Jack Carman

EC: This is an interview with Jack Carman, June 7, 1979. Why don't we start with just you. Tell me where your folks came from? What you know about why they came if you do, anything like that.

JC: Well, my folks came from Billings, Missouri out of Springfield, Missouri a little ways. And my dad used to buy cattle in the early day and down in Indian Territory and took [indecipherable] train back to St. Louis, and he got acquainted in this country. Finally, he moved down, moved his family down. He had five children, and [inaudible]. Yeah, he just had one child then, and the 00:01:00rest of us was born here in Bristow.

EC: I've noticed there were several people from Bristow who came, their families came from Billings, Missouri. Was there any connection that you know of?

JC: Well, yeah, dad was the first one come down, and he got to trading with the Indians, you know, and got acquainted, and got to making a good bit of money was one reason in the cattle business, of course, and buying land. Then it wasn't very long after that the oil boom came, and that's when things did start happening. He had to organize his Billings Oil Company. There was so many people down here from Billings, and they sold stock in there, and I think they made a little money but not a whole lot on that.

EC: Well, when were you born?

JC: 1905.

EC: Alright, what were some of your early memories about your childhood? Anything special, you know? What do you remember about Bristow and what life was like, what you did?

JC: My dad had a Model T Ford Agency here in Bristow during the boom, and I wasn't but about 12 or 13 when I learned how to drive one of those Model T's pretty early in life. Every time we sold one to a farmer, why I'd have to teach them how to drive. They never had driven before or hardly ridden in a car. That was quite an experience for me.

EC: You went to school here?

JC: Yeah, and graduated and went to OU, and graduated there, and coached a couple of years. I decided I didn't want anymore of that, so I came home and 00:03:00started farming and bull dozing and a little bit of everything.

EC: What were the schools like when you went to school in Bristow?

JC: Well, my dad and the superintendent were good friends, so that put me in a different category from the rest of them. But the school house that I went to school in had been torn down. That's right across from the gymnasium now. It was a rock school. Several pictures of it around town here. Mr. Hutton (ph) was the superintendent then. It was two-story, and they had a nice slick railing, you know, from the first story to the bottom story and the street level. The bell 00:04:00would ring and we'd scoot on out while all us boys would slide down that railing. The superintendent didn't like that very well, so he just drove some nails, two or three of them, into the railing just high enough that it would catch your britches, not your skin. That stopped the sliding.

EC: You mentioned the oil boom. When you think of the boom, what years do you mean?

JC: Well, I don't know exactly but it was about '23 or something.

EC: Right.

JC: That's way back there, and I was, I was born in 1905. But they had two or three after that and that was the first one anyway.

EC: What do you remember about the town of Bristow as the boom hit? Do you remember any changes?

JC: Yeah. We used to have dirt streets, mostly, I think, when the boom hit. I 00:05:00remember there was dirt streets and they had wooden sidewalks, they followed along in front of the stores and buildings. And if you was pretty heavy and you could step on the outside of one of those boards was about four foot wide in front of the building, while then the other ones would fly up.

EC: Well, do you remember the cotton days and all the wagons in the street?

JC: Yeah, gosh yeah. We had a lot of fun playing on the wagons that came in town.

EC: Did you have any jobs that, oh in high school or as a teenager? Did you work around town at all?

JC: Yeah, I worked plenty but it was for my dad.

EC: In the Ford Agency, mainly?

JC: Well, I was just kind of a small kid, and when they'd get a car load of 00:06:00Model T's in the train, why they had the body off of them and the chassis, you know, all in the same box car. My job was to put the body on the chassis and bolt it down, so they would go together. Of course, I had two or three school kids that helped me. One day there was a farmer that brought a car in and said, Mr. Carman, seems like this seat is trying to get away from the chassis. Dad looked around a little on it and found out I didn't put the body bolts in that connected. It was just sitting on there. And that was the last time I had any school kids to help me. I had to do it by myself.

EC: After you got out of college, what kind of business did you go into?

JC: Well, like I say, I coached two years over at Poteau. That was the start of 00:07:00the depression. We got married that year and graduated. Let's see what else did I [inaudible], huh? Yeah, had my first new car. I was really on top until I found I didn't like coaching too well.

