Oral History Venita Johnson

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Transcript:

Interviewee: Venita Johnson

Interviewer: Tracy Floreani

 

Tracy Floreani: Alright, would you mind stating your name and spelling it please.

Venita Johnson: Good morning, my name is Venita Johnson. That’s spelled V like victor, E-N-I-T-A. Last name Johnson. J-O-H-N-S-O-N.

TF: And before we turned on the recorder you were telling me that you were raised in Mcloud but born in Oklahoma City. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

VJ: Sure, I was born in Oklahoma City because it was the closest hospital that would serve negros—my son laughs because he saw my birth certificate. He says, “You were born a negro?” [laughter] He was like, “Hey, hey, momma’s a negro.” So, I was born in the segregated negro hospital in Oklahoma City. Shawnee was actually closer but there was not a hospital there we could go to. So, my mom went into labor early and I ended up in Oklahoma City born. And I spent my preschool years in Mcloud. Then when my dad retired from the military my parents bought a house in Oklahoma City and we moved here so I was about six when we moved here.

TF: And you were saying your family came from Southeastern Oklahoma originally?

VJ: That was my dad’s side of the family back several generations.

TF: What do you know about your family’s history in Oklahoma?

VJ: Well, I know that my dad’s side of the family came over on the Trail of Tears with the Chickasaw. They carried the Chickasaw stuff from the south into Oklahoma and somewhere along the lines we got transferred from the Chickasaw freedman’s role to the Choctaw freeman’s role and I don’t know how that happened, but I’ve seen the documents. My mother’s side of the family has been in Oklahoma so long I’m not sure of all the history. I don’t know if they were runaways. I think some of them were runaways and then some of them were actually enslaved here. They didn’t talk about that for a long time but later on my mom developed Alzheimer’s. So, she talked about things that they were never supposed to speak about earlier and she’d say, “Well we were so and so’s people, and such and such family were so and so’s people. And so that’s how I started understanding why some of the relationships existed that I had seen as a preschooler. So, my mom’s side of the family was in the area of what’s in Mcloud before Mcloud was there and sometimes you’ll see references in history that’ll say something about Shacktown or Shantytown cause there was a thriving little community there thriving by, you know, former slave standards. And my mom talks about when she was little and there were like, probably, 400 black people living there, and I think now you can count them on one hand.

TF: Do you know why they wanted to move to Oklahoma City or was there a reason why they wanted to leave Mcloud?

VJ: That was just the trend. The thing to do to feel more modern and urban because actually Mcloud was like a little garden of Eden that where we lived was almost like a compound though we lived in one house my grandparents lived across the alleyway. In another my great aunt, my cousins, my great grandmother, my great great great aunt, some more great uncles and aunts, so lots of relatives were around us. So, in our preschool years we could run and play between the houses and had such freedom. I wish my children could have known that freedom but they grew up in Oklahoma City and they were like latchkey kids and so very different life and see we grew up we could go between the sandplum trees, we’d play there. We could go to the apple tree, go to the peach tree, the pear tree. There was a black walnut tree. My older—I grew up

with older brothers and they would go pick blackberries for money and so yeah it was just a fun life. Everybody had gardens and a lot of people had chickens and so there was health food, healthy local fare.

TF: So, I’m assuming a lot of those family members stayed in Mcloud when you all moved or did some family members move with you to the city?

VJ: Many moved, yeah, yeah, many moved. Lots of people moved to Cal—I mean moved out of state and actually it was the elders that stayed in Mcloud, and most of the people that moved, moved because we did have a lot of military in our family. So they were moving all the time in and out of the country, different deployments, because we had people in the marine, the navy. My dad was army. We had people in the airforce.

TF: All over the world?

VJ: Yeah, all over the world.

TF: So, do you feel like—and I don’t know if you can answer this question, but do you feel like once your family moved to Oklahoma City there were ways that there were ways they could recreate that sense of community here that they’d had in Mcloud?

VJ: No, no. There was a pseudo sense of community—there was more of a community than there is now and largely that was because where we moved, we moved into we never lived in deep Oklahoma City so nobody in my family went to Douglas or Dungee or any like that. So we went to desegregated schools. In fact other than when I was in fifth and sixth grade my brothers and I always went to desegregated schools. They had gone to school in Mcloud and the elementary school was desegregated although they were segregated when my mom was growing up because there was no high school. It was illegal for black people to go to the highschool in Mcloud in my mom’s generation so they had to go to Shawnee to a little school that was there. But no in Oklahoma City we did have a sense of community cause we lived in our neighborhood. My cousins bought a house there within a couple years. The people that lived on the corner were my cousins’ cousins and 1963 there were like I said five families in that community and with the climate the way it was we relied on each other heavily. Other families I mean that was like the beginning of white flight in that community but there were, you know, white families that we were friends with and interacted with very closely too.

TF: Was ’63 the year your family moved here?

VJ: Yes.

TF: And you were how old?

VJ: Six.

TF: And so what neighborhood was it that you all moved to?

VJ: Moved to Park Estates.

TF: And at the time it was mixed?

VJ: At the time it was when Park Estates was beginning to be desegregated.

TF: So this is probably, you know there’s a lot going on in ’63 and you were young. Do you remember any of those events kind of infecting the climate?

