Hyatt Chapman

HK: Okay, this is Harlan Krumme, and I'm talking to Hyatt Chapman. I was, born in Bristow, and went to school in Bristow, and we're gonna a little, reminisce a little bit about what Hyatt was like. About his early life, about his grandfather, and how he came to come there, and just anything. Hyatt, start in and tell us your first memories about Bristow.

HC: Well, my first memories about Bristow started when I was real young. I was pretty active around the place. My Grandfather Chapman (Isaac “Clay” Chapman), would take me around with him and my Grandfather Tyus (Thomas E. Tyus) is, he was pretty active in the Bristow settlement because he came from Birmingham, Alabama and moved his family up there. He was a United States Marshal of Birmingham while his uncle was a United States Senator. After his senator decided not to run in anymore, why he was reduced to a [indecipherable] United States 00:01:00Marshals sent to Indian Territory.

HK: Do you remember about what year that was?

HC: I don't remember what year it was. It was a time that Parker was sent to Fort Smith, way, way back there. Bristow was just a crossroads.

HK: Yeah, okay.

HC: At that time. And his job was to come in here and ride herd on the people that was hauling whiskey from Texas. They'd go to Gainesville, Texas, and they'd take a schooner wagon, camp on Red River, unload half of their gallon jugs on the Red River bank, go into Gainesville and fill up the half that they took in Gainesville with them, come back to Red River and fill it up with water. Come on in and trade this whiskey to the Indians for hides and furs and cattle and horses that they would 00:02:00steal around there and gather up.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And that was his, his job mainly.

HK: [Indecipherable]. [Inaudible]

HC: This stuff and go on a masquerade, masquerade party and, and, run people out and kill them and murder them. And one particular instance my mother told me about her father was the time that he rescued Tol Foster and his family and put them under the meeting house underneath the floor while the Harjos went on a rampage, drunken r ampage, and burned their house down, stole their horses, and burned all of their hay up.

HK: Oh my goodness.

HC: And 00:03:00that is, a, one of the things that, and Tol Foster come over to my house while I lived in Bristow and told me about that. That was his deal while he was on this assignment, why he became friends with Alfalfa Bill Murray.

HK: And what was his name? Now this was your mother's father.

HC: Tom Tyus (Thomas Edwin Tyus).

HK: Tom Tyus. Okay.

HC: While he was on this assignment in the, Red River part of it, why, he run on to Bill Murray, Alfalfa Bill. They became real good friends. And, they came in, go down to the valley and come back to, uh, the settlement of Bristow. And, next time he'd go out why, he'd sickle down through Murray County and see, oh, what is now Murray County, what was this territory then, and, run on to the Murray family. And, let's see, 00:04:00one other thing he became.

HK: Well, I understand that, he didn't carry a gun.

HC: No.

HK: He was a marshal and didn't carry a gun.

HC: He was a marshal and didn't carry a gun. And that led to his downfall a little later on down the road, but he, he would go and if he was going to pick you up, he'd go tell you, okay, old buddy, I want to see you at the jailhouse at such and such time. You can come one or two ways, you can come peaceful by yourself, or I'll come get you one way or the other. If I come get you, I'll come get you [indecipherable] but has to be that way. He didn't carry a gun. He was a husky, old codger from what I hear. I was so little when he was killed that I didn't know him. Actually, I'm just getting my information from my mother and uncle. And, 00:05:00he was a great friend of Bill Tilghman and, Bill Tilghman and the marshal at Guthrie.

HK: Where did your father come from to Bristow?

HC: My father?

HK: Your father.

HC: He, my grandfather and my father came from Chandler. They settled on a homestead over, uh, four miles north of Chandler and two east. And, they, when the run was on, well, they moved down there.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And, then they settled on, I think it was 160 acres over there. And my grandfather didn't particularly like the thing and he came to Bristow and bought the place out east of town where he lived until he died. 00:06:00And my father also bought a little tract out there east of town.

HK: What year were you born in?

HC: I was born in 1912.

HK: 1912. So Bristow wasn't not very large when you were born?

HC: No, Bristow, I can remember Bristow when it had five cotton gins and the main street was two blocks long. And there wasn't no pavement on the streets of any kind. They had two watering troughs. One watering trough was at the intersection of 7th and Main Street now. And the other one was down at about 4th Street, right about where that little hamburger place used to be.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Right in there.