EC: Did you, when you were a child, what kind of things did kids do? Horseback riding or what was the fun part of life when you were a kid?

JC: That's a hard question. [inaudible]

EC: Any of them pranks?

JC: Oh yeah. Had one past time of Halloween, you know we all had outhouses, and at night we'd shove 'em over. Then they modernized those out houses, you know, and put water system in them in the outhouse and it was a little harder to push 00:08:00over then with plumbing in there.

EC: Did you, do you remember the Fourth of July picnics?

JC: Well, they had one every year, and I don't know--

EC: Well, that's what I mean, I just heard that was an annual affair, and I wondered what one was like. [inaudible]

JC: Well, mostly what I can remember about it was they had a lot of banners, you know, and just a red, white and blue and flags like all decorated, band stand in front of the stores, setting off fire crackers and [inaudible]. Yeah, had a lot of times free ice cream.

EC: Did Bristow seem crowded to you during the oil boom?

JC: Yeah, it was crowded. There was about twenty-five to thirty thousand people here compared with five or six they got now, counting the cotton wagon [indecipherable].

EC: Was it a typical oil town in the sense that there was fights and gambling or whatever?

JC: Yeah, money changed hands pretty freely, and fortunes were made and lost over night or gambling, you know.

EC: There's a former marshal I have only heard about, Uncle Billy?

JC: Billy Freshour.

EC: What can you tell me about him?

JC: Well, he was short with a large stomach. He was daring, and I don't think anybody was afraid of him, and he wasn't afraid of anybody at all. Let's see, he lived to be pretty old to be a sheriff. They had the jail down about where 00:10:00[inaudible]. What's the damn grocery store down there? Well's, yeah, it was down there in the Well's corner of the Well's grocery store down there. They finally got a new enough courthouse.

EC: You were about to tell the story about the jail, I think.

JC: Oh well, an instance in junior high or high school it was. Let's see, how'd that go? Oh, after school were shooting craps up in the gym, you know. One fellow, Paul Jones, went out to the police station, and he swept the police station out. They made it up against us that the law was to come up there and 00:11:00arrest us for shooting craps, you know. So, two or three laws came up and took us down and put us in the jail. Policeman said, "Now you want to turn this joke around while you just tell them that you found out that Paul Jones is the one that turned you in, you see." We did, and we didn't see Paul, you know, for a day or two because he was hiding out.

EC: When the depression came, what evidences of it did you notice in Bristow?

JC: That was 1930 when I got out of college. That's when I found out. I got married. I had a car and all that I found out where all this money was coming from. People just didn't have fans. Didn't have a lot of things. The oil boom, 00:12:00of course, helped out on that deal.

EC: Were you ever involved in politics in Bristow?

JC: Yeah, I run for County Commissioner once and that's [indecipherable] from now on.

EC: Who were some of the people who were involved in politics? Were there two sides? Was there democrats versus republicans or were there factions in town? How would you describe the politics in Bristow?

JC: Well, [inaudible] I never did take part. Yeah, my dad was a republican, of course, I was, too, and all us kids. I never forget my dad never did take much part in politics, but my mother and brother did, my older brother. He got beat, too.

EC: Who would you say ran the town in those days?

JC: Who ran the town?

EC: Who ran the town?

JC: Oh, Mark Schrader (ph) was the mayor two or three times here, and he was [inaudible]. Who? Oh, Jimmy Weaver [inaudible].

EC: What about World War II? Any particular effects on Bristow that you recall?

JC: Well, it didn't affect me too much. I was too old for World War II, and I wasn't old enough for WWI, so I came in between there. None of my family, luckily, didn't have to go. Of course, I had my cows and I still kept [indecipherable].

[Inaudible]

JC: On harvest day, you know, everybody got their guns up shooting, you know, celebrating. Somebody accidently shot the rope from the flag pole, and they thought there was a traitor there in the crowd shooting the flag down.

EC: Well, had there been any, particularly, oh, amusing things that have happened in Bristow over the years or exciting things that you happened to see? Were you involved in any of those bank robberies or anything like that?

JC: Well, I saw one bank robbery. I saw them come out shooting. I forgot what bank it was. I just happened be going down the street, you know, and I saw this old boy come out, and somebody had gotten up on the building across the street shooting at this bank robber. I saw where the brick, you know, shell went in the 00:14:00building into the brick.

