Description:
Hazel Habben talks about her life.
Transcript:
Terry Hickman: My name is Terry Taylor Hickman and today, my brother and I are interviewing our grandmother, Hazel Ruth Habben. We are in Edmond, Oklahoma and it’s July 17, 2007. Who are you?
Doug Taylor: My name is Doug Taylor.
Terry: And Grandma, give us a little bit about you. Tell us your name, your full name, and where you were born, and what year, that sort of thing.
Hazel Habben: Well, I was born in Wichert, but they called it Edmond, so Edmont, Oklahoma, in 1917, March 5th, was when I was born. The home I grew up in-
Terry: So, you were born at home?
Hazel: Yes, and Dr. McCabe was a doctor from Oklahoma City.
Terry: His name was Dr. McCabe?
Hazel: McCabe used to come quite a lot on the farm all the time and was good friends with him, my folks were.
Terry: So when he came to the house when you were born, did he drive a car, did he have a car?
Hazel: I think he had a model T Ford. He drove back and forth like we did. He would come out for a pump and enjoy himself and I guess he delivered me, my little brother, and my sister.
Terry: What was your little brother’s name?
Hazel: Lowells Mays.
Terry: And he’s how much younger than you?
Hazel: He was born in ‘25 and I was ‘17.
Terry: So he was eight years.
Hazel: Eight years younger than me.
Terry: And your little sister?
Hazel: She was born in ‘19, I mean ‘20.
Terry: 1920?
Hazel: She was that much younger. I was born in ‘17 and then my older brother, he was born in 1913 and I guess Dr. McCabe delivered him too.
Terry: What were your parent’s names?
Hazel: My father’s name was Harden Mays, Harden Jones Mays.
Terry: Harden Jones Mays was his name?
Hazel: And my mother’s name was Ella May Ecker.
Terry: Ecker?
Hazel: E-C-K-E-R. And my mother came down to the farm when she was 11 years old. That’s when Grandpa homesteaded.
Terry: So your grandfather homesteaded the place you were born on?
Hazel: Yes and as I say, I was raised there then. I grew up and we went to school.
Terry: Where did you go to school?
Hazel: At Wichert, they built the school. My mother would come down, she went to school there too. They had a one room school.
Terry: And what was the name of the school?
Hazel: It was Oakdale and it was still down there, the school. They called it Wichert part of the time, some people did, but the school’s name was Oakdale. That little town and Wichert was there and so we had two names practically.
Terry: So your mother went to Oakdale when it was a new school?
Hazel: Yes, she went to it when it was first built.
Terry: When was your mom born?
Hazel: Oh gosh, I used to be able to tell you in a minute, but this has been quite a while. She was born-
Terry: She came to Wichert when she was 11 and that’s when she started school in Oakdale. If you remember what year she was born, tell us in a little while, if you think of it, if that’s okay.
Hazel: I know my dad was born in the 80’s and I imagine he was four years older than her.
Doug: The 1880s?
Hazel: The 1880s.
Terry: And so you grew up down in Wichert, what did you do as a kid growing up in Wichert? What were some of the things that you would do with your days?
Hazel: Well, we always had little chores to do and you would play down there. We always had ponies to ride.
Terry: What was the name of your favorite pony?
Hazel: Old Spot.
Terry: Was he spotted?
Hazel: But then my favorite after I got 5, 6 years old was Nell, her colt.
Terry: Spot’s colt now. So you had chores to do as a kid?
Hazel: Oh yes, we had chores to do. I used to take, Grandpa built the house. We got the homestead 160 and then the people that lived right behind it, they had 160 acres of land, of homestead. That’s what you got when you homesteaded and his wife got sick and he had to live in a dugout and she got sick. He
came to my grandfather and he said, “If you would fix me a wagon to give me, I’ll leave this place to you and I’m going to take her back to Missouri because she’s sick.” So that’s how grandpa had 320 acres. He built his house right in the center of it, we had half a mile of muddy fields to get to the road.
Terry: What was the road you were getting to, trying to get to? What was the name of it?
