Hyatt Chapman - Part 2

HK: It was some kind of a fishing job. He could make a tool to fish it out.

HC: To fish it out, and he could tell you how to run it, and you could go out there and run it like he told you, and you could get your job done.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Now Chester (Chester Cushing), his son came along. Chester was equally as well with building the tool and telling him how to run it. Chester could take the tool out, and he couldn’t run it. He just couldn’t get ‘er done. But he could tell you how to run it.

HK: But he could tell you how to do it.

HC: He could build it and tell you how to run it, but he couldn’t go out and do it. And he, I plugged a well for Chester right south of Bristow there that he and his wife drilled.

HK: Did you plug that hole for him?

HC: I plugged that hole for him.

HK: Did you, did you happen to be smart enough, I wasn’t smart enough…did you happen to be smart enough to take a picture

of the last steam drilled well in the Bristow area? Because that was, 00:01:00that was the last

one drilled with a boiler.

HC: Yeah, that was the last one around anywhere there.

HK: And why I didn’t take some movies of it, I’ll never know, but I didn’t.

HC: Well, I didn’t, I didn’t take it. That was the last, that was the last steam rig, steam kettle tool rig.

HK: That’s right.

HC: After that, there was sputters and this, that and the other, but there wasn’t steam, it was…

HK: And Chester and his wife drilled that [indecipherable] by themselves.

HC: By themselves. Mrs. Cushing, she fired the boiler for him and would do the odds and ends and Chester, he’d do the drilling and the hard work. She took care of, she got out there and worked just like a man now.

HK: I bet she helped him sharpen those bits and [indecipherable].

HC: Yeah, she had to.

HK: Yeah.

HC: He had to have help because one man couldn’t do it! No sir, one man couldn’t do it.

HK: Well, it was too bad that was a dry hole.

HC: Well, that wasn’t a dry hole.

HK: But it wasn’t 00:02:00a commercial well. It didn’t make a commercial well.

HC: Bud, let me tell you something right now. I wish I had that well right now.

HK: Well, with frack it might have made a well.

HC: When I plugged that well, I went down there and then we didn’t put cement in it, not much.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Got mud in it. Filled it and shot the pipe. And when I shot the pipe, it blowed the mud out of the hole and it blowed oil all over that derrick, 50 or 60 feet.

HK: My goodness.

HC: All over, all over the old man’s corn field he had out there. I forget what that old gentleman’s name is that owned it that had the place down there, all over his corn field. And they got, they bradenheaded the five and a half and the seven inch, they bradenheaded it, and got their oil to fire the boiler between the strains of pipe.

It flowed 00:03:00between the strains of pipe

enough. It wasn’t a big one.

HK: But it would have, you’re right, it would have probably made a well.

HC: Yeah, it would because of the technology we have now. Then after I plugged that well, there was three other fellas come in and drilled wells around close trying to pick this up.

HK: Yeah.

HC: But they was trying to pick it up out of the Bartlesville and it didn’t come from the Bartlesville.

HK: No, it evidently was not the Bartlesville. Hyatt, do you have any idea, you’ve plugged thousands and thousands of wells, do you have any idea how many you have plugged in and around Bristow. Say around the state pool and the east of Bristow and west and north and south of Bristow.

HC: Well…

HK: You’ve plugged all over the country.

HC: I’m just trying to think. I would say, probably, between 1800-2000.

HK: Just in the Bristow area?

HC: In the Bristow area.

HK: I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

HC: See I was in business for 32 years.

HK: When did you go into business for yourself?

HC: 1947.

HK: 1947. Right after WWII.

HC: Yeah. I had to stay over in Germany extra time because they declared me essential. And I got home, I worked about four months and I went into business for myself. I got home in ’46 and I went into business in ’47.

HK: Well now, Hyatt, being in the oil business myself, I’m familiar with how you go about plugging a well, but I’m sure there are a lot of people that don’t know how you plug a well. Describe this procedure for us. 00:05:00They call you and say, I want to plug a well. Okay, then what do you do?

HC: Well, if you would call me and say you wanted me to plug a well for you, the first thing I would have to do is come to your office or get with you for all the records you can supply me with that you have about this well.

HK: Right, how much pipe is in it.

HC: How much cement was put in and how much pipe it was cemented with and what kind of pipe. Then I would take that record…

HK: Now why is it important that you know what kind of pipe is in that well?