HK: Well, getting back to your grandfather just, for just a second. It seems to me that I've heard you say he had something to do with the, one room, single cell jail 00:07:00that was, that was on the property between 7th and 8th Street, where Wells Food Market is now. It'd be just across the road from the [indecipherable] station.

HC: That's right. while he was Assistant Deputy United States Marshal there, they built that little jail. And that was the escape proof jail in this part of the country that the biggest part of the marshals, Uncle Billy Freshour, bringing people into that jail and the marshal from Guthrie bring it in. And that jail remained there until just about maybe a year and a half or two years ago.

HK: Had to about 1976 or 7 along in there.

HC: And they was gonna move it out to the Veterans and Foreign Wars area. And they got in there and by golly they didn't have anything to move it, tear it, destruct it before they could get it out of there.

HK: Right, it wasn't movable.

HC: No.

HK: It was, the walls were extremely thick on it and they the concrete and rock 00:08:00in the, base and foundation went down so deep that they couldn't move it.

HC: They couldn't move it. They couldn’t root it out, so…

HK: They had to destruct it. They built a real jail I’ll tell you that.

HC: Yeah, they had one that they wouldn't escape out of. Of course, it wasn't, there wasn't no modern facilities there. They didn't have anything in it but just a room and a place for the marshal when he'd come in there.

HK: Well, if you were born in 12, then where did you start to, where did you start school? Where was the school when you first started school?

HC: The school that I started to was the old Washington School. It was the old brick square building that finally burnt down there. Oh, I guess I'd been going to school there for two or three years and it, burned. 00:09:00And then we had to go to school in the churches.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And, we went to school in different churches, and we'd have this class in one church, and that class in another church, until…

HK: Do you remember what grade you were in when that school burned?

HC: I was in the third grade when that school burned. Oh, wait a minute, second grade.

HK: Well, you'd have been about eight-years-old.

HC: I'd have been about eight-years-old.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Somewhere in the neighborhood of eight-years-old.

HK: Well, it would have been roughly in 1920 that the school…

HC: It was ‘19 or ‘20 when the school burned, as near as I can recall. Then they built a new school, the school is there now, and we went on to school there.

HK: Well, I don't want to leave your grandfather too quickly now. You were saying that he got killed and, and, do you remember about what year this was and what the circumstances were?

HC: Yes, from, what they told 00:10:00my mother and my uncle.

HK: Yeah.

HC: My granddad served as Deputy United States Marshal until he resigned there, and then he went as City Marshal for this little town of settlement of Bristow. And where the Presbyterian Church now stands, there was a story and a half building there. Well, I'm getting ahead of my story. While, he was City Marshal, he run the livery stable. The livery stable was where the Roland Hotel is right now.

HK: While he was marshal, he ran the stable?

HC: Yeah.

HK: Okay.

HC: While he was marshal, he ran the stable and then Tom Slick came down and rented all of his rigs and only used one of 'em there for a week to go out in different places and lease land and, around Slick and Cushing and around there he'd only use one rig, but he at leased all of 'em, and there wasn't any rigs for hire.

HK: Right.

HC: Well, and then just about 00:11:00a year after that, well, this place where he was killed is down where the Presbyterian Church is now. There was a story-and-a-half frame house, had a wood fence around it, had a gate, front gate on it where they opened the gate to walk up to the porch. They had a chain there with a bunch of iron hanging on it, so it'd draw it to when they pulled it to, it'd draw it to and close it. And, this desperado, who they was wanting real bad, was reported to have come to this house. This house was a, uh, half-breed Indian lady that run the house. And it wasn't, she kept, took in these guys hiding from the law and this, that and the other. They reported that he was down there, so my grandfather decided to go down and tell him what he wanted him to do. And he goes down and when he opens the gate, he opens the gate and steps up on the porch. When he steps up on the porch, 00:12:00this, outlaw shoots through the door and empties the six-shooter in his chest.

HK: Wow.

HC: And, they, when the shooting, when they heard the shooting, why here come people running, this outlaw took off. And they didn't get him for about six years after that. They finally caught him after six years because he took off and went to Mexico. And, my granddad lived from, that evening to about two or three days. And that was in 1911.

