Carroll

My first memories of Grandma's house reaches way back to the late 1940's.  Grandpa was approaching eighty and Grandma was in her mid-sixties.  They were living on the Carroll home place northeast of Drumright, Oklahoma.  My memory pictures it this way: 

A weathered, unpainted, one-story, frame house enclosed by a wire fence with iron posts.  A porch spanning the front sheltered a wooden swing and a couple of rocking chairs.  The front lawn was shaded by a large black-jack tree and a large cedar.  Honeysuckle vines covered the corner of the fence.  A large expanse of lawn paralleled the north side of the house with two pear trees growing alongside the fence.  

At the rear of the house was a concrete cellar over which a small building was erected.  This was commonly called the wash house.  The porch off the kitchen had a slanted roof. Wire strung from the ground to the roof supported flowing vines such as morning glory, honey suckle, or trumpet vines.  These were aromatic and also provided some shade from the Oklahoma sun.  At the south edge of the back porch was the water well from which all the water for human consumption, bathing, laundry, and farm use was hand-drawn.  

Within a few yards east of the house, other buildings were scattered.  These included a smoke house, garage, chicken house, feed barn and tack room, and a two story barn where hay was kept in the loft. 

Grandma loved flowers and was a successful gardener. Around the house were many varieties of flowers.  I remember especially the petunias.  There was a small vegetable garden behind the garage where she managed to add a few hollyhocks.  She would occasionally pick the flowers of the hollyhocks to fashion small dolls which were a delight to my childish imagination.  There was a larger vegetable garden further from the house, to the south, on the edge of a hollow which bordered the place.  Once she also had the ground tilled between the feed and hay barns.  We planted a patch of pumpkins.  I must have been visiting her at the time because I felt part ownership in that patch.  I remember the excitement of seeing large pumpkins on the vines and the long awaited pumpkin pie which Grandma baked. 

Grandma seemed to be in charge in those days.  Grandpa was almost eighty remember.  She engineered a swing for me in the tree by the smoke house.  She often recalled, as I was growing up, how I loved to sit in the swing and sing at the top of my voice.  If Grandpa and Grandma had a car, I don't remember it.  I do remember walking with her to the mailbox which was a quarter-mile from the house.  At other times we walked even further, perhaps another quarter-mile to visit neighbors. 

I don't remember much about the interior of the house.  The kitchen was small, but there was a large dining room and parlor.  One bedroom had been built on the south side of the shotgun-fashioned original structure.  A phone hung on the dining room wall.  It was a party line, and I remember the phone number 1358J-3 because it was also our number when my own family moved out the farm.  In 1952 Dad bought a house on South Duke street in Drumright and traded with Grandpa for the farm.  The purpose was to provide a place for Grandpa and Grandma nearer neighbors and medical help and to provide growing space for our large family of six children.  I remember the excitement of our move; it was the week before I was to enter first grade. 

It was a bunch of tow-headed kids who moved into the old farmhouse with Mom and Dad.  Bobby, the oldest, was entering the 8th grade; Phyllis, the fifth; Donna, the fourth, and I, the first.  Jerry was almost three years old, and Billy was barely a month old.  The older three were upset about changing schools, for we had lived in the Lincoln school ward all our lives up until that time, and now were to attend Edison elementary. 

At the time I was born, 1946, our family was living less than a quarter mile from Lincoln school on the Pure Oil lease.  The only memory I can muster of those times is the name Mrs.Townsley who was a nearby neighbor.  When I was three Dad moved the house we were living in to a lot just across the street from Lincoln.  I remember looking across the street and watching the kids play in the fenced school yard.  Our next door neighbors became close friends to the family.  The Browns were Cecil, Geneva, Charles, and Mary.  Charles and Bobby were nearly the same age, and Mary was about the age of Phyllis and Donna. 

It was in the Brown's yard, playing "crack-the-whip" that I cracked my collar-bone.  Dad took me to Dr. Starr's office.  Dr. W. O. Starr, a full-blood Cherokee Indian, was our family doctor.  In fact, I was a "Starr baby".  Dr. Starr often donned full Indian attire and rode in the local parades.  He was very popular among Drumrighters.  Anyway, this day my arm was put in a sling. 

I returned home from the doctor's office to find the family all outside.  Mom had sprayed the house to rid it of flies.  The fumes were unpleasant, and advisably the family had retreated outdoors.  While I had been away, Geneva Brown had brought me some flowers.  These had been placed in a vase on the living room coffee table.  I begged Mom to let me go inside for a minute to see them.  As I was stepping back off the porch onto the large rock which was our only porch step, I lost my balance and toppled to the ground atop a piece of jagged glass which had been discarded there.  My nee was cut quite deeply.  It had been quite a day for me. 

