Norma Jean Goodmon

00:00:00Randy Witty: This is Randy Witty with Bristow Historical Society in Bristow, Oklahoma. This interview is part of the Historical Society's ongoing oral history project. The date is June 14, 2021 and I'm sitting here with Norma Jean Goodmon at Kellyville, Oklahoma, who is going to tell me a little bit about their history in the Bristow area. Also in the room is Wilberta Witty, daughter to Norma Jean Goodmon. All right, let's begin. What was your name at birth?

00:00:37Norma Jean Goodmon: Norma Jean Watts.

00:00:39Randy Witty: And where were you born?

00:00:41Norma Jean Goodmon: Slick, Oklahoma.

00:00:43Randy Witty: Were you born at home?

00:00:45Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, I was born at home.

00:00:48Randy Witty: What's your birthday?

00:00:49Norma Jean Goodmon: February the 15th, 1927. I'm 94-years-old at this time.

00:00:57Randy Witty: All right, what were your parents names?

00:01:01Norma Jean Goodmon: My daddy's name was James Garfield Watts [06/11/1883-01/28/1956]. My mother's name was Beulah Cecil Wilcox [03/10/1895-5/19/1976].

00:01:10Randy Witty: All right. Were your parents married?

00:01:12Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes.

00:01:14Randy Witty: I understand that they were married previous to this marriage.

00:01:19Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes.

00:01:19Randy Witty: Could you tell me a little bit about their spouses and their children?

00:01:25Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, I always call him Papa, so I'll just call him Papa. Papa had two daughters by his first wife. I'm not sure how she passed away, but she died. My mother had was married, and but now they realized that he probably had appendicitis, and it probably bursted, and he died, and but they had a little boy. And, so, after the children were Papa's children, girls were about eight or nine years old, and Mama's little boy was about two. They married each other.

00:02:06Randy Witty: Do you remember about what year they were married?

00:02:08Norma Jean Goodmon: About 1917, I imagine.

00:02:11Randy Witty: And what was your oldest brother's name?

00:02:16Norma Jean Goodmon: Bill England [James William England 02/26/1914-04/05/1974].

00:02:17Randy Witty: Okay. And then how many children did your parents have together?

00:02:28Norma Jean Goodmon: Four.

00:02:29Randy Witty: Okay. Now, did you say that you had an older sister that died at birth?

00:02:33Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes.

00:02:34Randy Witty: And what was her name?

00:02:35Norma Jean Goodmon: Juanita. She was born in Arkansas, and she's buried there.

00:02:40Randy Witty: Okay. And then what was the names of your other brothers and sisters?

00:02:45Norma Jean Goodmon: My older was Iona [Iona Shannon 08/27/1920-04/25/2005], and the next was Helen [Helen Marie Watts Quinn 04/04/1924-03/08/2001]. She had a twin, and she his name, they named him Harold. He died at birth, and then myself, Norma Jean, and then a younger brother, Earl Dale [Earl Dale Watts 01/06/1933-12/17/2020].

00:03:03Randy Witty: Okay. Do you know where your parents were married?

00:03:07Norma Jean Goodmon: Not really. They lived around Leslie, Arkansas. I remember hearing that name.

00:03:12Randy Witty: Okay. Do you know why they came to Oklahoma?

00:03:15Norma Jean Goodmon: Because of the oil.

00:03:18Randy Witty: Do you remember about what year that was?

00:03:21Norma Jean Goodmon: Probably about 1921, no about 1918. My sister was about, she was born in 1920, and she was just a baby when they came. So about 1918 or 19.

00:03:45Randy Witty: All right, so what did your father do as an occupation?

00:03:50Norma Jean Goodmon: He worked in the oil some, and then he got us, made a store. He started a store in Slick [Oklahoma]. He had, oh, I'm sure he had harnesses, and he was a shoe cobbler. He did, he had a shoe last, and he did cobbler work, and then he had groceries. And about anything it was just a mercantile.

00:04:17Randy Witty: So, what did your mother do?

00:04:19Norma Jean Goodmon: She was a housewife.

00:04:25Randy Witty: All right, so what is your spouse's name?

00:04:29Norma Jean Goodmon: Wilbert Harrison Goodmon [11/04/1923-01/06/2017]

00:04:32Randy Witty: And what year were y'all married?

00:04:35Norma Jean Goodmon: 1945.

00:04:38Randy Witty: And how many children did you have?

00:04:41Norma Jean Goodmon: Two.

00:04:42Randy Witty: And what were their names?