HC: If I didn’t know what kind of pipe was in that well, I could not pull on that pipe as hard as I should have maybe if I knew what kind it is.

HK: Right.

HC: Because the pipe could be stuck. It’s not setting in there free. It could 00:06:00be stuck, and you’d have to work it under high pressure. And that pipe will only stand a certain amount of pull. And different grades of pipe will stand more pull than the other. And you take lap weld pipe, you can’t, you can pull one and a half times the weight of it. If it’s good. If it’s not good, why you pull ‘er in two.

HK: So it’s important for you to know what kind of pipe it is.

HC: It’s important.

HK: Okay, after you get all these records and you find out what kind of pipe it is in there, you find out how deep it is, what’s next?

HC: Then I call the Corporation Commission man and tell him that I want to plug this well and I want to know his requirements on what he will require for the plugging of it. He will tell me how much cement to pump in the bottom of it. I’ll have to have a Haliburton type truck. I’ll have to mix cement with and haul it with rubber gloves and heavy mud pumped down to below the cement on the outside of the pipe. That’s the reason I have to know 00:07:00how cement is on the outside of the pipe, so I will know where to put cement on the inside of it. Then you run a, do that, you get your tension [indecipherable] pipe. If you know the area, why you don’t have to work [indecipherable] you go in there and shoot the pipe in two with nitroglycerin, and then pull your pipe up 50 feet below the fresh water zone. Now the fresh water zone will be supplied to me from the Corporation Commission man. He will have his chart there where he wants fresh water plugged. Here again, we will pump cement in with a Haliburton type truck and till it circulates. We will dress the pipe out, tear it down and 00:08:00move out and put a cement cap on the top of it and turn it back to you, and you can cover it up, and turn it back to farming.

HK: This procedure then protects the producing zones that produced oil and, perhaps, salt water, it has cement covering that. And then it protects the fresh water from contamination by cement plug from below all fresh water clear to the surface of the ground.

HC: That’s correct.

HK: And it’s a pretty good procedure and it’s too bad all wells weren’t plugged that way.

HC: If all wells was plugged that way, we would have a lot more natural gas wells. We would have more oil wells than we have now because in the early day, back in the old steam rig days, when they pulled pipe, they pulled pipe maybe ground a post oak down there or a post down in the top of it and throw a little dirt on the top of it.

HK: And that was all of it.

HC: And that was all of it. And communications from different zones rounded out to the little 00:09:00gas or little oil that you’d have up the hole.

HK: Right. Okay, did you actually start in business in Bristow or were you living in Tulsa at the time you started business?

HC: I was living in Tulsa at the time I started in business, but my dad had the home place there in Bristow, and I used that for my yard. His place for my yard. And I started in business at Bristow. And I when I started in business, why, I didn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger. I had to borrow money, and I borrowed money from everybody that would loan me money. And I wound up about $20,000 in the hole before I even got started.

HK: Before you ever did anything.

HC: That’s right. I started business at Bristow.

HK: You started with a hydraulic rig then.

HC: Right.

HK: And not the old cable tool, cable rig.

HC: No. Old cable rig. 00:10:00That’s why our insurance rate was so high was because of the old cable tool rig. They hurt too many people, and they killed too many people.

HK: Yeah. They did. They killed a lot of people.

HC: And that’s what made the thing bad. But getting back to the oil and gas wells at Bristow on my dad’s place was the first gas well that was ever drilled around Bristow anywhere.

HK: And it supplied gas?

HC: It supplied gas to the City of Bristow.

HK: To the City of Bristow.

HC: And the cotton gins in Bristow burned gas from this well. And it, they finally, when a fellow named Wolfe and Freeland one or two others formed the Bristow Gas Company. And they used this gas from this well. Then Oklahoma Natural came 00:11:00in and they gave the franchise to Oklahoma Natural, then they didn’t use this little well anymore. But it was the first gas well in that part of the country.

HK: It was eventually plugged, then?

HC: It was plugged…

HK: It was plugged when you were a youngster or by the time you were, or before you were 15-years-old, say the well was plugged. And you were telling me that it still made gas while you were growing up.

HC: Yeah, we’d go down there and the well was supposed to have been plugged but we go down there and strike a match and throw it over there and that well would catch fire. And the creek would get up and flood it out, then we’d have to wait until the creek came up before it flooded it out because that was the only way we could get it out.