VJ: I do, but I didn’t have an understanding then because I was six years old. So, I was pretty much in Lalaland. Now, as I look back, I’m able to put them into perspective and I have a sense of a historic perspective for them. My brothers understood things better than I did. I remember when Robert Kennedy visited Oklahoma City when they opened Kennedy Junior High, and I wanted to go but my parents wouldn’t let me. They were afraid for us to go there just because

of the climate in the country. So, we didn’t get to go. [laughter] I remember when JFK was shot in Dallas and my teacher cried and my first grade class—we all cried because my teacher was crying and because the adults around us were sad. So that sadness spilled over and we carried that sadness. Now I look back and I remember Mary Poppins. It just had the fifty or sixty year anniversary, whatever it was. Mary Poppins. I remember my mother’s friend gathering a bunch of us, probably seven or eight 6 year old girls, and taking us to this center theater downtown in Oklahoma City and we watched Mary Poppins. Well, it was just a fun day. We had a great time. I didn’t understand until recently that that was a new thing. And that was a very assertive act on her part to gather us and take us to that movie theater because that was a movie theater that black people didn’t go to. But by 1963 it was like well [chuckle] we’re going.

TF: Do you remember how many girls there were or how many kids?

VJ: About seven or eight of us.

TF: A good sized group.

VJ: Yes, yes, yes, and each one of us got to pick our own flavor, our own type of life savers. She bought us lifesavers and we would trade. You know I remember that. We had a great time. Of course, we came out skipping and singing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. So I remember that greatly. So 1963 to 75 when I finished high school through that time there was a greater sense of community. We moved to another, to Park Plaza area or it probably has another name in 1967 though and that’s when I went to a segregated school, fifth and sixth grade. It was culture shock.

TF: What was the name of that school? do you remember?

VJ: Dewey Elementary. I went from Longfellow Elementary to Dewey Elementary. Both of them are closed now. Longfellow was torn down and rebuilt as the new MLK. But I learned to swim at Longfellow park, at Longfellow swimming pool.

TF: And you went to Classen Highschool.

VJ: I went to Classen Highschool, yes.

TF: So do you as fifth and sixth did you have a middle school or did you go to Classen Highschool?

VJ: I went—Oh, yeah—Junior high.

TF: You’re just skipping over those years [laughter].

VJ: Junior high was very traumatic. 1969. That was the first year, well I guess Taft was the middle school, Taft Middle School—Taft Junior High. No, it was junior high. Taft Junior High and Northwest Classen were desegregated. Mrs. York of York Appliances didn’t want her son going to school with “those people”. Of course, she used different words. And there was a major stink about bussing but the issue was not ever really bussing. The issue was desegregation and I remember, of course, we had seen the news stories from the South, from the Freedom riots and all that, the busses on fire and all of that. But it came time for us to get on the bus and go to school. So we were the children that got on the bus and I remember going up Northwest Classen there were people throwing bricks at us and yelling “N-word” and “go home” and all that kind of thing. And the police watched and allowed it and we would go into the school and all the African American children had to go into the basement and wait until time to go to homeroom. Well, I understand that better now that they had liability issues so they had to protect us but as children we just felt like that’s not fair cause the white children got to come to school and they could go wherever they wanted in the building. But we had to be contained

there and we were dealt monolithically and we were, it’s like, we were used to being individuals. It’s like my name’s not “N-” my name’s Venita, you know. So ’69, the 1969, 1970s school year was very traumatic and I run into people that were there now those that are still alive and after we talk or meet each other and we chat for a while we realize we were there it’s like, “you were there.” There’s a sense of “you were there” and understanding, a kinship, that’s there. Some people will still say “they shouldn’t have done that to us. We were children. They shouldn’t have done that to us.” But, you know, if not then when. We gotta transfer back to Harding Junior High. My brothers transferred back to Northeast High School. So those schools had been desegregated longer so it was no big deal we were just going to school by then and desegregation was more normalized in those places

TF: So it was Taft you were at when you were first bussed?

VJ: Yes, it was Taft.

TF: How do you feel when you drive past that building now? Do you think about it?

VJ: I do. Everything I think about it I think about the events that happened there. I think about there was this one guy—tall, skinny, really tall, skinny guy, white guy—and we were in the outside—I’m really losing my words—we were outside and it was lunchtime just after lunch. He came up and he had cowboy boots on and he ground his heel in the top of my foot and called me the N-word. And I had brothers so I knew how to fight [laughs] so when he did that I just reached up and I punched him. Well they didn’t see him grind his heel in my foot first, you know it’s the one that hits back that gets caught. So the story that one of the teachers told is that I just went up and punched him for nothing. Now why would I go and punch this big ol’ guy for nothing. I remember getting in trouble I remember getting exp—well not expelled—but being suspended for three days. See I had been a straight A student; I was an honor student. That wasn’t me to be engaged in fighting or to be in trouble. I got my first F ever that year and it was in the homeroom first hour because going to school was so traumatic. Well, and then too my parents didn’t understand that. So bringing an F home was not acceptable. It’s like “No, you’re (and they’d label you) you’re an A student. We expect you to bring home As. So I got the grade up I think I ended with a B by the end of the year. But that first nine weeks that F was like “oh my.” By the time I was at Classen and high school things were great those were happy years. Had a lot of fun.

TF: So when you went back to Harding did that seem like a much safer space?

VJ: Yes, yes, yes. We still had to deal with racism but it was a much safer space because, like I said, the schools had been desegregated longer. It was no longer a new thing. It’s like, “Hello. We’re here. It’s not going to change.” [laughs]. Let’s get down to the business of going to school.