00:04:44Norma Jean Goodmon: Joyce Laverne [Joyce Laverne Welcher] and Wilberta Jean [Wilberta Jean Witty], two girls.

00:04:48Randy Witty: Okay, all right, I'm going to ask you a few questions about your early childhood and your home life. Tell me what your life was like growing up in Slick [Oklahoma] when you were a child.

00:05:00Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, I guess it was just a normal life. We just played. And, of course, we we never owned a car, so we never went out of town anywhere, and we just go down to the store to buy whatever we needed, and go to the post office and back. We went to church regularly, and that was about our lifestyle. I had a good childhood. I was happy. I had a happy childhood.

00:05:28Randy Witty: What kind of house did you grow up in?

00:05:32Norma Jean Goodmon: Papa and Mama had a boxcar at first for their first house, and then he built onto the front of it, and it was a nice looking house. And it was three bedroom, I mean three rooms, and the middle room was separated so that he could we could have a bed in each part of it.

00:05:56Randy Witty: Can you tell me where the house was located?

00:06:00Norma Jean Goodmon: It was just east of the school house in Slick [Oklahoma]. It was next door to the school.

00:06:08Randy Witty: Okay, tell me a little bit about the house on the inside. You said that there was two bedrooms. How many people slept in each bed?

00:06:19Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, I guess Mama and Papa probably slept in one and maybe had one of the younger children sleeping with them, and then we three girls slept in the other. And in the front room, we had a, what we called a dual fold. It was a it was a couch that came out and made a bed, and we had a wood stove in there, and then we had a larger chair and a table, and we had lamps for lighting. We never had electricity or water in the house. We hada lamp. We just had one lamp. We'd carry it from one room to the other, and we carried water from across the road. The city had a well over there that had a spigot, or a faucet on the outside, and we would carry water from that across the road.

00:07:13Randy Witty: Now, did y'all have a garden?

00:07:17Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, yes, they had, they'd always make a big garden.

00:07:21Randy Witty: Well, tell me what you raised in that garden.

00:07:24Norma Jean Goodmon: Oh, I remember at first they would raise lettuce and onions and radishes and peas and stuff like that. And then they would raise green beans and corn and just about anything, squash. We had a peach orchard. We had the peach orchard was pretty good size. I imagine it had maybe 10 or 12 peach trees in it, and they'd always have a good sized garden. And Mama canned just about everything that was extra. She canned a lot. We had a cellar that was under our house, and we kept the vegetables canned in the cellar under our house.

00:08:09Randy Witty: Did y'all have any kind of livestock that y'all raised?

00:08:13Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, we had, we had a milk cow, and then we had, Papa would raise, I don't know how many, but he would always butcher a hog in the winter. So, we had hogs. I never knew anything about beef. We never knew that people killed cows back then. We just would milk a cow, and then we had chickens. Mama would hatch, hatch eggs, and we would have little chickens, and we'd have plenty of, we had chicken fried chicken about every Sunday.

00:08:55Randy Witty: Okay, so how did you cook your meals?

00:08:59Norma Jean Goodmon: At first, they had a wood stove, and then later we got gas, and, so, we had gas in the stove.

00:09:10Randy Witty: How did you do your laundry?

00:09:11Norma Jean Goodmon: On a washboard with the wash tub. And Mama, they had a big black pot kettle out in the yard, and they would heat water in this large black kettle in the yard. Mama made soap with lye and whatever grease. And I remember her after this, she'd make the soap. It would get hard, and then she'd take a big butcher knife and go out there and cut it up into chunks, and that was our soap.

00:09:45Randy Witty: So you used the soap for laundry?

00:09:47Norma Jean Goodmon: Lye soap for everything.

00:09:54Randy Witty: All right, so tell me about some of your normal daily meals.

00:10:00Norma Jean Goodmon: Oh, I guess we all we just ate what was in the garden and what Mama canned. We never had a meat very much after the hogs were eating the hams and the bacon and the sausage and whatever like that. We had, but we always had plenty of chickens.

00:10:25Randy Witty: Do you have any family recipes from your childhood that you still make?

00:10:30Norma Jean Goodmon: Oh, well, Mama made corn bread about every day. She made biscuits of the morning, and then she would make cornbread. They always liked cornbread. And she would, she made cake. She would make a cake and put it in a kettle, a saucepan, and then she would make a, they call it chocolate gravy now, but mama made a pudding, and she would leave it in this saucepan and pour this chocolate pudding over it, and we would eat it out of that sauce pan, instead of putting it out, putting the cake out on the plate or platter or something, just cake.