I have other vague memories of those days in the house across the street from Lincoln school.  The Browns opened a small cafe only a few doors down from us; we kept a milk cow in the small shed at the rear of our property (I think it was 'Ole Betty'). And I had a playmate name Tracy Venable who lived about a block south of us.  Also, while there, I remember that Uncle Bryan and Aunt Mae came back from one of their many trips.  Uncle Bryan was a welder and Aunt Mae often went along with him on jobs.  They would often bring us gifts.  This time they brought me a clown made of crepe paper.  I remember how delighted I was with it.   I think we all went down to Brown's cafe and had hamburgers. 

Another memory is of an icy winter's morning as we were leaving the house to go to church.  Mom fell on the ice right as she was getting into the car landing on her back.  It terrified me.  I remember her suffering with her back a number of times as I was growing up.

Sometime after Jerry was born in 1949 our family moved to a house near the Tydol refinery (still in the Lincoln school district).  I was about 4 years old.  I liked to play in the sand beneath a tree not far from the house, and I can remember another favorite hide-away among a patch of large boulders south of the house.  I remember walking to the mailbox at the corner of our road and the old Shamrock highway. 

When we first moved into this house, we didn't have running water, not even a well.  We had to haul water for awhile, but later Dad had a well dug.  We had a small garden between the house and the barn.  Also, we had a larger garden on the edge of one of the alfalfa fields where we planted watermelons one year.  Also, I recall how the alfalfa was bailed.  After the hay was cut, the hay was raked into piles using horses to draw the rake; then, the hay bailer would be towed to each pile.  The bailer was powered by a large rubber pulley moving between the bailer and a tractor.  The hay was pitched into the bailer's hopper with pitchforks and the bails were tied with heavy twine.  Wooden blocks were used to separate each bail as it went through the machine.  As one block would fall off at the end of the bailer, I got to carry it back to the other end to be reused. Another year we got a more modern bailer which used wire.

We had an old faded red pickup truck which we dubbed "Old Red".  We used it for such things as hauling water.  Also, Mom drove it to Aunt Lucille's where she could have running water to do the laundry.  We had to take the back roads because Mom didn't have a driver's license. 

Grandpa and Grandma Lingle moved up to Drumright for a short time while we were living on this place.  Grandpa built a house right next door to us.  I don't remember much about it, except that Nina, my mother's sister, was living with them.  Once while she was babysitting my cousins, a bunch of us kids went out looking for our horses, a white mare named Nancy and a small Shetland pony named Rusty.  The horses had gotten out of our pasture and we finally found them near town.  We were returning home along the side of the highway when Mom and Phyllis came by in the car looking for us.  Donna Kay and I got whipped for leaving without permission; however, our cousins were only scolded.  We felt pretty upset about that!

We had many good neighbors though we were a couple of miles from town.  Before the Tydol Refinery closed in 1954, there were hundreds of homes scattered between Drumright and Shamrock, a neighboring community.  There also was a small community called Litchfield along the road between our house and Shamrock.  There was a ballpark within a very short distance of our house, across the creek north of us, but just south of the Tydol school house. Freddie's Grocery, across the street from the school house, was where Mom did all her grocery shopping.  Freddie later turned his business into a restaurant where he served his locally famous barbeque.  When the Tydol refinery closed, many of the houses were moved out or torn down.  The Tydol community virtually disappeared with the exception of the school house and lands which has become a vineyard and winery.  Freddie's is still a popular eatery and is well known in northeastern Oklahoma. 

Billy was born while we lived on the Tydol place.  I remember that all the kids were "farmed" out to other families while Mom was in the hospital.  I remember that I stayed with the Capps family who we knew through our church.  

In August of 1952 we moved to the farm that our grandparents had purchased in 1907, northeast of Drumright. Billy was hardly a month old.  As I write these notes, I am reminded that Billy now owns the old home place.  And though only the old cellar and wash house remain of the original structures, he and Karla have made a wonderful home in their trailer which sits near the site of the original house. Mom and I were visiting them in the spring of 2007.  She and I were sitting on their front porch and Mom spoke to me about how it just felt like "home".  That home place has now been owned by Carrolls for over 100 years. 

Collecting Our Kin: A Family History Collection, copyright 1998-2007, is a not-for-profit, personal, on-line genealogy project, formatted and presented by James H. Carroll, Goodlettsville, TN.  Excerpts and contributions from other sources have been used sparingly and with appropriate credit given. You are welcome to copy information found at this site for personal use and share information with other researchers or genealogical organizations, but this information may not be sold or used in a commercial project without expressed permission.