yeah. B: But that is-- BM: [Indecipherable] Charlie Lowe and dress [indecipherable] name is Ernie Moore. B: Ernie Moore and Charlie Lowe. BM: Yeah, you don' ; t want to leave somebody but he dressed tools for Charlie. B: Now this Charlie--this Charlie Lowe, was he one of the people that drilled in here, too? BM: Oh, yeah. B: You mentioned that a while ago. BM: Yeah. B: Could you tell me how the old cable tool rig operated with comparison of the [indecipherable] of today? BM: Well, the [indecipherable], it drills much faster. The cable tools was much slower. And they used what they called a rag line--that, uh, manila line--that' ; s manila line that Charlie Lowe' ; s drillin' ; with there. (interference in tape) But they generally spun it in, the first of the hole with a rag line because it' ; s much easier on the rig and it' ; s much easier on everything. MM: [Inaudible.] BM: We would kind of leash a wire line in a manila line when we first started, we called that a cracker. And we drilled with a cracker at first because it was easy on the rig. Oh, that old manila line just used to, just grunt and groan and sing along with us--it was really nice to work with one of them. There wasn' ; t many drillers in my day that knew how to run a rag line--uh, manila line. B: Uh, was that a pretty complicated thing to do? BM: Yeah, it was a little complicated, it is, but the manila line would stretch out, you know, like a rope--that' ; s what it was, a rope line. B: It was actually a tag line. BM: Yeah. B: You' ; d call it a tag line of today. BM: Yeah. And it would--well, we' ; d drill about five or six feet by the rag line and it' ; d be about nine feet by the time we got through because it' ; d stretch out. B: It would stretch out four feet. BM: Yeah, three or four feet. B: Mmm-hmm. MM: Ask him [inaudible]. B: Was it--especially when you first started the hole with that-a-way, was it pretty hard to keep that hole straight? BM: No, it was fairly easy, we' ; d rig it up and guide the stem and boards across and go close to the stem and then guide the stem. B: You mentioned a while ago about dressing tools? How was the old tools dressed or sharpened or whatever you might do? How was that done? BM: Well, dressin' ; tools is, uh--a driller and a tool dresser work together on a tower, and a tool dresser, he assisted the driller. The driller' ; s supposed to know more than the tool dresser did, but lots of times they didn' ; t know as much. I dressed tools for about twelve years before I started drilling because it was much easier on me and no responsibility. Well, I guess where they got the name " ; tool dresser," ; when they dress a bit they' ; d put ' ; em in a forge, they' ; d heat ' ; em up to white heat and then dress ' ; em out to gauge. They had a gauge that you' ; d dress ' ; em out to. B: You had a gauge that slipped over the end of that bit, is that right? BM: Yeah, that' ; s right, that' ; s right. When a bit got in sand formation or after drilling so long, it' ; d wear out and make the hole small so that the pipe wouldn' ; t fall, so when it got out of gauge we had to pull the bit off and put it in a forge and dress it, but they always had another bit they put on and we' ; d be drilling while the bit was heatin' ; . B: What kind of point was on that? BM: Well, we' ; d dress it to both sides and would come right out the gauge in a side of a circle on the gauge [indecipherable] and we' ; d work it out the gauge and pound the worn surface off and it was kind of a bevel on a point and a bottom. B: It had a beveled point on it? BM: Yeah. We used to have to dress it with--the big bits you' ; d used to have to dress with sledgehammers. Then we got to where we used a ram--that ran off of a crank of machinery. B: That made tool dressin' ; a lot easier and a lot quicker. BM: Oh, yeah, a lot easier. B: A lot faster. BM: Yeah. B: All you had to do was heat it up to the white hot that you wanted it and take this ram and batter it out there like you wanted it. BM: That' ; s right. B: And if you got-- BM: I was pretty good on a ram. I was hittin' ; ' ; em too nice one day. (both laugh) BM: But they was much better. B: The ram itself in later years came into quite a accomplishment, or quite a labor-saving device than the old-time tool dressing. BM: Yes! Yeah. We used to, when I was young, we started a twenty or twenty-four-inch hole. As you can imagine them bits would be quite hot. You stand up alongside of them you got cooked. B: That' ; s right. BM: So we used that ram to drive ' ; em out the gauge. B: Ram ' ; em out there, flat end of it out the side you wanted it? If you got it flared out too big, well then how did you work it down? BM: Well, we was careful not to do that. When you got it too big you had to pound it down with sledgehammers. B: She wants to ask you a question now. BM: Okay. MM: What about that one? That picture? B: What about that picture there? BM: On that picture is a picture taken at El Dorado, Kansas. MM: But it' ; s the same kind of drilling bit, too. BM: I was on a--I worked up there one winter, that was at El Dorado. B: That was at El Dorado, Kansas. BM: Yeah. B: This here is the old boiler that-- BM: That' ; s the boiler, that' ; s the boiler. B: That is what, now then--you said this boiler, what part did this boiler play? BM: That made steam to run the engine on! (laughs) B: Oh, it was operated by an old steam engine? BM: Oh, yeah! That was fired with oil and sometimes they fired it with gas. Gas was much better because it was cleaner. B: It was cleaner than the oil? BM: Yep. It carried about 120 pounds of steam and the boilers were rated anywhere from thirty to forty-five horsepower boilers. That was the way they rated them. B: Well now, then, go just a little bit further. What happened, say you' ; re moved into an area that there wasn' ; t gas and there wasn' ; t any oil, how did you fire--what did you use to fire that-- BM: We used to fire with wood or coal. Whichever one they get, which was the cheapest. B: If coal was cheaper, why you' ; d fired with coal. BM: Yeah. They [indecipherable] fired with wood. But boy, that took a lot of wood to heat that water up to where you get 120 pounds of steam. B: What was this well here made out of? BM: That derrick is made out of wood. B: It' ; s an old wooden derrick. BM: Old wooden derrick, right. It was about seventy-two feet tall. B: What kind of wood was--BM: Pine. B: Pine? BM: Yeah. B: That would be made out of two-inch stuff, three-inch stuff, or what? BM: Oh, yeah, it was made out of two-inch stuff, the derrick was. But the big timbers like the beam, which were the biggest parts, that and the main cell, the beams and Samson post, sat in the main cell. That was the biggest timber in the whole rig. And the walkin' ; beam was next and they were slotted out and keyed with wooden keys--that was hardwood keys and drive it in with a sledgehammer They was dovetailed, the timbers was dovetailed to fit. That was built by rig builders. B: Had to be a rig builder to do that? BM: Yeah. MM: [Inaudible.] B: And now then, on this first well that worked your walkin' ; beam that operated your bit, there was a big bullwheel on that, was there or was there not? BM: Oh, yeah. The bullwheel, they would wind up the cable that the stem was to, and the walkin' ; beam, after it got about, oh, it spun. You had a gangway at about a hundred feet and that' ; d hook onto the walkin' ; beam. B: It would hook onto the walkin' ; beam at about a hundred feet? BM: Yeah. And this would go onto a crank that run to the belt, to the belt on the bandwheel. And it hooked the [indecipherable] up to the timber down here, it had a whole--had a whole band of ' ; em who put that on this crank to come through the bandwheel. And the engine run here in this engine house with about a twelve-inch belt that run over the bandwheel and operated the bandwheel and the crank that operated the walkin' ; beam that the tools was on the end of it. B: Now they had all this drilling, whenever they started drilling the wells before electric came in here, they just drilled in daylight, did they or did they not? BM: No, we drilled night and day, twelve hour shifts. B: What kind of light did you use at night? BM: Oh, we had a generator that made electric light. B: You made electric light with a generator that operated off of this steam? BM: Yeah, on the steam. But the first, before they had the generator, we used what they called the " ; yellow gold." ; That was an oil pot come up with two spouts and a piece of hemp in each one of ' ; em and we' ; d light that to work by. B: Worked by that smudge pot-- BM: Yeah. B: --that old smudge pot at night, then? BM: Yeah. Called that the " ; yellow gold." ; B: Was those smudge pots pretty dangerous? Workin' ; at night? BM: No, they wasn' ; t dangerous. You soon learned not to get too close to ' ; em, you get yourself burned. B: Well, after you got a well down, oh, down into the gas sands-- BM: Then it was dangerous. B: Then these smudge pots was dangerous. BM: That' ; s right, that' ; s right. But I don' ; t think they had ' ; em in this--well, they had derricks, they had to' ; ve been up there around Nowata where they wells is about 600 feet deep and they worked with a machine, [indecipherable] and [indecipherable], a machine like that. B: About how long did it take to drill one of these wells? BM: Here? In this area? B: Yeah, in this area. BM: Well, ya done well to drill one in about thirty-five days if they didn' ; t have a fishing job losing tools. B: Uh-oh, now then, how did that come about? How did that-- BM: Well, sometimes the lines would break, you know, and sometimes they would lose the tools by breaking the line and then they' ; d go in there and fish ' ; em out. B: What kind of a deal did they use to fish ' ; em out with? BM: Oh, Lord, they had a lot of fishin' ; tools. The one thing that, if they had the line on it, they had what they called a three-prong grab. It was a tool that screwed onto the end of a stem and it had three long prongs on it with little wickers that come up. Oh, they were big as, oh, couple inches big. And they' ; d get ahold of the, try to get ahold of the line and pull them out. B: How much, how deep where they, or have you ever helped fish out one? BM: Yeah, I' ; ve fished one out over at Yale about thirty to a hundred, and I fished one out at Utah, was about two hundred feet. Now that was a fishin' ; job. We was out there seventy-nine miles from any town, forty miles from any neighbor, and they hauled the groceries out in trucks. We used what they called a Clark engine. That was operated by gasoline. Didn' ; t use a boiler there. That was all sand formation and sand would drill close and would sometimes stick the tools. And we stuck the tools about, oh, I guess about two hundred feet deep, and the sand and gypsum around ' ; em and we couldn' ; t pull ' ; em out. So we cut the line and filled the hole with tools--stems after stems--and put all forty sticks to drill by it first, with the small tools. We started a twenty-inch hole there. We drilled by it with the small tools and put all forty sticks of dynamite on it. B: Forty sticks of dynamite? BM: Yeah. [Indecipherable] put on twenty-five and I had fifteen left, and I said to Charlie, I said--we was livin' ; in a camp thar that had two small boys, and I said, " ; Before somebody gets hurt, let' ; s just put ' ; em all on, instead of hidin' ; ' ; em some place, we' ; ll just put ' ; em all on." ; And we filled the hole full of tools and pulled ' ; em out. But it broke the beam and there wasn' ; t a piece of timber in that part of the country big enough to make a beam out of and they sent to Florence, Colorado to get a piece of timber big enough to make a beam out of. And then once we got the beam out of it, ah, why, then we pulled ' ; em out. MM: [Inaudible.] B: What is the difference between the early casing and the casings of today? BM: Well the early days started a well with a wooden conductor. B: A wooden conductor. BM: Yeah. It was made like a pipe. If we started a twenty-inch hole we' ; d get about a twenty-two-inch wooden conductor, and that was just about twenty feet long, and as we drilled we would put the wooden conductor in and then reduce the hole to a fifteen-inch hole, or eighteen, and go on from there. B: Now, this wooden conductor that you' ; re speaking of, that would be what we would call today the surface pipe. Is that right? BM: Yeah. That' ; s right. B: The only thing in the early days, the surface pipe, or wooden conductor, it was made out of wood but today it' ; s made out of steel. BM: Made out of steel, that' ; s right. MM: What kind of wood? B: What kind of wood would they be made out of? BM: That was made out of two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, about twenty feet long. B: Oh, you made it yourself? BM: No, they made--a company made it. B: The company made it. BM: Yeah. It was a company that made the conductors. MM: What year did they quit using them? B: What year did they quit using that wooden conductor? BM: Oh, it was, I supposed, about nineteen, nineteen eighteen. B: Then they went to the regular steel surface pipes. BM: Steel surface pipes, right. MM: [Inaudible.] BM: You had to have something, you know, to keep the hole from caving in, and protect the drilling root. Stem. MM: [Inaudible.] B: What year--or do you know--what year did they go to the steel derricks instead of the old wooden derricks? BM: Well, they used wooden derricks up until, well, I guess they still use some of them now. But they got to where they make units out of steel and hardwood and turnbuckles and things like that they started in on that about, oh, about 1920. MM: [Inaudible.] B: What year did they do away with these derricks and go to the type that they' ; re using out here now, what they call a grasshopper? BM: Oh, that' ; s just been late years. B: That' ; s been here in the later years? BM: Yeah. B: Say, from uh, 1960, then? BM: Well-- B: Fifties or ' ; 60s. BM: ' ; Bout that time. B: What kind of wagon and teams did they use to get, to, uh, wait a minute, let me back up a minute. On puttin' ; up one of these wells before you--you started drilling, how long did it ordinarily take you to put one of them up? BM: A derrick? B: Put up a derrick and get all set up to go to drillin' ; . BM: Well we probably put up a derrick in about four days and then we would move the tools in, that' ; d take us about four days. B: Now then, let' ; s say that again. BM: I said it' ; d take about four days to build a rig. The rig builder' ; d do that, there was a crew of about, generally about five men. And they worked hard. And fast. And they worked daylight. Then we would move our tools in, that' ; d take us about four days to rig up, to get ready to start. And then we' ; d start drilling in about four days. B: You' ; d start then, it' ; d take roughly from the time they rig builders moved in and everything was completed, ready to go to drilling, it' ; d take about twelve days, is that right? BM: Well, no, it didn' ; t take quite that long. B: Ten to twelve days. BM: If we didn' ; t start up in four days after we started rigging up, why, the contractor would get on our tail! (both laughing) BM: But about four days. And we worked twelve hours a day and when we was rigging up, all four of us would go out the last day and finish rigging up and the driller and tool dresser would stay there and start, they' ; d work about eighteen hours that day. B: What was the pay during that time, Bob? BM: Well, I was getting' ; about eight, nine dollars a day. B: Eight or nine dollars a day? BM: Yeah. B: Now today their wages' ; d be-- BM: Quite a bit more. B: Yeah, I' ; d say, what--what would you say the wages would be today on a modern-day rig? BM: Well, I don' ; t know what they' ; re gettin' ; now, but when I quit drilling, that was about, oh, I was getting' ; twelve, thirteen dollars a day, but I was only workin' ; eight hours. Well I started workin' ; eight hours about, oh, about 1930. B: You started workin' ; eight hours a day runnin' ; three shifts. BM: Yeah. B: Three eight-hour shifts, and of the eight hours you' ; d draw about twelve dollars a day? BM: Yeah. Ten to twelve. B: Ten to twelve dollars a day. BM: Yeah. B: The drillers, what did the driller draw? Was that the driller' ; s--BM: The driller' ; d draw two dollars or a dollar more than a tool dresser did. B: Say the tool dresser drawed twelve dollars a day then the driller would draw about fourteen dollars a day. BM: Yeah. B: What year did you start in working in the drilling business? BM: Oh, 19-well, I first started in it as a kid, I was, I was sixteen years old. I worked on a cleaning-up rig up around Little Fall. It was [indecipherable] shallow stuff. And that was, oh, that was about 1912 or ' ; 13. And then I got fired because I was too little to dress bits, the contractor thought. But I had a good driller by Charlie Lowe who' ; d drilled, and he was big and strong as an ox. And he took a lot of work off of it. Well then, about, oh, about 1914, why I started back again. B: About 1914 you started back in again, into the oil pipe work. BM: Yeah. I worked ' ; til World War I and I went to the Navy, I was drawing fourteen dollars a day working twelve hours over in Yale when I went to the Navy in 1918 for--well, I worked six months and drawed fifty dollars. Which was quite a comedown. (laughs) B: That would be quite a cutback in pay. BM: Yeah, it sure was. And I wondered if it was a good idea for me to quit a fourteen-dollar job to go to--fourteen dollars a day--to go to war. But since then I' ; ve been drawing a little pension, about sixty-two dollars, and I guess if I live to be a hundred I' ; ll get the money back. B: You' ; d probably have to live to be about a hundred and fifty! BM: Yeah. (laughs) Which I don' ; t think I' ; ll [indecipherable]. B: What year did you--then after you came out of the Navy, did you go back in to the oil pipe-- BM: Oh, yeah, I was working for the Carter Oil Company then, and he-- B: Carter Oil Company? BM: Yeah. Over in Yale. And the company had a plan that if you went into the service, well when you come back they' ; d give you your same old job back. And I went for it. B: You went right back to work for the same people that-- BM: Right back to work, and I recollect, yeah. B: Then what year did you finally give up the oilfield, settle down and say " ; to heck with it?" ; BM: That' ; s when I starved to death! B: That' ; s when you starved to death? BM: Yeah! Oil business was pretty good but you worked maybe two or three months and the company shut down and you' ; d be off for a month or two. And it was hard to get a job. But I was pretty lucky, I was a good tool dresser, and was always able to go to work. Lots of tool dressers would be drunk or into a fight or something, but I was always able to go to work and generally had a job if anyone else did. I worked for Wilcox for, oh, about two years. B: What year did you finally completely quit the oilfield and leave it alone? BM: Let' ; s see, well I come out here in 1929, I' ; d been out of a job for about thirty days, and damn near starved to death, and I' ; d had one job since then, I worked about thirty days, and when that, well, when we--by that time I was quit, or--couldn' ; t get a job. B: At about 19-and-29, then, is when you actually left the oilfield? BM: About 1930. B: About 1930 is when you actually left the oil--oil pipes for good. BM: Yeah. B: I believe that' ; s-- MM: [Inaudible.] B: How important was that oil in this community? BM: Well, it was not quite as important as it is now, we didn' ; t have to buy foreign oil, and we had plenty of oil the fact of the matter is that there was times when they cut the production of the wells down to where they were only producing so much a day. They prorated. MM: How much a barrel? B: How much a barrel at the beginning, how much a barrel did that oil sell for? BM: I think about two dollars a barrel. B: About two dollars a barrel? BM: Yeah. B: What would you say it is today? BM: Oh, I imagine about fifteen dollars. B: I believe it' ; s more than that. BM: You do, well, that' ; s probably worth it. B: I would say, I would say about twenty-three to twenty-five dollars a barrel today. BM: Yeah, well that depends on the grade of oil, of course, and the way gasoline is selling I expect it ought to be worth more than that! B: Yeah, I would too! (laughs) B: [Indecipherable], is there anything you wanna ask him? You got ' ; im talkin.' ; MM: [Inaudible.] UW [Unidentified woman, Bob Moore' ; s wife]: Ask him out loud. MM: What did they do for fun, them oilfield guys? B: What did they do for fun, you oilfield boys workin' ; out there in the oilfield, what did you guys do for the fun? To have fun? BM: Oh, we' ; d get--not me, but most of ' ; em ' ; d get drunk and get into a fight, and something like that. Play craps and play poker and run around with the women-- UW: When you stayed, lived around Yale? BM: What? UW: Lived around Yale and worked, what did you all do for fun there? BM: When? B: When you lived around Yale, what did you guys do for fun up there? BM: Oh! I went to dancin' ; about twice a week. B: About twice' ; st a week?? BM: Yeah! UW: They had square dancin' ; . B: You mean them old feet got-- BM: Yeah! Listen, they couldn' ; t start a dance ' ; til I got there! B: Oh, oh! BM: I was a dancer. I liked to dance. UW: Tell them about how far you walked to work each night. BM: Oh, sometimes we walked three miles ' ; round [indecipherable] B: You walked three miles? BM: --horse, you get a horse and buggy and sometimes quick to get up when you couldn' ; t get over with a buggy and' ; d have to walk. B: Did you ever call for any of these square dances? BM: Oh, yeah! B: What was some of the calls that you called? BM: Oh, I called a hundred of them. B: Call a little bit for me! BM: Well, let' ; s see--how ' ; bout " ; Two Little Sisters?" ; B: That' ; s good! Let' ; s have it! BM: (calling, clapping, and stomping in rhythm) Two little sisters form a ring/ dosey out and dosey in/ two little sisters ready again/ back to your partner and everybody sway/ two little sisters out to the right/ pick up one little sister and three little sisters form a ring/ back to your partner and everybody sway/ four little sisters form a ring/ get back to your partner and everybody sway/ four little sisters form a ring/ back to your partner and everybody sway. That' ; s one of ' ; em. B: That' ; s mighty good, Bob, mighty good. UW: Bob and I have danced a million miles. BM: That was when she would answer my callin' ; . She don' ; t do anything I tell her now. (laughs) B: We' ; re gonna have another little get-together. end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0002-01_Bob_Moore.xml OHP-0002-01_Bob_Moore.xml
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Title
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Bob Moore
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 interview, Bob Moore discusses working as a tool dresser on oil rigs in the early 1900s in northern Oklahoma at a time prior to electricity, when rigs were built of wood, powered by a steam engine, and lighted at night by burning pots of crude oil. He also describes going to dances in Yale, Oklahoma in his spare time and calls a square dance named “Two Little Sisters” for the interviewer.