HK: It would just go ahead and burn all the time.

HC: Yeah, it would just burn all the time. It did burn all the time.

HK: Until the creek got up and put it out.

HC: Put it out. And that’s Sand Creek we are talking about.

HK: Right. Talking about Sand Creek there.

HC: Yeah.

HK: And 00:12:00for your information, as you know, we have discussed, you and I, the possibility of going back in there and drilling down to that gas end and sell some of that gas.

HC: We’re gonna do it.

HK: We may do it yet.

HC: We’re gonna do it. Somebody is with me, I don’t know who, but we’re gonna do it.

HK: Well with the price gas is now, it makes it a worthwhile venture. Okay, then you went through high school and graduated from high school and worked with your father then between high school and WWII.

HC: Well, now, my father, I worked for him until the Depression. When the Depression came, why he had men with families that was on starvation.

HK: Right.

HC: And I had something to eat, and they didn’t, so, I didn’t work for my dad from then on. 00:13:00He kept the family men working so that they could feed their families.

HK: Right.

HC: And I got married about, well I got married right at the time I went to A&M College. I got married at that time and then I came home and I went broke and I couldn’t stay in college any longer. I came back, then went back to high school. My last year of high school, I was a married man going to high school.

HK: Yeah. Which for those times was very unusual.

HC: Yeah, it was very unusual.

HK: Right.

HC: And after I had to drop out of college, I thought, well, I better get my high school diploma so I’d have something to show because, at that time, if you didn’t get a high school education, you’d starve to death.

HK: Right.

HC: So I went back and got my high school diploma and worked around there. When I left Bristow, 00:14:00I walked out of… [Pause]

HK: You said you left Bristow owing everybody in town.

HC: Right.

HK: Go ahead.

HC: And I went to Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City field was just starting, and I went into Oklahoma City field and I had, I had before I got up there, dress tools and worked on a drilling rig. And got up to Oklahoma City, well, I went into the oil, followed the oil line up there because there wasn’t anything else to do.

HK: Right, it was the biggest thing going at that time.

HC: It was the biggest thing going because they’d just drill while [indecipherable] and the boom was on, so that’s what I followed. And I started in the oil business there. And it took me four years of working like trojan 00:15:00to get my debtors paid at Bristow. I come home on the, round the first of the month, and I’d start up one side of the street and go as far as my money would go, then I’d see the others, so I’ll see ya next time.

HK: I’ll see ya next month.

HC: And I finally got them paid. It took me about four, four and a half years to get them all paid off finally.

HK: How’d you travel back to Bristow? Were you able to afford a car?

HC: I had an old junker. An old clunker.

HK: Your own automobile.

HC: Yeah, but then, you could go and buy a real good car for $300.

HK: Yeah. Right.

HC: Brand new Ford would cost you about six, six and a quarter.

HK: I have a receipt in the office where my father bought a Model-T Ford in Okemah, brand new, for $295.

HC: Yeah, yeah.

HK: And I’ve forgotten the year, but automobiles were cheap.

HC: It was probably 00:16:00about 1916 or 17.

HK: It could have been.

HC: Because my dad bought a Ford touring car with a little extra on it, and I think he give three hundred, little over $300 for it.

HK: Little over $300.

HC: But then back at the time, I was going from there, I had an automobile, it was a Model-A, Ford Model-A.

HK: Yeah.

HC: This was in around ’31, ’32, ’33.

HK: Right.

HC: And [indecipherable] I believe I give three hundred and some dollars, and it was nearly new.

HK: Pretty good automobile?

HC: Yeah, it was a good automobile. But I battled it. Got all my debtors paid there at Bristow. Didn’t owe none of them, but I walked out of there broke, boy.

HK: Well, do you remember any other people 00:17:00that you mentioned Dad Senter being such a help to the people of Bristow.

HC: Yep. He was, he was…

HK: Well, do you remember as you were growing up, anybody else outstanding that you thought was an outstanding person at that time? With community spirit and all that sort of stuff. And certainly, Mr. Senter had community spirit or he wouldn’t have done anything like that.

HC: Oh yeah. He devoted his time, but at this time, he was like 70-years-old at the time he was doing this.

HK: Oh! He was that old?