TF: Do you know why you went to Classen instead of Northeast?

VJ: Yes, I do, because I knew I was a cheerleader and knew all the cheers—the fight song, the alma mater, everything for Northeast. That’s where my brothers went. I was ready to go. And the finger plan had been in effect then, but the cluster plan followed. I got caught up in the cluster plan which, to my understanding, had to do with centers of excellence. So Northeast was the science center. John Marshall was a math center. Different schools had different centers. So anyway I got assigned to Classen as a result of the cluster plan.

TF: You had a good experience there?

VJ: I had a good experience there. Because Northeast was a little more bougie. North was—Classen was more bougie. Classen was an old hippy school. And if it, my classmates and I tease each other, it’s like you know were half hippy [laughs].

TF: So this would have been like earlier seventies?

VJ: It was early seventies. Yes, love, love, love.

TF: That sounds much better than Taft [laughs].

VJ: Yeah, it was, it was much better than Taft.

TF: It’s amazing to me that those schools are all within just a few miles from each other. The cultures are so different.

VJ: The cultures were very different.

TF: So, are there places, either in those years you were growing up or after high school here on the Northeast side that were particularly important to you outside of the schools?

VJ: Yes, my favorite place is, in the summer I spent my time. We had a library, not just one library like Ralph Ellison’s basically the only library in northeast Oklahoma City now up on 23rd—oh, there was one on 36th and it was small but it was adequate. I spent many hours in there in the summer reading there and I had a couple of friends who worked there. They had part time jobs there. There were three grocery stores right there and a Safeway, Humpty-Dumpty, and IGA right there by 36th and Kelly. TG&Y, C.R. Antony, those stores were there as well as other shops, barber shops. It was a thriving community. We didn’t have the deserts like we have now. So the library and Northeast center where the pool was. There were arts and crafts and I guess that was through Parks and Recreation, Oklahoma City Parks and Recreation. So we could go there for [crabs?]. We would go there in the morning for a free swim and be back in the afternoon and pay our little quarter to swim. It was a dime to rent a basket to put your clothes in. And so those are, I have very fond memories. Our friends and I would meet there. If we weren’t there we were riding our bicycles.

TF: The streets felt safe?

VJ: The streets felt safe. Yeah most of us had working parents. There were a few people that had moms that were at home, but most of us had working parents and we all kind of looked out for each other and the house behind our house had a big apple tree. So sometimes we would just climb up in the tree [laughs], lean back on the branches, have apples, and we had a peach tree in our background. So I remember picking peaches and my mom making peach pie, peach cobblers.

TF: What street was that on?

VJ: That was on Northeast 35th street.

TF: All right there in the neighborhood.

VJ: All right there in the neighborhood.

TF: Do you remember going downtown other than to that movie?

VJ: Yes, and again I didn’t know how new that was but my grandmother—I was the first granddaughter so my grandma would take me shopping and I remember going to John A. Brown. Like I said, I didn’t know that that was brand new but she was a very distinguished lady and she always walked upright. Good posture. She was always telling us to stand up straight. So we learned to sit up straight and stand up straight even though I won’t do it now [laughs]. I remember walking downtown with my grandmother going to John A. Brown and the elevator operator would come down and it was “going up?”, “going up,” and you’d say your floor and

they’d announce the floor as you’d arrive and so that was fun and Street’s department store was always my favorite. Those are the memories that I have of downtown.

TF: Did downtown seem far away from the neighborhood you would run around in as a kid? Did it seem like a big trek to go downtown?

VJ: It did. It did. It was a drive.

TF: Did y’all drive in a car?

VJ: Yes, yes.

TF: Was there any public transportation when you were a kid?

VJ: There was. There was busses, plenty of busses and there were lots of taxi cabs then. It’s hard to find a cab in Oklahoma City now. You can but if you call a cab, I actually called a cab from northeast Oklahoma City about twenty years ago and it took an hour for them to arrive. I don’t know if it’s better now because I haven’t tried but yeah that was a big difference from my childhood.

TF: So when you were going to school at Classen did you take the school bus or how did you get to school over there?

VJ: Oh yeah, most of the time I rode the school bus.

TF: You were bussing from the northeast side to Classen?

VJ: Yes, it was bussing. I rode busses from seven through twelfth grade.

TF: And is your memory of the bus as a place a good one or a so-so one?

VJ: [laughs] I have many memories of the bus and it’s like my oldest son says if there’s anything you don’t want your child to learn, don’t put them on the bus [both laugh]. I mean they’re going to learn eventually, so... Because he rode the bus eighth through twelfth grade. So that was that but I have happy memories and all kinds of memories. Some traumatic memories from the bus. They were friends. We bonded, the children of the neighborhood, we bonded together on the bus stops and on the busses. When it was cold they didn’t close schools like they do now so we were out there freezing on the bus stops and sometimes we’d all take our coats and we’d button each other’s coats. You’d button your coat to the next person’s coat and we’d make a tent so that our body heat would keep us warm until the bus arrived—I mean it was cold [laughs]. So you bond in that little tent there. One friend of mine lived around the corner. Her mom gave permission for three of us to be in her house so sometimes we would wait in her house until the bus came. And our bus driver [laughs], we had the same bus driver tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade. So he’d stop and he’d honk and I remember even a couple of times when I wasn’t there on the bus stop cause I had decided that I was gonna ditch school because my parents were gone to work. He did—no—that was no allowable cause the bus driver was, he was the father of my brother’s friends so he’d honk the horn, honk, honk, honk, honk, honk and then send somebody up there to beat up there. “Tell that girl to come on out of there. She’s going to school today!” [laughs] And it’s like “I’m sick!”, “I don’t care—you’re going to school. Let em’ send you home.” [laughs]. So, couldn’t get away with anything, you know.