HK: Did you ever hear your mother say whether this was on the very edge of town, or was the building on beyond it, west, or was this…

HC: This was right at the edge of town. See, 00:13:00at that time, Bristow was just a small, little small place. And, there, there was, it was just a small area there, about four blocks around there.

HK: Yeah. Yeah.

HC: And when you got past the Roland, where the Roland Hotel is now, where the livery stable was, you was getting out in the country. His livery stable was right at the edge of what was the community of Bristow.

HK: Right. Well, did he supply, do you know, did he supply, he supplied rigs, uh, which I suppose was a buggy and a team, or maybe a buggy and one horse, I don't know. Did he also supply team and wagons to haul equipment with?

HC: No, he had 00:14:00hacks, what they call hacks and buggies.

HK: Yeah. Used the hacks.

HC: And, he didn't do that, but there was people there later on that did. Now my Grandfather Chapman, he, when he came from Chandler over there and settled at this place, he had, three, three teams and he was a freighter from Guthrie to Bristow. And it'd take him about six or seven days to go to Guthrie and come back with a load of groceries.

HK: He picked up freight.

HC: Yeah, he picked up freight at the depot there for, uh, Jim Jackson grocery and Jim Bogle grocery and, Hamilton (ph) and, Harrington (Wilbur Harrington) and Wolfe (L.M. Wolfe). Wolfe and Harrington. That's early day Abrahams. He hauled freight for Abrahams.

HK: Why in the world would he go to Guthrie instead of, say, to Tulsa? Was there not a railhead?

HC: Well there was no railhead here.

HK: No railhead in Tulsa.

HC: No, no, Guthrie was the only railhead.

HK: Guthrie was it.

HC: See, Guthrie was it because there was no railheads in Tulsa. And, 00:15:00then when they did get a railhead to Drumright, uh, a little later on, and he cut his haul from Guthrie to Drumright to Bristow. But then, when they, it was later than that when, they got, seems as though the problem was getting across the river. I don't think…

HK: Probably right. You're probably right.

HC: There's a railhead here, but it's on this side of the river, on the north side of the river. He couldn't get across the river with his rigs to pick up the groceries.

HK: Right, but he couldn’t go to Guthrie.

HC: He couldn’t go to Guthrie, and that was way back in early, early days.

HK: Yeah. Well, I, there must have been a, a railhead at Drumright then before there was in Bristow.

HC: Yeah, I think there was. I think there was a railhead at, Drumright, either that or, some, someone had a, a freight line 00:16:00from Guthrie to Drumright because a little later on, after he started his trade work there, why, he shortened the route from Guthrie to Drumright and Drumright to Bristow.

HK: As far as you know, was there anybody else hauling, doing the same kind of work? Or was, he the sole supplier for the grocery stores? I mean, he was the freight man.

HC: Yeah, he at that time was the freight man there in, in Bristow.

HK: And the only one.

HC: And the only one, because I think he was the only one that had the stuff to do it with.

HK: Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised.

HC: And that's, and that was it there.

HK: Well, then did, after the railroad came in, and I don't really know what year that was either, did he get into other kind of hauling then?

HC: Oh, yes, he got into other kind of hauling even before, 00:17:00uh, even while he was hauling from Guthrie over here. He sold sand that he dug out of the Sand Creek bottom on his farm there. All the sidewalks in Bristow on all the concrete streets in Bristow, has got sand that was hauled, that he hauled in from there into Bristow to the contractor that put the cement for the sidewalks and the concrete streets down.

HK: So that brings up another thing. All the brick streets in Bristow are bound to be on a bed of sand.

HC: Yeah he furnished their sand.

HK: And, and I've asked Arthur 00:18:00Foster, and everybody else I can think of, where in the world did the bricks come from? Did they come from Sapulpa, Stroud, Tulsa, Guthrie? Did you ever hear anybody say?

HC: I've never heard anybody say where the bricks came from, but they, I think I never, I can't tell you for sure, Harlan, but now the sand, I know where the sand came from, it came from my granddad's farm. He hauled it in there.

HK: Well, there was enough of it there.