EC: When you think of Bristow, do you think of it now, this many years later, do you think of it mainly as a farming area, cattle raising or what?

JC: Well, I had a little part in all of it, I think, pretty well, around the town. You can make a living if you work at it, you know.

EC: You told a story earlier, the part about the Ku Klux Klan. Do you remember there being a Klan here in Bristow?

JC: I don't know if there was any here or not, but I remember reading, you know, all over the country about it and this and that.

EC: How do you feel relationships between the races have been in Bristow? Have there been any problems?

JC: No. I remember that one up in Tulsa. They had a big riot up there, you know. People from here went up there with guns. I remember that.

[Inaudible]

EC: How do you feel that the relationship between Indians and whites has been?

JC: We hadn't had any trouble there. They weren't very [indecipherable] but they did get along and didn't get in much trouble. They liked liquor like all other Indians.

EC: Where did the liquor come from in Bristow?

JC: Huh?

EC: Where did the liquor come from in Bristow?

JC: Oh, moonshine mostly. Made it out in the country. Once instance when I was out on the farm, this fellow came up and said, "Say you making whiskey over on the back side of your place?" I said, "Hell no!" He said, "Well, you got a still running over there." And I said, "Well, hell, let's go over there and look at it." And there was one over on the back side, wasn't but about a mile from where I lived. There was an old copper boiler and actually with fire under it right in operation, you know. It had two or three fifty-gallon barrels, wooden barrels, 00:16:00sitting around. Of course, nobody was there that heard us coming up, I guess. [indecipherable] didn't have a chance to move his still. I took a team. I had a team wagon those days and took it over there I hauled the mash home and fed it to the hogs. I had the copper to sell. I had a little spring over there. That's how come they [indecipherable] how it got there or whose it was.

EC: Who were some of the major land owners around Bristow?

JC: Oh, the Kelly's has been some of the first. My dad, of course, was in that early. Used to, all you had to have was a bottle of liquor and a deed and you could buy land pretty cheap. And then the court had to approve all the Indian deals, of course.

EC: Do you think there was a good bit of that done?

JC: Yeah, there was some of it, but more and more crude work on the lease and all that. The oil business was trading land, you know.

EC: I know what I wanted to ask you about, this Lake Heyburn?

JC: Who?

EC: Lake Heyburn or Heyburn Lake out here?

JC: Yeah, Heyburn Lake.

EC: I judge there was some controversy about the building of that.

JC: There was on my part.

EC: Well, tell me about it. Tell me about it. I don't know anything about the story.

JC: Well, Brick Kirchner and I bid on the clearing of the lake, you know, getting the brush off of it. First job we ever had that large and that kind of a job. We started the clearing on it, a $120,000 job, and about three-fourths done 00:18:00[indecipherable] was good up to that date. A big flood came and washed all a lot of trees down in what he had already cleaned up. The government made us go back and clean what we had cleaned up, [indecipherable] and we figured it was acts of God, and we wasn't liable for it, you know, getting all the flood water down on that. It liked to washed the Heyburn Dam out anyway. But we sued the government, but we didn't do any good. Just about broke even on the deal, so that was lucky.

EC: I take it that sports were pretty big in Bristow in your high school 00:19:00days--sports, athletics?

JC: Oh yeah, because the oil boom mostly. The men had the money and they wanted to bet on the team. They wanted Bristow to win, and if we had a weak spot on the team why the coach or somebody would hire this kid's dad whose job was here and that he would be living in Bristow legal to play on the Bristow team. It was several pictures there of boys that had been moved in, you know, from [indecipherable]. We played for the state championship down in Oklahoma City against Norman. We had a special train left at Bristow and went to the city with four or five cars on it. I wasn't on it but they said that was pretty rough. Plenty of liquor and drinking going on. Had five cars [indecipherable]. Norman 00:20:00football game, we lost. Come to find out the referees did have money on the game. One instance [indecipherable] ran out, trained to run out of bounds. The umpire overruled that. Then they said, well, he was a holding back up the way of somebody at Bristow.

EC: You mentioned, speaking of trips, you mentioned earlier that you used to go to Colorado in the summers. Where did people from Bristow go for vacations? Colorado?