TF: So there’s community there.

VJ: There is community there. Yeah, yeah.

TF: Can we talk a little more about that district on 36th and Kelly. Do you remember the name of the library that was at there?

VJ: It was Northeast Oklahoma City branch library.

TF: Do you remember when you noticed that district, that commercial district, starting to change?

VJ: I was going to college. It was around the time that I went to college.

TF: Which was where?

VJ: I went to OU. I’m a graduate of OU. I went to the college of business there but I’m gonna say the mid-seventies because actually big changes had begun [pause] when they were building the health sciences center

TF: Mhm.

VJ: And [pause] I think around, I’m not sure of the year, it may have been around ’73 or ’74 when they closed that branch library. Somewhere right in that time around my senior year or my freshman year in college or my junior year. Somewhere in there they closed it.

TF: How did you feel when you noticed it was closed?

VJ: I didn’t live there anymore but I, it’s like, wow, that’s different. I just thought about the jobs cause there were not a lot of part-time jobs available—well there were some for teenagers. So there had been the library then there were the grocery stores and then the people who had jobs as lifeguards or maybe at, I don’t know what their titles were, but they worked at the recreation center. Trying to remember if anybody worked at the laundromat but I think those were just, those were adult jobs at the laundromat. Oh! There was the Fire station at 36th and Lindsey. When I was going to Taft, two busstops, we had one at the laundromat at 35th and Lincoln and then they changed it to 36th and Lindsey the fire station. And if you think about it 36th and Lindsey had a little less traffic then, Lincoln Blvd. So, we had fun there and firemen were there, so it was safer. We had supervision than we did at the laundromat. The wild boys that would attack the vending machines weren’t able to attack vending machines at the fire station. And sometimes the firemen would say “Hey, you want ice cream?” because they kept a freezer full of ice cream. So, it was pretty cool.

TF: Those were the days! [laughs].

VJ: Yeah, that was the good part about 1969.

TF: Do you remember, do you have—I mean obviously you lived around 36th and Kelly and you went downtown sometimes for shopping and entertainment. Do you remember this neighborhood that we’re in at all? We’re around 6th and Kelly.

VJ: We would come and visit cousins’ houses and play over here sometimes. So I have fleeting memories but it was not familiar to me.

TF: Do you remember what the feeling of the neighborhood was? Was it prosperous? Was it starting to?

VJ: Oh yeah, it was a well-established community. Felt safe. I remember there was sidewalks. I remember playing on the sidewalks, you know, drawing out hopscotch, playing hopscotch. I remember sitting outside on the porch playing jacks. And playing with the skateboard I never did skateboard, but we had skates, the kind you put over your shoes and tighten the key. I remember skating on the sidewalks and the driveway. It was fun and it was safe and I remember, I have vague memories of the houses that were on 8th street. Those were pretty prosperous. I mean it was a prosperous community. There were doctors and lawyers and teachers. I mean you had a mix of people, skilled laborers as well, craftsmen that lived together and I remember visiting, I remember my aunt taking me to visit her mother who lived on 8th street so I remember it was a big house. It had steps that went up and I remember playing on

the steps. And that house has been gone for since probably the late sixties. Cause I was pretty little girl when that happened and I wanna back up because before we lived, yeah I was gonna say, from 1963 to ‘67 we lived on Meyers Place which was over near the Oklahoma City Zoo. So I remember going to the zoo and—Oh! One of my favorite things during that year, during those years, was dollar day at Spring Lake Amusement Park. So, we would go, we would get our hands stamped. And you could ride all the rides all day long for one dollar. So, we had that dollar and then we had, our parents could send us with two dollars each. With that other dollar we could eat all day and it was a lot of fun. So, there was a regular Saturday activity during the school year.

TF: During the school year and not during the summer.

VJ: Right, during the school year.

TF: How interesting.

VJ: Yeah, and then during the summer we had chores and I remember when the washing machine went out. S my mom would take us, bring us down here to, I don’t know if it was 2nd or 4th street, but there was a laundromat that she would bring us to and our job was, well we did multiple things, but we our job was to do the laundry, wash it, dry it, fold it, hang it up, have it ready by the time she got back. So my three older brothers and myself, that was our job. So she’d come, she drop us off, she’d come back. My older brother had the money. And then the Aldridge Theater, I do remember the Aldridge Theater. I do believe it was on 2nd street.

TF: Was the theater still open?

VJ: It was still open. Those were the early years. I guess the early sixties and again my oldest brother had the money and you could watch the movie as many times as you wanted. It was usually only one movie showing at a time at a theater, so he’d pay our—whatever it was, fifteen cents, quarter, whatever—for us to see the movie. So, we’d stay there for a long time. Other people would come and go we had friends that would show up at the movies. And then we’d have maybe fifty cents apiece after that to go down to the Rexall Drug Store. And they had the best chili dogs. They served them on hamburger buns. And—oh my goodness we loved those!

TF: Was that on 2nd street also?

VJ: That was on 2nd street also. Yes, it was very close to here. I don’t remember what the cross street was but it was one of those that’s really near here and again I was a very little girl, the youngest, the tag-along.