Hazel: What?
Terry: What was the name of the road you were trying to get to?
Hazel: Well, it is Sooner now, but I guess it was Wichert Trail at the time.
Terry: It was called Wichert Trail?
Hazel: No, we just had it up about 10 when we would come down on the horses and head straight up the road and made a better route out of it. We had a massager schoolhouse as a little church down the hill and Wichert Baptist Church, but we would ride. We had a pony to ride to school and then we would get on. My brother, he always rode in front and my sister, she was the middle, and I got on the back. The three of us, off to school we went.
Terry: So what did you do with your horse while you were at school?
Hazel: They had a pipe looking fence that went around the post. It went around our schoolhouse and we had to come up to the corner, go up the hill, which is now I think hefner Road. Uphill, they had a gate and a schoolyard and you would turn the pony and ride along down the fence and tie it to the post there. Then you went down to school. Well, when it was slick and rainy, real slick, you scooted that hill down. A few years later, the directors said we needed a place to put the ponies because one of the director’s boys and girls went to school too. So they built us a little barn, lighting shed, and you would put the pony down there and meet it on the other side of the fence, but then they had a ballfield up there where they would play.
Terry: Are there big trees there now?
Hazel: Yes, we had a great big sycamore tree and it was nice. Down by the schoolyard, it went around it. We would play there, base and run like that.
Terry: You would play deer bass?
Hazel: Yes, you would have a line between you and you would run on the side and on the side, you had a post here and then you would have to go around the post. Well, you counted, but you had to run through these, kind of like football.
Terry: To get to your post? So you could go around it and it was called deer post?
Hazel: They had to call it deer base.
Terry: Oh, deer base.
Hazel: And we played ball, some ball of the way. But anyways, when we would come home in the evening-
Terry: Before you came home from school, tell me about being in the classroom. How many were in your school and what was it like being in the classroom?
Hazel: Well, we just had one room when I first started. Well, we just had one section, a little row, first grade, third, and fourth. You would come up here and when I was in one room, they had a cloak room. You would put your coats and things, but one teacher taught us all. We just got mad because your row, you would have to move over to the next desk when you graduated. You just went over to the next line and when I was in fourth grade, they put a petition through the school and it slid back and forth and that meant that they had a stage built, about 4 high. One teacher, she sat this way and the other teacher, she sat down here at the upper way.
Terry: How many people would be in your school at any one time in this one room?
Hazel: For the class, I remember of was 75.
Terry: You had 75 kids in this one room? And one teacher?
Hazel: Well, we had two. We had a petition, we had two rooms and they lined it so you would sit this way and a little grade, they would sit this way. When we would have program, they would push them together, these two stages. They would speak on rollers and roll back the big petition and you could see under them. You could get over there because we had mischievous boys, the director’s son, that would throw erasers over this petition.
Doug: Honorary boys back then.
Hazel: But that way, we got along that divided you at least. We would have the fourth grade and the eighth grade.
Terry: Let me ask you Grandma, do you have some favorite relatives that you have from being a kid when you were a kid?
Hazel: Oh yeah, my cousins. We used to play together a lot. They were the Ecker kids, they were my mother’s brother’s kids. They lived on this farm east 160, the back one, along the road. They had this one boy, I was March and he was August so I was older than him, but they had two brothers just older than that. That’s who my oldest brother played with and my sister, they had a girl, Colleen, and they played together. Colleen and my sister, she was a girl, a rose-cheeked girl, and I was a freckle-face little tomboy because I liked to ride horses and hook the team up for Grandpa and I would help out and milk the cows. I would also come home and we would have eggs together and they would give me a bucket of eggs and I would get on Nell and down we go to the store.
Terry: What was the name of that store?
Hazel: It was the Wichert, George Stefson run it, and I would just, the Wichert Store. It was just their store and you would’ve went in there and swap your eggs for whatever you wanted, for groceries. I would get these and if I got so many, I had a gunnysack. George, he would put them in the sack and I would get to the porch, come out to the store on one side, so I could ride on up and be level with the store there. He would put whatever I had, groceries, and he would put them up there in front over the neck and home we would go.