HC: Yeah, he was 68 or 70-years-old.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Because, see, his sons is all dead, and I’m sure…I think he had one daughter. She’s pretty well dead. But getting back to the early day, Jim Jackson and Jim Fogle, they were 00:18:00merchants there. Farhas (Ellis L. Farha, William E. [Bill] Farha) were merchants. And they uh, fella named Grimes (Stimpson R. Grimes) had the furniture store there, Ford. Not the Ford Hardware there now. It’s his father. And they were all pretty good people. List, Old Man List (Lester M. List), his boys all come along about my age.

HK: Didn’t the Lists come there to Bristow from somewhere else?

HC: They came, they’re not, they’re not real old…

HK: Old timers.

HC: They’re not real old timers. But Jim Jackson…

HK: They are sort of like me. I didn’t show up in Bristow until 1930.

HC: Yeah, well, List showed up there, it was in, oh, before ’29. It was in the, about the time the first oil boom hit, hit Bristow. That’s when they come there.

HK: I see that’s been the early or middle 20’s 00:19:00 then.

HC: Yeah, well, getting back to community spirit, I was trying to, that was about it, other than the people around there that was originally there. Getting back to the lumber yards and the rig builders, these old rig builders. There was a lot of rig builders there that, there was McMurtry Brothers (LeeRoy McMurtry, Albert W. McMurtry), and there was Stanley Henson, Earl Dwyer, and Mike Foreman. And there was two or three more there that…

HK: Do you remember, do you remember the year your dad bought his first truck?

HC: Yes, 1927.

HK: 1927.

HC: Yes sir. And it was…

HK: What kind of truck was it?

HC: It was a Chevrolet. And he bought that Chevrolet in 1927 and he hired, now here’s the switch. 1927 he bought the truck and he 00:20:00drove the team himself. Now he had a team that he drove and nobody touched those lines, don’t nobody touch that team. Nobody went up and got on that wagon.

HK: Right.

HC: You stayed, just keep your hands off. Dad drove that team. He hired a truck driver, 1927-1928. 1928 he bought a ton Dodge. Now this Chevrolet was a ton…

HK: Big truck. One ton.

HC: Big truck. And he couldn’t, he was hauling cable tools stuff and a 15-inch bit was all you could haul on the truck because it was overloaded if it was any bigger.

HK: Well, did he have a winch to load it with?

HC: Had a hand winch.

HK: Hand winch.

HC: Had a hand winch on the side. Then the Dodge had a hub winch on the side. But he’d have to go out here with a block, come up here with a block [indecipherable].

HK: Right. The winch wasn’t attached to the drive shaft like it is now.

HC: No.

HK: It was either 00:21:00a hub winch or hand winch.

HC: Hand winch.

HK: Right.

HC: The old hand winch was a back breaker. It was a hard deal to operate. That was my job, a swamper’s job on the truck. I ran the hand winch.

HK: He would trust somebody to drive his truck for him, but he wouldn’t trust anybody to drive his team.

HC: His team. And 1928 when he bought the second truck, he decided he would retire the team. And he drove the horses into the yard, unharnessed them, put them in the barn, and every day he cut one bushel of oats down. He’d feed them a bushel of oats of a morning and a bushel of oats at night and two bales of hay. And he retired them. And this was in 1928.

HK: I’ll be darn.

HC: He sold the rest of the horses, but…

HK: Kept that team.

HC: He kept that team. And that 00:22:00team from 1928, when I went over seas, one horse was still alive.

HK: Is that right?

HC: He was 34-years-old.

HK: Holy cow!

HC: That old horse was 34-years-old. My dad raised that horse. He weighed 2001 pounds.

HK: Was he black?

HC: White.

HK: White. White horse.

HC: Oh boy, I mean the shoes on that feet on there about like that.

HK: Gracious.

HC: And when he got ready to…

HK: Well, that’s about like a Clydesdale, isn’t it?

HC: Yeah, it’s as big as a Budweiser horse.

HK: Yeah, that’s what I mean, big as a Budweiser horse.

HC: And when he decided to go into the teaming business, he started [indecipherable] made for the horse, the one he raised. He went all over the country. He went to Idaho. He went to, went to Nebraska, and he went here, and he went there and he finally found a horse that was nearly 00:23:00what he wanted. Just a young horse.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Over at Carney, Oklahoma. So he goes over there to get it. And we have this old T-Model Ford. He drives over there that he bought that I mentioned while ago.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And he goes over there to get it, and to make the deal with the old farmer, and my dad gave him a $1000 for this horse. And he had a halter and a rope on him, and dad said, well, okay, we’ll just take him now. And the old farmer says, well, wait a minute, I’m not going to sell you that halter and rope. I didn’t include that.