Identifier
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OHP-0002-01
Subject
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Drilling in the early 1900s in northern Oklahoma
Date
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1976-10-18
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audio
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6ff0971fa09eb2bb198fae103d74491d
Dublin Core
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Title
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Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
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Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
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Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bob McCarty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
George Krumme
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https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0002-04_George_Krumme_Oct_1976.xml
Interview Keyword
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natural gas, drilling, Hoppy Toad Oil Company,
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5.4 OHP-0002-04 George Krumme Bristow Quadrangle OHP-0002-04 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Bristow Historical Society, Inc. natural gas, drilling, Hoppy Toad Oil Company, George Krumme Bob McCarty MP3 1:|9(4)|20(13)|30(1) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0002-04 Krumme, Geo.mp3 Other audio 0 Drilling in Bristow Quadrangle GK: According to Bulletin 759 by A.E. Fath of the Oklahoma Geolog-of the United States Geological Survey on the geology of the Bristow Quadrangle in Creek County, Oklahoma which was printed in 1925 but the work began on it-field work for it-began in 1915, the first well drilled in 17-93 was drilled in section 36 by Oklahoma Natural Gas Company. Drilling of the second and third successful natural gas wells in the Bristow Quadrangle A.E. Fath ; Bristow Quadrangle ; drilling ; Glen Freeman ; Hoppy Toad Oil Company ; Oklahoma Natural Gas Company Drilling for natural gas in Bristow Quadrangle https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0759/report.pdf Geology of the Bristow Quadrangle Creek County, Oklahoma In this brief 1976 interview, George Krumme (1923- ) discusses a 1925 United States Geological Survey geological report covering the “Bristow Quadrangle” oilfield area and early oilfield companies in the area. BM: This is an interview with George Krumme from the oil company on the location, the survey company, of the first well that was drilled in the Pinehill Community. GK: According to Bulletin 759 by A.E. Fath of the Oklahoma Geolog--of the United States Geological Survey on the geology of the Bristow Quadrangle in Creek County, Oklahoma which was printed in 1925 but the work began on it--field work for it--began in 1915, the first well drilled in 17-9 was drilled in section 36 by Oklahoma Natural Gas Company. They drilled--they found a gas stand at a depth of 990 to 1,010 feet, which would be, I' ; m sure, the Cleveland sand, and they encountered an initial flow of seven million cubic feet a day. They turned the gas into their twelve-inch line which at that time ran through just south of where that well would be and carried gas to Oklahoma City from the oilfields of eastern Oklahoma. In 1917, the well was re-opened after having been shut down for some time and at that time its open flow capacity was 350,000 cubic feet a day and the rock pressure was 375 pounds. It was the second successful well in the Bristow Quadrangle according to Fath. pause in recording GK: --Fath, in 1913, another well was drilled in 17-9 in section 29 and also in 1913 a well was drilled in section 33, 17-9. And unless I' ; m wrong, that well in section thirte--33 was the well they called the " ; Hoppy Toad Well" ; because it was drilled by the Hoppy Toad Oil Company which was one of the companies of the Freeland brothers. Glen Freeland worked on that well and my brothers--my brother and I, my brother Harlan and I--are married to sisters. Their father, F.S. Freeland, worked on that well in 1913 out on Wild Horse Prairie, just north of highway 66, and was drilling on it and caught some--I forgot whether it was typhoid or some ailment and didn' ; t finish completing the well. And he told us about where the well is, I know exactly where it is, on the north side of the road on Wild Horse Prairie. So those are the first three wells drilled according to Fath. end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0002-04_George_Krumme_Oct_1976.xml OHP-0002-04_George_Krumme_Oct_1976.xml
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
George Krumme
Description
An account of the resource
In this brief 1976 interview, George Krumme (1923- ) discusses a 1925 United States Geological Survey geological report covering the “Bristow Quadrangle” oilfield area and early oilfield companies in the area.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OHP-0002-04
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1976-10
Format
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audio
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36d19139284163f00d3fc3ff007e1319
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Early Drilling Near Bristow
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral Histories of Drilling in the early 1900s
Description
An account of the resource
Oral accounts of drilling for oil and natural gas near Bristow in the early 1900s
Source
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Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
N/A
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ralph R. "Brick" Kirchner
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0015-01_Kirchner,_R_R_Rotary_Club.xml
Interview Keyword
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“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
oil drilling, Bristow Rotary Club, Ralph Kirchner,
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5.4 OHP-0015-01 Ralph Kirchner at Bristow Rotary Club OHP-0015-001 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Oil Drilling - The Early Years Bristow Historical Society, Inc. oil drilling, Bristow Rotary Club, Ralph Kirchner, Ralph R. " ; Brick" ; Kirchner N/A MP3 1:|17(6)|27(6)|44(7)|61(15)|70(12)|80(2)|93(2)|106(2)|122(3)|135(2)|146(14)|158(2)|170(8)|178(6)|188(3)|198(9)|216(2)|226(13)|236(13)|245(13)|256(7)|266(10)|277(15)|285(7)|295(6)|308(7)|318(9)|327(1)|338(10)|349(10)|369(3)|382(11)|389(14)|401(8)|417(13)|425(15)|436(9)|450(12)|460(1)|473(4)|482(5)|496(16)|513(12)|524(14) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0015-01 Kirchner, R.R. Rotary Club.mp3 Other audio 0 Introduction of Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner EM: We’ll have to be real quiet on this now. (Pause in recording) EM: [inaudible] He has attained the ripe of age of ninety-one. His father made the run in to Oklahoma territory in…1889? BK: Ninety-three. EM: Ninety-three, back here when the state [inaudible]. BK: That’s correct. EM: Brick attended the Oklahoma A& ; M College, for those of you who are not familiar with that, it’s now Oklahoma State University. Brick is also the dean of the Bristow District Rotary Government, having served since 1931 and 1932. There are many more facts about Brick Kirchner that I’d like to bring out is that Brick Kirchner is—or was, at one time—in the newspaper publishing business. Brick Kirchner owned half interest in a newspaper in Ada, Oklahoma. Having seen the error of his ways, he took his money out of the newpaper— Guest speaker Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner is introduced by Ed Mackenson Brick ; Bristow Rotary Club ; Congress ; Oklahoma A& ; M College ; Ralph R. " ; Brick" ; Kirchner Introduction of Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner 143 Ralph Kirchner Early Years BK: [inaudible] No, I don’t care. Am I speaking into this? Okay. Mr. Steward, thank you very kindly for that very nice and very liberal education, and I’m happy that my [indecipherable] section is here, too. (chuckling) BK: And the [indecipherable] section’s been here for a long time. I thought, too, it was kind of odd, Doc Yourman got the program for Don Kitchens, and Don Kitchens couldn’t be here, so Ed McMillan—I mean, Ed Mackenson introduced me for Don Kitchens. Now that beats around the bush a little bit. (laughter) Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner speaks about his early years in college and in the military. Army ; Ed Mackenson ; Gulf Oil Production ; Gypsy Oil Company ; J.D.Ward ; Oklahoma A& ; M Ralph Kirchner Early Years 372 Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner sells real estate BK: Now that’s something, too! And I went to Perry. That’s my old hometown. And Perry is—was about eighteen, twenty miles—about twenty miles, I guess—southeast of Garber, and Garber was really booming then. Plenty of production around there, but Garber was really booming of that fine, high-grade oil. And my dad was in the real estate business and he would buy royalties. So he and two other gentlemen that I knew bought royalty under the Wolf (ph) farm about two miles south of Garber. And my dad had told me, and so had Mr. Mauser (ph) that they would like to sell their interest if they could get $15,000 for it. So I thought that I’d use that as a starter and I went to Enid and I managed to sell that royalty—represented that I owned its individual interest and could deliver it for $22,500. And that’s quite a bit of profit. So I had to buy it first, so when I came home that evening I went to my banker, Mr. John Hanson (ph), the Bank of Commerce, and explained the deal to him and I said, I’d like to borrow the money from you to buy this. He said, Alright, I’ll do it. I’ll tell you how I’ll do it: I’ll do it for half of the profit. (laughter) Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner talks about buying and selling royalties in Oklahoma. Enid ; Garber ; Mr Hanson ; Perry ; royalty Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner sells real estate 537 Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner goes into the oil business So I was acquainted with Jim Sloane (ph). Jim was the tool pusher for the Roxanna Oil Company. And a tool pusher—that means he had charge of all their drilling tools, and hiring the men and so forth and operate the rigs. And so Jim and I decided to go into partnership and buy a string of tools, which we did. And Jim was fortunate enough to get his assistant pusher—to get his assistant pusher appointed to fill his position at the Roxanna. Here’s the deal: that enabled us to borrow from [indecipherable], this assistant, any tools that we didn’t have! So that made a nice deal for me, too. Brick begins a partnership and starts Kirchner & ; Sloan, Inc. Billings Petroleum Company ; doodlebug ; Jim Sloane ; Kirchner & ; Sloan, Inc ; oil ; Roxanna Oil Company ; tools ; Yukon Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner goes into the oil business 759 Getty Oil Company Contract But by that time, it was necessary that we got our rig moved because we had a contract with the Getty Oil Company. The Getty Oil Company was owned by J. Paul Getty. This location was on a main (ph) six miles east of Billings. J. Paul owned the Getty Oil Company. His father, Colonel Getty, was the big dog Getty in the oil business at that time. He owned the Minnehoma Oil Company and had mass production in the Garber field. We drove this well for Mr. Getty and we had our bunkhouse there, and it was the cook shack also. Some of the crew stayed in the house and we cooked our meals there. And our meals was either hot dogs or hotcakes. Hotcakes for breakfast and hot dogs at the other two meals. Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner drills for Getty Oil Company Bank of Commerce ; drilling ; Getty Oil Company ; Hoover sand ; J. Paul Getty ; Kirchner & ; Sloane, Inc. ; Minnehoma Oil Company ; Mr. Hanson ; oil ; Santa Fe Station Getty Oil Company Contract 1005 Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner drills for J.D. Means BK: Well, I have a lot written down here. (laughter) BK: Our next well, after Mr. Getty’s well, was for J.D. Means, and it was by the northeast offset to Mr. Getty’s. And while we were drilling that well for Mr. Means, Marland Oil Company was drilling in the northeast corner of the section and we were in the southeast corner of that same section. We made a small well for Mr. Means, but Mr. Getty—I mean, Mr. Marland, on his location up there, got a nice well and that was the discovery well for the great Oklahoma Three Sands pool. And incidentally the north offset to that, my dad had some royalty that he purchased under that, too, that offset—that well was dry. The east offset and for a mile and a half or two miles north and south, and a mile and a half wide, was the Garber field, and it was a dandy. [There are a] few wells producing there today. Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner drills for J.D. Means and discusses life in the oilfield boarding house ; Bristow ; bunkhouse ; Caufield Oil Company ; Garber field ; J.D. Means ; John Phillips ; Krumme ; Marland Oil Company ; oil scouts ; Oklahoma Three Sands Pool ; Phillips Petroleum Company ; Red Fork ; rig Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner drills for J.D. Means 1408 Drilling in Slick, Oklahoma Well, we got started at Slick. We were on fuel number one, and after we got a little below a hundred feet we went through the line and left the tools in the hole. We had about three feet of line—the line broke about three feet up above the tools. And those drilling lines, as most of you know, have six strands. They’re six to nineteen line, they’re called. There’s six—there’s three big strands and nineteen little strands in there. Well, we had the casing rolled down to get over the tools to pick ‘em out but I couldn’t get over it on account of that size of wire there. And we ran a light down the hole to see what condition it was, because you could look down there and see it with a light in there. And it was frazzled out, and I said, If that wire was cut off at the top of that socket, we could fish those tools out. And one of the men volunteered to go down and I thought, That’s a foolish trip. And we had [indecipherable] it’d break our company for sure. So I went down myself. And I put a felt hat on and filled it with waste up there because you could hear chunks go down there and hit the water around those tools and go ka-PLUNK and you didn’t know whether it was a big chunk or a little chunk or whether it was a rock or a piece of shale. Nevertheless, I went down and it wasn’t dangerous. However, we were drilling an 18” hole and right on top of the ground was cable tools you stomp, you know, and put a little water in the hole and stomp down there and bail out what you’ve mixed, that’s the way they drill with cable tools. Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner discusses drilling near Slick, Oklahoma and for Caufield Oil Company on the Sewell Farm Barney Sewell ; Caufield Oil Company ; control head ; drilling ; Dutcher ; eight-mile corner ; explosion ; oil ; Sewell ; Sewell Farm ; shell ; Slick Drilling in Slick, Oklahoma and for Caufield Oil Company 1872 Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner discusses Jim Sloane BK: --he said, No sir, mister, [indecipherable], said, We done closed the rolls. (laughter) BK: [Indecipherable.] –my partner in Kirchner & ; Sloane, Inc. was Jim Sloane (ph). Jim wanted to continue drilling on a contract basis. I wanted production. So we dissolved partnership and dissolved the corporation and I got—and divided up the tools. We had two strings at that time. And I got a lease on the Henry Fisher farm south of here, and many of you are familiar with the Fishers and some of ‘em buy their eggs there, I imagine. But we drilled a well on it, I sold some interest in it for to raise a little money to drill it with and I sold Art Stone (ph) on the interest on those. And Art was out there the day we were to hit the sands. And I was in to fifteen-ten (ph) and it was looking good, and I sold Art Stone a ninety-sixth (ph) interest for $3,000 on the derrick floor there just by a shake of the hands—and that’s the way many, many deals were closed, just by a shake of the hands. And it wasn’t an hour until we’d hit—until we hit the sand. And when she started smoking gas we started out of the hole, but the oil beat the tools out of the hole. And did we feel good! And so we had the tanks up anticipating a well, and we had the tanks up so we got out of the hole and tools and closed that control head and turned it into the tanks and it was flowing into the tanks. And we went home that night, nice little fortune between the [indecipherable] bungalow. I figured, I think we’re rich. What in the world could we do now for our poor relatives? Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner discusses Jim Sloane and how they dissolved the partnership Art Stone ; Jim Sloane ; Kirchner & ; Sloane, Inc Ralph " ; Brick" ; Kirchner discusses Jim Sloane 2063 Gotham Oil Company BK: Let’s see. The next one—I moved from there over to [indecipherable] 15-10 for the Gotham Oil Company. The Gotham Oil Company was out of Washington, D.C. And M.M. Wyville (ph) was the major holder in the Gotham Oil Company. And M.M. Wyville (ph) was secretary to William Jennings Bryan when Bryan secretary of war under Woodrow Wilson, to give you a little line-up on that. We drove that well for, for Gotham and when she started smoking gas—we had the control head on—we turned it into the pit, turned the well into the pit in case it wouldn’t flow. And Mr. Wyville (ph) and I went to Bristow to order out the tanks. We did, we ordered out a full tank and two 250s. Tanks then were all folded tanks, they weren’t welded like they are today. But when we got the tanks set—the well’d flowed twice into the pits when we got back. When we got the tanks set we picked up 450 barrels of good oil out of the pits. And [indecipherable] wanted to drill the well six inches, and we tried to hit the string on six inches—six inches above the clamps—and clipped it to the clamps, and it didn’t change the motion at all. And when it drilled off, it came out of that hole. That well made 450 barrels. That was sixty-one years ago now, today. Sixty-one years ago and that well is still producing between seven and eight barrels in the Meisner sand. Drilling for the Gotham Oil Company and discussion of Claude Freeland Albert Kelly ; Claude Freeman ; Corporation Commission ; gauger ; George Fargo ; Gotham Oil Comapany ; Levan ; M.M. Wyville ; Poor Farm ; Prairie Oil and Gas ; William Jennings Bryan ; Woodrow Wilson Claude Freeland ; Drilling for the Gotham Oil Company ; Prairie Oil and Gas 2390 Bristow is a Boom Town BK: Bristow was a—Bristow was a real boom town and my time’s about gone, but I wanted to tell you some of the things that aren’t here now that I saw here. We had three refineries here. A Bristow Refining Company out here on the Kelly farm here right at the north edge of town. Wilcox Refinery across the railroad track east of it. And then the Sun Company Oil Refinery up on the hill—one of the old [indecipherable] refineries. We have no refineries here now. We used to have the Republic Supply Company here—that’s an oilfield supply company. Across the street was the Oil Well Supply Company. Then after that was the National Supply Company. A couple of blocks north and a half east was the— Bristow was a " ; real boom town" ; with many refineries and oil businesses. American Tool Machine Company ; Bristow ; Bristow Pipe and Machine Company ; Bristow Refining Company ; Chester ; Cushing ; Ed Abraham ; National Supply Company ; Oil Well Supply Company ; Producer Supply Company ; refineries ; Republic Supply Company ; Sun Company Oil Refinery ; Wilcox Refinery Discussion of Bristow as a boom town In this 1979 interview, Ralph R. “Brick” Kirchner (1893-1990) speaks extensively about the oil drilling industry in Bristow, Oklahoma in the early 1900s, business involvement with J. Paul Getty, anecdotes about Tom Slick, how people handled their new-found oil wealth, and restrictions upon Indians regarding the handling of their own finances. EM: We' ; ll have to be real quiet on this now. (Pause in recording) EM: [inaudible] He has attained the ripe of age of ninety-one. His father made the run in to Oklahoma territory in--1889? BK: Ninety-three. EM: Ninety-three, back here when the state [inaudible]. BK: That' ; s correct. EM: Brick attended the Oklahoma A& ; M College, for those of you who are not familiar with that, it' ; s now Oklahoma State University. Brick is also the dean of the Bristow District Rotary Government, having served since 1931 and 1932. There are many more facts about Brick Kirchner that I' ; d like to bring out is that Brick Kirchner is--or was, at one time--in the newspaper publishing business. Brick Kirchner owned half interest in a newspaper in Ada, Oklahoma. Having seen the error of his ways, he took his money out of the newpaper-- (laughter) EM: Brick also has--I don' ; t know whether this is a distinction or--but Brick has stood for public office. Brick ran for Congress in the fourth congressional district on the Republican ticket and I think that' ; s the reason I got to introduce you today, Brick, is because I ran on the Democratic ticket about twenty years later. (laughter) EM: I asked him what year he ran, he couldn' ; t tell me. He said, What year did you run? I said, I don' ; t remember either. (laughter) EM: Without any further accolades, I' ; d like to introduce to you, our dean of the Bristow Rotary Club, Brick Kirchner. (applause) BK: [inaudible] No, I don' ; t care. Am I speaking into this? Okay. Mr. Steward, thank you very kindly for that very nice and very liberal education, and I' ; m happy that my [indecipherable] section is here, too. (chuckling) BK: And the [indecipherable] section' ; s been here for a long time. I thought, too, it was kind of odd, Doc Yourman got the program for Don Kitchens, and Don Kitchens couldn' ; t be here, so Ed McMillan--I mean, Ed Mackenson introduced me for Don Kitchens. Now that beats around the bush a little bit. (laughter) BK: But I' ; m happy to be here, and I want to endeavor to give you some interesting points about the life of a ninety-one-year--of a ninety-one-year-old oilman. When I got out of school at Oklahoma A& ; M, I went to work for the Gypsy Oil Company in Tulsa. Gypsy Oil Company was the production department of the Gulf Oil Corporation, and I was in the production department at seventy-five dollars a month, if you please. Not bad! It wasn' ; t--I wasn' ; t there too long until I had an opportunity for a better salary and I went to Collinsville for Mr. J.D. Ward at a hundred-and-a-quarter a month, and then I was in tall cotton. I thought that was something. I got my first production-- (pause) Well, I was with Mr. Ward and he encouraged me, and then he said, You ought to get something for yourself. So I acquired a lease on eighty acres east of Owasso, Oklahoma and I sold it the superintendent of the Bartlesville Yanks (ph) Company, provided he would drill a well and carry me into the tanks and first well. That he did. We got a little well on the Bartlesville, around 7,800 feet and didn' ; t amount to very much. So I was fortunate enough to sell the well and lease and get Mr. Gardstock' ; s (ph) money back for him out of the deal. But nevertheless that was--that was my first real introduction in it where I' ; d get a little grease on my hands. That, that' ; s oil business. I [indecipherable] to the Army from Collinsville, and my employer, Mr. Ward, got me a deferment for a while, and then I volunteered in the Army for the--in the F-A-C-O-T-S. That' ; s Field Artillery Central Offices Training School at Camp Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky. I had letters from my employer that when I got out of the Army that he had great things planned. But I had something planned, also. I figured if I had made money for him buying and selling real estate and leases, I certainly ought to be able to do it for myself. So I got my discharge from the army and incidentally I got my discharge and my commission in the same envelope. (laughter) BK: Now that' ; s something, too! And I went to Perry. That' ; s my old hometown. And Perry is--was about eighteen, twenty miles--about twenty miles, I guess--southeast of Garber, and Garber was really booming then. Plenty of production around there, but Garber was really booming of that fine, high-grade oil. And my dad was in the real estate business and he would buy royalties. So he and two other gentlemen that I knew bought royalty under the Wolf (ph) farm about two miles south of Garber. And my dad had told me, and so had Mr. Mauser (ph) that they would like to sell their interest if they could get $15,000 for it. So I thought that I' ; d use that as a starter and I went to Enid and I managed to sell that royalty--represented that I owned its individual interest and could deliver it for $22,500. And that' ; s quite a bit of profit. So I had to buy it first, so when I came home that evening I went to my banker, Mr. John Hanson (ph), the Bank of Commerce, and explained the deal to him and I said, I' ; d like to borrow the money from you to buy this. He said, Alright, I' ; ll do it. I' ; ll tell you how I' ; ll do it: I' ; ll do it for half of the profit. (laughter) BK: Well, now, he didn' ; t hurt himself any--if seventy-five--that' ; s $3,750 is all he was going to charge me for that $15,000 for about thirty days. And that was our last--I was pleased that I could get the money so I told my dad and I went home and I said, I' ; d like to buy your Wolf (ph) royalty. He