HC: Yeah, there was plenty of it there because, right out there at that area, there's about 10 acres of, of the prettiest golden grain sand that you've ever seen.

HK: I'll agree with you. I've been out there and it is good lookin sand.

HC: And, he, he sold it, I think he delivered a yard and a half into town for $3.

HK: And I suppose that all the loading and unloading was done with just the old long-handled shovels?

HC: Long-handled shovels, and they finally got, they finally got 00:19:00smart and put 2x8’s down in the wagon bed and so that they could lift them up and turn them and dump the sand out on the ground instead of having to shovel it out. But it took two or three years for them to figure that out. But, that was it. Now getting back to this hauling.

HK: Yeah.

HC: There's, when the oil fields came into Bristow, the, my dad went into the, well, my dad, helped my grandfather haul from Guthrie over to Bristow, and he had his own team. And when the oil fields started coming in around Drumright, why, he'd go from Bristow to Drumright and do, uh, teaming from one well to the other, haul the tools from one well, because he didn't have trucks, and they all had to be moved by teams. And my dad was a teaming contractor, 00:20:00and my granddad was, my uncle was too. And in Bristow there was five different oil field teaming contractors there, and one was a fella that moved from Drumright over to Bristow. His name was Doc Martin (Howard “Doc” Martin), and his barn was right where your office used to be before he moved over on 9th Street.

HK: On 7th Street.

HC: On 7th Street. And, at one time, why, he had a fire there and burned up a lot of horses.

HK: My goodness.

HC: Right there on, where your oil company office used to sit. Then right across the street from where your office is now, L.C. Jones started out in the teaming business right there.

HK: That would be on 9th Street just east of the railroad tracks.

HC: East of the railroad tracks and east of the gin.

HK: Right. East of the gin.

HC: Back there where the old Wilcox 00:21:00Oil Company had a little gasoline rack.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Between Charles’ house and the gin.

HK: Right.

HC: L.C. Jones started there. And then he migrated on to Seminole and then Elliot McCutcheon was another one of the L.C. Jones, you know, became one of the largest trucking contractors in the United States.

HK: Oh, is that now Jones Truck Line?

HC: No, that's, you're thinking about the Jones Truck Line here. It's the Jones Truck Line that, that used to be at Oklahoma City.

HK: Oh, yes.

HC: It was L.C. Jones Trucking.

HK: So he went from teams right on into trucks?

HC: He went right on from teams into trucks. My dad did the same thing.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And, Alex McCutcheon (ph). He left Bristow at midnight, broke, owing everybody in town. And he left and he didn't stop till he got to Kilgore, Texas. 00:22:00He moved his teams out, lock, stock, and barrel at midnight.

HK: Right.

HC: Left old Basil Henson with a big feed bill, and he, uh, he got down to Kilgore and went from teams to trucks and from trucks to the, he was one of the Texas millionaires now. His sons are, he's dead, but his sons, he went from teams to trucks to oil and he's one of the large millionaires in Texas.

HK: He started out in Bristow broke.

HC: He left Bristow broke. A lot of them did.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And there was a, oh, any number of teaming contractors there in the early days. But, getting back to the early Bristow, uh, at 7th Street and Main Street, on each corner there was a bank. And, when, they first started there, 00:23:00there was no pavement. It was all dirt other than this water tank sitting out for the horses sitting out in the middle of the street. When you walked across the street, why, you'd have to walk in mud.

HK: Yeah, right.

HC: And, so they finally decided they'd put crosswalks from each side, east to west there.

HK: Right,

HC: And north to south there at that corner.

HK: Yeah. They did that at Seventh Street before they did it at sixth Street then?

HC: Yeah. Oh yeah, Seventh Street was, really it, the center of town. It was the center of the town because, there wasn't any, much activity down further. When you go down past Sixth Street, why, by golly, you was getting kind of out of town again.

HK: Getting out of town already.

HC: Yeah, and at that time, so, my grandfather hauled the sand in off the place there and they built these things over there. That was way, way early. And 00:24:00I can remember when they decided to pave the streets, the main street there, but they wanted somebody to haul these crosswalks out of there.

HK: Yeah, get them out of the way.