HK: Just the horse.

HC: Just the horse. So, dad said, well, you stay here and hold the horse. You just hold on to that rope ‘till I get back. Well, I got under a shade tree and sat there. And dad had to come all the way 00:24:00from Carney back to Chandler to buy a halter and a rope and get back out there and get the horse. And we led the old horse home, and dad was driving about two mile an hour.

HK: Now you didn’t haul the horse home?

HC: No, we led him home and he walked!

HK: And he walked.

HC: He trotted. And my dad didn’t drive but three or four miles per hour in that old Ford.

HK: Right.

HC: We led the horse home, and he walked, he trotted along behind the car. But the old farmer wouldn’t let…dad offered to buy the bridle.

HK: Buy the bridle and the rope, and he wouldn’t sell it.

HC: He wouldn’t sell it.

HK: Sold the horse.

HC: He sold the horse. That’s all I sold ya. I’m not gonna sell you that bridle and halter and rope.

HK: Okay, do you remember where the streets bricked in Bristow, from the time you can 00:25:00first remember or at least part of them?

HC: Uh, no, they wasn’t…

HK: Do you remember the old dirt streets, about where…

HC: Yeah, I remember the dirt, mud streets.

HK: About what year did they put those bricks down? Seemed to me like I asked Arthur (Arthur Foster) and Arthur wasn’t sure.

HC: I would say it was in, they started putting them down before WWII, I mean one, WWI. Before WWI. Now I can’t say exactly, but I would say there are some in there, some of those streets was in there in 1915 or ’16.

HK: Yeah.

HC: Because I was about four or five-years-old, and my grandad was hauling that sand in there, and there was a contractor, cement man 00:26:00in there by the name of Fielder. And if you look around the streets, you’ll see many…

HK: Many of the street corners, there’s A. Fielder.

HC: A. Fielder.

HK: That’s right.

HC: And he was, he was a real good concrete man. And he put the sidewalks in and a lot of the streets and a lot of the brick.

HK: And Bristow must have been, at that time in ’16 and ’17, a fairly thriving community and fairly prosperous.

HC: It was a thriving and prosperous community because of the cotton.

HK: Mainly cotton and corn then.

HC: Yeah, cotton and corn. And the cotton gins that was there. There was one, two, three…there was five cotton gins there at one time.

HK: Yeah. I have heard, and I don’t know how true this is, that at one time, 00:27:00and I don’t know what year this was, there were actually eight cotton gins in Bristow at one time. But that was before my time.

HC: Excuse me, it was…excuse me, now it might have been, I might have missed one or two, but to my recollection, I can count for sure…well, Abrahams had two, Kellys had one, and there was some other people had one. And then the one over there by your place.

HK: Yeah there was one across the street from my office, and one where John Bishop…

HC: Oh, Friersons, Friersons. Friersons had one.

HK: Friersons had one, right.

HC: They had the cotton seed mill there.

HK: I can remember five myself.

HC: Yeah.

HK: And I’ve heard that there were eight.

HC: Well, there was eight at one time. Then there was some people there named Anderson (John Andrew Anderson) that run the feed mill back in the early day when there was 00:28:00just horse and buggy. And I can remember coming in with my dad from his farm out there at Mayes Corner, we’d come in in the buggy to get groceries, and we’d come in once a week, and it would take all day to come in. We’d bring corn to grind. We’d take it to Anderson’s Mill, and Anderson’s Mill was built right where, right where, you know where the J&J Café is?

HK: Right.

HC: Anderson’s Mill was about the next door down. It wasn’t over at Billy’s there then. It was an old sheet iron building, and they had, they had, they ground meal and wheat and made feed.

HK: Yeah. Do you remember how many oil field supply houses there were in Bristow? I remember National Supply Company was where Martin Pound Drilling 00:29:00Company is now. Oil Well Supply was immediately east of them across the railroad tracks.

HC: Okay, just north of the Oil Well was Republic and just, let’s see, across the railroad tracks from where your office is, the light company’s got a building there. Right across there was the old Frick Reid (ph) building.