00:11:16Randy Witty: So, besides the food that you raised, did you shop anywhere for groceries?

00:11:22Norma Jean Goodmon: Just for staples. We would, we there was a grocery store in town, and we would buy our staples. But I don't know that we ever bought very much canned stuff or anything like that. I don't remember ever, Mama ever having to open a can from a store, but she probably did.

00:11:48Randy Witty: All right, let's see, did you do your own butchering on the hogs and the chickens?

00:11:57Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, yes. Mama would wring their necks out in the yard. And Papa, he always butchered. Okay, so after you butchered the hogs, how did you store it?

00:12:10Norma Jean Goodmon: Papa had a smokehouse. He smoked it, and we just ate it pretty quick, I guess, since there were several of us. It didn't take long, because Mama never did can it.

00:12:26Randy Witty: Okay, so tell me about the clothes that you wore.

00:12:30Norma Jean Goodmon: Mama, Mama made about all of our clothes. We had a Sears catalog, Montgomery Ward, and we girls would look through that and see a dress that we thought was pretty, and Mama always was able to cut it out by herself, and she would make it and that's what we wore. Sometimes, well, I don't think that, I don't remember us ever ordering a dress from the catalog, but we ordered our shoes from the catalog. We would, I guess we'd get a pair of shoes about the time school started, and we would wear them, but just as soon as it got warm, we went barefooted. I can remember running through the sand fast because that sand would really get hot in the summertime.

00:13:22Randy Witty: Who did you play with?

00:13:25Norma Jean Goodmon: I had a girlfriend that was about the same age of I, that was lived real close. We were almost next door, and we were together just about all the time in the daytime.

00:13:37Randy Witty: You remember her name?

00:13:38Norma Jean Goodmon: Emily Jones.

00:13:42Randy Witty: You remember a couple of games that y'all played growing up?

00:13:47Norma Jean Goodmon: Oh, when we were outside, it was just the kids that were close, but we played hide and seek, I guess, and tag stuff like that and then, but I played with dolls, mostly I sewed. There was a couple of that lived in the town. We got acquainted with them, and they had a baby, and so Emily and I would go down to her house and play with that baby, or, you know, and she'd sewed for it. She taught us to sew. So Emily, Emily and I, we made clothes for our dolls. We had, I had my doll in a shoe box, and one night it was a cellophane doll. It was about 10 or 11 inches long, and I had clothes and that doll in that shoe box, and I left it out on the porch one night, and our dog got got it and chewed the doll up. And I cried and cried. And I was about 12 or 13 years. I was in the eighth grade when I got that doll for Christmas, and it was made of cell, not cellophane, celluloid, celluloid.

00:15:10Randy Witty: Did you all sing any songs growing up?

00:15:12Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, we sang a lot of songs. Mama, she was a good singer. Her all of her family sang, and we sang a lot of songs. I did know the old fashioned songs my cousins, they could sing for hours, those old ballad songs. I wish that I knew them. I do know few of them.

00:15:37Randy Witty: All right, besides around the house, where did your father work?

00:15:41Norma Jean Goodmon: He he worked in the oil field somewhere. I don't know what job he had. And then he got a store. And I said, you know that it was a mercantile store. And then he worked for the WPA later, and he worked at the school. He cooked at the school in the cafeteria,

00:16:08Randy Witty: Do you remember the first time you heard a radio?

00:16:14Norma Jean Goodmon: No, not really. Well, I may have, our neighbor, or the girl that I said was my best friend. They had a radio, and it was, they could get foreign countries. And if I was up at her house at night, I remember him sitting in front of it, and he would turn the knob and get all kinds of stuff from overseas. And then we, a little later, after about the time the war was over, we got a battery radio for ourself.

00:17:03Randy Witty: I'm gonna ask you a few questions about your church life. Did your family attend church when you were a child?

00:17:10Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, we went to church regularly. I don't think we missed very many times.

00:17:15Norma Jean Goodmon: At First Baptist.

00:17:15Randy Witty: Yeah, what was the name of your church?

00:17:20Randy Witty: There in Slick?

00:17:21Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, in Slick.

00:17:25Randy Witty: Where was the building that you attended?

00:17:27Norma Jean Goodmon: The first building was between the school house and downtown. And, then, I imagine about in the about 1940, the Nazarene Church was occupying the old depot, the train depot, and they disband. All of them started going to Bristow, I guess. And so the baptist church bought that depot downtown, and that's where I went to church then. I might say that we we moved to Tulsa. My daddy went to California to work during the war, and my two sisters went to work at Douglas in Tulsa, so Mama and my younger brother and I, we moved to Tulsa so that Mama could take care of their children. And I started the school in Tulsa when I was a sophomore, and I graduated from Central High School in Tulsa.