HC: Yeah, get them out of the way. My grandfather went in and loaded them up on a wagon to haul them out to his place and they're still out there. He's still got them.

HK: No kidding? You mean they're still out there?

HC: They're still out there. They're still out there.

HK: Maybe I better go out and take a picture.

HC: Well, we'll, as soon as I can get down there. How quick would you want to take a picture?

HK: Oh, anytime that you happen to be down, why, we'll go take a picture.

HC: I, you know I'll, I'm fouled up here. As soon as I get squared up where I can drive the car and get down there, well, we'll go out there and we'll take a picture of that.

HK: I’d like to do that.

HC: And because, they’re early history big boy.

HK: Yeah.

HC: There wasn't but, one, one, two, three, 00:25:00four of them. It was all the crosswalks there was in Bristow at that time.

HK: And where do they, did they ever build wooden sidewalks in Bristow?

HC: Oh, wooden sidewalks was before…

HK: Before the crosswalks.

HC: Before the crosswalks, but they didn't cross the streets. They just built a, they just built them in front of the businesses that was there.

HK: Yeah, in front of the businesses.

HC: But, because the wagons were bringing cotton and freight in would bust the wooden ones down if they went across it. So, they just built them in front of the stores there.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And, that was, pretty interesting. I wouldn't change my life in any way coming along because we, I came from the horse and buggy days right on up to putting a man on the moon.

HK: Right.

HC: And we, Harlan, we are living in the most advanced age of time right now.

HK: It's amazing. It's mind boggling, really.

HC: It really is. Well, getting back to Bristow, there's an old fella down there that the Bristow people will know. And his name, they called 00:26:00him Dad Senter. And he did more for Bristow along, all of the young ones knew him. He sold produce there, garden stuff. He raised a large family.

HK: Senter?

HC: Yeah, S E N T E R.

HK: S E N T E R.

HC: Dad Senter. Okay, he had, I believe one, two, three sons and maybe a daughter or two. Henry Senter, he, his wife was postmaster there. He was postmaster until he died. He got burned in a gasoline explosion.

HK: So Dora was his wife.

HC: Dora was his wife.

HK: Dora was Henry's wife.

HC: Dora was Henry's wife. Then Alvin was, uh, Dad Senter's son. He was street commissioner there for Bristow when they did the 00:27:00street work with the horse and mules. And, old Dad Senter, he, started out, why in the summertime, while he'd, he'd, had an old hack and he had little bells on his horse. He'd get ice cream and go down the street. He was the first ice cream peddler. He was a Good Humor man. He was the first Good Humor man.

HK: First Good Humor man.

HC: Then when the Depression came along, the old gentleman went downtown. Everybody was on starvation there. I say everybody, not everybody, but the biggest part of the people.

HK: Everybody was pretty hard up.

HC: Pretty hard up.

HK: We remember that.

HC: And, there was a lady there who ran a little hotel. It's about where Shamus’ Grocery, I mean, Shamus’ Dry Goods Store is, upstairs. I believe her name 00:28:00was Maltby. Maltby Rooms (ph). And the people didn't think very much of her. They all wanted to run her out of town and all that stuff. Because, see, her hotel wasn't just exactly what it was meant to be.

HK: You wouldn't call it real high class.

HC: Well, no, it wasn't a high-class hotel. People didn't think very much of her.

HK: Right.

HC: But, uh, she owned that building. She paid for that building. She owned the building downstairs. She owned the rooms upstairs. And there was a, I believe, a car agency in the place down under there, but it all went broke and under depression and had to leave and go get out 00:29:00of there. Dad Senter went down and asked her if she would mind if he used that building. She asked him what he wanted it for. He said he wanted to put in a soup kitchen.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And she said, well now, where are you gonna get the stuff to do this work with?

HK: Make this stuff. Make you soup.

HC: He said, well, never mind, I'll get it. She said, well, I've got an old stove up here. We'll just take it down, we'll hook it up. This old lady paid the gas bill for the stove and furnished this building.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Dad Senter would get up at daylight and go downtown and, with baskets, he carried on his arm, he'd go around the stores where they'd cut leaf off of cabbage or celery that was bad. They'd give it to him and he'd take it there and dump it and go get more. And then he'd, after he made the rounds of the little, place there, he'd go down and he'd make soup out of all the stuff he got. He'd get everything. He'd get a dog bone, he'd take it down, he'd make soup out of it. And about 00:30:00, people had come down with five, five pound lard buckets to get that soup.