HK: Oh Frick-Reid, now Jones and Loughlin (ph).

HC: Jones and Loughlin, Frick-Reid. Then down on first, there was three or four. I say there was possibly eleven or twelve.

HK: Oil field supply stores.

HC: Yeah, oil field supply stores. And that’s, there was a bunch of them, man, there was a bunch of them. When they had the Slick railroad, they had a bunch of the supply house out along old Slick railroad.

HK: Down where it started up there 00:30:00at Bristow. Started off of the Frisco.

HC: Frisco track at Bristow.

HK: Frisco track at Bristow, and there were supply houses along that railroad at the beginning of that then.

HC: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And where old Sinclair place is there, Arco (ph) yard is there now, used to be an oil field supply store.

HK: It did. It was also.

HC: Yeah, it was also. Then along the railroad track there, there was pipe yards and supply stores, and I say there was eleven or twelve.

HK: Well, the railroad then between, between Bristow and Slick and went on [indecipherable] to Nuyaka. Probably, I would imagine, would have hurt the trucking business that your dad was in.

HC: Well…

HK: The teaming business…or was there enough for everybody to go around?

HC: There was enough for everybody to go around then, because it was a slow operation and 00:31:00the railroad couldn’t haul that stuff out to the locations. They could haul it to a central railhead…

HK: They still had to unload it, right?

HC: They’d haul it to Slick and unload it and then they had to go out to here or there.

HK: That’s right.

HC: And I can remember going to up where this waterfront is that we got out there, you know where the well is on the big hillside over there?

HK: Yeah.

HC: My dad, we’d go from Bristow out there, and do whatever we had to do and spend the night down there at that spring there on the, I forget what spring, Turkey Creek Spring, I believe.

HK: Yeah. Turkey Creek Spring. And as far as I know, it’s still running.

HC: It’s still running.

HK: Right.

HC: And we’d spend our night there. It was…we stayed all night, we’d spend it right there at that spring because there’s water for the horses and then 00:32:00we’d, when we was just coming out to the eight mile corner, we’d pull to Jesse Allen’s place…

HK: Right.

HC: That creek is a good hole of water there. We’d make it there and try to make it there by lunch time. And we’d load up in town, make it to Jesse Allen’s place for lunch, then go on to the eight mile corner, and then be 8:00, 9:00 getting back home at night.

HK: It was a long, long day.

HC: Oh yeah, yeah. And the people that developed the oil business back in the early day around Bristow as the Rolands and the Freelands and Slick, Tom Slick…he developed Slick. That’s where it got it’s name.

HK: Actually the Joneses never did, they, as far as I know, they never did actually operate as operators.

HC: They operated as investors.

HK: They operated as investors.

HC: That’s right. And now the Joneses, they were, they made their money on after they come to Bristow from oil. But it was as investors, not as operators.

HK: Right. That’s what I understood.

HC: They, there was old B.B. Jones, he got into Drumright, made a fortune there. R.L., he made a fortune in the Drumright and then in the south Bristow deal, too. But there’s…

HK: Well, there was lots of oil around Bristow.

HC: Yeah, a lot of oil.

HK: No question, it was a major factor in the growth of the town.

HC: That’s right. And on this, getting back to early day Bristow, there used to be a bunch of tough characters around here. Boy, I mean they was rough, rough 00:34:00individuals. And there wasn’t hardly a week went by that somebody didn’t shoot somebody or kill somebody there.

HK: Yeah.

HC: And back when the banks had to run on the banks right after WWI, my uncle’s father, his name was Inman. He was a rough old character, and he wore an overcoat summer and winter. And in them overcoat pockets, he carried two old thumb-busters. He and his boys, my uncle and his brother and the old man hauled their cotton into Bristow and sold it. And at the gins they took the money up and he did, he did business with the Yakish Brothers’ bank (Robert W. Yakish of Bristow National Bank). I don’t remember what 00:35:00that bank is, where the American National Bank used to be.

HK: Yeah, on the corner of 7th. Oh it was across the street from…

HC: Across the street from American National Bank.

HK: Right.

HC: There used to be four banks there.

HK: Right.

HC: On each corner had a bank. Now the First National Bank was here and, I don’t remember what American National Bank, it wasn’t American National Bank back then.

HK: Wasn’t American then, no.

HC: And the Yakish Brothers, I don’t remember what their bank was, and the other bank, I don’t remember it. But the Groom’s owned the First National Bank. That was where McMillian’s office is.