TF: Do you remember any specific movies that you sat and watched all day?

VJ: Trying to think what we saw. I don’t know. What I do remember is that they always had cartoons in addition to the movies. So we watched a lot of looney tunes cartoons along with those but we watched some Bowery boy movies even there. Some of the three stooges, so I guess they were showing us old movies we didn’t know. We were children. [TF laughs] Everything was new. So yeah, the Bowery boys, the three stooges, but I don’t remember specific others. One thing I do remember is cinema 66 drive-in which was over near Remington Park. There’s a McDonald’s near Remington Park now, and that cinema 66 drive-in was down the hill below there and I remember watching the Ten Commandments there. Charlton Heston as Moses and that was new and watching Elvis. I watched Elvis Presley movies there and at the Aldridge. Yeah, Viva Las Vegas, some of those maybe Jailhouse Rock—whatever all those Elvis movies that were popular at the time. Gidget, Gidget movies, Gidget Goes Hawaiian with Moondoggie and my dad would take us, there was a place on 23rd near Martin Luther King

called the Cuckoo. So, my dad would take us and he would get a bag of burgers. They were like nineteen cents for hamburgers. I’d get a bag of burgers and we’d pop popcorn at home before we’d go and burgers, hotdogs, we’d have drinks. So we would go to cinema 66—he’d fall asleep because he was tired from working but you put the speaker in the window, roll the window up, and then the rest of the windows were down. And we’d watch the movie. All of us in the car or sometimes we’d take blankets and spread them out on the ground if there weren’t, if it wasn’t crowded. So we’d sit and we’d watch the movie.

TF: I remember drive-ins. They were great.

VJ: Yeah, yeah.

TF: I’m gonna pause for just a second to make sure this is still recording. Do you want to get a drink of water?

VJ: Ok, great.

TF: Great stories.

VJ: Oh yeah, lots of [us?].

TF: Alright, still going, excellent. It went to sleep so I wanted to make sure the program was still running. Don’t want to miss any of this.

VJ: Right, but yeah the Cinema66, the library, the zoo, Spring Lake, the grocery store—all of those were within walking distance. Of course, Longfellow, we walked to and from school. Ms. Fran, I think she’s still alive, Ms. Fran from Storyland lived in the neighborhood over near Longfellow. And I forget the lady that was the TV Sunday School teacher. She lived across the street from Longfellow and I think about it now there were practices then that there was no way that I’d let my children do that but she used to have milk and cookies for us after school. We’d stop by after school and have milk and cookies and then go home. Not a problem right. But I mean there’s no way I would let my children go into a stranger’s house for milk and cookies. It’s like, “you don’t know those people, you don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”

TF: She lived near Longfellow school?

VJ: Yes, on Northeast 48th Street. Yeah, I don’t remember her name but my friend lived over in that area too. Yeah, it was funny.

TF: When you visited this neighborhood to visit your cousins did it feel like a neighborhood that you would want to live in? Did it feel like oh these are all homes or these are all our home?

VJ: Yeah, just—

TF: Or did it feel like you were jealous of their neighborhood or anything like that?

VJ: No, I wasn’t jealous or anything but it was just like, it was like home. I mean like my aunt’s house and some of the houses it was like—huh they have big houses. But it’s funny I never thought of our house as a little bitty cracker box until after my senior year in high school because it was bigger than a lot of people’s houses, you know. And it was your typical three bedroom, one and a half bath ranch house built in late fifties early sixties. Just pretty normal house but there six of us that lived there, my parents, my three brothers, and myself. And it was a hub, there were always people in and out of our house. It was a place that people came. Our friends were over, we have Sunday dinners. Everybody at my house could cook by the time we were teenagers, you know, we all cooked cause my dad was a chef. He had graduated from cooking school in 1949. In fact, he and my mother would have discussions, lively discussions because he would say, one day he was telling me the difference between vanilla extract and vanilla flavoring and my mom was going, “Oh Howard, you don’t know, you don’t know that

they’re the same thing.” And he turned around and he said, “I graduated from cooking school in 1949. When did you graduate from cooking school?” [laughs].

TF: Where did he go to cooking school?

VJ: In the army.

TF: Oh wow, and his name was Howard Johnson?

VJ: No, Howard Fischer.

TF: Oh, Howard Fischer. Johnson is your married name. I was going to say that would be a crazy coincidence.

VJ: Yeah, really that would be yes.

TF: In that house that you grew up in on 35th still there?

VJ: Yeah.

TF: Is it still in the family?

VJ: No, it’s not still in the family, it is still there.

TF: Do you go by it sometimes?

VJ: I do. There are a couple of trees that we had planted in the front yard and those trees are huge now. And I look at them and I’m going, “Oh my God! The trunks are so big!” Yeah, so yeah.

TF: Does the house seem small to you now that--?

VJ: It does.

TF: Are there other things in this part of the town that seem really different to you from your memory of them as kids when you go by and you think, “Oh wow, I used to think that was so fancy or I used to think that was so strange,” and now your perception has changed?

VJ: They just seem—I mean they used to be—it was a nice neighborhood. It used to be cleaner. I mean the thing I didn’t like was the deterioration or just knowing there used to be houses there, there used to be businesses there. There was a place on Walnut, I don’t remember where it was, but I remember my dad taking me there for broasted chicken. And that was the best chicken. I don’t know what they did if they broiled it, roasted it first, then deep fried it—I don’t know what they did to that chicken but it was, it was wonderful. Yeah.