Terry: With the groceries?
Hazel: With the groceries.
Terry: Traded eggs for dried grocery and stuff at George’s store.
Hazel: And other times, they would just send me to get the groceries for them and eating, I must’ve done a lot of that because as I said, I liked to ride the horse and my brother, he wasn’t such a bond with the horses most of the time. We would go up the stuff and he would get on to go into the house and I would take the pony out and take care of her, but that was just because I liked to be on the horse. We graduated out of the school and we had a club, a 4-H club, before I got out of school.
Terry: Well you graduated out of school, what grade did you graduate?
Hazel: Eighth grade.
Terry: 8th grade, so what were you? 12, 13, 14?
Hazel: Well, I was thirteen at the time I think so you would have the Sunnyside District 3 miles east and we had the Lone Star 3 miles west and the Sunnyside 3 miles north and we would go to Club meetings. We would go to each one of them.
Terry: And what would you do in these meetings?
Hazel: They would ask us a question and they would make different little crochets or something and they had chickens, you would raise chicken. Ray had a calf or something like this and we had a fair in September at the school grounds or schoolhouse. So they would have our fair and you would have your chicken and take it down to the fair.
Terry: And you would sell them?
Hazel: They would grade them and give us a price and we would get $2, $3, or maybe $4.
Terry: That's a lot of money.
Hazel: It was back then. It was quite a bit of money.
Terry: So that was in like 20s?
Hazel: I think it was in the 20s, it was in the late twenties because I graduated I think in ‘32 I believe or ‘31, I don't remember. It was 7 miles, how you would go to Britton and have seven miles to go, but Edmond, you had 7 miles, but that was high school that you had to go.
Terry: Right.
Hazel: If you didn't have relatives or something, you were in pretty bad shape to go stay with.
Doug: What did you guys do when you guys were kids for entertainment at home? Did you guys listen to the radio or play games for entertainment?
Hazel: I would love to, as I say graze books. My grandfather did too and I would bring books and we would have a little Library. Well, our schools always had a nice school because we lived, our district that Katie Railroad went down through our district. I think it was four crosses and then they had a switch and you would have to pay extra for that and the railroad helped me. They kept us what we call our
school, we would go to county and laugh and play basketball and they didn't have enough money and things like that so we were lucky to have a good school like that and nice teachers. For school, the girls of us they had a solar dugout And cement and the top was flat so we could get up there and play jacks. Our teacher, she would come, Miss Kennedy from Fairview, Oklahoma and she had big hands. She was tall and she would throw these jacks up and turn them over and everybody wanted to be her partner so it was always a battle.
Terry: Well, now you told me sometime, stories about writing. It wasn’t the train, but it was the trolley or something as a kid.
Hazel: My father, he had worked there on the farm but was always at a different time, but he worked at a nursery. Bill Ray’s Nursery.
Terry: Bill Ray’s Nursery?
Hazel: Yeah, Bill Ray’s Nursery. It was just on the backside of what we used to call Bell Isle Park and they had this week. He would get on to interurban went through.
Terry: Yeah, interurban.
Hazel: And he would come down into there with Katie and Wichert there, you would have agent. He would send his messages down into the code. It also had a big platform out there, a bale of metal cutting gin in Wichert. They would bail this hay and put it on the big platform and they would load the cars in it, but you could also ride the train to the city where you want to go and when I was probably about nine, we knew the engineers because they had come and eat candies at the store. Then they had section houses down there and that's where the men worked railroads but the engineers, they had always seen us kids and offered us candy. We already liked the engineer's head to come on the train.
Terry: I would too.
Hazel: But Mom would take me over and put me on the train down to the depot there on East Reno. Dad lived right up the street and he would stay at this black hotel.
Terry: It was called the Black Hotel in Oklahoma City?
