Description:
Dorthy Caldwell talks about growing up in Oklahoma City in the 1930s and 1940s.
Transcript:
Interview with Dorthy Caldwell 9/11/07
Interviewee: Dorthy Caldwell
Interviewer: Buddy Johnson
Interview date: 9/11/07
Interview location: Unknown
Transcription Date: 7/1/20
Buddy Johnson (B): My name is Buddy Johnson and I’m a librarian at Downtown Library. So Dorothy, if you would tell us first where you were born and when you were born.
Dorthy Caldwell (D): I was born May 5th, 1925 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. I guess jobs were a little light then, because Mother and Daddy moved me up here to Oklahoma City when I was seven months old.
B: What kind of things did they do in Fort Smith?
D: Well my dad, I know he worked at the scissors factory for a while, and then I know he worked with the glass company. I think it was Harding Glass1. I’m not sure. That’s what it is now at least down there.
B: Were they from Arkansas or were they from Oklahoma?
D: Mother was born in Cherokee County, Texas. I don’t know when she came to Arkansas or why. My dad was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
B: Was he an urban kid? I mean, did he grow up on a farm or in the city?
D: Well, no. It was in town then.
B: Okay, and what were their names?
D: My father’s name was Oscar Howard. Nobody in his family went by their given names; he was ‘Mage’ [Transcriber’s Note: this is pronounced with a soft ‘g,’ so ‘Mage.’] or ‘John.’ His sister was called ‘Bill.’ Uncle Will was Mose. I can’t remember all the rest of them.
B: Were they just randomly given those names, or did they have some meaning behind them?
D: I don’t know. I don’t think so.
B: Why do you think your father was called ‘Mage?’ Is that for ‘Major’ or something?
D: No. I have no idea. I never questioned it [laughs].
B: So what was your mom’s name?
D: My mom’s name was Hattie Catherine Burnett. She was part Cherokee and would talk occasionally of the things she saw as a child, which was very interesting to me. One time, she and her mother decided to go fishing and they left her little brother, I guess it was Dallas [her younger brother’s name], in the cabin. There was a cabin. Momma never had to borrow a pair of shoes until she was thirteen. It was a real back country sort of thing. She didn’t remember her daddy; I guess he died when she was pretty small, and her mother came back and married his brother. Her maiden name was Barnett. She had another stepdaddy who was kind of mean to her. I think Great-Grandma had been married four times when she died. Lived out in California before she died, so she moved around. But Momma just went from Texas to Oklahoma. And she was forced—her stepdad ordered her to build a…what do you call those cross-legged fences? Split-rail?
B: A split-rail, yes.
D: A quarter of a mile she built by herself. So, it was rough. It was rough country. And then Mother, like I said, she talked about going out to fish and they left the little brother asleep in the house. They weren’t too far from the house. But they heard something scream, like a child, and then a splash of water. Grandma was just convinced that the little baby had got up out of the house and fallen into the river. She was determined to look along the river. Mom said, ‘No that’s not Dallas, that’s not (unintelligible). Just go up to the house.’ Got there and sure enough, Dallas was there. They figured out I guess, or their daddy when out and looked, but there were big cat tracks, like the panthers you had out there in those backwoods.
B: Wow, so that was really back country then if there was…
D: Yes, it was. My mom or born back in either 1892 or ‘93. Both of those dates show up in the bible. Then she was forced to marry one of her stepdad’s buddies after…things we don’t talk about, you know? But he was a drunkard, kept her living in a tent, and when the second baby was born—the first one was my half-sister—when the second baby was born, the midwife and him went out to talk about the baby and they said the baby was dead. So, he came in after a little while, took it out to the woods and buried it. No trace. They didn’t keep record in those days very well. But she said she saw the baby move, so she got word to her stepdad, a man named Mr. Viles. She said he was a wonderful man.
B: Despite his name.
D: ‘Vile’ had nothing to do with him, yes. And he got her and Myrtle away from him. And later, Mr. Stockton was killed in a bar room brawl. Drunken, you know. Probably around the turn of the century – no, it had to be later than that because Myrtle, Momma, had just turned seven.
B: This is still in Texas.
D: Still in Texas. And I guess probably work is what drove her up into Arkansas. She had to work as a housewife, had no schooling whatsoever. All told she was in a school classroom about six weeks of her life, and that was just in off and on periods.