HK: He made that much?

HC: He made...

HK: Five pound lard buckets?

HC: You know, five pound, five pound buckets. Okay, they'd come down, and Harlan and I have seen them lined up there from the center of that block up to the Community State Bank back to the alley. From the center of that block down to 5th Street up to Braces Electric place.

HK: Gracious.

HC: During the Depression.

HK: And he gave it away.

HC: He gave it away.

HK: I'll be darned.

HC: That old man, he saved a lot of people's hides down there. And if you'd go up to some of those people and say, my goodness, I saw you in the soup line back in 1928 and 29, they'd want shoot you now. But now, he, did it now.

HK: Yeah. Well that it was a, great thing for Bristow.

HC: It was, a good thing he did it.

HK: Yeah. And it was great for him.

HC: Yeah. He enjoyed doing it. He enjoyed 00:32:00doing it. He was a swell old man. He lived up on Sixth Street. Do you remember where this guy used to run his junkyard south of town? He lived between Oak and the next street west on 6th on the north side of the street, about the middle of the block.

HK: Oh, the junkyard that used to be on Chestnut. Ben Arcader.

HC: Ben Arcader.

HK: Right.

HC: Dad Senter lived where Ben Arcader did.

HK: Yeah.

HC: But not in the house that was there now.

HK: Yeah.

HC: It was house they built.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And that, Dad Senter did a lot for Bristow and for the people in Bristow during the hard times.

HK: Well, 00:33:00let's get back to some of your early school and after your grade school, after your grade school, uh, was there a junior high school in Bristow at the time you went into the seventh grade?

HC: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. There was a junior high school there. It was where the junior high school was right back of the old high school building.

HK: Yeah.

HC: There on 9th Street at the back of the 9th Street, the big, square high school building that's there now. It used to be the high school. That was junior high school.

HK: That was junior high school in there.

HC: Yes, sir.

HK: Was the old, we, when I was in school, we called it the old band building. It was between, it was a, I believe a three-story brick building, uh, on 10th Street in, in the block that all the schools are in now 00:34:00in between Edison and the, what was the junior high school when I went to school, was that building there when you went to junior high school?

HC: Yes, it was, but they tore it down, along in there, I believe after I…that building stayed there until after I got out of high school.

HK: Yeah, because it was there when I graduated from high school in ‘37.

HC: Yeah.

HK: And it was still there then.

HC: Yeah. Well, it was still there until, it was, I guess, about the World War II time they tore it down.

HK: Must have been.

HC: You see, the Edison School was here. And here was this, building we're talking about. Now that used to be the old Bristow High School building.

HK: That's what I wondered. What was it used for?

HC: That was the old Bristow High School building.

HK: That was the high school.

HC: That was the high school.

HK: Oh, great.

HC: That was the high school before any of the rest of the schools was there.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And, we, they used it, the, they used it for, well, we had DeMolay 00:35:00meetings there. And we had boy scout meetings there in the basement. And while we was going on, they had quit using it for class rooms. The Edison School was here and the Junior High School building was here. And the High School building was that big three-story building or double-story building where it is now.

HK: What year did you graduate from high school?

HC: I should have graduated in high school in 1930, but I left school when I was a junior and went over to A& M College. Took special entrance examination and went in college to study, uh, dairy husbandry and butter making, cheese making, ice cream making.

HK: Right.

HC: And, 00:36:00everything was going real good then. And the depression hit and I had to drop out. So I came back. Went back to school and I think it was 1930 I graduated. I graduated with Arthur Foster and those guys. And I believe your sister was in that class.

HK: I think my older sister was in that class.

HC: Yeah, she was in that class.

HK: Okie doke. Well, your dad was in the teaming and trucking business.

HC: He was in the teaming and trucking business.

HK: Didn't you work with him for a while in, in that part of the business before you, uh, went out on your own?

HC: Yes, I've worked, I helped him drive teams on, in the summertime. He had three teams and, when school was out 00:37:00in the summer when I was, uh, around 11 or 12 years old, he would fire a skinner and I'd drive the team.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Through the summer months.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Then, when school started, why, he’d hire another fella to drive the team, and I'd go to back school.