said, You' ; d like to buy my royalty? Now, how in the hell would you--could you buy it? (laughter) BK: Well, I couldn' ; t have that morning, but I-- (laughter) BK: I could that evening because I had arranged for the credit! He said, Well, I' ; ve decided I don' ; t want to sell mine. Now that was a shock to me, first. The other gentlemen that I knew that had that like interest was in Amarillo. I didn' ; t know whether he' ; d be in, so I did manage to acquire the interest of a gentleman in Pawnee and I delivered it and I got my $22,500, Mr. Hanson (ph) got $3,750 and I got $3,750 out of it, and I thought I had about half the money in the world. Me, with $3,750 and owed no one! I felt mighty good. I wanted to put that money to work. So I was acquainted with Jim Sloane (ph). Jim was the tool pusher for the Roxanna Oil Company. And a tool pusher--that means he had charge of all their drilling tools, and hiring the men and so forth and operate the rigs. And so Jim and I decided to go into partnership and buy a string of tools, which we did. And Jim was fortunate enough to get his assistant pusher--to get his assistant pusher appointed to fill his position at the Roxanna. Here' ; s the deal: that enabled us to borrow from [indecipherable], this assistant, any tools that we didn' ; t have! So that made a nice deal for me, too. And we--we' ; d brought our rig up here north of Yukon, Oklahoma. And we moved it up to Billings where we had a contract for the--for the Billings Petroleum Company. Our company name was Kirchner & ; Sloan, Inc. And we had to have this well started by September 5 to validate Billings Petroleum Company' ; s leases there. So we rigged up and we run the socket out of the back window that you' ; re familiar with, and screwed onto our big-holed stem to bring it into the rig, put the bit on and starts spudding, and we got it up at about a forty-five-degree angle and this thing broke square in two in the middle. We just pulled the top half of it into the rig and spudded with half of a stem, no bit on it! (laughter) BK: Ran the driller, got a little mud out of the hole and dumped it in the cesspit and the lease was validated. Then we were in business, we' ; d made good. (laughter) BK: We had finished that well for the Billings Petroleum Company--finished our contract, I mean--we had no oil. That location that I drilled for them was made by what was called then a doodlebug. A doodlebug were an oil smeller and this doodlebug--this doodlebug or oil finder--he had two black whale bones about that long and about a quarter inch square fastened together at the point with a little bottle on it. And I found out later that little bottle had crude oil in it, and it had crude oil that was produced in the area where he would work. Well, he' ; d made that location, he said, Now there' ; s shallow gas along here, and there' ; s deeper oil along here, so we' ; ll dig this location right where they cross, we' ; ll have shallow and we can get the gas for fuel, ' ; course everything was steam then, and at--do future development on the lease. We completed our contract-no oil, no gas, no nothing. And they paid it. But they wanted to go deeper. That doodlebug knew there was oil down there, so we agreed to drill it deeper at $7 a foot and they paid us over 100 feet. Drill it we did, we drilled it 300 feet deeper and they paid us every hundred feet. But by that time, it was necessary that we got our rig moved because we had a contract with the Getty Oil Company. The Getty Oil Company was owned by J. Paul Getty. This location was on a main (ph) six miles east of Billings. J. Paul owned the Getty Oil Company. His father, Colonel Getty, was the big dog Getty in the oil business at that time. He owned the Minnehoma Oil Company and had mass production in the Garber field. We drove this well for Mr. Getty and we had our bunkhouse there, and it was the cook shack also. Some of the crew stayed in the house and we cooked our meals there. And our meals was either hot dogs or hotcakes. Hotcakes for breakfast and hot dogs at the other two meals. Mr. Getty came out when we were approaching what was to be the objective sand--which was the Hoover sand--and he--I recall he had a little wax moustache, short, that just stuck square off. And when he opened his coat he had a deputy sheriff' ; s badge on his shirt. He wanted to get some Oklahoma tan to carry back to L.A., so he would walk up and down the highway here up by the rig with his hat off and his shirt unbuttoned to get a little tan. Well, he got the sunburn, anyway! We made him a well at twenty-two-sixty. Twenty-two-hundred-and-sixty-feet in the Hoover sand. Made about sixty barrels of that lovely, high-grade oil. And Mr. Hanson, with the present Bank of Commerce, he financed our operation all the way. And I wanted to get the money for the well so I could pay Mr. Hanson and stop that interest. I made out my bill immediately and took that and the log and certificate and I went up to the rig the next morning. And Mr. Whitsun (ph), J. Paul' ; s superintendent, said, Well, now, J. Paul won' ; t be out here. J. Paul' ; s on his way to Los Angeles, and if you don' ; t catch him before he gets away, you' ; re liable to be two months getting your money. I said, Where is he? And he said, He' ; s at the Santa Fe station in Perry. And I hustled right in to the Santa Fe station in Perry. And we had a few [indecipherable] and went in to the waiting room and there was Mr. Getty, and we had a few pleasantries and then I presented my bill and told him the bank and I needed the money. And he said, I' ; m sorry, crookster, but I don' ; t have any checks on my bank. Well, I said, I can fix that. And I stepped up to the ticket window and I got a blank check on the Bank of Commerce at Perry, changed it to his bank in Los Angeles, and made out--filled in the amount of the bill for Kirchner & ; Sloane, Inc. and presented it to Mr. Getty, and he signed it. And we were happy. (laughter) BK: I waited around with him until his train came in and he left. And I haven' ; t seen him from that day ' ; til this. But he' ; s done alright, I understand. (laughter) BK: Richest man in the world. That was quite an experience. He was very pleasant, and very nice. (pause) (papers rustling) BK: Well, I have a lot written down here. (laughter) BK: Our next well, after Mr. Getty' ; s well, was for J.D. Means, and it was by the northeast offset to Mr. Getty' ; s. And while we were drilling that well for Mr. Means, Marland Oil Company was drilling in the northeast corner of the section and we were in the southeast corner of that same section. We made a small well for Mr. Means, but Mr. Getty--I mean, Mr. Marland, on his location up there, got a nice well and that was the discovery well for the great Oklahoma Three Sands pool. And incidentally the north offset to that, my dad had some royalty that he purchased under that, too, that offset--that well was dry. The east offset and for a mile and a half or two miles north and south, and a mile and a half wide, was the Garber field, and it was a dandy. [There are a] few wells producing there today. Now after we finished that well for Mr. Means, I loaded a flatcar. Loaded a string of tool on a flatcar and started for Bristow. And I followed it--that flatcar--in my automobile. And I found out that five bucks here and there in some of these yards will get your car moved pretty fast. It worked in west Tulsa that way--Red Fork, I mean, that way. And we got in to Bristow, there was no trucking contractors then, everything was moved by teams. Most of it was most by teams. So we got Doc Martin (ph), a teaming contractor here, to move us out to Slick, eight miles east and two south of here, for the Caufield (ph) Oil Company. They had claimed this block of acreage there, which acreage and wells in production is now owned by the Krumme brothers. Harlan' ; s here today. By owned by Harlan and George. And I loaded a 14x28 boxcar house for myself and I had the deluxe job: I had a screened-in porch on each end of it and I had a sub-roof over my roof, about eight inches up, where the sun couldn' ; t hit my--the roof of our house directly and the air can circulate under there. So we thought that was pretty deluxe for us. And I built a 14x40 bunkhouse there and I built it right by the bathhouse, and near the boarding house, because all the leases then, if they had any size and employed very many men, they had a bunkhouse and boarding house and a warehouse, just as the Caufield (ph) Oil Company did. I remember, we had a good boarding house there. And it happened that the driller--a driller that worked for me was the husband of the lady that ran the boarding house, and while I wasn' ; t using him on the rig, she was running him around the country buying groceries for the boarding house! So I thought, Well, he can' ; t be doing his work. I went down there about three o' ; clock one morning and there he was, sound asleep on the driller' ; s stool, the tools just swinging, motion very slow, just swinging, wasn' ; t even hitting bottom. So I didn' ; t wake him up, I just wrote his check out because you would carry a time book and a checkbook in your pocket then, and fire a man if you wanted to, because you didn' ; t have to account for his social security or any other take-out. So I just wrote his check out and put it in the headache box there at the rig and told his tool dresser, who was awake, I said, Just call that to his attention when he wakes up. I paid him off. We had a lot of fine experiences out there at that time. I remember at that time the companies--the larger companies--all had oil scouts. And I recall one in particular that came to our rig to get information. They wanted to know how you were coming so that they could buy leases if necessary. I remember one of the Phillips boys--John I think was his name, John Phillips of Phillips Petroleum Company. He wasn' ; t one of the rich ones, that was Waite and his--Waite Phillips and his brother. And this boy, this Phillips, was about my age--around twenty-six I was then. And he came to our rig scouting our rig to see how deep we were, and if he could catch any--take any samples that we had there of sand that we had encountered. And he got to be quite a big shot then. At that time the companies furnished the rig, pipe, fuel, and water on the location for a drilling well. They' ; d build a rig, and the rig was all wooden--no steel rigs then, and they had a 250-barrel tank on both sides of the engine house there for water, and they had water the tracked to the tank. It was filled up, the 250-barrel wooden tank. Well, we got started at Slick. We were on fuel number one, and after we got a little below a hundred feet we went through the line and left the tools in the hole. We had about three feet of line--the line broke about three feet up above the tools. And those drilling lines, as most of you know, have six strands. They' ; re six to nineteen line, they' ; re called. There' ; s six--there' ; s three big strands and nineteen little strands in there. Well, we had the casing rolled down to get over the tools to pick ' ; em out but I couldn' ; t get over it on account of that size of wire there. And we ran a light down the hole to see what condition it was, because you could look down there and see it with a light in there. And it was frazzled out, and I said, If that wire was cut off at the top of that socket, we could fish those tools out. And one of the men volunteered to go down and I thought, That' ; s a foolish trip. And we had [indecipherable] it' ; d break our company for sure. So I went down myself. And I put a felt hat on and filled it with waste up there because you could hear chunks go down there and hit the water around those tools and go ka-PLUNK and you didn' ; t know whether it was a big chunk or a little chunk or whether it was a rock or a piece of shale. Nevertheless, I went down and it wasn' ; t dangerous. However, we were drilling an 18" ; hole and right on top of the ground was cable tools you stomp, you know, and put a little water in the hole and stomp down there and bail out what you' ; ve mixed, that' ; s the way they drill with cable tools. I went down there and [indecipherable] to it, but they let a lantern down on a string so I could see what I was doing and I had a hammer and a sharp chisel and they let me down on derrick line around me so I could stretch out a little bit and sliver myself any time where I didn' ; t figure there was much hazard to it. But I chipped those strands off of there and I [indecipherable] they pulled me out of the hole. However, they did drop the line that had the lantern on it, and it went on down the hole. And then we let the casing roll down over it and put the slips over it and gosh, it came with no difficulty at all getting the tools out once we got over them. But on the next well that I drilled with was for the Caufield (ph) Oil Company and it was the variant north offset to this first well. And we got to the well--I mean, got to the sand around 2,700 in the Dutcher--and the Dutcher over in the Slick area was black oil around thirty-four to thirty-six gradients (ph). And when the--we' ; d shoot a well, they shot all of them over there, when they' ; d shoot on ' ; em, when they' ; d shoot a well, they would load the oil--the well with oil on top of the shot right up to where it was running over the control head because if they didn' ; t fill it clear full they' ; d--when that shot went off it would break the pipe at the top of the fluid. And we tried it once just filling it up into the control head and it broke the control head! So after that, we ran it over. Well, when that shot goes off, it blows that hole full of oil in the air, and that' ; s why it was such a beautiful sight over there. When you come out from Bristow, top that hill by the eight-mile corner--every drilling well was clean, white pine just about the color of that piece of paper, and the producing wells were black because they had been shot, and were all covered with oil. And we used steam for fuel and every drilling well there was that white, crisp steam and it was a beautiful sight. Well that' ; s the drilling well--that fuel drilled up pretty rapidly. Now that-- (pause) Oh, yes, I' ; m on the Sewell (ph) farm there--I mean, yeah. Barney Sewell' ; s (ph) farm, that' ; s where this well was. Second well that I drilled for Caufield (ph). And they were putting the shot in. We drilled the well and we were gonna shoot it. We used shots before--did sixty quarts of liquid nitroglycerin: glycerin shells around four inches in diameter and about five feet long. And you would hang it onto the hook there that would stay hooked as long as there was any tension on the line. And you had to be in there when the shooter was there, some of the crew did. And I' ; m telling you right: when that shooter gets that shell--that glycerin can up there--and poured it down in there, when that hit the bottom of that shell, I mean, it just kind of sets the hair on you a little. (laughter) BK: It looked scary to me! Well, we had a little more gas in that Sewell (ph) than we did in the fuel, and we were putting the last shell in. We got down in the hole a ways and the shooter--the shooter operated the reel that lets the shell down the hole--and his line went slack, which showed that that shell was coming up the hole. And it had unhitched! That gas with [indecipherable] gas in there is gonna blow that--have a good chance to blow that shell out of the hole. And it started going pretty good. The shooter hollered, Catch that shell! And I said, Hell on earth. (laughter) You catch your own shell if you want-- (laughter) And I did like he did, and all the rest of them: I ran! (laughter) And sure enough, the shell came out of the hole and blew the Caufield (ph) Oil Company' ; s rig down. Clear down. None of us were hurt, fortunately, and that wasn' ; t so bad, except for the delay in production and the dollars that it cost to replace this rig. It didn' ; t hurt my tools any. And-- because those shots will go off naturally in seventy-two hours at that depth and in that area. In seventy-two hours that shot will go off by itself due to the heat and pressure on it. And that' ; s what happened on this well of [indecipherable] out there. (Break in recording) BK: --he said, No sir, mister, [indecipherable], said, We done closed the rolls. (laughter) BK: [Indecipherable.] --my partner in Kirchner & ; Sloane, Inc. was Jim Sloane (ph). Jim wanted to continue drilling on a contract basis. I wanted production. So we dissolved partnership and dissolved the corporation and I got--and divided up the tools. We had two strings at that time. And I got a lease on the Henry Fisher farm south of here, and many of you are familiar with the Fishers and some of ' ; em buy their eggs there, I imagine. But we drilled a well on it, I sold some interest in it for to raise a little money to drill it with and I sold Art Stone (ph) on the interest on those. And Art was out there the day we were to hit the sands. And I was in to fifteen-ten (ph) and it was looking good, and I sold Art Stone a ninety-sixth (ph) interest for $3,000 on the derrick floor there just by a shake of the hands--and that' ; s the way many, many deals were closed, just by a shake of the hands. And it wasn' ; t an hour until we' ; d hit--until we hit the sand. And when she started smoking gas we started out of the hole, but the oil beat the tools out of the hole. And did we feel good! And so we had the tanks up anticipating a well, and we had the tanks up so we got out of the hole and tools and closed that control head and turned it into the tanks and it was flowing into the tanks. And we went home that night, nice little fortune between the [indecipherable] bungalow. I figured, I think we' ; re rich. What in the world could we do now for our poor relatives? (laughing) BK: And I went out the next morning: Lo and behold, there' ; s a hundred and thirty-six barrels in the tank and eighteen hundred feet of water in the hole and the well had stopped flowing. (laughing) BK: And, well, we put tubing rods in it and produced it for a while, but it would never pay off. I think I was the only one that got my money back out of the deal on it, and that was on account of that $3,000 I got offered by Art Stone. (laughing) BK: Let' ; s see. The next one--I moved from there over to [indecipherable] 15-10 for the Gotham Oil Company. The Gotham Oil Company was out of Washington, D.C. And M.M. Wyville (ph) was the major holder in the Gotham Oil Company. And M.M. Wyville (ph) was secretary to William Jennings Bryan when Bryan secretary of war under Woodrow Wilson, to give you a little line-up on that. We drove that well for, for Gotham and when she started smoking gas--we had the control head on--we turned it into the pit, turned the well into the pit in case it wouldn' ; t flow. And Mr. Wyville (ph) and I went to Bristow to order out the tanks. We did, we ordered out a full tank and two 250s. Tanks then were all folded tanks, they weren' ; t welded like they are today. But when we got the tanks set--the well' ; d flowed twice into the pits when we got back. When we got the tanks set we picked up 450 barrels of good oil out of the pits. And [indecipherable] wanted to drill the well six inches, and we tried to hit the string on six inches--six inches above the clamps--and clipped it to the clamps, and it didn' ; t change the motion at all. And when it drilled off, it came out of that hole. That well made 450 barrels. That was sixty-one years ago now, today. Sixty-one years ago and that well is still producing between seven and eight barrels in the Meisner sand. George Fargo (ph), who was superintendent for the P-O-N-G, Prairie Oil and Gas, he wouldn' ; t believe it that we' ; d only drilled it that far in. When he--he drilled the offset for his company and he drilled it in two feet. His well was plugged in a year and a half, he got it in the water too far! And this one, I think--this one makes water now, but it still produces between seven and eight barrels. And I drilled a seven-hundred-foot well there and we pumped the water into that, that Boomer (ph) sand, I think it is. Let' ; s see now. (pages rustling) Man, alive. Well, some of you' ; ll want to know how we--how do you get your money for your oil? When you got a tankful, you call the gauger, he comes out and gives you a written--gives your tank top and the bottom and then peeks at it to see how much b.s. and water there is in it and if there' ; s too much of that basic sediment and water in there, why the gauger' ; ll say, Clean your tank, like they told us on this ticket here. (laughter) BK: It says, Clean tank. And they gave you a ticket for each tank and they would pay you on about the twenty-sixth of the month--the twenty-sixth of the following month. Rotary is much faster than drilling with cable tools, so Claude Freeland--which some of you know, he built that home first--home west of the Presbyterian Church here in Bristow. Claude Freeland drilled a well out in the Poor Farm area, which was discovered--the Poor Farm area was discovered by Albert Kelly, Levan' ; s dad--discovered the Poor Farm pool. Claude Freeland had a well that had started off with 10,000 barrels a day of this black Dutcher oil. A grand well. Carter had the offset. They wanted some of that, so they moved a rotary in. That' ; s the first rotary that was in this country, on that offset. And they drilled it down there, set by to drill the hole dry and drilled the sand and made ten million in gas. No oil. They let it blow wide open in the air thinking that it would blow onto oil. But it didn' ; t. You can' ; t blow one open that way today, the Corporation Commission' ; ll be on ya--you got to shut that well in. If you don' ; t they' ; ll shut it in for ya and charge ya. (noise) Pardon me. And, well--this well of Claude' ; s--and Claude would ride with me out to the rig once in a while and we' ; d visit--he told me about that particular well. He said, That well made a million dollars' ; worth of oil in sixty-seven days and never made another barrel of oil. Not a million barrels' ; full, a million dollars' ; worth. And I imagine then that oil was worth about $2.45 a barrel. That' ; d be nice to have in the family, believe me. (laughter) BK: Bristow was a--Bristow was a real boom town and my time' ; s about gone, but I wanted to tell you some of the things that aren' ; t here now that I saw here. We had three refineries here. A Bristow Refining Company out here on the Kelly farm here right at the north edge of town. Wilcox Refinery across the railroad track east of it. And then the Sun Company Oil Refinery up on the hill--one of the old [indecipherable] refineries. We have no refineries here now. We used to have the Republic Supply Company here--that' ; s an oilfield supply company. Across the street was the Oil Well Supply Company. Then after that was the National Supply Company. A couple of blocks north and a half east was the-- UM: Producer. BK: Producer Supply Company. The [indecipherable] was here. Also the American Tool Machine Company and the Bristow Pipe and Machine Company run by Mr. Cushing. Mr. Cushing had a son, Chester--when you' ; d go in there for any fishing tools, old Chester--you' ; d tell him what you want, Chester' ; d say, Oh hell you don' ; t want that, you want to have this, show' ; d me this or that. But after Chester got to drilling for himself he found out that the people that knew pretty well what they wanted when they went in there. And Chester drilled a well for himself just about a quarter of a mile south of this new project on south Chestnut and a quarter west up on the hill. He drilled it with cable tools ' ; til the [indecipherable] broke sand, made a little, well, and his wife dressed tools for him on that well. Drilled it in daylight, and his wife dressed tools. That' ; s something. I only want to give you interesting things, I think. Out northwest of town we had some big wells. I recall one that was drilled on the Abraham, the Ed Abraham farm out there and it got away and went into the air and the wind was right that it blew oil from that well into Bristow and spotted clothes that were on the line, and oil spots on your car. Three miles away! (papers rustling) That' ; s all of it. (laughter) UM: [Inaudible.] BK: No, I don' ; t want to shoot the breeze all afternoon. I' ; m too [indecipherable] have to go, it' ; s time to go on and [indecipherable] around here. Well let' ; s see if there' ; s anything else that I think you, you can' ; t live without. (laughter) Yes, I tell you what it is! Bristow was a boom town, the streets were full and the sidewalks were full, in fact I' ; ve seen teams lined from Slick two miles north to the eight-mile corner of a morning. Just teams loaded out with pipe and rig stuff. And people would like to see--individuals would like to see people mill up and down those sidewalks, and some of them would park their car at a point of vantage and walk home, and then walk back downtown and get in their car in view of the people walking up and down the streets and sidewalks because it was that interesting. That' ; s the Bristow that a lot of you have never known. Thank ya. (applause) Tape ends. audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0015-01_Kirchner,_R_R_Rotary_Club.xml OHP-0015-01_Kirchner,_R_R_Rotary_Club.xml
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Ralph R. "Brick" Kirchner
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1979 interview, Ralph R. “Brick” Kirchner (1893-1990) speaks extensively about the oil drilling industry in Bristow, Oklahoma in the early 1900s, business involvement with J. Paul Getty, anecdotes about Tom Slick, how people handled their new-found oil wealth, and restrictions upon Indians regarding the handling of their own finances.
