Houses

I was born on December 10, 1936 (a Thursday) at 1:25am in Wewoka, Oklahoma during the height of the great depression.   M.M Van Zandt MD delivered me according to my birth certificate.  My mothers maiden name was shown incorrectly on my birth certificate as "Sybil Sue Myers". It should have read "Sybil Jewel Myers". We still lived at 1318 South Okfuskee when I started to school.  It was a white 3 bedroom frame house with a rolled green asphalt roof.

My father worked for State Fuel Supply Co. (It was sold to Oklahoma Natural Gas in the 60's)which serviced natural gas to about twenty communities around the state of Oklahoma.  The office for State Fuel Supply (were he retired after 44 years) was located on the alley around the corner from the hospital and across the street.  There was a huge pipe yard behind a small brick building.

The Presbyterian Church where we spent the whole day every Sunday was on the square, We would picnic after church in the park.  Everybody brought a dish and we shared.  We played and once in a while I'd make the whole day without getting switched.
We walked everywhere. The grocery, the movie theater, church, the barber shop, and to the soda counter at the drug store. We had an old green Model A Ford sedan with a tar covered top.  During the hot Oklahoma summers, it would get very soft.  I remember getting in trouble for leaving my foot prints in the tar.

There are only a few things I remember about going to school for the first time.  It was only three blocks from the house, I had to wear knickers, and I got paddled when I was in the Easter play. The teacher knocked the tail off my bunny rabbit costume when she hit me with a paddle. One other memory comes to mind that first year.  I took a dump in my knickers when the teacher won't let me go to the restroom!
We moved from Wewoka to Bethany, Okla. during the summer of 1941. The house we rented was near the Nazarene College. (I think in was on East Bradley) It had a separate garage building with a dirt floor. By then my father started riding the bus so the car stayed in the garage most of the time. I do remember falling off the garage so maybe I was a terror on wheels!

Within a short time my parents purchased a 3 bedroom frame house located at 915 NW 94th  Britton, Okla.  The house was located a block north of downtown Britton, two blocks west of the Oklahoma City to Edmond trolley line which ran down the middle of Classen Blvd and less than a block east of the Santa Fe Railroad tracks. The lot was large and there was a chicken house located at the alley.  It was a white frame house with a green rolled tar paper roof. We raised chickens in the back yard and I collected the eggs every morning before I went to school  and  burned  trash in the alley behind our house.  Tommie Glidwell lived across the alley and west in a house that looked like our except it was green.    Karen and Ramona Edwards Lived across the street and to the east.

I started the second grade at Britton Elementary and raced the steam engines that pulled passenger trains to and from Chicago every morning.  We walked to and from school and had to cross three sets of tracks to get there. Went to sleep every night to the sound of steam whistles and trains rushing by.  Woke up every morning to the sound of switch engines pushing cars onto the siding.   In 1947 my father brought home a brand new two tone green Hudson business coupe. We put chairs from my sisters tea set where the back seat would have been so that we could ride in the car.

That summer we had a wind storm and it took the old tar paper roofing off the house.  My Brother, my grandfather Ferguson, Dad and I put on a new roof and my grandfather closed in the screen porch.  I got a brand new red Schwin bike that same summer and the Palmer's moved into the little house that had been converted from a garage at the back of the lot next door.

Gertie Palmer, her son Billy, her daughter, and her mother (Mrs. Procter), shared three rooms until her brother built a 3 bedroom house for them on the front of the lot. Her brother (Charlie Procter) worked for Mohawk Drilling Co. as a tool pusher.  I can't remember anything about her ex-husband. She worked for D.F. McLemore Drug along with my mother and long after mother quit working.

Jim McLemore was D. F. McLemore's oldest son and my best friend for 20 years.  Jim had a younger brother named Jeff. Jim  married and moved to Dallas when he graduated from college and we lost touch. We were roommates in college and spent  time together everyday from Christmas of 1941 until we came home after our freshman year at Oklahoma University.

My last year in high school, dad bought the house at 1410 Downing which he still owned when he died. He rented it or my sister lived there after they moved to Anadarko, Okla. In the early 60's, Dad converted what had been my bedroom into a dining room.  About 1980 my Dad and I converted the one car garage into a Den.