HK: You'd go to school, and he'd take your place.

HC: Yeah. Then when Christmas vacation would come, why, I’d help my dad and go with the teams. It's funny, we'd leave, all the way at four o'clock in the morning, and get back eight, nine, ten, sometimes midnight.

HK: How far away did you, how wide a range did you cover?

HC: Well, my dad would, uh, normally, Slick, which would be eight or ten miles.

HK: Right.

HC: And do whatever they had to do and then get back. And there's times when he had to be Slick at daylight, why he had to leave Bristow along about three o'clock in the morning.

HK: So you'd be out to Slick by daylight.

HC: Yeah, I'd be out to Slick at daylight 00:38:00because it took about, two or two and a half hours to get out there in a wagon. And, the times we'd work up at Drumright, it'd take, we'd leave, Bristow about 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning, and it'd be up in the evening before we'd get to Drumright, and then we'd have to stay, we'd have to bunk down under the wagon at night and do our work. It was a two-day operation.

HK: Two-day operation to get to Drumright.

HC: Do some work up there.

HK: How did he find out where he was supposed to go? Did he have a telephone?

HC: Well, back, at first he didn't. Because the telephone system wasn't large enough to reach out to our house where we lived.

HK: Right. It couldn't get out there. That’s what I wondered. It didn’t come out there yet.

HC: It didn't come out there yet. And, finally, and, it didn't get out there till about 19, oh, 16 or 17. Yeah, we got, telephone out there.

HK: Right.

HC: Because when the war was over, World War I, why, they called and told us the war was over and this that and the other.

HK: So you remember the telephone. By the time the war was over, you did have a telephone.

HC: We did have it by the time World War I was over, we did have a telephone. And before then, whoever Dad was working for would get on a horse and ride out there and tell them where to go.

HK: Ah, I see.

HC: You see the tool pushers and, and the people looking and supervisors had horses. They rode horses. They didn't have automobiles then.

HK: Well, he had, he helped move the strings of tools from 00:40:00well to well then at Slick and Drumright both.

HC: Oh yeah, Slick, Drumright, Sapulpa, Kellyville, all around.

HK: Did he haul lumber, any lumber that you remember to build those rigs, all those old wooden derricks out of Slick?

HC: Yes, sir. He hauled a lot of them out of Slick. And at 8th Mile Corner where, used to be, not Singer, but yeah, Singer, Citron's (ph) place. He hauled all the derricks out there then.

HK: Did he?

HC: For them from Bristow…

HK: Yeah.

HC: He hauled from the lumber yard is sitting where, right across the street from J&J Cafe was the, main lumberyard there in Bristow.

HK: Right. I can remember that.

HC: And, when, he had hauled stuff from there to Slick and from there to different places. I can remember, uh, we hauled, and when I was about, I wasn't 00:41:00drive, big enough to drive a team for him then. We hauled the lumber from that lumberyard out to, a well, about, uh, four miles north of Bristow, there at Sinclair built, and you own that well now.

HK: We own the well right now. Yeah, we do.

HC: And by golly, it's on the west side of the highway, and it was in the middle of a cornfield when we hauled that rig out there. And there's an old board derrick and this was Sinclair Oil Company. But there's a lot of history around Bristow there that...

HK: Did he have these, did he have these big wide tired wagons there? They had their low wheel on them. Seemed to me like they were oil filled wagons and the wheel was about four, three and a half feet diameter. And the tread on them must have been twelve to fourteen inches wide.

HC: You're, thinking about the boiler wagon.

HK: That's the boiler wagon.

HC: Eight, eight wheels on them.

HK: Right.

HC: Big wide wheels. The 00:42:00regular wagons, it took one team of horses to pull that wagon. It was so heavy.

HK: Right.

HC: And bulky. My dad had a team of horses and he worked on what they call the wheelers, which was one that's hooked up to the tongue and right onto the wagon, and he had two other that he put out in the front, which would be a six up, what they call a six up.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And, he'd, he'd hook up that deal. If he got an extra big boiler or extra heavy load, then he'd call, go over to his dad's and get two teams of his.