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OHP-0015-001
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1984
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audio
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Pinehill Histories
Subject
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History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
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Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
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Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
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Oral history.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Robert L. "Bob" McCarty
Interviewee
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Clarence "Boyd" Myers
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https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0008-01_Myers_Clarence.xml
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5.4 OHP-0008-03 Clarence " ; Boyd" ; Myers OHP-0008-01 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Histories Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Clarence " ; Boyd" ; Myers Robert L. "Bob" McCarty MP3 1:|13(4)|39(15)|61(1)|87(2)|112(5)|135(1)|155(11)|174(13)|190(8)|211(3)|226(10)|238(14)|254(7)|288(6)|300(8)|326(7)|345(11)|363(5)|413(8)|433(5)|456(14)|488(2) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0008-01 Myers, Clarence.mp3 Other audio 0 Boyd Myers Family History BMC: This is an interview with Boyd Myers [indecipherable] 10/13/76, time 7:15. BM: That aggravates me every time I think of that—I think the government gave six thousand dollars to that plant down in Texas. And they say it’s gonna be covered with water. BMC: Boyd, on the Pinehill community, to your knowledge when did your dad come into that country? BM: You asked me that on the phone, I think it was 1908, I’m not sure. Boyd Myers talks of his family history in the Pinehill community Bernice ; Boyd ; Boyd Myers ; Bristow ; Burl ; Fay ; Kelly ; Mule Ellen ; Naomi ; Nellie May Blythe ; Pinehill ; Ray ; train ; Virgil Boyd Myers ; family history ; Pinehill Community 232 School Days BMC: To your knowledge, your mother never did go to school there at Pinehill, did she? BM: Oh, I definitely don’t think she did. BMC: How many of you children went to school there at Pinehill? BM: I guess all nine of us did. BMC: Do you remember your first teacher? Memories of school and fairs in the Pinehill community canning ; cattle ; crops ; Effie Curtis ; elections ; fairs ; pie suppers ; Pinehill School ; sewing ; township fair cattle ; crops ; fairs ; school 454 Oil wells, hunting, and school memories BMC: It was on a smaller scale. Well, do you remember hearing say when the first oil well was drilled in that community? BM: No, that was mentioned a while ago. I don’t remember where the first well was drilled. BMC: How old was you when you saw the first well in operation? BM: Well, Bob, most of the wells around there was gas wells. I can remember that they would drill for oil and probably get gas [indecipherable] and they didn’t have any way to cap these wells in like they do now and that gas would roar, come right down the creek and sound like it was close to the house as we were from the creek. And they would blow like that for days before they’d get stopped. Memories of the first oil well, hunting, and school friends and graduation hunting ; Milton Snow ; oil ; oil well ; Olive ; Olive High School oil wells ; Olive High School 705 Work after high school and trying tobacco BM: Well, I went the summer of 1933, after I graduated, I went to the wheat harvest in Kansas. I worked for a dollar and a quarter a day and that wasn’t an eight-hour day, that was from daylight to dark. BMC: That was from sunup, daylight, ‘til dark. BM: And we ate four meals a day. And then later on I came to Tulsa in 1936 and I begged to get a job making thirty-five cents a day. That a seven-day-a-week job, no overtime. I was born at the wrong time. BMC: Anything that you can think of that you’d want to add? Discussion of working after high school graduation, more school memories, and trying tobacco for the first time Beechnut tobacco ; Earnest Rhinehardt ; Floyd Wilson ; Kansas ; light bread ; syrup bucket ; wheat harvest trying tobacco ; working in wheat harvest 935 Farming and a new table BMC: When was the first time that you saw one of the old sorghum mills? BM: Well, now, that wasn’t a cane country right in there so I really don’t remember—seemed like Smith Bruce had one, I believe. Pulled it with a mule, I believe, I’m not too sure of that. BMC: I know there was quite a bit of sorghum cane, I expect about— MM: What did your dad raise out there? What did he raise on his farm? BM: In the agricultural line? Farming memories and the making of a table from a walnut tree corn ; cotton ; grain ; Smith Bruce ; sorghum ; soybeans ; Winkey Creek Bridge Farming ; tables ; walnut 1126 Motorcycles and College BMC: What year—I know that what all [indecipherable] I know that Burl and his first wife made certain trips to California on [indecipherable]. What year did you boys start riding motorcycles? BM: Well, I’d have to do some figuring. I was sixteen when I got my first one. Burl started prior to that, so thirteen to sixteen would be— MM: Twenty-nine. BMC: Twenty-eight or ’29. BM: That’s about it. But Burl started probably in ’24 or ’25. Memories of riding motorcycles and college Bristow ; Business College ; California ; college ; Edmond ; Junior College ; motocycles college ; Riding Motorcycles In this 1976 interview, Clarence “Boyd” Myers (1913-1979) discusses his father’s arrival in the Pinehill Community, his siblings, the Pinehill School and his classmates, early agriculture and cattle, oil drilling in the community, social events such as pie suppers, his early adulthood working in Kansas during the wheat harvest, and the first time he ever tried chewing tobacco. BMC: This is an interview with Boyd Myers [indecipherable] 10/13/76, time 7:15. BM: That aggravates me every time I think of that--I think the government gave six thousand dollars to that plant down in Texas. And they say it' ; s gonna be covered with water. BMC: Boyd, on the Pinehill community, to your knowledge when did your dad1 come into that country? BM: You asked me that on the phone, I think it was 1908, I' ; m not sure. BMC: Now we' ; re on tape. How many brothers came in there with him? How many came in there with him with the Myers family? Do you-- BM: He came alone. BMC: He came alone? BM: He came in on the train, I remember time and time again he told me that he had $7.50 in his pocket when he got in Bristow. BM: When he settled in there, he settled there on the old home place? Or did he settle some place else and then buy the old home place up here? MM: [Inaudible.] BM: I don' ; t know. BMC: Did you ever hear him say what the first place that he lived? BM: I don' ; t remember. MM: [Inaudible.] BM: You got that tape on now? BMC: Yep. BM: Let me tell you something that it wouldn' ; t hurt for this to be taped: You know his nickname was Mule Ellen (ph), did you ever hear that? BMC: Yep, I did. BM: Well, he got the name right there at that school. He was showing off for the girls there, and he rode that mule around that school building and I guess he done everything to-- MM: That sounds like your dad. BM: --that you' ; d expect a mule to do, and they all laughed and carried on ' ; cause the mule didn' ; t behave too well, and that' ; s where he got the name Mule Ellen (ph). BMC: What year, Boyd, was your dad and mother married? BM: I don' ; t know that, either. Well, Verna' ; d (ph) have that in the Bible, she' ; s got the old Bible. MM: We gone and talked to her on-- BMC: I talked to her about forty-five minutes last night. Do--your mother and dad' ; s marriage, how many children were there? I know the answer to it, but-- BM: Nine. BMC: Nine. There was--names were what? BM: Burl, Virgil, Bernice, Boyd, Kelly, Ray, Fay, and (inaudible). BMC: And Naomi. MM: You forgot Naomi. BM: I skipped one, didn' ; t I? Naomi was just younger than Kelly, right. BMC: Right. MM: He needs your mother' ; s maiden name. BMC: Your mother' ; s maiden name was-- BM: Nellie May2. BMC: Nellie May Blythe. BM: B-L-Y-T-H-E. Most people called them " ; Bly," ; B-L-Y, but it' ; s B-L-Y-T-H-E. MM: (inaudible) BMC: To your knowledge, your mother never did go to school there at Pinehill, did she? BM: Oh, I definitely don' ; t think she did. BMC: How many of you children went to school there at Pinehill? BM: I guess all nine of us did. BMC: Do you remember your first teacher? BM: Yes, Effie Curtis (ph). She whopped me about every day. MM: (laughing) BMC: You must' ; ve been an ornery little stinker. UW: [Inaudible.] BM: Don' ; t tell Mike this. UW: --more like our grandson. BMC: What all activities--to your knowledge, what all activity was the school used for? BM: Other than the ABC' ; s, you mean? BMC: Other than the ABC' ; s, other than school purposes. What all was the school used for? What was all the schoolhouse used for, besides the ABC learning? BM: Well, I can remember the pie suppers, I can remember the fairs that I mentioned, and I can remember the elections, and the voting precinct, well elections, I mentioned that. UW: Church. BM: It was used for church, also. BMC: And singing groups. UW: [Inaudible.] BM: Well, church is all I remember. BMC: You said something on--you said fairs. I want you to confirm what I already have: What type of fair was this? BM: It' ; s what they called a township fair. It was a small community fair. BMC: At this fair, what all was exhibited? BM: Oh, just home products like you would at the county fairs, only on a small scale. BMC: Did you ever take anything to these county fairs? BM: I definitely did. BMC: What did you take? BM: Cattle and crops that we grew on the farm. BMC: Did you personally, did you ever win anything at these fairs? BM: Oh, I don' ; t recall but I' ; m sure we did. BMC: To your knowledge, who was the judges at these fairs? BM: I don' ; t remember. MM: [Indecipherable] Dowdy was judge at the-- BM: I think he did, but I don' ; t remember. MM: What did the women show at the fair? BM: Well, they had their sewing and canning and just like they would at the larger fairs, only it was on a smaller scale. BMC: It was on a smaller scale. Well, do you remember hearing say when the first oil well was drilled in that community? BM: No, that was mentioned a while ago. I don' ; t remember where the first well was drilled. BMC: How old was you when you saw the first well in operation? BM: Well, Bob, most of the wells around there was gas wells. I can remember that they would drill for oil and probably get gas [indecipherable] and they didn' ; t have any way to cap these wells in like they do now and that gas would roar, come right down the creek and sound like it was close to the house as we were from the creek. And they would blow like that for days before they' ; d get stopped. BMC: Well they can' ; t cap those-- MM: Did you ask him about the [indecipherable] BMC: Whenever you were growing up, what game was there in that part--in that community? For hunting purposes? BM: Oh, rabbits and squirrels. We' ; d try to trap skunks and opossum and maybe go opossum hunting at night. And fish, we' ; d go down there and catch these little catfish about that big. But we didn' ; t have much time for that, dad kept us busy all the time. BMC: Oh, I know. MM: [Inaudible.] BMC: And your schooling there in Pinehill, do you remember the kids that graduated with you from the eighth grade? BM: Yes, I do. Milton Snow (ph). BMC: Would you name the ones that graduated from the eighth grade with you? BM: Name all of them? BMC: If you can. BM: Well he' ; s definitely one of them, and I can' ; t--I don' ; t remember the rest of them. BMC: What year was that? BM: Well that little old [indecipherable] and I was five when they started, I was born in 1913. BMC: Well, that would put you in school about 1918. MM: [Inaudible.] BMC: And that would put you roughly graduating from Pinehill school in either ' ; 26 or ' ; 27. BM: Well, you figure eight years from the time I started, that' ; d been ' ; 28. BMC: Let' ; s check back here and make sure that that' ; s right. Check back here on 1918, see what, what' ; s on the school rolls in 1918. (sound of pages flipping) BM: I say it' ; d be ' ; 27. BMC: What year, Boyd, did you leave that community? (sound of pages flipping) BM: Well, I went to high school at Bristow for three years, then I missed a year and wound up at Olive and graduated from high school. BMC: You graduated from Olive High School? Then after you graduated from high school you went into what type of business? BM: Well, I went the summer of 1933, after I graduated, I went to the wheat harvest in Kansas. I worked for a dollar and a quarter a day and that wasn' ; t an eight-hour day, that was from daylight to dark. BMC: That was from sunup, daylight, ' ; til dark. BM: And we ate four meals a day. And then later on I came to Tulsa in 1936 and I begged to get a job making thirty-five cents a day. That a seven-day-a-week job, no overtime. I was born at the wrong time. BMC: Anything that you can think of that you' ; d want to add? MM: Did he steal any watermelons? BMC: What, honey? MM: Did you ever steal any watermelons? BM: Not any more than I could eat. MM: Who raised the best watermelons? BM: I really don' ; t know. No, we didn' ; t--I can truthfully say I don' ; t remember us stealing watermelons. MM: Did you ever steal any chickens? BM: Oh, no, no. MM: You didn' ; t go on any of them chicken roasts? BM: No, never did. I' ; ve tried to carry two watermelons on a horse and if you think that isn' ; t fun--and the horse steps on a watermelon. MM: Who was the best girl, who was your girlfriend while you was going to school? BM: Oh, I liked all the girls. But you know, I didn' ; t know there was a difference between boys and girls ' ; til I was about six! BMC: About six you found out-- MM: [Inaudible.] BMC: Yeah, tell me about that, that boy [indecipherable] little bit better than that, he found out about three, I think. MM: Did you ever put any girls' ; pigtails in the inkwell? BMC: Some mischief, what mischief did you get in at school? MM: And I' ; m sure he must' ; ve done some-- BM: Well, I don' ; t know whether you' ; d call this mischief or not but I don' ; t mind telling it, I told you this--they had those outdoor houses at that time, and we was out there one day and that' ; s when I was five years old, that was my first year at school, and Earnest Rhinehardt (ph) and Floyd Wilson (ph) came up there. And they had some Beechnut tobacco and they insisted that I take a chew of tobacco. Well, I didn' ; t want it but they insisted and I started to--well, I put it in my mouth, I couldn' ; t hide it, it burned my mouth. I started to spit it out and they said, " ; Don' ; t spit it out!" ; They said, " ; It' ; ll get sweet after a while." ; Well I don' ; t know whether it got sweet or not, but I started going in circles. And I had the biggest piece of vanilla cake in my gallon bucket that I carried my lunch in, and I couldn' ; t no more eat that cake than I could fly. Oh, it made me sick. MM: What kind of bucket? Syrup bucket or a lard bucket? BM: Syrup, it was a syrup bucket. MM: What' ; d you carry in lunches, we' ; ve never asked anybody. What' ; d they put in your lunches? Biscuits? Probably biscuits. BM: Mom made a lot of light bread. I imagine it was light bread sandwiches. MM: What' ; d you put on ' ; em? BM: Well, I remember one thing was peanut butter and jelly. MM: Your dad always killed a lot of hogs so you had plenty of meat. BMC: Boyd, when was the first time-- MM: Probably sausage sandwich, that I would imagine. BMC: When was the first time that you saw one of the old sorghum mills? BM: Well, now, that wasn' ; t a cane country right in there so I really don' ; t remember--seemed like Smith Bruce had one, I believe. Pulled it with a mule, I believe, I' ; m not too sure of that. BMC: I know there was quite a bit of sorghum cane, I expect about-- MM: What did your dad raise out there? What did he raise on his farm? BM: In the agricultural line? MM: What did he raise, uh-huh, something besides kids? (laughs) BMC: In the agricultural line, what all did Alex3 raise? BM: Well, the money crop, if there was any money, was cotton. And corn and small grain. But in the later years they tried to grow soybeans--and grow ' ; em but they didn' ; t have any way to harvest them. MM: Your mother was good at canning and stuff. BM: Oh, mom worked all the time. She would churn this old-type churn and be reading the Bible or some other book at the same time. BMC: I can' ; t think of anything else. MM: Oh what about that--who made that table and chairs, and talk about how that was made up, your mother [indecipherable]. Somebody told me that you [indecipherable] something you made, a dining room set. BM: Oh, that' ; s after we got into high school. Fay and Ray made the chairs, I think Kelly made the table. MM: Tell us about that. BM: Well, this was mom' ; s idea again. Money was very scarce, we didn' ; t have any money. Lot of times we' ; d be Sunday' ; d roll around and they' ; d all go to town and I wouldn' ; t even go to town. Why should I go to town, I didn' ; t have any money. So this big nice walnut tree was down there close to Winkey Creek Bridge and mom suggested we cut that tree and cure it and use it in the school--at Bristow High School. So that' ; s where the table and chairs went. MM: Tell us about-- BMC: That' ; s what table and chairs-- MM: I know, but I want to know what kind of table, I want him to tell us about it-- BM: Well they was walnut. MM: Walnut? BM: Walnut dining table. MM: How many sit the table, how many chairs? BM: Well I believe there was six chairs, isn' ; t that right? UW: Did Bernice have those? Didn' ; t she have those? BM: No, Fay and Ray made the chairs. And Kelly made the table. UW: Well I know--who has them, though? I know who made them but who has them? BM: Well [inaudible]. BMC: In later years-- BM: Bernie has them now. BMC: Bernie has them now. BM: Right. BMC: Is that right? MM: I' ; ve heard about those, that they were things of outstanding beauty, like art. BM: Well, I' ; ll show you what I made for [indecipherable]. MM: Okay, what did you make? BMC: Uh-- BM: I made a chifforobe out of solid oak. MM: Cut it off the property again? BM: No, no, I did not. BMC: What year--I know that what all [indecipherable] I know that Burl and his first wife made certain trips to California on [indecipherable]. What year did you boys start riding motorcycles? BM: Well, I' ; d have to do some figuring. I was sixteen when I got my first one. Burl started prior to that, so thirteen to sixteen would be-- MM: Twenty-nine. BMC: Twenty-eight or ' ; 29. BM: That' ; s about it. But Burl started probably in ' ; 24 or ' ; 25. BMC: And how many of you boys at the present time, how many boys still ride those motorcycles? BM: Fay rides as a hobby. MM: Kelly? Does he ride? UW: Burl still rides [indecipherable]. BMC: Well that time I talked to Burl, he was, he was talkin' ; about hunting, hunting deer. BM: Well he sold his motorcycle and I doubt whether he rides now or not. MM: Kelly probably rides to games-- BM: Well I' ; m sure Kelly rides with his kids. BMC: Well is Kelly, is he still in the trick riding business? BM: Oh, no, no. Kelly got banged up and then he, he wouldn' ; t look at a motorcycle until the kids got of age and then he got back into it again. But no trick riding or anything like that. BMC: Just normal, just normal everyday riding. MM: Well the kids your age, all of you kids are better than average educated. How many of you went to college? BM: Well, I don' ; t know whether we' ; re better than average. We, we finished high school and Kelly went a little bit to the junior college there in Bristow. UW: Brooke (ph) went on to business college. BM: Yeah, she went to business college. UW: And Bernice-- BM: Well, now, she went to Edmond. UW: She was-- BM: --to teacher' ; s college. UW: --engineering-- BM: But she probably wouldn' ; t even want to hear about that. She started, and would go a while and then have to teach and then go back again and have to teach on account of finances-- UW: I think it' ; s commendable that people can do that-- BMC: Yes, I agree, but I really think that-- MM: I think, I think, I know that they did better than average-- UW: It' ; s hard to do, but they, you know, she did it. BM: Well, mom was the driver along that line. She always encouraged education. And believe it or not, they wanted to send me on to engineering school, but I couldn' ; t--I couldn' ; t stand for them to be working at home and me be off to school. UW: [Inaudible.] end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0008-01_Myers_Clarence.xml OHP-0008-01_Myers_Clarence.xml
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Title
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Clarence "Boyd" Myers
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 interview, Clarence “Boyd” Myers (1913-1979) discusses his father’s arrival in the Pinehill Community, his siblings, the Pinehill School and his classmates, early agriculture and cattle, oil drilling in the community, social events such as pie suppers, his early adulthood working in Kansas during the wheat harvest, and the first time he ever tried chewing tobacco.