Hazel: Yeah, so he would ride interurban to get into the city or Bell Isle. He would catch up there to Britton but he would get on down where he worked. I hiked right up the street and went about two blocks and had to go up there and they got the block hotel. He needed me to because they had Dad stayed there so much and I would play around there and Dad kept me at work. I knew I wanted to get cherry pie and chili.
Terry: So you just wanted to be with your dad and be down there?
Hazel, yeah and I would go up there and spend the night with him so he would put me back on the train the next morning. They went back and forth.
Terry: That was kind of a special thing.
Hazel: Yeah, always Katie Railroad.
Terry: Is that one of your favorite memories of your dad?
Hazel: Yeah, like this because when he would come and stay, he planned this whole big garden and we had to cut wood with my grandpa at night. I would sit and read to him, I would bring books home from the school library and we had a coal light.
Terry: What was your grandpa's name? You told us your dad's name, what was your grandpa's name?
Hazel: His name was Alvey Franklin Ecker.
Terry: Alvey Franklin Ecker, and he’s the one that homesteaded the place down there?
Hazel: Yeah, and grandma’s name was Sarah Evangeline.
Terry: What was her maiden name?
Hazel: Bonham.
Terry: Bonham?
Hazel: She's English and grandpa with Ecker, you knew he had a bit of German in him.
Terry: Now were they born here? Were your grandparents born here?
Hazel: Yes, they come from Wisconsin. That's where they come from, Wisconsin, and would go into Missouri and they stayed there and went to Oklahoma. Open, it was cold and he brought a train load of horses and a few cows but they came from Tarkeo.
Terry: They came from Tarkeo, Wisconsin?
Hazel: No, Missouri. I don't remember where Wisconsin because I heard them say when they got married, they had three brothers marry three Sisters. They lived in Wisconsin, it was prairie and they said they hunted cow chips.
Terry: It sounded like they were wealthy as far as having cattle and horses.
Hazel: Yeah, it was pretty good. We got that in Missouri, a good farm up there. Grandma could sing and Grandpa could play.
Terry: Play what?
Hazel: Violin, and my mother could play anything she picked up but I used to go and people, the Wisconsin or homesteaders, said that if they had a dance, they would go and play for them. They would give them a piece of bacon or you got something like that.
Doug: That was a payment for playing?
Hazel: Yeah.
Terry: So they went from Wisconsin to Missouri and did they do the land run?
Hazel: Yeah, they came on in from the train. Grandpa did stake their claim out here.
Terry: And his claim is Deep Fork River down there? Oh, so he was down there on Deep Fork by Sooner Road. Doug, what do you want to know?
Doug: Just keep going, I want to go into farms later.
Terry: I want to know how you met Papa and how he proposed to you and all those things. I want that.
Hazel: I was at school, I went on a school tour with Mildred Lushbaugh.
Terry: You are going to school with her?
Hazel: With her, we went to school together. They moved in probably when I was about in 5th grade or 6th grade.
Terry: Mildred did.
Hazel: Yeah, Mildred did and they came from, I don't remember where they moved from. I think South Dakota and they have built a house in Wichert and Mr Lushbaugh had a shoe shop in Edmond. He repaired shoes, he was a shoemaker and he stayed in town until weekends or sometime when he came home. But anyways, Mildred was a good friend. She kept telling me she said, “Hazel, why don’t you come on over. I can get you to mean Jean, Bill’s Brother.”
Terry: Mildred Lushbaugh was married to Bill Habben?
Hazel: Yeah, she was married to Bill Habben.
Terry: And how old are you now?
Hazel: 90.
Terry: No, when Mildred was trying to get you to meet Papa.
Hazel: I was about 17, 16 or 17.
Terry: You are working at home and you were doing the fair things with the 4-H?
Hazel: And all that stuff, but I graduated from high school down there. I was around home helping work down there, helping raise bed gardens, helping the cows to milk, and pigs down on one side. You had to take care. The farm I was raised on had 5 springs but anyways she kept on and finally she told me, “Well, you’re going up with me and my sister to Thanksgiving dinner to Guthrie.”