00:18:43Randy Witty: Did your mother or father have any part in the church?

00:18:48Norma Jean Goodmon: Mama, Mama taught Sunday school, and we were just there every service.

00:18:55Randy Witty: How about you? Did you have any responsibilities in church?

00:18:58Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, when I was younger, I, all my, both my sisters, as they grew up, they led singing, and then I led singing.

00:19:08Randy Witty: How big was your church? How many people attended?

00:19:10Norma Jean Goodmon: Probably the, at the largest part, probably 50. But we regular, probably about 30, 35.

00:19:18Randy Witty: I want to move on to World War II. Can you, can you tell me where you were at when you heard that the war had started?

00:19:35Norma Jean Goodmon: It was on a Sunday morning. We had gotten out of church and we were walking home from downtown and coming up over the hill, we'd got almost to the schoolhouse, and someone came running down the street and told us that there had been a bombing in Hawaii. And we went to some place we didn't, I think the man, Mr. Jones, was probably the only one that had a radio around, and so he kept us kind of informed of what was going on.

00:20:12Randy Witty: So, how did things change after the war started?

00:20:19Norma Jean Goodmon: What do you mean? How did they change?

00:20:21Randy Witty: After the war started, did things change? Your daily life change?

00:20:27Norma Jean Goodmon: Oh, yes, yes, we things began to be rationed. We couldn't buy sugar. We couldn't buy shortening. There was lots of things that we couldn't buy and they, we had a card that we used. And of course, back then, they had coins. They called them mills. They were a little coin, and it had a hole in the center of it. And they, we bought things with they were valued at a certain price, and we would buy stuff, and then we could give them the coins, and that would help to pay for the groceries. But we didn't buy very many groceries. We just would, we bought staples, but of course, we didn't need anything because we never had a car. But it was, I can remember someone come through town was making mattresses, and you could sign up and go downtown and make a mattress. We, Mama didn't go do that. I don't know why, but anyway, they made mattresses downtown.

00:21:41Randy Witty: Do you remember getting information about the war during the war?

00:21:46Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, I was, not really. I knew that it was terrible, but then when my husband joined, or my he was my boyfriend, then when he joined, then I began to realize what war really was.

00:22:12Randy Witty: So, how did things change after the war was over?

00:22:19Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, my my husband got a car. It was about a, it was a Ford, it was real pretty, and we were able to buy a car. We were married at that time, and we bought a house over at Broken Arrow, and we lived over at Broken Arrow. My husband went to work at Braden Steel or Braden Winch, and they moved the shop over Broken Arrow, and we moved over there in about 1947.

00:22:56Randy Witty: Now what, what year were you married?

00:22:59Norma Jean Goodmon: 1945.

00:23:00Randy Witty: Okay, and

00:23:01Norma Jean Goodmon: May 15.

00:23:02Randy Witty: Okay, he was still in the service when, when y'all got married?

00:23:06Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, yes.

00:23:07Randy Witty: Tell me about that.

00:23:08Norma Jean Goodmon: He he enlisted. He didn't, people back then were referring to the men that didn't go as 4-Fs, and he didn't want to be known as a 4-F, so he enlisted, and they put him in the Navy, and he went to San Diego for boot camp. And they just put him on the ship, the USS Maryland, and he never came back home until the war was over, which was two years. So we

00:23:18Randy Witty: Did you get married during the war?

00:23:43Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, but we we start dating before he went to the service, and then we wrote to one another all that time. And the ship was bombed headed to Okinawa, so they brought it back to Seattle, Washington to repair it. So, they gave the crew one half of the ship came home from the first month, and another half, the other half came home for the second month. He was in the first month that came home. So, when he came home, we were married, and I went back with him, before he was home for a month, and then when he went back to let the other group come home, I went back to Seattle with him, and I stayed there until the other group had been home a month. And they started telling people, telling them that they were going to go back out to sea, and they didn't know when it was, because they some of the aircraft carriers had been bombed when they when the Japanese found out that they were out there, so they decided that they wasn't going to let the boys know when they were leaving. So, I was [indecipherable] my husband had a cousin that lived in California, so I went out there with and stayed with them. And well us, they we were in Seattle at first, and then they went on down to San Diego, California with a ship. And I went on down there, and I stayed with his cousin. His cousin was a deep sea diver, and he would go out through the daytime, and he would come back at night and he would say, well, my husband got to come to their house probably a couple of nights, and then he went, he came home the next night and he'd say, well, the ship is still out there. And he did that about three nights, and he came home and he said, well, the ship is gone now, so I knew that he had gone back out to sea. And so then he he was gone till the war was over, and they let him come home.