Identifier
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OHP-0008-01
Date
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1973-10-13
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audio
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16ed27d65dcec60a390ee9d81fe8af41
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Title
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Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
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Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
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Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert L. "Bob" McCarty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Loyd Raymond Bruce
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https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0008-02_Loyd_Bruce.xml
Interview Keyword
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“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Pinehill, Bruce, cattle drives, school, Heyburn, crops, landrun, electricity, movies
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5.4 OHP-0008-02 Loyd Raymond Bruce OHP-0008-02 'Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive' Parkhill Community Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Pinehill, Bruce, cattle drives, school, Heyburn, crops, landrun, electricity, movies Loyd Raymond Bruce Robert L. "Bob" McCarty MP3 1:|12(16)|22(1)|34(3)|45(13)|52(10)|65(15)|80(14)|93(9)|120(14)|137(2)|147(7)|164(15)|178(7)|197(5)|222(15)|249(10)|283(15)|305(2)|326(7) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0008-02 Bruce, Loyd.mp3 Other audio 0 Bruce Family migrates to Pinehill BM: [Inaudible] --in their living room, 10/13/76, ten minutes ‘til 9 o’clock. MM: [Inaudible.] BM: Loyd, to your knowledge in your research that you’ve done on the Bruce family, would you say they were the—some of the first people that came in to the Pinehill community? LB: Yes, according to the information that I have on our family they migrated from Missouri into there just east of Oklahoma City in 1889, 1890 and ’91 during those runs from the Kansas line, and my father made the run in 18—either 1889 or ’90, I haven’t been able to determine for sure, and staked a claim just east of Oklahoma City. He was fifteen years old at that time and had to wait for his older sister who was legal—of legal age—help him make that claim. Then they stayed there for a few years, I’m not sure exactly how many, but they settled in what is now Creek County--it was Indian Territory then—near the Pinehill community, and my grandfather Coleman Bruce and wife Alpha Bruce had come after the claims were staked east of Oklahoma City. They had come, moved their family here and they built a rock house east of the last Pinehill school, down near Polecat Creek bottoms, and raised their family—at least partially raised their family there. So I’m sure that they settled sometime between 1895 and possibly 1898 in that area and it’s my understanding that they were the first white people in that part of the country at that time. Discussion of the Bruce Family migrating to the Pinehill area in the late 1800s. Alpha Bruce ; Bruce ; Coleman Bruce ; Indian Territory ; landrun ; Loyd Raymond Bruce ; Pinehill Landrun ; migration ; pinehill 175 Crops and Cattle BM: To the best of your knowledge, do you have any idea what their first crops were whenever they came in there? LB: I heard them mention corn all the way back, and I heard the crop of maize mentioned being raised, and kaffir corn. Cotton came around sometime but it’s my understanding that it was several years later, possibly after statehood, before cotton became popular in Oklahoma. Discussion of cattle drives and cattle sales. Albert Kelly ; Bristow Depot ; carload ; cattle ; cattle drive ; corn ; cotton ; crops ; kaffir corn ; railhead ; railroad ; statehood ; W.O.Baker cattle drives ; crops ; farming ; railroads 416 School days and fairs BM: Alright, we’ll move on down to the school. To your best memory on the school itself, how many schools were built there, Loyd? LB: I can only recall the last school that was built there. I went from primary to the eighth grade there, however I heard before, I’ve heard it talked in the family that there were a total of three schools and a church associated with one of those schools. I think initially there was a church that—it may have been one building that was used as a church and a school. And this may have happened to more than one of the schools, but I remember that one building served as a school and a church for the neighborhood. Discussion of various activities held at the school pie suppers ; school ; township fair ; voting precinct school 526 Heyburn Lake BM: --to your knowledge, when did the government come in and go to buying up that land along the creeks and bottoms there in that community? LB: This would’ve had to be in ’46—no, correction, about ’47 or ’48 they did the actual purchasing of it. And then I think maybe the construction of the dam and so forth was a year or two later. BM: Do you have any idea how many people was affected by— MM: Displaced. Discussion of Heyburn Lake being built and families displaced displacement ; Heyburn ; lake Heyburn Lake 683 Christmas Programs, Pie Suppers, and Electricity MM: --talk about the Christmas tree, the Christmas programs. What did they [inaudible] LB: Oh yeah, I remember the Christmas programs. It used to be one of our days of enjoyment planning for the Christmas tree because usually the kids got out of school and the neighborhood, one of the neighborhood residents would volunteer a truck and we would go up into the Keystone area and cut a Christmas tree a few weeks in advance of Christmas, and this was a treat in itself to get away from school. Then we would bring it back and take part in decorating the tree and we got away from some of our usual school chores and enjoyed doing these things. Then at the time of the actual Christmas program there were, well—I’m leaving something out, the box suppers that was held, the pie suppers and so forth to raise funds for the Christmas program was also part of this sequence of events, and when the money from that came in then there was candy and nuts and apples and oranges and things that were a treat to us in those days that are common now. They were provided for all of us and in some cases it was for needy people who really appreciated it, and it turned out to be a very successful gathering and festive time at Christmastime. MM: Now what did the boxes and pies sell for at those pie suppers? Discussion of entertainment, school days, and sources of power Christmas program ; electricity ; gasoline lanterns ; kerosene lamps ; movies ; pie suppers ; potbellied stove ; school ; western movie Christmas programs ; electricity ; school life 929 Watermelons, Chickens, and School Memories MM: Did you ever steal any watermelons? LB: (laughs) Gosh, that’s like asking me if I ever lived. MM: Who raised the best watermelons? LB: I would say—well, there was Walter Reed east of us raised real good watermelons. John Mizell (ph) raised real good watermelons. And I think his were the best because we felt he was the meanest. And it took a little more risk to climb over his fence and get his watermelons, so I think they— MM: Did you ever ride your horse with a watermelon underneath your arm? Memories of school days, stealing watermelons, and old girlfriends Alton McCarty ; CHarlene Digby ; chicken ; Fay Myers ; John Mizell ; lunch pail ; Polecat Creek ; Rosalina Vanmeter ; Walter Reed ; watermelon chicken ; school ; watermelon In this 1976 interview, Loyd Raymond Bruce (1920-2006) discusses his family’s early settlement of the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma. He describes early crops and cattle shipments on the railroad, community social programs such as pie suppers, life before electricity, early schools in the community, and the impact of the construction of Heyburn Lake upon the community. BM: [Inaudible] --in their living room, 10/13/76, ten minutes ' ; til 9 o' ; clock. MM: [Inaudible.] BM: Loyd, to your knowledge in your research that you' ; ve done on the Bruce family, would you say they were the--some of the first people that came in to the Pinehill community? LB: Yes, according to the information that I have on our family they migrated from Missouri into there just east of Oklahoma City in 1889, 1890 and ' ; 91 during those runs from the Kansas line, and my father made the run in 18--either 1889 or ' ; 90, I haven' ; t been able to determine for sure, and staked a claim just east of Oklahoma City. He was fifteen years old at that time and had to wait for his older sister who was legal--of legal age--help him make that claim. Then they stayed there for a few years, I' ; m not sure exactly how many, but they settled in what is now Creek County--it was Indian Territory then--near the Pinehill community, and my grandfather Coleman Bruce and wife Alpha Bruce had come after the claims were staked east of Oklahoma City. They had come, moved their family here and they built a rock house east of the last Pinehill school, down near Polecat Creek bottoms, and raised their family--at least partially raised their family there. So I' ; m sure that they settled sometime between 1895 and possibly 1898 in that area and it' ; s my understanding that they were the first white people in that part of the country at that time. BM: Uh, there has been other names mentioned. This George Lindsey, what--what connection was George Lindsey to the Bruces? LB: George Lindsey was my grandfather on my mother' ; s side. He moved in to that area from Kansas, but the year that he moved there I can' ; t recall exactly. I do think it was some few years later than the Bruces settled there. He moved into that area and became associated with the guardianship of some of the Indian children there. He brought his family there and settled about a half a mile west of the first Pinehill school and church in the latter 1890s or it could' ; ve been slightly after 1900. BM: To the best of your knowledge, do you have any idea what their first crops were whenever they came in there? LB: I heard them mention corn all the way back, and I heard the crop of maize mentioned being raised, and kaffir corn. Cotton came around sometime but it' ; s my understanding that it was several years later, possibly after statehood, before cotton became popular in Oklahoma. BM: I have pretty well pinpointed on the cotton, it was about 1909. Albert Kelly, W.O. Baker, in 1913 built a gin there by the ice plant at Bristow where there was already three other gins there at that time. And it has been pretty well traced out that around 1909 is when the first cotton came in--money crop for the sellers and farmers in that area. The cattle situation--I know that they raised cattle in there. Do you know when they--or have you heard where they took their cattle to sell them? LB: Initially I, it' ; s my understanding that the railroad only came as far as Sapulpa in the very early days of marketing cattle, and ran up to Kansas City. And in the earlier years they took their cattle to Sapulpa because the railroad terminated there. A few years later it was extended on to Bristow and on west and the marketing area, or the area where the cattle was raised was closer to the Bristow depot there for loading, and they started taking them to Bristow and initially they sent them to Kansas City from Bristow. Then later when the stockyards in Oklahoma City developed, they shipped them to Oklahoma City. BM: Now, getting over to the railhead they had these big cattle drives, is that right? LB: Yes, that' ; s right. I can remember as a child myself making cattle drives to Bristow. Car--in carload lots, we would take either one or two carloads of cattle to Bristow and get up early in the morning and drive them there and it made it necessary to drive through the residential area in Bristow and there were times when we were guilty of damaging the yards and the flower beds and whatnot and having to stop and pay people for damages for running cattle through their area. It was quite an exciting time for me because I was a child, but it was quite a responsibility for the adults at the time. BM: When you said " ; carload lots," ; how many did they count as a car? LB: As I remember, a carload at that time was ninety head. BM: So then you would take as high as 180 head at a time in to be shipped out? LB: That is true. There was, there was times when the yield from my father' ; s herd was over 200 for that season. I' ; m not sure how it fit in to the carload lots but I remember him selling 230, 240 head per year from the yield from his herd. BM: Alright, we' ; ll move on down to the school. To your best memory on the school itself, how many schools were built there, Loyd? LB: I can only recall the last school that was built there. I went from primary to the eighth grade there, however I heard before, I' ; ve heard it talked in the family that there were a total of three schools and a church associated with one of those schools. I think initially there was a church that--it may have been one building that was used as a church and a school. And this may have happened to more than one of the schools, but I remember that one building served as a school and a church for the neighborhood. BM: What all functions was the school used for? LB: It was used as I said, as an educational purpose. Also a social purpose, they would have pie suppers and this sort of thing where raising money for various functions in the neighborhood. And then it was used for church and I' ; ve heard it mentioned that they had fairs there but I can' ; t recall ever seeing or attending a, I guess it would be a district fair rather than a county fair that they had in the school there. MM: Township fair is what they called it. LB: Township fair. BM: It was also used as a voting precinct, too. LB: Right, that' ; s right, it was. BM: And singing conventions and such as that. LB: Mmm-hmm. MM: We' ; ve never heard anything talked about a Christmas tree. BM: Loyd, to your-- MM: --Christmas program-- BM: --to your knowledge, when did the government come in and go to buying up that land along the creeks and bottoms there in that community? LB: This would' ; ve had to be in ' ; 46--no, correction, about ' ; 47 or ' ; 48 they did the actual purchasing of it. And then I think maybe the construction of the dam and so forth was a year or two later. BM: Do you have any idea how many people was affected by-- MM: Displaced. BM: --displacement of the government coming in and buying this, this land up and erecting this dam? LB: Mmm, that would take some thinking. There were several families, several homes relocated. Several families and offhand I would say upwards of 25 families which might involve two or three hundred people were affected or relocated because of the construction of the lake project there. BM: I know there is a lot of hard feelings on the lake, but how do you feel personally, your personal opinion, about that lake? LB: Well I, I feel like it depends on how you look at it. I think for the public good, the public in general, it has been good because it has offered a flood control project that saved a lot of valuable bottom land below it. It' ; s also offered a recreational and park atmosphere for people who want to go out for recreation on their time off. And looking at it from that point of view I think it' ; s been a success and beneficial to those particular people involved. If you look at it from the point of view of the people who has their history and heritage in that area, I feel that they feel that they' ; ve lost something, that it no longer represents what they remember as the area they grew up in and if it was their intention and goal to live in that area the rest of their life, I can see where they would be highly disappointed. BM: Good enough. (pause) MM: --talk about the Christmas tree, the Christmas programs. What did they [inaudible] LB: Oh yeah, I remember the Christmas programs. It used to be one of our days of enjoyment planning for the Christmas tree because usually the kids got out of school and the neighborhood, one of the neighborhood residents would volunteer a truck and we would go up into the Keystone area and cut a Christmas tree a few weeks in advance of Christmas, and this was a treat in itself to get away from school. Then we would bring it back and take part in decorating the tree and we got away from some of our usual school chores and enjoyed doing these things. Then at the time of the actual Christmas program there were, well--I' ; m leaving something out, the box suppers that was held, the pie suppers and so forth to raise funds for the Christmas program was also part of this sequence of events, and when the money from that came in then there was candy and nuts and apples and oranges and things that were a treat to us in those days that are common now. They were provided for all of us and in some cases it was for needy people who really appreciated it, and it turned out to be a very successful gathering and festive time at Christmastime. MM: Now what did the boxes and pies sell for at those pie suppers? LB: Oh, I can remember pies selling for as little as fifteen cents and then I can also remember some of the people in the area, particularly those who were fortunate enough to have a job with an oil company and a little money to spend, spending as much as twenty dollars for a pie. MM: What' ; s the most you ever gave? LB: Gosh, I would say not more than thirty-five or forty cents, probably. I don' ; t really remember, to tell you the truth. MM: When did they bring electricity in there, that' ; s one that--to the school. That' ; s one thing Bob gonna need to know. BM: When did electricity come in to that part of the country? LB: That would' ; ve been in the latter--that was after World War II, which would' ; ve been in the latter ' ; 40s, ' ; 46 or ' ; 47 as I remember it. We had gas in our home up until that time and the school itself might' ; ve gotten it before. MM: Did they use gas for lighting the school before electricity? LB: No, it was gasoline lanterns and kerosene lamps. Gasoline and kerosene lamps were used prior to that time. MM: What--did they ever put modern heating or did they--what type of heating did they use? LB: They used wood heating, there was a large potbellied stove in the corner with kind of a circulating jacket around it that would circulate the heat through the building. And to my knowledge it wasn' ; t replaced. It might have been in later years. MM: Did they ever put modern bathrooms in it? LB: No. Not to my knowledge. BM: To your knowledge, Loyd, I was told that there was at one time there was a talking movie presented there at Pinehill school. Do you know anything about that? MM: Any movies. BM: Any movies. LB: Yes, I do. I remember a movie, I can' ; t remember whether or not they were talkies or not, but I remember going there to movies, it was quite a treat to go to a movie anywhere at that time and it was a real big time to have a movie out in the schoolhouse. And I remember going to a movie but I can' ; t remember whether it was a talkie or not. MM: What type of movies? LB: They were western movies. Cowboys. MM: You don' ; t remember any of the stars in the movies, or any other things? LB: Offhand I don' ; t. BM: Valerie came up with the, with that first. She was the first one and the only one that I found yet that remember--that said anything about the movies. MM: Did you ever steal any watermelons? LB: (laughs) Gosh, that' ; s like asking me if I ever lived. MM: Who raised the best watermelons? LB: I would say--well, there was Walter Reed east of us raised real good watermelons. John Mizell (ph) raised real good watermelons. And I think his were the best because we felt he was the meanest. And it took a little more risk to climb over his fence and get his watermelons, so I think they-- MM: Did you ever ride your horse with a watermelon underneath your arm? LB: I probably have. I probably-- MM: They say that' ; s quite a feat. LB: (laughs) MM: Did you ever steal any chickens? LB: Yes, I' ; m afraid I' ; m guilty there, too. MM: Who' ; d you steal ' ; em from? LB: I think it was back to John Mizell (ph) again, I mean, he was the one that, that we for some reason we liked to needle him because he was always kind of after the youngsters. We thought he was, but he was really a good old person. MM: What' ; d you do with them after you stole them? LB: We took them down the creek bank of Polecat Creek where we found some clay and rolled ' ; em up in clay and then threw them in the fire and roasted them and-- MM: Did you remove any undesirables prior to, before you roasted them? LB: I don' ; t think we did. (laughs) I really don' ; t. MM: Did you ever play hooky from school. LB: Yes, I' ; ve played hooky from school. MM: When, and why? LB: Well, I played hooky from school one time, I was about the seventh grade and for some reason I didn' ; t make the basketball team and I thought I should have, and our teacher took the basketball team to a neighboring school to play ball and while he was gone, he and two other friends and I, rather-- MM: What two friends? LB: Let' ; s see, what two friends, gosh I can' ; t remember. One of them was--hmm, I can' ; t recall their names, I should know offhand but I can' ; t remember. But we played hooky. MM: What was the results? LB: We played hooky and one of them--let' ; s see, one of them was a Myers boy, one of they was Ray or Fay Myers, I believe. And I was trying to remember, one of them may have been Alton McCarty (ph). BM: You sure it wasn' ; t Coleman [indecipherable] in on that, too? LB: Well, Coleman [indecipherable] may have been in on that, now. I' ; m not sure. MM: Did they ever have any shop-type work at that little school? Never? LB: No. MM: Did they ever--in your time they didn' ; t have the money for it. What did you take in your lunch pail to school? LB: Well, we took what would be considered real wholesome and desirable food now, but then we thought we were kind of underprivileged because we had to take fresh ham and cold biscuits. We didn' ; t have, usually didn' ; t have light bread but we had--we always had fresh ham and we had biscuits for bread and some of the, there were some that were fortunate enough at that time to have light bread and bologna and we thought that was a real treat, but-- MM: Your mother made cake and pie and such-- LB: Right, that' ; s right. Mmm-hmm. MM: Who was your favorite girls while you was in school? We haven' ; t asked this for (inaudible) LB: (laughs) Oh, let' ; s see. Charlene (ph)--her name was Digby (ph) then and she married one of the Vann boys. She was my first girlfriend, and then Rosalina Vanmeter (ph) was also one of my girlfriends. MM: Rosalina' ; s (ph) dead, you know. LB: Yes, she died a couple years ago. MM: You wouldn' ; t care if [indecipherable]. We interviewed Charlene (ph) earlier this year but we didn' ; t have a tape. BM: I think that' ; s about all I can think of, you pretty well covered everything. MM: You never did ride a horse in the schoolhouse did you? LB: No, no. BM: Yeah, he would' ; ve drive on a late model Ford to school. LB: (laughs) MM: I thought he crossed his fingers when he heard that. BM: He drove a late model-- MM: Was you old enough to get in on them-- end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0008-02_Loyd_Bruce.xml OHP-0008-02_Loyd_Bruce.xml
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Title
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Loyd Raymond Bruce
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 interview, Loyd Raymond Bruce (1920-2006) discusses his family’s early settlement of the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma. He describes early crops and cattle shipments on the railroad, community social programs such as pie suppers, life before electricity, early schools in the community, and the impact of the construction of Heyburn Lake upon the community.