Terry: And this is Mildred talking?
Hazel: Yeah, and she said, “We are going to go out and eat Thanksgiving dinner.” Her and Bill, they were married then. I said, “Okay,” so I went up there and when we came back at old 77-
Terry: How did you go there? Were you in a car, what kind of car?
Hazel: I think it was a Model T, I think the one Bill had was-
Terry: Was it black?
Hazel: Everything was black. Anyways, we went to go to Guthrie and come back and they said they're going to stop for cigarettes and they had a little gas station with one pump about half a mile down the road was Bradbury Corner.
Terry: Up here, Sooner Road and I-35, used to be called Bradbury Corner.
Hazel: And we stopped and played cards and when we got there, Jean was there.
Terry: Was Mildred planning that?
Hazel: Mildred was definitely planning that and that's when I started going to Jean.
Terry: What did you think when you first saw him?
Hazel: He's a nice looking guy and he's real polite. You couldn't not like him if you didn't want to.
Terry: I think he was a handsome guy wasn't he?
Hazel: He was a good-looking gentleman and he stayed that way.
Terry: And where was he living?
Hazel: He was living in a home place down where you kids were growing up, down on 66 with his dad. They had a little schoolhouse, upper mile north.
Terry: It was Danforth and Sooner, our Papa went to school.
Hazel: That's where he went to school.
Terry: And it was called what?
Hazel: Fairview, the name but everybody called it Jacks, Jacks Schoolhouse.
Terry: Why was it called Jacks?
Hazel: After one of the directors.
Terry: So you met Papa playing cards on Thanksgiving and what happened, did he flirt with you? Did you play cards with him?
Hazel: Yeah, we played cards.
Terry: What did you play, what were the card games?
Hazel: We played Picture. It was Mr. and Mrs. Seagray and they had known them for years and they enjoyed having young folks around the station and they had always wanted us to come see them and they always had a card game to play. Anyways, I started going to him and went with him.
Terry: Did he ask you to go with him or how did it happen?
Hazel: Of course he asked me if I wanted to go with him. We would go with Bill and Mildred.
Terry: Did he have a car, did Papa have a car?
Hazel: He had a Buick, and old Buick.
Terry: And so would he come down to the house and get you?
Hazel: Yes, he would come down and it was muddy through the field and then in the later years, he would get a ‘29 Ford.
Terry: So did he have to ask your father if you could date or court you?
Hazel: Well, Jean was down, he would come on down to the folks. Five years, they were pretty well acquainted with him.
Terry: But did he have to ask your parents if he could take you out?
Hazel: Oh, he did.
Terry: What did your parents say about him to you?
Doug: What did they think about him?
Hazel: They thought he was wonderful. Jean didn't give them a reason not like him. My brother used to bother him a lot and he was crazy about me and he didn't want me to go off with Jean.
Doug: He was the one we all knew as Uncle Shorty.
Hazel: And Uncle Shorty was doing his thing and everything just going out there. He was getting ready to go home and we have been playing cards, this was a Sunday afternoon, and Lowell was down on one knee again. He had little overalls and he was just hugging up on, I saw both kinds of like the ones on the cedar tree, they would want him up there.
Terry: Papa hung Uncle Shorty up there?
Hazel: Yeah, up there and he was just snorting and raising and hollering.
Terry: So you dated for 5 years. How did Papa ask you to marry him?
Hazel: Well, I can hardly tell anyone. He said, “Hazel, we are probably going to have to get married because my folks are going to California. They had a daughter out there that they hadn't seen in 23 years and they had a sale.” Jean was going to rent the place.
Terry: So this was Papa's father. What was Papa's father's name?
Hazel: Henry Habben.
Terry: Henry Habben, and what was Papa’s mother’s name?
Hazel: Louise Habben.
Terry: Tagmeyer, was her maiden name Tagmeyer or something?
Hazel: Tagmeyer, Louise Tagmeyer. His father came over when he was 15 and his mother had come when she was 3 months.
Terry: And they came from Germany?