00:25:57Randy Witty: Where were you married?

00:25:59Norma Jean Goodmon: In his parents home in Bristow on 4th & Walnut, right there on the corner of 4th & Walnut.

00:26:08Randy Witty: All right. Tell me about was there any customs, how they treated newlyweds after they were married?

00:26:19Norma Jean Goodmon: Yes, but he came home, and I'll tell you this, he came home and on Saturday, got, got home on Saturday, and he came to Tulsa and picked me up, and we went to town, to [indecipherable], and bought me a dress for a wedding. And we were we went back to his parents house, and his sister, we said that we wanted to get married. So, his sister went on Tuesday afternoon to the preacher's house, and he said he would be over just in a little while. And so we were married at his parents house at four o'clock on Tuesday, May the 15th, and they shivereed back then, which, I don't know how many knows about shivering, but you were supposed to give candy or cigars away when you married. So, we got the candy, and they came to get us, and we wasn't going to let them, they were going to take us to the jail in Bristow, and we weren't going to let him take us to the jail. So, we started running, and his sister and brother in law was helping us get away. And they chased us about all over town, and we got uptown, and they caught us, and well, I, Jim Green, was on the city he was one of the city policemen. He and his wife had several children, and, so, they were going to make us, ride us in a wheelbarrow and have a toilet paper, toilet tissue, and, so, I had this roll of toilet tissue. And, so, I was going to get along with them, and not just go ahead what they were doing, but my husband, he wanted, he didn't want to do that. And anyway, when I saw Jim Green, the policeman uptown, I knew he had several children, so I went up to him, and I told him, Jim, you have, you and Pearl has several children. You could use some toilet paper. I'm going to go to, I want to go back to Seattle with Wilbert. And if you give me a quarter, and he gave me a quarter and grabbed me, and they was going to get Wilbert. And Wilbert started fighting him. And we were right there in front of 6th & main. It was J&J Eat Shop at the time, and it was J&J eating. And we began, he began to wrestle

00:28:55Norma Jean Goodmon: with those policemen. They were trying to put handcuffs on him. The Greyhound bus stopped at J&J at that time, and the J&J bus came in and opened it up. I don't remember if someone got on or got off, but the driver asked if we needed if Wilbert needed any help, and Wilbert said, If there had been some sailors on that bus, we'd have cleaned Bristow up. And they went on and they put us in handcuffs, and then they told us that they didn't have keys to unhook us. So, they took us to the back to the jail and got the keys, and then they took us down to his parents house. He told them that he had not to give him anything, but we did. We gave them some candy.

00:29:51Randy Witty: All right, tell me, in your lifetime, the kinds of changes that you've noticed since you were a child.

00:30:01Norma Jean Goodmon: Oh, my goodness, there's so much traffic. There's so many much to buy, so many stores you could just buy anything you want. Electronics has just gotten so up to date, so many things, TV, radio, computers, everything is just you couldn't hardly believe the difference in today and back during the war.

00:30:32Randy Witty: And as you see it, what are the biggest problems that face our nation, and how do you think they could be solved?

00:30:40Norma Jean Goodmon: I think the largest problem is hatred that we have today.

00:30:48Randy Witty: How do you think we can solve it?

00:30:51Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, if people would turn to the Lord, that would solve a lot of problems, because I don't think we are too industrialized. We have anything that we can do. We we can, we can get plenty of jobs. We don't have to, I don't think we'd have to worry about the economy or anything like that, because I think there's enough for people to do that we could make a good living. Anybody could make good living that wanted to work.

00:31:30Randy Witty: All right. In closing, is there anything else that you'd like to tell us about?

00:31:33Norma Jean Goodmon: Well, I've had a real good life. I've got two daughters. I had five grandchildren, and they now there's about, um, I'd have to count them up, but I imagine there's probably 38 or 40 in our family now. The girls, the kid, the grandchildren and them, used to tell my husband, when we would gather together for Christmas, Grandpa, you're going to have to build a bigger house, but we would just go get right in anyway, and had a good time. We've had a good, good life. Our children have all been, we've never had any problems with them. They're all well. They have good, good jobs. The Lord has been real good to us.

00:32:28Randy Witty: So, thank you for all your time you spent talking to us. We really appreciate it, and this will become an important part of the oral history archives for our museum.