Identifier
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OHP-0008-02
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1976-10-13
Format
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audio
-
https://bristoworalhistory.org/files/original/cd182bc2aa252ae10fbaeec1ebffdbca.jpg
f412eea3e0c3fcd3fbf5be988a7ed7c3
Dublin Core
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Title
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Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0008-03_Mary_McCarty.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
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between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the
OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the
“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Heyburn
Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty
Pinehill
OHMS Object Text
This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the
contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka
5.4 OHP-0008-03 Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty OHP-0008-03 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Community Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Pinehill Communit and School Heyburn Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty Pinehill Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty MP3 1:|11(2)|21(5)|33(5)|42(1)|48(14)|58(1)|67(10)|77(11)|87(1)|97(4)|106(3)|113(9)|121(4)|130(7)|136(1)|146(2)|155(6)|162(8)|172(4)|179(1)|186(10)|196(9)|205(4)|214(7) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0008-03 McCarty, Mary.mp3 Other audio 0 Pinehill History This is Wednesday, November 17, 1976, the time is twelve o’clock noon. I’ve had several people ask how Bob and I got into the Pinehill research and history writing. And I thought that I would tape my reasons at least. In May of 1972 Oma Head (ph) was at decorations at 44 Cemetery when I took my mom McCarty out there and she told me that she and Donnie Johnson were going to have a Pinehill community reunion that August. When I came home I told Bob and he was pleased. In July he contacted Oma (ph) and she said, “Oh, we just talked about it, we haven’t done anything about it,” so Bob got busy and he and I contacted a lot of people. We had 82 people present at the Pinehill reunion on August 20, 1972 at Rocky Point. Everyone had a good time and vowed to hold a reunion each year on the third Sunday in August. We elected Chester Wilson as president and a committee of five to assist the president, with Lenora Darnell as secretary. The committee of five were Mildred Kerley (ph) in Tulsa, Frankie McKinzie (ph) Oklahoma City, Chester Wilson Sapulpa, Neiman Mark (ph) Drumright, and Lenora Darnell and Eva Carson (ph) of Bristow. Discussion of reunions in the Pinehill Community and those who helped organize them. 44 Cemetery ; Chester Wilson ; Clarence Myers ; Della Brake ; Donnie Johnson ; Eunice Perryman ; Eva Carson ; Frankie McKinzie ; Lenora Darnell ; Leo Bruce ; Leo pinehill ; Mildred Kerley ; Neiman Mark ; Oma Head ; Phoebe Perryman ; Pinehill ; Pinehill Road ; Rocky Point ; school ; Shepherd Point Pinehill Community Reunion ; Pinehill School 330 Map of Pinehill During research and getting the county records from J.L. Darnell who was county superintendent when I was doing the research, he told me about a map of Oklahoma that hangs—a four, five foot, I would say, map hangs in the courthouse in Sapulpa. It’s either 1902 or 1903 map of the original Indian allotments. I—the names and the figures and the map fascinated me but I didn’t do any—I looked at it and I’ve looked at it several times since and thought how to copy it. We thought of photography and different ways. The people at the courthouse would not let us take the map off the wall to do anything with it because it’s old and it’s fragile. So I got busy with other things. Trying to obtain a copy of the map of the Pinehill Community Augustine Kelly ; Heyburn Lake ; Indian allotments ; Iva Rossander ; J.L. Darnell ; Kathy Thompson ; map ; Pinehill ; Ranger Station ; Rick Cane ; Shepherd's Point Map of the Pinehill Community 750 The Bruce Family, Crops, and School Taping these people, older people, and getting their personalities in them has been a wonderful thing. And to get the feel of community is interesting also. What we found out is this: In 1885 the Bruces, the first white settlers, came into Pinehill community. In 1896 the W.O. Baker came in—family came in. We really have no dates on the people as they came in after that. In 1897, as far as our history can tell, Leo Bruce was the white, first white child born in the community. They were five of the Bruce brothers that came into the community. And some people says it’s a Bruce history—it’s not. They were just the first there, and a lot of people and the ones that Bob and his family knew best—and that most people knew best. They were workers, they were builders. The thing that kept the community alive was the rich bottomlands and then the oil and gas wells—mostly gas wells, of the oil industry. The people in the oilfields moved so often that we really have no history on persons of the oilfield, but the oil industry was one of the team that kept the community alive. Discussion of the first settlers to the area, the Bruce family and the early school days bootleg school ; Bruce ; cattle ; church ; corn ; cotton ; Creek Indian ; Creek Indian Nation ; Creek Nation ; crops ; Della Brake ; grains ; horses ; Leo Bruce ; maize ; school ; subscription school ; voting precinct ; W.O. Baker Bruce Family ; crops ; farming ; school 1093 Railroad and Heyburn Lake When the government surveyors surveyed the railroad for the line between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, one of the surveys—surveyors, Dr. Fath, surveyed the area for oil and gas. He must’ve been a very remarkable man, and we have—were kindly given some photostatic copies of one of Dr. Fath’s books by George Krumme. He—his records called the area the Bristow Quadrangle. The Pinehill community were—was included in it. The second successful well in the Bristow Quadrangle was drilled close to Wild Horse Prairie in section 17-9 in 1911. ‘Producing well,’ they called it. There had been others drilled but that was the second producing well. It was a gas well and it was drilled at depths of 990 to 1,010 feet. And it produced seven million cubic foot of gas a day. Discussion of railroad and Heyburn Lake Bristow ; Bristow Quadrangle ; Dr. Fath ; gas ; George Krumme ; Heyburn Lake ; Kellyville ; oil ; oilfields ; Olive ; pipeline ; railroad ; Wild Horse Prairie Bristow Quadrangle ; Heyburn Lake ; railroad 1335 Repeat of Introduction This is Wednesday, November 17, 1976. The time is twelve noon. I’ve been asked by several people why Bob and I started the Pinehill research and history and so I thought I would tape it today. In May of 1972 at decoration at 44 Cemetery, Oma Head (ph) told me that she and Bonnie Johnson were going to have a reunion for the Pinehill Community in 1972 in August. Mrs. McCarty appears to be restarting her narrative at this point in the tape and re-reading from her notes. Pinehill Pinehill In this 1976 monologue, Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty (1929-2007) gives a summary of her efforts, along with her husband Bob, in compiling the history of the Pinehill Community in Creek County, Oklahoma. She also provides a summary of their findings regarding the early Pinehill School, early settlers to the area, and their efforts to memorialize their research in an informational display at Heyburn Lake. This is Wednesday, November 17, 1976, the time is twelve o' ; clock noon. I' ; ve had several people ask how Bob and I got into the Pinehill research and history writing. And I thought that I would tape my reasons at least. In May of 1972 Oma Head (ph) was at decorations at 44 Cemetery when I took my mom McCarty out there and she told me that she and Donnie Johnson were going to have a Pinehill community reunion that August. When I came home I told Bob and he was pleased. In July he contacted Oma (ph) and she said, " ; Oh, we just talked about it, we haven' ; t done anything about it," ; so Bob got busy and he and I contacted a lot of people. We had 82 people present at the Pinehill reunion on August 20, 1972 at Rocky Point. Everyone had a good time and vowed to hold a reunion each year on the third Sunday in August. We elected Chester Wilson as president and a committee of five to assist the president, with Lenora Darnell as secretary. The committee of five were Mildred Kerley (ph) in Tulsa, Frankie McKinzie (ph) Oklahoma City, Chester Wilson Sapulpa, Neiman Mark (ph) Drumright, and Lenora Darnell and Eva Carson (ph) of Bristow. The second annual reunion was held August 19, 1973 at Shepherd Point with 136 present. We said we had a better time. The reunion was growing each year, we held them each year the third Sunday in August, and we intend to keep on holding them. We have new ones that comes each year and some of the older people can' ; t make it and some just don' ; t care for them. Of course, some of them are quite old and illness and death is taking away them each year. I would sit and listen to people talk and different ones would say, Well, the first school was a stockade school, or The first school was a log school, and I found no one who really knew. In 1974 I started taking notes and interviewing people along in October. Leo Bruce is the only one that I found then, or I find now, that remembers the first school. He wasn' ; t to school age when they were building it and he was watching them build it. He said he got chased home from the site many a time from getting in the carpenter' ; s way. It was built about a quarter of a mile east of the section line that we call the Pinehill Road on the Leo Pinehill original Indian allotment. Then Leo Bruce started to school there in the school term of 1903 along with several of the other children. He told us the name of the first teacher and then the second and Clarence Myers remembered a bunch of the early teachers, Bob' ; s mother started to school in the 1907-1908 and Della Brake (ph) was the teacher that year. She remembered and I was taking the notes very well. We' ; ve had different opinions. We know the first school was built on the Leo Pinehill allotment. It burned in 1909. The controversy was the second school and where this schoolhouse was, but it would--if it was the second school we heard about was built a quarter of a mile west of the first on the section line corners, and it was there only three years. In 1912 they moved the school one mile north and about a quarter of a mile west on the Phoebe Perryman allotment and it burned in 1918. Then in the year 1918 the school records show that the final school was built a quarter of a mile east from that school on the corner and it is the Pinehill School on the Eunice Perryman property, and that is the school most people remember and know as the Pinehill School. All of them were the Pinehill School, buildings burned or changed but the school itself remained the Pinehill School. During research and getting the county records from J.L. Darnell who was county superintendent when I was doing the research, he told me about a map of Oklahoma that hangs--a four, five foot, I would say, map hangs in the courthouse in Sapulpa. It' ; s either 1902 or 1903 map of the original Indian allotments. I--the names and the figures and the map fascinated me but I didn' ; t do any--I looked at it and I' ; ve looked at it several times since and thought how to copy it. We thought of photography and different ways. The people at the courthouse would not let us take the map off the wall to do anything with it because it' ; s old and it' ; s fragile. So I got busy with other things. So in this fall of 1976 I went over to the courthouse and stood and copied the allotments off the map, section 17-9 -- township, I might say, 17-9, off from this map because I didn' ; t know very much about maps. I started at the site of the last Pinehill School and just went in a circle around it ' ; til my paper was gone, which was a very foolish way to make a map, I should' ; ve just copied the section of 17-9. I did not get hardly far enough south, so Bob went back and copied them, and somehow in copying and recopying the map was several points incorrect. Kathy Thompson is making a good map for us for the use in the Pinehill stuff. So we just couldn' ; t bear to put an incorrect map out for people to see, so we contacted the map companies in Tulsa to see if we could get a map of the original allotments for that section and they put us in touch with Augustine Kelly. She is the wife of the maker of this original map. We drove to Tulsa. I called her and then I drove to Tulsa and got the copy--twelve-inch square this section. It' ; s made from an obsolete process now and she' ; s very old and ill and when she dies this map will be gone. The newer map makers do not use the process of using these old maps, but I was very fortunate, I bought the copy--twelve-inch square copy of the original map, so Kathy' ; s using it so the map will be entirely correct. My notetaking was very unsatisfactory. I use a brand of shorthand only I can read, so we bought the tape and now we have quite a number of tapes of the people. Oddly enough we found out that people would say things to us for the taking notes that they won' ; t say on the tape. I heard several stories in the tape that some of them, if I thought I would embarrass or hurt the descendants of the original people in the stories that I didn' ; t write down. Some of them I wrote down for Bob and I. And some at the time I wrote down hoping to make a history in booklet form for the people that cared about it. I showed the map to one of the farmers and to Iva Rossander and she said, ' ; Well, what are you going to do with the map when Kathy makes it for you, the teacher makes it for you?' ; I told her, ' ; Well, I' ; m going to frame it and hang it on the wall for Bob.' ; And she said, ' ; Well, it' ; s just a shame to do the map that way, to put it in a private place that way when it would belong to the community of Pinehill and the people.' ; Bob and I next day drove to Oklahoma City and talked to the state parks and recreation division and they told us there that since it was a--the community did join Heyburn Lake, the school district and it was history local and people were still interested in it that they didn' ; t see why that we shouldn' ; t be able to erect an information shelter at the Heyburn Lake to put the map and the condensed history and different articles of history for people to see. We drove--they sent us to the park planning division and we drove to North Lincoln and talked to Rick Cane (ph) there about the map, possibility of putting this information shelter at the lake. They told us if we wanted it at the Y at Shepherd' ; s Point that they would build a shelter for us because of the value to us at least of the articles that were to be put in it, we would prefer it to be put at the Ranger Station and if not there at the picnic shelter on Shepherd' ; s Point at Heyburn Lake. Our plans at this time call for the map, a list of all the people that have ever lived in the community--the township of 17-9, and a key to the map where they can find the area they lived in, or their ancestors, their family lived in. There would also have the plaques that shows all the teachers that ever taught in the school, the main community builders, and the committee that' ; s working on the historical information shelter. Taping these people, older people, and getting their personalities in them has been a wonderful thing. And to get the feel of community is interesting also. What we found out is this: In 1885 the Bruces, the first white settlers, came into Pinehill community. In 1896 the W.O. Baker came in--family came in. We really have no dates on the people as they came in after that. In 1897, as far as our history can tell, Leo Bruce was the white, first white child born in the community. They were five of the Bruce brothers that came into the community. And some people says it' ; s a Bruce history--it' ; s not. They were just the first there, and a lot of people and the ones that Bob and his family knew best--and that most people knew best. They were workers, they were builders. The thing that kept the community alive was the rich bottomlands and then the oil and gas wells--mostly gas wells, of the oil industry. The people in the oilfields moved so often that we really have no history on persons of the oilfield, but the oil industry was one of the team that kept the community alive. The early crops were corn, maize, and the grains. In 1909, cotton came in as the money-making industry. They always raised horses and cattle on the hillsides and in the early years they killed quails and shipped them to Kansas City. There were some game, they used to game, but it was still--needed the money crop of cotton terribly bad. pause in recording --there were many other public buildings in the community at one time for a couple years. Leo Bruce ran a small concession-stand-like store. The school was their schoolhouse, it was their church house, it was their voting precinct, it stood for every--it was used for all community purposes. Their pie suppers, their Christmas trees, the literaries. When I first heard--I' ; d never heard the word until they were talking about it, it fascinated me. They were--people were [indecipherable] and they sang, read poetry, whatever they wanted to do to entertain each other during the winter season. In the early days the school was only three months--November, December, and January, and then later years it was, they had school then during June, July, and August, and then the winter months were lengthened out a little. The early school was a subscription school. The parents each paid so much toward the teacher' ; s salary and they boarded in their homes. The salary was about $17 a month. Della Brake (ph) was the first teacher hired by the state as that. [Indecipherable] looking at the Creek Indian Nations, and they called the schools a bootleg school. It was never registered with the Creek Nation, or Creek Indian Tribe as a school. If it' ; d been done so, the early history would be written history. The way it is, the state has a list of the teachers from 1916 through 1954. No record was kept either in the state or the county offices of the pupils in the school. We did borrow and copy the census books, the school census books that showed all the school age children and young people that lived in the community--but that doesn' ; t necessarily mean they went to the school. Everyone that we' ; ve asked in the state or county offices has been cooperative, they just didn' ; t keep the records. pause in recording When the government surveyors surveyed the railroad for the line between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, one of the surveys--surveyors, Dr. Fath, surveyed the area for oil and gas. He must' ; ve been a very remarkable man, and we have--were kindly given some photostatic copies of one of Dr. Fath' ; s books by George Krumme. He--his records called the area the Bristow Quadrangle. The Pinehill community were--was included in it. The second successful well in the Bristow Quadrangle was drilled close to Wild Horse Prairie in section 17-9 in 1911. ' ; Producing well,' ; they called it. There had been others drilled but that was the second producing well. It was a gas well and it was drilled at depths of 990 to 1,010 feet. And it produced seven million cubic foot of gas a day. It was turned into the big pipeline, eleven-inch line that went from the Glenpool area to Oklahoma City. Oil and gas drilling were prominent in the community from about 1911 on up until recent times--a major part of the community. In 1948 when they bought up the land for Heyburn Lake, they bought--the government bought the bottomlands and it caused a number of families to move out when they bought it. At the same time, the oilfields were dying down, so the community died. The community reached such a low point that it could no longer support the school. Part of the children went to Olive, part to Bristow, and part to Kellyville. I for one watched them build Heyburn Lake and we' ; ve used it for recreational purposes every year since it was built. All the--all the time since it was built. To some of the older families it was such a heartbreak. It tore up their farms, it took out the productive land, and they didn' ; t want the school to go. I can see that very well. pause in recording Incidentally, the first school was a frame school. All the schools were frame schools, as we know them, there were no log schools involved and I had the Krummes to research and as near as they could tell, the Bristow Quadrangle was an area of sixteen square miles, as the term was used in Dr. Fath' ; s book. pause in recording This is Wednesday, November 17, 1976. The time is twelve noon. I' ; ve been asked by several people why Bob and I started the Pinehill research and history and so I thought I would tape it today. In May of 1972 at decoration at 44 Cemetery, Oma Head (ph) told me that she and Bonnie Johnson were going to have a reunion for the Pinehill Community in 1972 in August. So long in July, Bob contacted Oma (ph) and she said, ' ; Oh, they had talked about it but had done nothing about it so Bob and I got busy and contacted various people. We had the reunion August 20, 1972 at Rocky Point. Eight-two people were present. Everyone had a good time and voted to hold the reunions each year the third Sunday in August. We elected Chester Wilson as president and a committee of five to assist the president with Lenora Darnell as secretary. The committee of five were Mildred Kerley (ph) in Tulsa, Frankie McKinzie (ph) Oklahoma City, Chester Wilson Sapulpa, Lehman Mark (ph) Drumright, Lenora Darnell and Eva Patterson (ph) of Bristow. The second annual reunion was held August 19, 1973 at Shepherd' ; s Point. We had 136 present. Chester just wouldn' ; t--did not work at being the president so he just told me, ' ; Well, Bob did the work this year, I didn' ; t, I just accepted the position,' ; so since then Bob has been officially president of the Pinehill Reunion and I have been the--assisting him. Sitting at the reunions, I did not go to Pinehill School so sitting at the reunions listening to other people talk of Bristow-- end of recording 1 audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0008-03_Mary_McCarty.xml OHP-0008-03_Mary_McCarty.xml
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This field should be added if you are using the Philly Theme with your OHMS
Plugin Suite. Consult the Philly Theme User Guide for details.
5010
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 monologue, Mary Lee (Fuller) McCarty (1929-2007) gives a summary of her efforts, along with her husband Bob, in compiling the history of the Pinehill Community in Creek County, Oklahoma. She also provides a summary of their findings regarding the early Pinehill School, early settlers to the area, and their efforts to memorialize their research in an informational display at Heyburn Lake.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OHP-0008-03
Subject
The topic of the resource
Pinehill Communit and School
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1976-11-17
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
-
https://bristoworalhistory.org/files/original/7458576b2256960266608938b37dd941.jpg
e63d20283fc90287b998fe93091e12c7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert L. “Bob” McCarty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann
OHMS Object
This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS
Viewer)
https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0001-01_Carrie_Vann.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration
between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the
OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the
“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Pinehill
school
fairs
OHMS Object Text
This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the
contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka
5.4 OHP-0001-001 Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann OHP-0001-01 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Community Bristow Historical Society, Inc. History of Pinehill Community Pinehill school fairs Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann Robert L. “Bob” McCarty MP3 1:|36(2)|68(7)|103(12)|121(5)|141(15)|181(9)|206(9)|222(4)|242(2)|269(2)|294(3)|307(8)|320(4)|341(2)|371(2)|400(13)|424(16)|461(1)|498(2) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0001-01 Vann, Carrie.mp3 Other audio 0 Spelling Bees and School CV: Which was the most dangerous—water or fire. BM: Yeah. CV: You know, fire killed [inaudible]. MM: Well I can’t think of what [inaudible] Memories of spelling bees and school in the Pinehill community Charlie Dressler ; Ellis Head ; Floyd Wilson ; Howard Baker ; Mosquiter Creek ; schoolhouse ; singing ; spelling bees ; Virgil School ; Spelling Bees 235 Teachers and getting into trouble BM: Uhh, what about those spankings? (tape interference) CV: Well, in the evenings, y’know, we’d all walk home together on the road ‘til we’d get to Mosquito creek, or sometimes I would go on with a bunch up to the next corner, on the south up there where we lived. BM: Where the other school that—where the first schoolhouse was. CV: Yeah. And--well not hardly that far. And momma, she kept tellin’ me not to do it, to come on home. And one evening I—told me not to do that no more. Next evening I did, I went up there and I got a whoopin’ when I got home. (laughs) Memories of getting into trouble as kids and the first teachers of Pinehill Edith Whiteneck ; Ethel Logan ; school ; teacher school ; teachers 389 Death of Alvin Hicks CV: Yeah, I think that’s the way it was because I know, uh, we didn’t live down there too long ‘til we moved up here on this [indecipherable] and, uh, he was teachin’ school— BM: He was teaching school when— CV: Well when my brother got killed. Alvin. BM: When Alvin got killed, well, he was the teacher there then. That was Alvin Hicks. Okay, then After Alvin Hicks there was who. Carrie Vann speaks on the death of her brother Alvin Hicks. Alvin Hicks ; stalk cutter ; teacher Alvin Hicks ; teacher 533 Families in Pinehill CV: And you haven’t talked to any of the Vanns, or— BM: No, uh, you’re the first, uh, we just got this thing today, got ahold of-- CV: I guess I better let [indecipherable] let them talk. BM: Well you tell what you can and on that part, I’ll come back to that, and, uh—it was after you and Virgil-- A discussion on the families living in the Pinehill community Abner Bruce ; Annie Pinehill ; buggies ; Iva Ware ; Jay Crawford ; John Wilson ; Milk ; Naomi Ballard ; Owen Ware ; Perrymans ; Phoebe ; revival ; Sally Pinehill ; sapulpa ; Sister Mary ; Smith Bruce ; train ; W.O. Baker Pinehill Families 908 Fairs BM: Tell us about this fair situation. VV: Well, I don’t— MM: Uh, Alex—you might start with Alex— VV: Well, really, I don’t know, I think Alex Myers was one of the judges, wasn’t he? Of the milk cows? CV: I don’t remember. VV: Oh yeah, I’m sure he was, uh, you can have these old timers like John or somebody can tell you more about that, but I can’t, ‘cause they—I was just a kid, you know, ‘bout seven years old. Discussion of fairs in Pinehill Alex Myers ; church ; Deep Fork ; fair ; Judges ; Pinehill Fairs 1010 Bruce Family and Playing in the Creek VV: And old Smith Bruce, I heard him talk, you know, he, he might’ve, uh, raised some big ones. All I know, I know he raised a lot of cane down there, I shipped cane for him myself. MM: Now, honey, you don’t put the ashes in her vases-- CV: No, here, right here, that’s what it’s for— VV: Now I just don’t remember anything about the watermelon. CV: Well, you wasn’t born then, when what I’m talkin’ bout— Memories of playing in the creek chicken house ; creek ; Smith Bruce creek ; rooster In this 1976 interview, Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann (1900-1982) discusses the history of the Pinehill Community outside of Bristow, Oklahoma in the early 1900s, including the first teachers at the school and her classmates, her childhood, courting her husband Virgil Vann, social events such literaries, and the childhood death of her brother Alvin. CV: Which was the most dangerous--water or fire. BM: Yeah. CV: You know, fire killed [inaudible]. MM: Well I can' ; t think of what [inaudible] pause in recording BM: People had a lot of fun at ' ; em. CV: Yeah. pause in recording CV: You know, even the grown people would help out in those. You remember the sp--oh, you don' ; t remember the spelling bees, do you? BM: Yeah. CV: And the older folks would spell against one another, and I know my mother won one time. BM: And it' ; s, uh, the last one in. CV: Yeah, and the word was " ; recollect." ; I' ; ll never forget that word, " ; recollect." ; They all missed it but her. (laughs) pause in recording CV: Stuff like colored people. BM: Mmm-hmm. CV: [Indecipherable] but I--I just can' ; t figure out, well, Baker boy, y' ; know, that-- BM: Which one is that? CV: Howard. BM: Howard Baker. CV: Yeah, he went to school there, and then the oth--George, was it? BM: Geo--uh, Matt. CV: Matt. BM: Yeah, that--I think that picture that I was talkin' ; --I think he' ; s in that. MM: Didn' ; t they have some singing at the literaries? CV: Oh, yeah, they had just a--children' ; d say it was-- MM: Singing. CV: Oh, singing? MM: Different adults sang songs? CV: I don' ; t think we did. Only at church, y' ; know, Sunday School, but on the lit-- MM: You had church and Sunday School in the schoolhouse, too. CV: Mmm-hmm. When we moved up this country, did youse live here? In around in here? BM: Aww, see, mom and dad was, was, married here. In 19-and-19, I think. CV: Yeah, yeah I can remember when they got married. MM: Mom went to school out there. CV: Yeah, she did. BM: 19-and-12. CV: But I' ; m talkin' ; ' ; bout her momma and daddy. BM: Aww, no, they came to Oklahoma in 19-and-07. CV: Seven, well that' ; s the year, then, when we moved down here, we moved in about 1912, I think. [Indecipherable] got the schoolhouse and then Charlie Dressler owned the place and dad rented it from him. BM: He lived down on the Charlie Dressler place. CV: Right south of the schoolhouse. BM: Right south of the schoolhouse, that would be down-- CV: It' ; s right close to the little creek. BM: Be Mosquiter Creek. CV: Mosquiter Creek, yeah. On--we lived on the north side. BM: You had it on the north side--you must' ; ve lived in there where Ellis Head lived over there. CV: Well, that' ; s-- BM: You lived there where Ellis-Ellis and Mickey lived there for years. CV: Yeah, yeah, um-hmm, that' ; s the place we lived. And I was trying to think--Mickey and I, you know, [inaudible] Vann that year, and I remember Floyd Wilson, he was just a baby. (laughs) And, I know a [indecipherable], we' ; d pack him around, take care of him. But that--I don' ; t remember ' ; em singing, only just in church. I know they had reading, Da--I can remember--when I say " ; Daddy" ; I mean Virgil, I remember him singin' ; a song about the grasshopper, and he still knows that, it' ; s a reading, rather, you know, and he still knows that good. MM: I asked Virgil if-- pause in recording BM: Back up-- pause in recording BM: Uhh, what about those spankings? (tape interference) CV: Well, in the evenings, y' ; know, we' ; d all walk home together on the road ' ; til we' ; d get to Mosquito creek, or sometimes I would go on with a bunch up to the next corner, on the south up there where we lived. BM: Where the other school that--where the first schoolhouse was. CV: Yeah. And--well not hardly that far. And momma, she kept tellin' ; me not to do it, to come on home. And one evening I--told me not to do that no more. Next evening I did, I went up there and I got a whoopin' ; when I got home. (laughs) BM: You got a paddlin' ; when you got to the house! MM: So did the teacher ever paddle you? CV: No, I [indecipherable] BM: Well what' ; s up with the cotton pickin' ; mess that Virgil got into? CV: Well I don' ; t know, you' ; d have to ask him ' ; bout that. He--I know he was a' ; ridin' ; a horse out on the schoolground-- BM: Yeah- CV: --and, uh, the horse throwed him, and throwed him up against a tree. He hurt his shoulder, and [indecipherable] was tryin' ; to show off. BM: ' ; Tryin' ; to show off? CV: (laughs) Yeah. BM: To the girls? CV: We wasn' ; t sweethearts then, we just-- BM: Just tryin' ; to show off to the girls? CV: Yeah. That' ; s what I expect. (laughs) He' ; ll get me for that. BM: Awww, we don' ; t need to let him know ' ; bout that one. When it comes to that one, why, we just shut ' ; im off. Or let it on forward, turn the volume down where he can' ; t hear. CV: But you know the first school was Miss Whiteneck. BM: The first teacher-- CV: Edith Whiteneck. BM: Edith Whiteneck. Okay, now, then. Edith Whiteneck was the first teacher. CV: For me, I can-- BM: Okay, she was the first teacher, period, the way I understand it. CV: Yeah, I think she-- BM: Alright, uh, what was the teacher' ; s name after Edith Whiteneck? CV: Oh, let me see now, the other day I remembered. (pauses) Ethel. Ethel Logan. BM: Ethel Logan. Was the teacher. Was the teacher after Edith Whiteneck. CV: Yeah. BM: Alright. CV: I think that Edith-- BM: Who was the teacher after her? CV: A man teacher. BM: Man teacher then? After Etta? CV: Yeah, I think that' ; s the way it was because I know, uh, we didn' ; t live down there too long ' ; til we moved up here on this [indecipherable] and, uh, he was teachin' ; school-- BM: He was teaching school when-- CV: Well when my brother got killed. Alvin. BM: When Alvin got killed, well, he was the teacher there then. That was Alvin Hicks. Okay, then After Alvin Hicks there was who. CV: He was, uh, drivin' ; a one of them--cuttin' ; stalks, cotton stalks-- BM: Cuttin' ; stalks with a stalk cutter. CV: Yeah, yeah. Stalk cutter. Henry died when that--and he come home from school and he had wanted to ride on that and he got on that thing and rode by himself about a hundred foot and it went to runnin' ; (tape interference) down onto the ditch, the thing turned over and caught him and he was dead. BM: It had cut him all to pieces. CV: Yes. So, and then, I just, I didn' ; t go to school down there so I didn' ; t really know. I imagine Ivy' ; d remember what-- BM: Oh, uh, we' ; ll check with Ivy on it, too. We' ; ve got, uh, a few to go. CV: It was ' ; fore I was married, just not too long afore I was married, when she got married in sixteen? Nineteen? BM: Nineteen--you got married in 1915. So he was killed in 1915. CV: It was the thirteenth--I mean on the fourteenth or fifteenth, I think I' ; ve got it in the Bible. Ivy might know. BM: Ivy might recollect what day it was--what day it was that he was killed. CV: Yeah. pause in recording CV: --went home, you know children used to go home with children. I was with Esther Wilcox that day. (tape interference) --they sent somebody down to tell me about him. (tape interference) CV: And you haven' ; t talked to any of the Vanns, or-- BM: No, uh, you' ; re the first, uh, we just got this thing today, got ahold of-- CV: I guess I better let [indecipherable] let them talk. BM: Well you tell what you can and on that part, I' ; ll come back to that, and, uh--it was after you and Virgil-- CV: I think it was after we was married, or just before. I think it' ; s after, when they did that. MM: How did they run off and get married? CV: I don' ; t know. MM: Are they the ones that were on the train to Sapulpa and got married? CV: I don' ; t think they went very--couldn' ; t have went very far in them days they just had buggies, you know. MM: Somebody went to--who was it your momma used to tell about-- BM: Uh, I think they were married afore. CV: Uh, let' ; s see, when we first come up to this country, down there, they just got through with a revival. They had the biggest revival they' ; d had. And when--they just called her Sister Mary, the woman done the preaching, but I never did learn her name, they just called her Sister Mary. But that was before [indecipherable] BM: Yeah. CV: Grandma and grandpa did. BM: Grandma and grandpa Dot. CV: You know, uh, Mary Bly (tape interference) CV: --and uh, what else maybe I can-- BM: [Indecipherable.] CV: Oh, yeah, Smith Bruce and them-- BM: Okay, Smith Bruce-- CV: --back over here a little, and-- BM: Yeah. CV: And you folks, and Jay Crawford-- BM: Jay Crawford. CV: Yeah, and his family lived on the black--what they called the black place, a little house there in there where dad--your grandfather let ' ; em use it. And, uh, Milt and Phoebe lived there, I remember them, and uh, Sally Pinehill, I remember I went to her funeral. And, uh, Annie Pinehill, the one with the husband (tape interference). It' ; s just mostly Bruces (tape interference). BM: And what was Grandpa Bruce' ; s name, was that Abner Bruce? [Indecipherable] man Abner? CV: I don' ; t know what his name was, we just always called him Grandpa Bruce, he was always--he loved children. I used to ask him to go home with him for dinner, but I--to tell you the truth, it must' ; ve been [indecipherable] the boy' ; s names back then, mustn' ; t it? Would Phoebe know? BM: I' ; d have to talk to her. CV: They made that [indecipherable]. And Naomi Ballard went to school there. And, uh, Wilson? What was his name? John Wilson? BM: John Wilson. CV: His family, they lived there. And uh, Wares, you remember them? And then W.O. Baker and their kids went to school there. And the Ware kids went there, Owen Ware and Iva Ware. MM: What about the Perrymans, was there any of them? CV: Yes, they lived there too. MM: Yeah. CV: The Perrymans lived there. MM: Mmm-hmm. CV: And what was those kids' ; names, I can' ; t think of them-- MM: That would' ; ve been-- CV: Or Parkham, if it' ; s close enough. You know, half the [indecipherable] from down at the cemetery' ; s, it' ; s down on Pinehill, you know, in that creek, Pinehill Creek. And, uh, he died, Pinehill, Grandpa Pinehill died for, when we went to his funeral. And, uh, they put in there his lunch, in a shoebox, they fixed him a lunch, and they put his saddle and then--I don' ; t know whether it was a gun or a bow and arrow. MM: It might' ; ve been a bow and arrow. CV: I don' ; t know whether they used guns then or not, the Indians. And, let me see now. Yeah, they just packed him down there and the rest of them walked down Pinehill ' ; cause it wasn' ; t very far there. BM: I was sayin' ; to her, over in, uh, the road there that [indecipherable]. CV: Yeah. BM: Over there in the creek. CV: Yeah. [Indecipherable.] BM: Yeah. CV: Somebody told me here awhile back somebody' ; d been digging in the graves over there, I don' ; t know if that' ; s right. BM: Yeah. That' ; s what I heard. CV: That' ; s the reason, don' ; t you think? BM: Ahh, I imagine so. MM: [Indecipherable.] CV: [Indecipherable.] pause in recording BM: Tell us about this fair situation. VV: Well, I don' ; t-- MM: Uh, Alex--you might start with Alex-- VV: Well, really, I don' ; t know, I think Alex Myers was one of the judges, wasn' ; t he? Of the milk cows? CV: I don' ; t remember. VV: Oh yeah, I' ; m sure he was, uh, you can have these old timers like John or somebody can tell you more about that, but I can' ; t, ' ; cause they--I was just a kid, you know, ' ; bout seven years old. pause in recording BM: You' ; re on. You' ; re on, buddy. You' ; re on. VV: I can' ; t talk into one of them little old things. BM: No, you were talkin' ; a while ago, you were tellin' ; me all about it, and you--now you, now what about this, uh, prize that you won. VV: Well, I took, uh, I went out in dad' ; s field and got some sudan, you know, and took it up there and won first prize there at the fair. Well they bring their work horses, you know, their cows, everything, they grew everything. MM: ' ; Bout what year did it--what years did that? VV: Well must' ; ve been ' ; 28, ' ; 29, or ' ; 30, in there you know, well, we moved to Pinehill what was ' ; 33 when we moved down there was. They, we -- there to, I mean to-- CV: ' ; 30-- VV: I mean to Deep Fork. CV: It was ' ; 30 when we moved to Pinehill. VV: ' ; 30? So it must' ; ve been ' ; 28 and ' ; 29 when I went to school down there. And they even used to have fair, uh, a fair up here at this church up here, you know, uh, Liberty, okay? They had a fair there, they had one at all these little places around here, they had their own little fair. I can remember, I don' ; t remember takin' ; anything up there but I remember going up there to the fair. That' ; s when the old church sat on back west up on the hill there, you know? And I was a kid goin' ; up there. pause in recording VV: And old Smith Bruce, I heard him talk, you know, he, he might' ; ve, uh, raised some big ones. All I know, I know he raised a lot of cane down there, I shipped cane for him myself. MM: Now, honey, you don' ; t put the ashes in her vases-- CV: No, here, right here, that' ; s what it' ; s for-- VV: Now I just don' ; t remember anything about the watermelon. CV: Well, you wasn' ; t born then, when what I' ; m talkin' ; bout-- pause in recording BM: Alright, now then. VV: --and we' ; d pull it back up on the one leg and kids would get on there and ride it-- CV: --I had some things, I had a basket of the things [indecipherable] and ride it down the creek-- MM: Why was it put there?-- CV: They built it, the boys-- VV: It was up in a great big old elm tree, see-- MM: Oh you built it yourself? VV: Yeah, put a pulley on there and a seat, you know, and we' ; d pull it up there and climb up the tree and get on and ride down the creek, you know, and we had it tied to another tree and you stopped, it was just something to play with, you know. pause in recording VV: And somebody came there and broke some [indecipherable] off and took off, and that was it--we lived back over there by Smith-- CV: Well, we lived down on the corner-- VV: But he found out who it was, I think, but he just let ' ; em go, said they was hungry. CV: Way over Bruce' ; s place, well not way over Bruce, the little Pinehill' ; s place-- VV: That' ; s where your chicken house was, far away, them birds CV: (laughing) VV: Over up on that Pinehill place. pause in recording VV: Well where' ; d you live at? CV: Uh, dad lived up on what call--used to call Pike' ; s Peak, that big hill where you turn, you go down to-- VV: Way up on there on that cave? MM: Yeah, uh, dad lived up there. VV: You know, where they played ball? BM: Yeah. VV: Where it turned west? On the south side of the road just--I was up there here, I was telling Carrie it' ; s still up there, no sir, they had a mother that lived in an old cellar there-- CV: No, we lived in a tent. MM: Albert Cree (ph)-- CV: Dad had the-- MM: Albert Cree' ; s (ph) rooster' ; s who he' ; s tellin' ; -- CV: Yeah. (laughs) MM: What' ; d they do with it? CV: Oh, they--he got after ' ; em with his gun and they had to turn it loose. (laughs) Dad still tells that. VV: I don' ; t remember that. pause in recording CV: [Indecipherable] and that really got him, he said you know' ; d I didn' ; t [indecipherable]. VV: Who was that? CV: [Indecipherable] Bruce VV: Oh. CV: [Indecipherable.] end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0001-01_Carrie_Vann.xml OHP-0001-01_Carrie_Vann.xml
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 interview, Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann (1900-1982) discusses the history of the Pinehill Community outside of Bristow, Oklahoma in the early 1900s, including the first teachers at the school and her classmates, her childhood, courting her husband Virgil Vann, social events such literaries, and the childhood death of her brother Alvin.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OHP-0001-01
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of Pinehill Community
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1976-10
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
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1db4ce2efc85366ed6a04d0158ec1394
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Elsa Ray Self
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0001-01_Elsa_Self.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration
between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the
OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the
“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
church
school
teachers
roads
OHMS Object Text
This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the
contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka
5.4 Unknown Date OHP-0001-002 Elsa Ray Self OHP-0001-02 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Community Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Pinehill Community church school teachers roads Elsa Ray Self MP3 1:|19(8)|45(8)|64(6)|79(3)|98(9)|118(4)|147(2)|173(3) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0001-02 Self, Elsa.mp3 Other audio 0 School Teachers BM: --recording everything you say. MM: It is—oh just stop it just for a minute to, and get start- stop it just for a minute BM: Alright, just— pause in recording ES: The first building was, uh, one mile south of the last building and a quarter mile east. Then the third building—the second building was, uh, a quarter of a mile west of the last building there. The last building was in the corner right here— Memories of teachers and school in the Pinehill Community Bob Lucas ; church ; Edith Whiteneck ; Etta Logan ; Mark Schockley ; school ; teachers school ; teachers 161 Oil, Fairs, and Church BM: Yeah. Now on the history situation, Elsa, is there anything in particular that you can think of that we ought to put down here in this history, that history on that thing? Like these, this oilfield stuff through here--something on that order there, is there any history on that that you can think of that we might ought to put in, in that. ES: No, I think not. This oil development started in here in the early twenties. I’ve got eleven wells on my place here, and the first one was drilled in 1923. And there was a few up in the north of there, north of here toward Pinehill, but I don’t know how close. Discussion on oil wells, churches, and fairs Charles Thomas ; church ; fairs ; literaries ; Mr. Rufus ; oil ; Pinehill ; statehood drilling ; fairs ; oil ; school 353 Land Development and a Hilarious Interruption BM: On developing this thing out this far in this country through here in 19--when you came back through here, who was some of the more prominent people that helped, was helping in on that at that time? ES: On what? BM: On helping get these roads and things built through here? In the community, helping get these roads built and— Discussion of land and road development and a hilarious interruption. Bruce ; Indians ; Molt Bruce ; Perrymans ; Pinehill ; roads ; Stubblesfields ; Velma Vann development ; roads In this 1976 interview, Elsa Ray Self (1901-1984) discusses the first pre-statehood buildings constructed in the Pinehill Community outside of Bristow, Oklahoma, the first teachers at the Pinehill School, the identities of some of the first families to settle in the area, and early drilling activity in the region. BM: --recording everything you say. MM: It is--oh just stop it just for a minute to, and get start- stop it just for a minute BM: Alright, just-- pause in recording ES: The first building was, uh, one mile south of the last building and a quarter mile east. Then the third building--the second building was, uh, a quarter of a mile west of the last building there. The last building was in the corner right here-- BM: Right. ES: Now then, they had a little church house a mile south of that, uh, old building, of the fir--the last building, and it was just a church house that stayed there a year, a few years. (pauses) Now, the people who lived here I' ; ve known many of them. BM: Uh, now, here' ; s a question, Elsa do you remember the first, the first teacher that taught-- ES: No. No, I haven' ; t lived here all my life, so-- MM: Which is the first teacher you remember? BM: Which, which is the first teacher that you remembered? ES: Well it might' ; ve been Bob Lucas. BM: Bob Lucas. Well, see I have one back before Bob Lucas, that was, uh, Mark Shockley. ES: Mark Shockley, yes, I remember Mark-- MM: [Inaudible] BM: Then there' ; s one, uh, one before him, there was a lady before him by the name of Edith Whiteneck and another by Eddie, uh, what is that name? You got it wrote down there, that was after Edith Whiteneck-- MM: Hicks. BM: Hicks, yeah, what was that Hicks' ; last--first name. MM: Etta, uh Edith Whiteneck, Etta Logan, and then something Hicks. ES: Well that' ; s before I came here. I didn' ; t come here until, didn' ; t move here until 1922. BM: 1922 ES: I owned this place since 19-and-02. BM: Well that, that' ; s what I know. ES: I owned this, well, I owned this place since 19-and-02 and I could tell you people who lived here, well, but these uh school buildings here I just know about them. BM: Yeah. Now on the history situation, Elsa, is there anything in particular that you can think of that we ought to put down here in this history, that history on that thing? Like these, this oilfield stuff through here--something on that order there, is there any history on that that you can think of that we might ought to put in, in that. ES: No, I think not. This oil development started in here in the early twenties. I' ; ve got eleven wells on my place here, and the first one was drilled in 1923. And there was a few up in the north of there, north of here toward Pinehill, but I don' ; t know how close. UW: Well that number one was the first oil well that went---ever drilled in here. ES: No it wasn' ; t. UW: At that time. ES: It wasn' ; t. BM: Is there anything that you can think of that-- ES: Now, I went to church in this first building right up here, way down here back before statehood. I remember going there to church before statehood. My father was a minister and he went there and preached once in a while. But then when that building burned they moved it north and northwest. MM: What about the literaries? BM: Do you remember anything on those old time literaries that they had? ES: No. UW: They was over by the time he was back. MM: What about the fairs? BM: Do you know anything about fair that was held? Fairs that was held? ES: No. MM: At Pinehill School itself. ES: No. MM: Starting about middle of 1928, ' ; 29 out there. At the school itself, a fair. UW: Do you know when, uh, that was during Mrs. Rufus' ; time, I was substituting there for her and, uh, they was having a literary going-on there then because I was in a play that was there. BM: Okay--so you' ; re helping out here too. ES: I did a little substitute work there for Charles Thomas. BM: Yeah, I knew that. ES: But not much. BM: On developing this thing out this far in this country through here in 19--when you came back through here, who was some of the more prominent people that helped, was helping in on that at that time? ES: On what? BM: On helping get these roads and things built through here? In the community, helping get these roads built and-- ES: Well, I' ; d say the Bruces, Bruce families-- tape hilariously interrupted KID1: (excitedly) --and the top comes off, and it' ; s got little benches, and everything! Don' ; t we, mama! KID2: Mama! DAD: What the hell goin' ; on here! Somebody been playin' ; with this damn thing again? MOM: [Indecipherable.] No, what ya did, turned on them on or somethin' ; , did you wind it back? DAD: Yeah. MOM: I gotta do it again? DAD: Nope. tape continues ES: And then there was Vann, Velma (ph) Vann was here, he lived here on my place. Stubblefields lived here from 1902 to 1912, they must' ; ve had quite a bit to do with it. BM: Well see, that-- ES: Stubblefield. BM: Stubblefield. MM: What years did the Vanns lived on this place? ES: Well, they lived here, I' ; d say, uh, 1912 to about ' ; 17, 1917. They lived here five, six years. MM: If you' ; d ever let me in it, you wouldn' ; t have got me out, this is a nice, my idea of an ideal place to live. ES: Pinehill? MM: No, this place right here. ES: Oh. (laughs) Well-- MM: What about the [inaudible] BM: Alright, let' ; s kind of-- MM: --' ; cause they still, they still own the property there across from where the school was, they was the Perrymans and the Bruces and-- ES: Yeah, they were Indians. Yeah, they was an Indian lived east of that there and she was, he was Molt Bruce' ; s wife' ; s brother but I forget his name, terrible with his name. BM: Noble? ES: I' ; m not certain whether it was Noble, or-- MM: Well they say one of the Perrymans owned this-- ES: Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn' ; t know who-- end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0001-01_Elsa_Self.xml OHP-0001-01_Elsa_Self.xml
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Elsa Ray Self
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 interview, Elsa Ray Self (1901-1984) discusses the first pre-statehood buildings constructed in the Pinehill Community outside of Bristow, Oklahoma, the first teachers at the Pinehill School, the identities of some of the first families to settle in the area, and early drilling activity in the region.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OHP-0001-02
Subject
The topic of the resource
Pinehill Community
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
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https://bristoworalhistory.org/files/original/f1c97a66f7b2b847344cb950308b73c7.jpg
99ca05401f4ba42b4810f193651248a2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Pinehill Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
History of the Pinehill area north of Bristow
Description
An account of the resource
Several interviews were done by Mary and Bob Mc Carty of people who grew up in the Pinehill area north of Bristow. This collection is the Pinehill subset of the Bristow Oral Histories
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Bristow Historical Society, oral history collection
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral history.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert L. “Bob” McCarty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Virgil Rufus Vann
Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann
OHMS Object
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Viewer)
https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0001-03_Virgil_Vann.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration
between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the
OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the
“keywords” field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record.