Hazel: Both of them.
Terry: Did Grandpa have to work his way over on the ship?
Hazel: Yes, if he was over there when he was 16, he had to go into the military.
Terry: Oh, in Germany?
Hazel: In Germany. His dad had wanted him to cabinet trade so he could build cabinets and wooden homes. He could do a good job and he told him, he said, “Son, before you get there, they will probably find you.”
Doug: He was a stowaway on the ship?
Hazel: Yeah, and he said, “They will probably find you and if they do, tell them you want to work.” So sure enough, he said, “They found me.”
Terry: How many days was he on the ship before they found him?
Hazel: I don't remember, he didn't ever say. It was quite a while because Mrs. Habben was three months born on the ship and by the time they got home, she was three months old, she said when they got there. Well anyways, they told him, they said, “You got to go to work.” Mr. Habben said, “I told him I intended to,” but he landed here at that age.
Terry: Did he land at Ellis Island, Grandpa Habben?
Hazel: I guess there and by the time they had his 60th birthday, he came to this country and he didn't know a soul at that age. He worked his way.
Doug: So his dad sent him to keep from going to military in Germany?
Hazel: Yes because he didn't want him in the military so they sent him off and he worked his way down from, he built and had been working on a farm in Maryland. He said he got to Maryland and this guy was going to build a house and he said, “Let me build your house,” and I said, “You're not old enough, you can't do that.” He said, “I can build you a house.”
Terry: What year was this?
Hazel: I couldn’t tell you.
Terry: So Grandpa Habben was about 16 or 17 when he was in Maryland?
Hazel: Probably, and he got on that way you got to Oklahoma. He got on the railroad building bridges for the Santa Fe I think. Anyways, he went to work for them and they had bridges made out of wood still and that's what he did.
Terry: Did he build that man's house?
Hazel: Yes he built the man's house. This man told him, he said, “Young man, if you make any fault of my home, I'm going to kick your britches.”
Terry: But the man was pleased with the house?
Hazel: Well he was pleased with the house he has and I kind of got him started. He got in order with the railroad and when he got on the railroad, he got down to the railroads in Kansas. They got through with the railroad but he had to quit working for them for 2 weeks so he could homestead.
Terry: So this is around 1889?
Hazel: Yeah.
Terry: That Grandpa Habben got to here?
Hazel: He homesteaded and we were all here at 15. It was 9th Street, where 9th comes down and goes alongside 160 right there.
Terry: Where EASI is kind of?
Hazel: Ninth and I guess it would be Bryant, yeah.
Terry: Papa Habben had that homestead there?
Hazel: Yeah, sure. He homesteaded and then he was a mover. He was going different places and he would come out here, then he got his place. But I think it was Max Reynolds that he bought from I think. He's got one of the little abstract that says 1907.
Terry: Don’t we have the deed from the land run signed by the president from that place where I grew up? We have that, don’t we?
Hazel: Yeah, I think that abstract of that place before its statehood. No, he didn't homestead that. He had that one but he had bought this one out here before statehood.
Doug: Henry did.
Terry: Henry Habben?
Hazel: Henry Habben, yeah.
Terry: And so Henry Habben, what was his wife’s name?
Hazel: Louise.
Terry: Louise, they were going to California to see great aunt what was her name? Mag, Margaret? Great Aunt Margaret?
Hazel: No, Aunt Emma.
Terry: Emma, okay. So that’s when Papa said that you guys needed to get married.
Hazel: Yeah, that's what he said and then take over this place and we were going to leave.
Terry: How much do they sell it to Papa for?
Hazel: Well we rented it 1950 and then when 1950 came, he had never been to a doctor. I went with him down to the courthouse and he got worried about this land and he went out there and he went to buying houses.
Terry: Who is this, Henry Habben?
Hazel: Yeah, because back then, it was the Depression pretty bad and they've been selling houses out there for taxes so he bought them four or five houses and when he went out to stay, they stayed out there and Great Aunt went with him. She drove out in the Model T or Model A, they had a Model A then.