JC: Well, yeah, Joe Abraham had a big family, and he did about like my dad. He'd go out there and rent one of those houses, you know. They had a big family, and dad would just lay around there and enjoy the cool nights and rest up. And us kids was kind of on our own. I sold newspapers and did a little guide. A whole lot of people wanted the kids to show them where just sight-seeing tour was.

EC: Did you go to Siloam Springs at all?

JC: Just drove over there for the weekend or day.

EC: Were your business connections in Bristow through Tulsa or through Oklahoma City or Kansas City or where?

JC: Mostly Oklahoma City. Sold cattle down on the Oklahoma City market, and I borrowed my money for school [indecipherable] and went to school at Norman, so 00:22:00that put me down in Oklahoma City more than it would have Tulsa.

EC: Let me ask you, what are some of the houses or buildings still standing that you remember as being some of the oldest?

JC: [Indecipherable] Grocery on west sixth street, Dr. Schrader (ph) had this kind of nice house right here next to the park.

[Inaudible]

EC: Okay, any others? Bill Cheatham (ph) house on 11th.

JC: Joe Abraham had this large brick house on 8th Street that's still standing. One of the daughters lives in it.

EC: What about downtown? Are there any of the buildings that are the original 00:23:00old ones?

JC: Yeah, there's a lot of them. Of course, a lot of them burned and a lot of them tore down. My dad had the first brick building in Bristow. He met the brick guy here on east 8th Street, there was a little creek out there had water and right kind of sand or brick material. They had an old mule or something like, you know, squeezing sorghum. They put this mixture in his box and the mule would turn it to mix the mortar to make brick with. And they had mold where they made it. Then they had a fire they call it, you know, to heat them to make the brick where they'd stand up to weather. He made the brick for this first brick building in Bristow. When they tore it down about two or three years ago, I saved a lot of the brick out of it. Some of the brick. Deteriorating the brick 00:24:00and, then I forget who owned it then, plastered it, plastered over it. Then that got to deteriorating, so they put a new brick wall on the outside of it and all that's old was still in there. Then when they opened the Community State Bank (ph) [indecipherable]. Then when they decided to build the new Community State Bank (ph), they had to tear all the inside brick out of it, as well as, the new outside.

EC: This is Mrs. Jack Carman (RC)

RC: The first hospital that I ever remember is down here on North Main, next door north of the Masonic Temple. It's still standing. It's an apartment house now. And Mrs. Albert Kelly, Sr. had charge of it. That was before she married Mr. Kelly. Of course, the doctors all had offices upstairs downtown in the building over the stores downtown. My father had an office in the same building 00:25:00as Dr. King and Dr. Schrader.

EC: Tell me about your family. Who was your father and where did he come from?

RC: My father came, my family came from Tennessee. And the day we landed in Bristow, I was six-months-old, and he had just graduated from medical school in Tennessee and had taken a trip out in Oklahoma, down in the southern part of the state, way down in the south part of the state to find a location. And he didn't like what he had seen in the south and he started back home on the train and met a drug salesman. He told him that there was a little settlement, Newby, 10 miles south of Bristow here, that badly needed a doctor. So he went down and he liked it, so we went back to Tennessee and brought the family out. And we lived in Newby about four years.

[Inaudible]

RC: Oh, yes, drove a horse and buggy. Then we came to Bristow before I was six-years-old, and we've been here ever since.

EC: What are some of your memories of Bristow as a child?

RC: Well, I can remember how rough it was during the oil boom.

EC: Rough? How?

RC: Well, women just couldn't go out on the streets alone. We lived, at that time, over on East 7th Street, and right down there where Well's Grocery Store is, was a livery stable. And on that main street, right across from where Johnny Roberts now lives, was the livery stable. And I remember how carefully we used to have to walk by there, because it was a pretty rough place. It was a dirty place, of course. But women didn't go out at night without someone being with them, because it was pretty rough. I can remember the terrible flu epidemic we 00:27:00had during WWI, how my father worked night and day, and how we would beg him to stop. But, no, he was needed. But that was a terrible time. I can remember that. That flu epidemic was [indecipherable].

EC: What other things stick in your mind about growing up in Bristow?