HK: And Blackstock.

HC: Blackstock.

HK: There in that building now.

HC: That building. Then across the street was where American National Bank, and then Yakish was across there.

HK: Across main street.

HC: Old man hauled his cotton in. They all brought, I don’t know, three loads of cotton or how much. I don’t know. He sold his cotton and went up and deposited money in the bank. And the next morning, the bank 00:36:00didn’t open. So, about 00:37:00, why, somebody let the old man know the bank didn’t open, so about 00:38:00, he road to town on his horse. He and the Yakish boys was good friends. He goes around the side door, knocks on the door, old head Yakish comes to the door and opens it, and he walks in. The old man walks out with his money after he pulls the six-shooters on them and tells them he come in after his money. He walked out with his money.

HK: He’s one that walked out with it.

HC: He walked out with it. He got the money.

HK: And what was his name?

HC: Inman.

HK: Inman.

HC: Yeah. He killed two or three men on the main street there. He got in an argument or something. The old man was hard.

HK: Self-defense, of course.

HC: Yeah, yeah, self-defense. Never did serve a day, and they were about half Indians, and my aunt, my uncle’s 00:39:00wife, I guess she still living there at Bristow. I, we didn’t ever visit, because they didn’t hardly claim kinfolks to us.

HK: Yeah.

HC: But back in the early day there, it was rough. Old man killed my grandad and all that jazz. It was some pretty rough characters.

HK: Well, most, most early settlements in this country were rough.

HC: They had to be rough to exist.

HK: That’s right. Well, when you get back on your feet, now, and when you can get around, why come down and we’ll go take a picture of the sidewalk.

HC: Of that sidewalk.

HK: Of the sidewalk.

HC: Well, that walk will be, it will be, no it will be about 65-years-old.

HK: I’d like to get a picture of it.

HC: And it may have old A. Fielder’s name 00:40:00on it. I don’t know.

HK: It may have.

HC: I don’t know, he put it in. It was back there when he first come to Bristow. He put it in.

HK: Okie doke, we’ll take a picture of it.

HC: Okay, I’ll come down.

HK: And we’ll put it with the record.

HC: I’ll get with it and see what we can…and you think of anything else that…

HK: You don’t happen to have any, any early day pictures of Bristow of the dirt streets or of the oil field or anything like that?

HC: I don’t. My dad did.

HK: In any of your dad’s stuff.

HC: He had it, but I don’t know. I look and see. I don’t know, I may have some pictures of my dad’s team and some of his teams. I don’t know. I had it, at one time, I had a lot of it.

HK: If we had some of the down town, you know, and the streets muddy and jammed and that stuff and what they looked like in the early day. 00:41:00It would just be interesting.

HC: I’ll check and see, but I don’t believe I have Harlan, because when my first wife and I separate, she took all of my pictures. I had a lot of them, but that’s about it. Now I’ll to you somebody that might, old, not Ted Herman, but Taylor Herman.

HK: Taylor Herman.

HC: His dad was a judge (Judge William H. Herman), there, back in the early day and he was Chief of Police back there. And he was a pretty, he was a great big fat fella. He was a husky guy. And he might have some pictures of the town.

HK: I’ll ask him.

HC: John Price, he may have some. I don’t know. And some of the old buildings down 00:42:00at Bristow, down where the original Church of God is now, it’s on third street.

HK: Right.

HC: And whatever street that is, Uncle Billy Freshour’s old house was a block north there, and it’s on the north side of fourth street there. But it’s about a two-story house. It’s an old house.

HK: Old house.

HC: He lived there, Uncle Billy did. He was one of the roughest United States Marshals that they had in the country. Oh, he would shoot you and…

HK: Ask questions later.

HC: Ask questions later.

HK: Well, I guess there had to be a few of those around to tame that place down.

HC: Yeah, you better know it, because it was rough. All during that oil boom, the “dopies” you talk about dope now, there was dope back then.

HK: Yeah, I’m sure there was.

HC: And gamblers and the prostitutes coming in. And that…

HK: And always the whiskey.

HC: Oh yeah, plenty of that. Plenty of whiskey there.

HK: Well, unless you can think of something else, I’ve about run out of questions.

HC: Well, if you run out of questions, well, let’s closer her off and we’ll think of some more later.