TF: So, that leads to the interesting question: if there was one place from your past neighborhood that you wish was still here what would it be? Would it be the broasted chicken place?

VJ: The broasted chicken place! Yes! The broasted chicken place.

TF: I wonder if it would taste as good as it does in memory.

VJ: I don’t know. That’s a good question, yeah, that’s a good thing cause see we laugh and we talk about that container of rancid bacon grease that used to be on everybody’s stove that they’d cook with. It was like, “Oh my God no wonder people are dying of heart attacks and strokes!”

TF: They had to make use of things.

VJ: Yeah, wasting was the ultimate sin. And I really didn’t understand that my parents lived through the Great Depression. I knew that my grandparents did but my father was born before the Great Depression and my mother was born in the middle of it and that really didn’t come into focus for me so when we were studying those things, The Great Depression, World War I, World War II in high school and even in college they seemed like they were, “Oh, that’s forever ago.” Well it really wasn’t. It was a whole lot closer than we realized.

TF: Created habits that are probably still with you.

VJ: Yeah, it took me a long time before I ever threw away wrapping paper. Oh my goodness that was major. Because we would always just take it, keep it, fold it up neatly, and then cut it down and wrap something smaller with it. Cut it down, cut it down till we got to a really small box. And even then I would tape it together and when my oldest son was still small I would tape it together and make new wrapping paper from it or I would use the comics because they were colorful. I would use the comics from the Sunday paper.

TF: [?]

VJ: Yeah, to wrap gifts because you just didn’t waste. You used everything. So yeah, it was major, I was probably in my late thirties before I threw away wrapping paper.

TF: [laughs] I’m still working on it. I’m still trying to get over it.

VJ: And I felt guilty. Yes! I felt very, very guilty.

TF: What was your first job? Your first paying job? Do you remember? Apart from allowance that is?

VJ: Oh ok, apart from babysitting and whatnot?

TF: Your first real job.

VJ: Ok, I paid social security, taxes—McDonalds on Lincoln Boulevard.

TF: Yeah.

VJ: Yes.

TF: Was it a good experience?

VJ: It was. The McDonalds on Lincoln opened in 1973. So, I was sixteen and after school one day my friends were saying, “Let’s go apply for McDonalds, they’re gonna open a McDonalds.” It was coming soon. So, I went with them and we all applied and then we trained at other McDonalds around the city. There was one at the south side where we trained and then we trained at the one that used to be across the street from Shepherd Mall back in the day. And when it opened we had an all American team. Excellent serv—I mean there was excellence. We knew we were trained at all the stations. We knew how to operate a store. So years later when I came back, when I moved back in Oklahoma City in the eighties, when I saw how it had gone down. I was like “Oh my goodness, they’re not training the people.” It was like they thought training was wasted time but it’s not. Anyway, that was that.

TF: Did you work there all the way through high school?

VJ: I worked there all the way through high school. Yes, yes.

TF: Go ahead you were going to say something.

VJ: I was going to say you had asked me about how I got to school and I said most of the time I rode the bus but my junior year, most of my junior year and probably half the time in my senior year I drove my mother’s car to school. It’s funny friends of mine were saying, “We thought that was your car.” And I’m going, “No.” [laughs]. It was my mom’s new ’73 Plymouth Fury.

TF: Ooh, she let you drive it.

VJ: She let me drive it. Well, she was sick so actually I was taking care of her a lot so I’d drive the car.

TF: So, when your family moved here you said your dad had retired and that’s why you moved to Oklahoma City?

VJ: Yes.

TF: And then was your mom still working or was she retired also?

VJ: She was working. They both worked still. He retired from the army but he worked.

TF: So, he was still young?

VJ: He was still young, yeah.

TF: So where did they work?

VJ: He had done twenty years. They worked at Tinker. Before that my mom had done day work. She was the help. And she still did some day work around Oklahoma City before she got on at Tinker. But she did work at Tinker a few years, and he worked at Tinker several years and he retired—they each retired from Tinker.

TF: What kind of work did they do there?

VJ: Mother did warehouse work and daddy I’m not sure what he did and after he left Tinker though, he worked for the Oklahoma City housing authority and I remember he put on a uniform to go to work so I guess he was housing authority police. And a friend of mine was telling me he said, “Yeah, cause I worked there your dad was,”—I didn’t know if he said he was a lieutenant or a captain I didn’t know that, I didn’t know all that. He was just daddy [laughs].

TF: Do you know any of the families your mom did day work for?

VJ: Yes.

TF: Were they prominent families in town or?

VJ: A couple of them were, yes, yes. Cause well, yeah, that was another traumatic memory from Taft. Cause my grandmother bought me really nice clothes so I dressed well growing up and but I remember one of the families my mom worked for. They had a daughter that was a year older than I was and when I went to Taft we were at the same school and her mom had given my mom some clothes for me. And my mom’s thing was, “If somebody gives you something, you hear it.” I was going, “I don’t wanna wear her dress to school.” But I had to wear her clothes to school and I didn’t, you know, she never, it never got back to me that she said anything to anybody, but—

TF: But you knew.

VJ: I knew. Right. Yeah, so. It’s like, “I don’t wanna wear her clothes.”

TF: Right, cause there’s the tension about the desegregation but then there’s also like a class issue there.