RC: Well, I think it's been a marvelous place. It's been just small enough that it was close. And, big enough, we had Chautauqua. Do you remember the Chautauqua and the [indecipherable] courses? We had those in the summer time, and they were up here this, back where the library stands now, along in there. You remember that, Jack? The Chautauqua? And we were close enough even to Tulsa and Oklahoma City, anything big that went on, we would take the train and go to the city 00:28:00[indecipherable]. And when Billy Sunday was in Oklahoma City, the big evangelist, why we all went down to hear Billy Sunday. But I think it's been a fine place.

[Inaudible]

EC: What, thinking of the Chautauqua, did they have the tent?

RC: Oh yeah, great big tent and chairs and everybody just smothering to death and fanning like mad.

EC: Do you remember any of the people that came through?

RC: No, off hand, I don't. No, I really don't.

EC: That would have been about what years?

RC: Oh, that would have been in, in the early 20s or late eighteen, nineteen, somewhere along in there.

EC: Do you have any memories of the depression that stick in your mind?

RC: Well, no. We were married, and of course, had three little tiny kids, so that was depression enough, you know. Just the usual things. Nothing in 00:29:00particular. We just didn't buy anything we didn't HAVE to have.

EC: Now, your father was a doctor. I've heard some interesting stories about some of the doctors here in town. Do you have any--

RC: Not my father.

EC: No, no, but--

RC: I can guarantee you that!

[Inaudible]

RC: Well, they're the ones that ruled the town.

EC: They ruled the town?

RC: You're right. The town and the politics of the town.

EC: They did?

EC: About how many doctors were there in those days?

RC: Well, I remember from the enterprise, oh, we had nine or ten [indecipherable].

EC: And the hospital that Mrs. Kelly, did she run it?

RC: Yes. Uh huh.

EC: Who actually started it? Do you know?

RC: No, I don't recall who actually started it. That's my first recollection of 00:30:00it is that she was running the hospital, and my father being a doctor, I expect that's the only reason I remember that part of it. And it was there, then, until my father and Dr. Hollis and Dr. Bisbee and Dr. Williams organized a clinic, and went into the building, now occupied by Schumacher Funeral Home, and it was called the Bristow Clinic. And they were there several years. Then they built, just across the street, east of the American Legion Hut. They built the Bristow Clinic and Hospital was the new first new hospital they ever had. And they ran that for, well, I don't know many years. It was the Bristow Clinic and Hospital. And then Bristow began to get bigger and the need was there for more 00:31:00hospitalizations and better care, a graduate nurse, for instance, and things like that. So then, John Collins was really instrumental.

EC: Who?

RC: John Collins in starting, as I recall, the movement for the hospital out here, Bristow Memorial Hospital. But the need was there, definitely. And my father and the three partners dissolved up in years and sold out to the sister and Todd (ph) [indecipherable] from Tulsa. Dr. [indecipherable] sister is still in Tulsa, as well as, one of the young boys.

[Inaudible]

EC: Well, have there been any particularly exciting or amusing things in Bristow that I haven't asked about that you remember? Things that happened to you or that you saw?

RC: Um, I don't think so. My mother and family were very much involved in the Methodist Church, and I have grown up in the churches and have been familiar with all of them here in Bristow and watched their growth and their organization. The first brick church, first church we had in Bristow was the First Christian Church and it was over on East 9th Street. And the little church that sits down here next to the new City Hall was one of the original. It's been used by several different congregations. The Catholic used it. The Presbyterian used it. And the Christian Science have it now.

EC: Have you been aware of any anti-Catholic feelings in Bristow in your life here?

RC: I don't think so, particularly, there has been some, I think. As I can recall, now I'm not saying it's true, but as I recall, most of the Catholic people were the, what we call Syrians then, but they call themselves Lebanese now, came into Bristow, Cejul (ph) and Ed and Useph Abraham, the three brothers came to Bristow. And, of course, they were all Catholic. I believe that's my first memory of that, and then, of course, as other people moved in, people from back east in the oil [indecipherable] so it changed from being predominantly foreign-born people to more like it is today.

EC: Had there been any major controversies in Bristow that you remember? Things 00:34:00like arguments over whether to, oh, pave the streets or whether to build the new City Hall? Or has there been anything that's really controversial?

RC: I don't think of anything, really. I think we've done pretty well through the years without any big fights over anything. Do you remember anything?