Terry: Did they go out to 66 to California?
Hazel: Oh, they went right out 66 to the Southgate. Southgate was a pretty good town because Emma had worked at the Firestone Place out there. They got and built the houses and they finally had to fix them up and then they would come home and it was in the spring and they left in the fall. Well, it wasn't really fall but it was the summertime. They stayed out here and they would read on these houses and then they would come home.
Terry: How long were they out there all together?
Hazel: About six months I imagine. They've been out there for about six months and then they came back and they needed the house fixed so Mr. Habben went back out when he saw the houses at the time. Antelope Valley was opening up out there and he bought him 20 acres of gated land so they finally sold out all together and came home, but we have been living in their house and at that time, we built this house around where Kent lives.
Terry: Well, first of all, you guys got married. Tell us about when you got married.
Hazel: We didn't tell you about that wedding? Okay, Jean’s brother, Eric, and his wife lived in Nowata, Oklahoma along one of these travel places. They got up there and anyways, no rain which fits the name right, Nowata. It was raining too hard on the going so the boys went on down here to Luther to have Jean’s brother move on where Bill is and he lived down on this one and then Herman over. They rented these farms up Coon Creek and there was another one on Coon Creek that people wanted to change renters. So they got that one forever and that's three brothers right down in a little spot. They had Coon Creek taken up.
Doug: That was Uncle Bill, Uncle Edward, and-
Hazel: That was Uncle Bill, Uncle Edward, and Herman. They moved to Perry afterwards. But anyways, they needed a place to stay and I told Jean, “We just won't get married, we will wait until Eric and Jackie stayed with Jean until January.” That's when they got the place rented and they can move.
Doug: So you all would have a house of your own and not share it.
Hazel: So that's when we got married. We went up to Nowata and one of Eric and Jackie's neighbors, they have been married. So we went up there at the Presbyterian minister and his wife and they married us. I think Jean had, I laughed about that, the minister had given him something and he had 11 senses left. We had that 11th sense for a long time. We got married at the minister’s house.
Terry: In Nowata?
Hazel: In Nowata, and then we had to get back down here because we had cows smell so we had to come back with Eric and Jackie’s brother and sister. So I said that's where we spent our honeymoon, milking cows.
Terry: I need to ask you a couple of questions here before we get into your married life. would you call your childhood happy, would you say you were a happy child?
Hazel: For sure, we had a wonderful childhood. We always had a spring this big. Grandpa dug it out, put concrete in it, and water would come out. It was ice cold and we had a half gallon of milk and things, tied a rope around it, and dropped it down into the ice cold water.
Terry: You had cold milk to drink.
Hazel: I had cold milk to drink.
Terry: Horses to ride.
Hazel: Horses to ride, and we always had a big garden because it took the spring in the garden with the water running down the rows and you had a big watermill everything like this and a 75-acre peach orchard where we could pick peaches.
Terry: Who had the greatest influence on your childhood, who taught you the most?
Hazel: My father taught me a lot. He taught me to not wear anklets and if you saw you pick up a story book that was not a school book, one of these magazines or something that was getting popular, he would come out-
Doug: Gossip.
Hazel: Yeah, and if you lay that down, then he would get a Bible up and say, “Read it, it will help you more.”
Terry: So was religion an important part of your life as a kid?
Hazel: Yes, my dad was, my mom wasn't so much. My dad was strict, I couldn't even wear anklets until I was sixteen.
Terry: Anklet socks?
Hazel: Anklet socks.
Terry: You have to wear knee highs to cover up your legs?
Hazel: Yes, that’s that.
Terry: Oh, I see.
Hazel: He was real strict about that and I know one time when me and my sister were playing with firecrackers and he looked under that bench and saw that, we put it out real quick. My cousins, they smoke cigarettes and things and he thought we were under there with cigarettes.
Terry: Did you get in big trouble?
Doug: Did he put you in time out?
Hazel: We were in time out. They were mad that we had a cigarette in our mouth.
Terry: Did he spank you?
(end of part 1)