VJ: Yeah, a class issue, right, right. And really even with that class issue see my mom spent more time with—of course, she worked there—she spent more time with them than she did with us. I mean the time she spent with us was like the time I spent with my children. We were asleep most of it cause you get home and you’re doing dinner, homework, and baths, and going to bed. But we did a lot of church though, so we had interaction with my mom at church since she was the minister of music.

TF: Which church did you go to?

VJ: Greater Bethel Baptist Church. So she was the minister of music while we were growing up. It was a very small church so we had to learn how to do everything. We unlocked the church. We cleaned the church. We ushered. We were the choir. We, my goodness, of course a lot of the time we locked up the church. Helped set up things for vacation bible school, Sunday school. We were in the youth department. Royal ambassadors and girls, I forget the girls auxiliary name actually, but before that the sunshine band, we did all that.

TF: What street was that on do you remember?

VJ: Northwest 24th and Jordan. And it’s actually still there.

TF: I thought so.

VJ: Yes.

TF: Do you remember specific big events from—did you attend any weddings and funerals that stand out to [alone]?

VJ: Oh many, many, many, many, many, many, many.

TF: Did you get married there?

VJ: No. I did not. And that church actually began in my great uncle’s living room. He was the head deacon. It had been new hope mission before that. One of the missions from New Hope Church, which is right over here on 7th street, they had done outreach and whatever in that little church. They decided that they would, that that mission would become a church. So they incorporated it as a church or whatever they do to become a church. So, it was a family—I was part of the founding family and yeah.

TF: Are some of your family members still really involved with it?

VJ: Some of my family members are still very involved with it. Many, many have died. So, we’ve had so many funerals there. My parents were funeralized there. My brother was funeralized there. Many cousins, aunts, uncles, funerals, weddings, birthday parties.

TF: Family [TF says word I couldn’t understand].

VJ: Yes, yes.

TF: So, if you have any energy left I’d love to talk about your life after college.

VJ: Ok, yeah, I would of love’d to have stayed in Norman. I loved Norman.

TF: So, what brought you back to Oklahoma City?

VJ: My husband. My first husband. I was married twice. I’m single again. Been single again for a very long time.

TF: Congratulations.

VJ: Thank you [laughs]. But my first husband did not want to live in Norman. He was insistent that I move. We got married when while he was still living in Oklahoma City and I was still living in Norman. He insisted that I move to Oklahoma City and I submitted and moved to Oklahoma City. And we did live on 8th street. The 8th street apartments were there so that was the first place that we lived in Oklahoma City.

TF: What do you remember about your first newlywed apartment. How did it feel?

VJ: It was, it felt normal. It was ok. But I didn’t feel as safe as I had felt growing up in northeast Oklahoma City because there were so many changes. The community had been gutted and it was mainly who was left behind. You had the lumping proletariat kind of left behind so I didn’t feel as safe there. I still would brave up and go ahead and walk down to the, there was a little grocery store there, I would walk to the grocery store and I would go to the laundromat. There was a barbeque place right there, I’d go there. But I wouldn’t go far unless I got in my car and drove whereas I had felt pretty safe in Norman, safe and free. I lived in isolated incidence.

TF: Do you remember the name of that barbeque place or that grocery store? It’s been a while.

VJ: It’s been a while. It was something else before it was ETs. The grocery store was a Happy Foods.

TF: So, it wasn’t like the barbeque place, your favorite barbeque place of all time. It wasn’t a broasted chicken restaurant [laughs].

VJ: No, it was no broasted chicken. Right, you’re right. But they had reasonable rib ends. I’d go get rib end sandwiches. Of course, my husband would, didn’t eat pork. He was like [with

disgust] “You’re eating that pig!” and I was like “Yeah, and I’m enjoying it!” [both laugh]. But, you know, they had good smoked chicken.

TF: It sounds like, from your memory, like you went away college and when you came back the city was really different or did you notice a gradual change before you went to college?

VJ: No, it was, it was drastically different. It was a drastic change in the late sixties when there was urban renewal cause even cousins’ houses that I used to visit over here—they don’t exist anymore. They got bought out and moved elsewhere in the city. So, they no longer even live like around the corner from each other. They were in different, they were spread out in different parts of the city.

TF: So what years were you at college at OU?

VJ: I was at OU a long time cause I was a working independent student. So, I was, I lived there—well I only lived there five years going to school, ’75 to ’80. And my intent when I came back was to finish but I didn’t go back to finish until ‘82. So I went back in ’82, finished in ’83.

TF: So when did you really notice those like in the early eighties?

VJ: Definitely by 1980 it was drastically different. You couldn’t go, 10th street used to go all the way from god knows where out east to god knows where out west and you can no longer go straight through on 10th street. They built the health sciences center. That’s the way we used to go to the fair, when they moved the fairgrounds to 10th and May, which is the fairgrounds I remember. But we’d go straight out 10th. You can’t do that, you couldn’t do that then. I remember my, even my freshmen year, my sophomore year, when I met Billy Sims and Thomas Lawton. You know, Billy was a freshman too. He wasn’t famous yet. Thomas was.

TF: He was just Billy.

VJ: You he was just Billy. Thomas was just Thomas. You know meeting them and bringing them, they were like “You know where some good barbeque is?” yeah, bringing them to Pulliam’s or, for barbeque. I remember when the recipe changed because old man Pulliam died and it turned out that maybe there was some kind of something between the sons and one had the recipe and one had the money. Anyway the recipe changed. It was no longer the same barbeque.