Pinehill
school
teachers
OHMS Object Text
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contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka
5.4 OHP-0001-003 Virgil Rufus Vann OHP-0001-03 Bristow Historical Society - Oral History Archive Pinehill Community Bristow Historical Society, Inc. Pinehill Community and School Pinehill school teachers Virgil Rufus Vann Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann Robert L. “Bob” McCarty MP3 1:|32(11)|64(5)|80(3)|103(11)|120(8)|137(9)|154(11)|167(6)|180(4)|194(2)|206(11)|215(10)|232(12)|243(6)|275(14)|284(16)|295(13)|304(14)|314(7)|326(10)|360(10)|374(12)|383(5)|402(11)|420(13)|437(10)|461(14) 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/interviews/OHP-0001-03 Vann, Virgil.mp3 Other audio 0 School teachers and classmates in Pinehill BM: --seventy-six, five p.m. MM: Alright, now— BM: Your first— MM: Just a minute, back up, see if it’s recording right quick. BM: Your first teacher was, the first teacher that you went to was who? VV: [Indecipherable] the best I can remember, it might’ve been someone else before that, but-- BM: You don’t know what year it was she told him, huh? Discussion of school days, classmates, and community events in the Pinehill Community Carl Carson ; Charlie Line ; church ; community ; Dewey Carson ; Earl Phillips ; Elsa Self ; Etta Logan ; Howard Baker ; Indians ; Laurie Vaughn ; Leo Pinehill ; literaries ; Mary Vaughn ; Matt Baker ; pie suppers ; Pinehill School ; school ; teacher ; Walt Biggs classmates ; pie suppers ; pinehill ; school 390 Pitch Game and a poem about a Grasshopper BM: What did you do after the literaries? VV: Sometimes we’d have a pitch game. (laughs) BM: Pitch game? VV: Yeah. The boys would. And then we all got scared one night and we saw the community got tired of it, they got that—they didn’t like it a bit in the world, the board didn’t like it, ‘cause we was havin’ a pitch game. We didn’t mean nothin’ by it, just passin’ the time off. I remember one night we’d just got started, you know, and somebody rattled the door, it’s under the law, they’d already warned us. And “Stop that thing!” And somebody rattled and took ahold of the knob and pulled out on the door, tried to break it in. And we had a lock, you know, but they began to shake it and we all broke out of there. Somebody, I remember, someone, they went out, they kicked a big old chair right in the door and we finally just leaped over that chair, hit the ground, and I remember, it kinda knocked the breath out of me when I went over. (chuckling) It gave us such a scare that that ended the pitch game. We never did try that anymore. That was orneriness. And, oh, I don’t know what made us do that, but we didn’t mean nothin’ by it, you know, just havin’ fun. Memories of a pitch games and a poem from school Art Bolin ; Bob Biggs ; Charlie Line ; Frank newman ; Les Stubblefield ; pitch game ; Ralph Newman pitch game 593 Stealing a Rooster MM: What about Albert Cree’s (ph) rooster? VV: Ohhh (laughs) I’m gonna have to tell that again? BM: Yep! We didn’t get it down a while ago. School boys stealing a rooster Albert Cree ; Bob Biggs ; Charlie Vine ; Earl Phillips ; Hog Barnes ; Lester Wilson ; rooster ; stealing rooster 774 Schoolhouse burned down and moving BM: You said a while ago somethin’ about the schoolhouse burnin’, you said that you knew the reasons why that Ella Bruce (ph) and Willie Wilson (ph) didn’t teach anymore. What was that reason? VV: Well, Bob, the best I remember that I don’t know what time of the year, but I don’t know, it seems like they had their election along in March, don’t the school election? Pretty much. But anyway they had the school election there and they had—one of the parties was trying to put the other one out and put some more people in, you know, on the school board. Well, all of the community come out and those that didn’t, why, they’d have the hacks and they’d have buggies and somebody would go after ‘em and bring ‘em in and get ‘em to vote. And so that night, why, after the election, why the schoolhouse burned down. And they wasn’t no more school that year. Memories of the schoolhouse burning down and moving Big Deep Fork ; cotton ; crop ; Ella Bruce ; fire ; Newby ; Pinehill ; school ; schoolhouse ; Willie Wilson school 1136 Oil wells and the Vann children BM: Another question, Virg. Do you remember, or do you remember hearing them say, when the first oil well was drilled in this community? VV: Yeah, I think I do. Pretty sure I do. It was about a mile south of the W.O. Baker place. Glen Freeland and his brother was in the drillin’ business at time. Glen is still livin’. That’s where the first oil well was drilled, I think. I think he’s still livin’ but it ain’t certain for me. BM: Well would Glen Freeland still be around the Bristow area? VV: Yeah. I think he is. He got some wells back over there. The first oil well being drilled and the names of the Vann children covered wagons ; Donald Christopher Vann ; Eliza Elizabeth Grimes ; Glen Freeland ; oil well ; W.O. Baker children ; oil 1394 Courtship and showing off for girls BM: Alright, you and Carrie’s courtship, how did that go? When you were courtin’ Carrie, when you was courtin’ Carrie, how did that take place? VV: How’d it take place? BM: Yeah. VV: Well I got stuck on her. (laughs) I just got kind of stuck on her and we went together, was goin’ together. She wasn’t but fifteen when we married and we didn’t go together—how long we go together, mom? Discussion of courtship with Carrie, showing off, and watermelon stealing courtship ; horses ; Louis Masterson ; Molton Percy ; Owen Ware ; schoolhouse ; watermelon courtship ; horses In this 1976 interview, Virgil Rufus Vann (1895–1983) and his wife Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann (1900-1982) discuss their early-1900s childhoods in the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma, including the first teachers at the school, classmates, their courtship, community social events such as literaries, the loss of the first Pinehill school by fire, and Virgil’s boyish antics such as playing “pitch,” stealing watermelons, and the theft of a rooster. BM: --seventy-six, five p.m. MM: Alright, now-- BM: Your first-- MM: Just a minute, back up, see if it' ; s recording right quick. BM: Your first teacher was, the first teacher that you went to was who? VV: [Indecipherable] the best I can remember, it might' ; ve been someone else before that, but-- BM: You don' ; t know what year it was she told him, huh? CV: So she was teaching-- BM: So what year did you start school? VV: I think it was 1910, I' ; m pretty sure it was. BM: Alright, then she had to have been the teacher there in 1910. VV: Is that the way you got it wrote? BM: No, that' ; s not the way I got it, but-- MM: Well, she could' ; ve taught more than one-- VV: Well, now, I wouldn' ; t be positive on that, I just wouldn' ; t be sure. CV: Five years later we moved up there and she was teaching then. VV: She was? CV: So she might not be teaching VV: She must' ; ve--somebody else must' ; ve--you don' ; t know what year Etta Logan-- BM: Yeah, that was before that. VV: Before ' ; 10? BM: Yeah. VV: It was. I know I went to school with her, didn' ; t I? CV: I did. BM: No, Etta Logan was after Ella. CV: Yeah. MM: We may have that in some of that papers BM: Naw, I ain' ; t got any of that with me. VV: [Indecipherable.] BM: That damn thing, got it runnin' ; now? MM: Yeah, it is. CV: Didn' ; t you say [indecipherable] BM: When you first moved in here to go to Pinehill School where did you live at that time, Virgil? VV: Over on the Elsa Self place BM: You lived on the Elsa Self place. VV: Yeah. BM: Do you remember offhand the kids that went to school with you at that time? VV: Well there was Howard Baker (ph) and Matt Baker (ph) and Charlie Line (ph) and Laurie (ph) and Mary Vaughn (ph) and there was boys, Earl Phillips (ph), I think, [indecipherable] Phillips, Carl and Dewey Carson (ph) I believe, anyway I wouldn' ; t be sure. CV: Well, the Indians-- BM: The Indian kids-- VV: Leo Pinehill, I believe he went to school there, Walt Biggs (ph), and the Wilton (ph) boys, Esco (ph) and Lester (ph) I believe. What year was it that Alvin got killed, do you remember? CV: I think we figured that out. BM: Fifteen. CV: Ware. The Ware (ph) boys. VV: Huh? BM: The Ware (ph) kids. VV: Yeah. Yeah that' ; s right. Oh there' ; s probably some more but I honestly it' ; s out of my mind. BM: Okay, did you--what all activities was the school used for? VV: Well, community purposes, pie suppers and literaries and kangaroo courts, why nearly anything that people in the community-- CV: Church. VV: --wanted to use it for, why it was open. It was open to the public, you know. BM: Every kind of activities for the community, community purposes. VV: Yeah, that' ; s right. And church purposes, you know, they had church there, pretty regular all the time. BM: Now when you first went to go to school there, do you remember these old literaries? VV: Yeah, I remember very well. They' ; d have programs, you know, people would sing songs and different things. Anything that people, any kind of gathering that they wanted, why they was open to the public, you know. MM: Kangaroo courts? VV: Huh? BM: Kangaroo courts, uh, was that, uh, kangaroo courts, was that held as a, one of these literaries or was that-- VV: Well it just seemed to me like they would have literaries, what you mean by " ; literaries" ; is they just had songs, you know, and things like that and to entertain the people, you know. BM: Now this kangaroo court that you was talkin' ; about a while ago, uh, was that officially or was that a, held as a dialogue at these get-togethers on Friday night? VV: No, during literaries they didn' ; t have no dialogues in their programs, you know. They had school programs. They only had dialogues, you know, on the last day of school they' ; d have a program, you know. They' ; d have dialogues and speeches and [indecipherable]. MM: What did you do after the literaries? BM: What did you do after the literaries? VV: Sometimes we' ; d have a pitch game. (laughs) BM: Pitch game? VV: Yeah. The boys would. And then we all got scared one night and we saw the community got tired of it, they got that--they didn' ; t like it a bit in the world, the board didn' ; t like it, ' ; cause we was havin' ; a pitch game. We didn' ; t mean nothin' ; by it, just passin' ; the time off. I remember one night we' ; d just got started, you know, and somebody rattled the door, it' ; s under the law, they' ; d already warned us. And " ; Stop that thing!" ; And somebody rattled and took ahold of the knob and pulled out on the door, tried to break it in. And we had a lock, you know, but they began to shake it and we all broke out of there. Somebody, I remember, someone, they went out, they kicked a big old chair right in the door and we finally just leaped over that chair, hit the ground, and I remember, it kinda knocked the breath out of me when I went over. (chuckling) It gave us such a scare that that ended the pitch game. We never did try that anymore. That was orneriness. And, oh, I don' ; t know what made us do that, but we didn' ; t mean nothin' ; by it, you know, just havin' ; fun. BM: Who all was playing pitch? VV: Oh, there was Les Stubblefield (ph), Charlie Line (ph) and Bob Biggs (ph) and Frank Newman (ph), Ralph Newman (ph), and [indecipherable] Phillips, I think, and Art Bolin (ph)--aw, there was a whole host of us that played. But that ended up the pitch game that night. BM: Now, Carrie said something ' ; bout you had some of these school get-togethers, you said a little poem. What was this little poem about? VV: Oh, it was ' ; bout a little old grasshopper. BM: Would you care to repeat it? VV: Well, it goes like this: There was a little silly grasshopper/ He was always on the jump/ He never looked ahead/ He often got a bump/ His mother said to him one day/ While they were in the stubble/ You don' ; t watch before you leap/ You' ; ll get yourself in trouble/ The silly little grasshopper/ He despised his wise old mother/ And he said I know what to do/ And he decided not to bother/ He hurried on across the field/ And all at once he took a great big old jump and he landed in the brook/ He struggled hard to reach the bank/ But he finally decided he couldn' ; t do it/ He give up/ And all at once an old trout came out/ And tore him all to pieces. And that' ; s a warning, you know, for young people, to take warning from their mother. BM: That' ; s right. MM: What about Albert Cree' ; s (ph) rooster? VV: Ohhh (laughs) I' ; m gonna have to tell that again? BM: Yep! We didn' ; t get it down a while ago. VV: Well, we and us boys--they' ; s a whole bunch of us, oh there must' ; ve been eight or ten of us, we was always tryin' ; to play some prank, you know, on someone, and well Albert Cree (ph), he had an old fine rooster. And he thought a lot of ' ; im, but we decided we' ; d steal that old rooster that night and [indecipherable] was his brother-in-law, wasn' ; t it? He went out and borrowed his gun so that he couldn' ; t use that on us, and on ' ; bout little before we' ; s bedtime we slipped out to the henhouse and one of ' ; em, I forget--he grabbed that old rooster. He began to make his call and finally Albert came to the door and he had his dog about him, too. " ; Get him out! Get it!" ; and old dog just stand there and barkin' ; and barkin.' ; And we' ; d make that old rooster squall as loud as we could. Finally we decided we' ; d take him home and roast ' ; im. We started across the blind side, across an open field there and we, rather than walk through the brush we decided we' ; d walk around the edge of the field. We got over there a certain place and Albert, he cut across the field, you know, he didn' ; t go like we did. But he cut across and he run right into him. And he said, " ; Boy, give him up," ; he said, " ; I come after him." ; And well, he didn' ; t do it, he just hand the old rooster over and Albert went back to the house with the old rooster on his arm. And we didn' ; t bother old Albert no more, that--and with that ended up the rooster roast that night! BM: Who all was in on that rooster roast that night? VV: Huh? BM: Who all was in on that rooster roast? VV: Oh, Hog Barnes (ph), Charlie Vine (ph), Lester Wilson (ph) and Bob Biggs (ph) I believe, and Earl Phillips (ph)--all them, there' ; s a whole bunch of ' ; em. We just out having a good time, you know. And we--we didn' ; t get to roast that old rooster. The way we' ; d do it, we' ; d roll that--roast of ' ; em--roll them old roosters in mud, you know, then we' ; d put them on the pole iron and bake ' ; em. And, well, then we' ; d eat ' ; em. Not salted or nothin' ; . We didn' ; t like ' ; em very well, but we' ; d had a big time, you know. BM: You said a while ago somethin' ; about the schoolhouse burnin' ; , you said that you knew the reasons why that Ella Bruce (ph) and Willie Wilson (ph) didn' ; t teach anymore. What was that reason? VV: Well, Bob, the best I remember that I don' ; t know what time of the year, but I don' ; t know, it seems like they had their election along in March, don' ; t the school election? Pretty much. But anyway they had the school election there and they had--one of the parties was trying to put the other one out and put some more people in, you know, on the school board. Well, all of the community come out and those that didn' ; t, why, they' ; d have the hacks and they' ; d have buggies and somebody would go after ' ; em and bring ' ; em in and get ' ; em to vote. And so that night, why, after the election, why the schoolhouse burned down. And they wasn' ; t no more school that year. BM: Wasn' ; t any more school that year? VV: No. MM: How many schoolhouses-- VV: Finally that fall they built a new schoolhouse down up on the hill where the last one was. I don' ; t know if anybody remember it--do you remember that, where that was at? BM: How many schools do you remember being in the Pinehill District? VV: Three. BM: Three. VV: Three. Three different buildings. BM: Three different buildings. VV: Yeah. BM: Virgil, when you and Carrie came back from Arizona where did you move to? VV: We moved on the old Biggs' ; (ph), well, he owns it now. But dad had bought that place-- CV: Ella Grayson' ; s (ph) place. VV: Well it was up on the hill from dad' ; s house, on the Patty Grisham (ph) place, square-top house. And that' ; s where we lived for--I forget what year it was, we come back in nineteen eight-- CV: Well we lived in an old log house on your dad' ; s place first. VV: Well we moved from there on the [indecipherable] place. No, we moved from down in the field in the longhouse up to the square top house. Ella Grayson' ; s (ph). Then we lived there some years ' ; til 1929. We moved up on John Hader' ; s (ph) place. And we lived there two years and we moved there to Pinehill. And we lived there two years, we moved down on Big Deep Fork. We lived there two years and we moved from there over to Newby, a while east of Newby. That was in ' ; 35. We lived there one year and we moved back over on Kelly' ; s (ph) place south of Bristow five miles. Then we lived there one year and made a crop. We made one bale of cotton that year and we got stalled out. That was the hardest year I ever spent in my whole life, I guess. end side A of tape ; begin side B at 00:00 VV: --and we went from there to forty-four. We been there--that was in ' ; 36. That was a dry year. Were no crops to speak of at all. We left there in August, we went to New Mexico and picked cotton down in the valley that fall, and we left there and went to California. And we stayed there for one year I believe, and we come back to Oklahoma. And that' ; s the year dad had bought the old Phelps (ph)--not--I forgot where it was he bought that from. CV: Old Jake Corns (ph) was livin' ; on it. VV: Yeah, but I forget who it, who we bought it from. But we moved down in the little log house down in the field, and an old dug well in there. And we lived there a while, ' ; til nineteen-and-twenty-nine, we moved up on the Hader (ph) place, John Hader (ph) place. About two miles south of the sub (ph) station. And we lived there two years, two years--that' ; s right. We moved from there on the Leo Pinehill place a mile south of the old Pinehill schoolhouse. We lived there two years and we went to Big Deep Fork. We lived there two years, am I right? Oh, I' ; m all mixed up, ain' ; t I? CV: [Indecipherable.] BM: Another question, Virg. Do you remember, or do you remember hearing them say, when the first oil well was drilled in this community? VV: Yeah, I think I do. Pretty sure I do. It was about a mile south of the W.O. Baker place. Glen Freeland and his brother was in the drillin' ; business at time. Glen is still livin' ; . That' ; s where the first oil well was drilled, I think. I think he' ; s still livin' ; but it ain' ; t certain for me. BM: Well would Glen Freeland still be around the Bristow area? VV: Yeah. I think he is. He got some wells back over there. BM: Would you repeat all of the Vann kids' ; names? Your dad, your mother--dad and mother-- VV: Yeah, they was fourteen of us children. BM: Okay, start with your mother and dad. VV: That' ; s with brothers and sisters. BM: Start with your mother and dad' ; s names, Virg. VV: Dad' ; s name was Donald Christopher. BM: Donald Christopher Vann. VV: Yeah, and my mother' ; s name was Eliza Elizabeth. BM: What was her name before they were married? VV: Mother' ; s name was Grimes. BM: Grimes, okay. VV: Dad' ; s name was Vann. (laughs) BM: Alright, then-- VV: He married when he was seventeen years old, dad did. BM: The children' ; s names was what? VV: Huh? BM: What was all the kids' ; names? VV: Well, Vernie (ph) was the oldest, then I' ; m next. Pearl is next, then, um--- CV: Grace? VV: Grace, and Eamon (ph). That was the oldest ones that--then dad had a younger family after that of about four or five. Gertrude and Meehan (ph) and Louis (ph) and Cletis (ph). Four. Yeah. MM: How old was you when Cletis (ph) was born? VV: Huh? BM: How old was you when Cletis (ph) was born? VV: Cletis (ph) was born after I was married, I was married 1915. Cletis (ph) was born and he' ; s the youngest, he' ; s the baby, and he was born while we was in Arizona. And also, he was born a very--born the day that Maude (ph) died. See, Maude' ; d married Hog Varner (ph). And they went--when we went to Arizona, why they was five of us in the--five covered wagons. Six? Five or six. And we got out in Arizona, they lived there a while and Maudie (ph) died. CV: Not in Arizona. VV: And mother couldn' ; t even go to the funeral. They brought Maude (ph) back and buried her, but mother couldn' ; t go to the funeral because Cletis (ph) was born that day. BM: Alright, you and Carrie' ; s courtship, how did that go? When you were courtin' ; Carrie, when you was courtin' ; Carrie, how did that take place? VV: How' ; d it take place? BM: Yeah. VV: Well I got stuck on her. (laughs) I just got kind of stuck on her and we went together, was goin' ; together. She wasn' ; t but fifteen when we married and we didn' ; t go together--how long we go together, mom? BM: Did you ever pull any--show off to the girls at the school? VV: Did I what? BM: Did you ever show off to the girls at school? VV: Well, yeah, I tried to. (laughs) BM: What did you do showin' ; off? VV: Well I' ; d get down there and ride horses, you know, buckin' ; horses. I remember one time Owen Ware had a little horse and he was a buckin' ; little horse, and I told him I' ; d ride him behind the saddle. And the more I got on that little ole' ; horse and he run out and throwed me up in the tree and I fell down. Fell and knocked me unconscious, and I remember Carrie comin' ; out--I don' ; t remember but she said afterward, she come up there to help me, pick me up. (laughs) Yeah-- BM: So that was the start, that was really the courtship? VV: (laughs) Yeah. BM: When you was a lad growin' ; up, did you ever go watermelon stealing. VV: Oh, yeah, that sounds very common. BM: Who in your opinion, who raised the best watermelon? VV: Well, I just don' ; t remember, Bob, they was all good melons. BM: But you don' ; t--anyone in particular? VV: No, no, I don' ; t, I just don' ; t. But I remember we would, when we' ; d go get a watermelon, we' ; d just get a watermelon, we wouldn' ; t cut the--cut the green ones and mess the pipes all up, we was very respectable along that line. We wanted the people, you know, not to think hard of us and we' ; s just pretty good boys. BM: Okay--- VV: But we did play pitch once in a while. BM: I got a report that one time that you rode your horse into the schoolhouse, is that right? VV: In the what? BM: Into the schoolhouse. VV: No, no, I wouldn' ; t do nothin' ; like that, I don' ; t think I ever did. I believe I did ride him up on the porch, didn' ; t I? CV: I don' ; t know. BM: You rode him up on the porch, you never did get him on inside the schoolhouse? VV: Naw (laughs) no, I-- BM: Do you remember any of the other boys riding them in there? VV: No, no I don' ; t remember anybody. They could' ; ve but I don' ; t remember. BM: How long have you known Louis Masterson (ph)? VV: Well, let' ; s see, can' ; t remember, Bob. I didn' ; t go to school with him, I' ; m pretty sure. But he moved, they moved in the community in later years, I think, best I remember, and he married Molton Percy' ; s (ph) little girl, Virgie (ph). BM: I believe that' ; s about everything, Virg. end of interview audio 0 https://bristoworalhistory.org/ohms/viewer.php?cachefile=OHP-0001-03_Virgil_Vann.xml OHP-0001-03_Virgil_Vann.xml
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Virgil Rufus Vann
Description
An account of the resource
In this 1976 interview, Virgil Rufus Vann (1895–1983) and his wife Carrie May (Millhouse) Vann (1900-1982) discuss their early-1900s childhoods in the Pinehill Community outside Bristow, Oklahoma, including the first teachers at the school, classmates, their courtship, community social events such as literaries, the loss of the first Pinehill school by fire, and Virgil’s boyish antics such as playing “pitch,” stealing watermelons, and the theft of a rooster.
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OHP-0001-03
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Pinehill Community and School
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1976-10
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audio