HK: Two teams from him.

HC: Yeah. And we, there's times when we had, that I've seen, that he had six pairs of horses out in front of that boiler wagon.

HK: That's a pretty good sized boiler wagon.

HC: Yeah, it is. Well, it didn't make any difference about the size of the boiler. The deal was the terrain you had to...

HK: Well, that's true. Some of it was pretty rough.

HC: And it was rough and some of it was soft. It's a lot softer than it is now.

HK: Well, when we have 00:43:00as much work to do in making a location in the times that we're working in right now. We have bulldozers, and we have backhoes if we need them, and we can move that dirt around. We can actually move the dirt and scrape it away and make roads. And yet, you see some of the places where they build these wells, back in the late teens and in the twenties, and it makes you wonder how in the world they got there in the first place.

HC: That's right. And you'll have to remember those old boys was pretty, pretty salty. They was pretty smart to take what they had to work with and get done what they got done.

HK: They really did. They really were.

HC: And, 00:44:00I've been out with my dad when we’d have to take a plow and a team, and where they'd build a sludge pit, well, they'd have to plow this dirt and then take a slip or fresno and scoop it over to make the rim. Then you'd have to get in there and plow again.

HK: Plow it again. And move it out.

HC: Move it out again. And it'd take, sometimes three, four days to build a sludge pit at this well.

HK: Well, did you stay out on the job, at that time? You just stayed there and you got it done.

HC: That's right.

HK: Cooked on the job.

HC: Batched and whatever. And I can remember back in the early day, when Davenport was on the boom, why, Dad did an awful lot of work over there for Magnolia. And it was a day over there, and he'd stay three or four days, well, somebody'd have to take him oats and hay for his 00:45:00 teams.

HK: Right.

HC: And, these, these teams, the teams that he had, the team that he drove, each one of those horses weighed a ton. 2,000 pounds.

HK: 2,000 pound horses.

HC: And they took a bushel of oats each to feed them.

HK: Gracious.

HC: And they, he fed them three times a day.

HK: Well, he was working them hard, so he had to feed them good. Right.

HC: And at night he'd, he'd, bale, throw the baled hay down for them a bed, and then he'd fix a place for them to have hay to eat while they, was sleeping and resting. If they wanted to eat hay, there's hay there for them.

HK: Right.

HC: And it, took, take a load of hay. I've seen them when they get ready to go out to make a location at around where they couldn't drive back and forth, he'd take a load of hay and a load of oats and a load of food.

HK: Right.

HC: And go out there and we’d stay there…

HK: Until you got the job done.

HC: Got the job done.

HK: Do you remember the first well that you ever saw drilling, where it was? A drilling well?

HC: Yes, I do. It was number one Red Bank, and it was out east of my dad, on the farm out there. And it was half a mile east of our house. Dad would put me on his back. I'd piggyback over there after supper. We'd piggyback over there and sit on the lazy bench and visit with the driller and tool dresser while they was drilling. And it was an old steam cable tool job. And it was, where this place was, it was a mile and a half west of Maye's Corner and 00:47:00three quarters of a mile north.

HK: Of Maye’s Corner.

HC: Of Maye’s Corner.

HK: Right. Maye’s Corner for information is northwest of town.

HC: Yes, it's nine, at one time it was nine miles northwest of town, but the roads have shortened now.

HK: The roads have changed now. It isn't quite that far.

HC: It's not quite that far.

HK: Right.

HC: But, that's, that's, where it is. Use Maye’s Corner to direct you to the spot.

HK: Yeah. Okay. Do you remember, Tim Cushing (ph) used to have an oil field, uh, tool house and machine shop, I guess, on the corner of, just east of railroad tracks, and on 8th Street on the north side of the street where the barbeque, there's a barbeque place in there now.

HC: Yes, sir, I remember that place well, because my dad hauled pipe, 00:48:00casing, and tools out of there. And, I knew the old man Tim, and I knew Chester, and I knew the fella that was their business manager. In fact, unless he's died in the last little while, his business manager, he lives here in Tulsa.

HK: What was his name?

HC: Hopper.

HK: Wayne Hopper.

HC: Wayne Hopper.

HK: Wayne was business manager for Chester and Tim.