TF: It was the beginning of the end of Pulliam’s.

VJ: It was the beginning of the end, yeah.

TF: Do you know what year that was?

VJ: About ’76, yeah.

TF: Cause it’s legendary.

VJ: Right, right. So, lots had changed. I was taking them to—I was gonna take them to the Cooper Theater. It was closed. I was gonna take them to the center. It was closed. The Tower had turned, had gotten pretty raunchy.

TF: Yeah, wasn’t it a rated X theater for a while?

VJ: It became that eventually.

TF: Yeah, like in the eighties.

VJ: Yeah, in the eighties it became a like triple X theater but before it was a triple X theater, they had gotten to the place that it was not clean and it had gotten pretty raunchy. The movies that they showed were at best R rated. So, I didn’t go there as much, but that’s one of the theaters that I went to a lot in high school. Yeah, I saw Mahogany there. Yeah, we did come to Oklahoma City and see Mahogany at the Tower with Diana Ross and Billy D. Williams. You know, some other movies similar to that. But it went downhill

TF: So, but you’ve lived in Oklahoma City ever since even though you wanted to live in Norman?

VJ: Even though I wanted to live in Norman. So, I’ve never lived, I’m in my sixties now. And I’ve never lived more than thirty-five miles from the state capital building.

TF: So how would you describe you relationship with this neighborhood now?

VJ: I come here for events. That’s about it. I’m excited about the revitalization. I like the fact, where they’ve renovated this building, I like the fact that they’ve done so. My first time ever being inside here though was this month or well the end of last month. Right, I came to an event here. I remember passing this building and it always looked like a military bunker on the hill. And I guess I thought about military ways because so many people in my family were military but also when we were small children we used to get up under our desks and cover the backs of our necks just in case somebody dropped an atomic bomb.

TF: Duck and cover! [laughs].

VJ: Duck and cover, right! [laughs as well]. Yeah, we had those bomb drills. Stay ok.

TF: So, this building was mysterious when you would [something?] it as a kid.

VJ: Very mysterious, yes, yes.

TF: Interesting.

VJ: But even though I have friends that actually went to school here, they went here in the last years of school. And my oldest son actually went to Lincoln Elementary School and that was the last year it was opened. So, he went to Kindergarten there.

TF: What year was that? [pause] I won’t tell him it took you a long time to remember his first year of school [laughs].

VJ: I know he graduated in 1998 right after the May 3rd tornado and he graduated from Classen. So twelve years before that, 1987 I guess, 1986, ’87. Went to preschool at Children’s House on 7th street and then he went to the kindergarten at Lincoln. And the reason for that was I worked at the health department over here at 10th and Stonewall. So, it was near my job.

TF: I was gonna ask where you worked when you moved back to the city. Have you been at the health department, were you there for a long time?

VJ: I was at the health department for twelve and a half years and then I spent eighteen working over at 13th and Lottie at the department for mental health and substance abuse services. I’m a state retiree.

TF: Did you like working for the state?

VJ: Well yeah, that’s what I—that’s not what I—I intended to work there just a couple of years and to move on but the way life happened I stayed with the state. That was my career and I ended up working, having a career in public health.

TF: That’s great.

VJ: Yeah, it was very different from how I planned.

TF: So, are there any questions you think I should have asked you like memories that you want to make sure you get down that we didn’t cover?

VJ: I think you asked me a lot of questions, some of which I guess I didn’t really answer.

TF: No, you always did, you always came back around.

VJ: Ok, yeah.

TF: You mentioned you thought the community had changed, has changed a lot since you were a child.

VJ: There’s much less of a sense of community. The people that still own homes in this area, deep northeast Oklahoma City, and by deep I mean, I’m gonna say south of 23rd street, some people mean south of 16th when they say that. But between 23rd and Reno, between Lincoln Boulevard and Bryant they still have much more of a sense of community. Those that have still owned property here. But so many are gone that left because of urban renewal.

TF: It sounds like, it’s interesting, because when you use the term urban renewal you’re using the term the city used but everything you are describing is not renewal for the community.

VJ: Yeah, the community was not renewed [laughs]. No, the community was gutted. And it was definitely gutted. And the people did not, to my understanding, get properly compensated for their properties either because the city paid them the value that they assigned to the property and because the people living there were people of colors then they were like “Hm, they lived there so the property is worth less.” I mean because we’re talking about well maintained homes. A number of them very well maintained. They were small, they may have been little shotgun houses but they were well taken care of but they weren’t given what that would have been wherever they were moving to. So yeah, I’d like to see the area renewed so that the community could be renewed because the community, the people, that made up the community still have a lot of healing to do, you know, these forty to fifty years later.

TF: It sounds like, it’s interesting because the way you talk about it it’s the people and the place. There needs to be something that brings them together.

VJ: Yeah, yeah.

TF: Thank you so much for your time. Do you know other community members you think we ought to interview?

VJ: I do and I’ve been talking it up and encouraging them to sign up. I’m hoping that a friend of mine and his ninety-one-year-old mother will come next week. I’ve encouraged, encouraged, encouraged and some more people that really know this area. Because this is where they ran and played. So yeah, we were kind of on the edge and outside of that.

TF: We’ll look for those names, please send them our way.

VJ: Well, I’ll see if they are ok with me doing that.

TF: Yeah.

VJ: Ok, you’re welcome!

TF: Thank you so much! That was a great conversation!