B: I wanted to stop you real quick, because I wanted to know—I didn’t quite understand. When the cat got into the house, did he take the baby?
D: The cat didn’t get into the house. It was the splash that was heard in the river.
B: After the kid scream.
D: Because when they scream, it sounds like a human. It’s a very human sounding scream [D laughs].
B: I see. I was kind of concerned that the baby, you know. Because that has happened.
D: Matter of fact was lost Dallas, sometime or another. He moved to California and married and communication just kind of quit. So I might have cousins in California.
B: There you go. [D laughs]. So your mom made her way to Arkansas.
D: Doing housework and caring for children and stuff like that, with dragging a baby along with her. Because Myrtle was born in aught eight.
B: Do you know how they met, your parents?
D: Yeah, momma was dating his brother [D laughs]. And then John came home from somewhere. Oscar, really. Sparks flew, and pretty soon she was married to him. I had a brother, the first thing. He was born in ’19; they were married in ’16. Myrtle was eight. Then like I said, when I was born, right afterwards, we moved up here to Oklahoma. I understand there was another brother between me and Gene. Gene is still alive. He’s living way out in westside Warwick. Warwick? Warrick…?
B: Oh yeah, there’s several Warricks out on the west side.
D: I can’t remember which one, but him and his wife met in England. She’s a war bride, so that was kind of interesting. But after moving up here he worked for a couple of other glass companies and then in ’30 my little sister was born, and they decided to start their own business. We lived at 816 N. Francis then. It was a house on the alley, because there were two houses on one city lot. There were sixteen concrete steps up to the house, and the owner, Mr. Jonas had closed off part of the big front porch and made a room for my brother which it got in to through the window from that bedroom [laughs]. But it was a good place for a boy to sleep. He had the area dug out that he built the garage stop in on the ground level. At sixteen steps down, there were quite a few. They weren’t like four-inch risers or anything; they were seven inches. They were big steps to run up and down.
B: Now, 816 North Francis, that’s going to be over by St. Anthony.
D: About a block and a half from St. Anthony’s.
B: And how long did you live there? How old were you?
D: Well I lived first down in the four-hundred block of Francis, and that’s where I followed my brother on to the fence. You know big brothers can do dangerous things. Little girls aren’t supposed to, but I did. I got up on the fence, was walking to top rail, and I fell off. I screamed. I guess I stuck my tongue out at the same time, because I hung the bottom side of my tongue on a nail. Oh it swelled up great and big, and Momma rushed me up to the hospital. They drained it and sent me home, and by the time I got home it was full again. She didn’t take me back; she knew it was going to have to go down on its own. I don’t remember it; I remember being told about it. And what a pain I was about bugs. They came home from a movie one night -- my dad loved his movies -- and walked in, laid me down, he reached up and turned on the light, and that wall was just working with cockroaches. You know those houses were set close to the floor in a low-lying area, a low-slung area. And I passed out [There is a thud, as though she’s dropping something to the table in demonstration]. Fell back, passed out dead [laughs]. They thought I had died, but I guess I fainted. And I haven’t liked bugs to this day. I think that’s why I got married. My boyfriend Harold, who I married later, was helping me gather bugs for biology class, and he got a real kick out of chasing me with those bugs.
B: I’ll bet.
D: The only way I could stop him, was kiss him [both laugh]. That led to getting married.
B: What was your dad like? What was is personality?
D: He was a jolly, happy-go-lucky, singing creature, so I grew up singing too. Actually, my brother sings fairly well (unintelligible). You remember songs, you know. I like to sing. I like to sing at church; I sang with the Mid-Del Mother Singers back in the fifties, I guess it was.
B: Did people in your family play instruments too?
D: No, oddly enough, nobody played instruments.
B: What kind of things did your dad like to sing? Were they gospel…?
D: No, they were basically popular songs like [sings], you’re the only star in my blue heaven. [Speaking] That’s a pretty old one named “My Blue Heaven.” Just most anything. I sang [singing], in the valley of the moon. [Speaking] that’s all I can remember of that one [laughs].
B: Lots of good standards, I think we call them.
D: And then later when Harold and I married—Well I guess I’ll tell you about the meeting, because I didn’t like him at first sight. I thought he was just another old man that goes to the dances with Mom and her friends. I came in from this show—At that time Mom was living at 700 E. 6th Street, had a little grocery store in the front room, supporting herself. It was fall of ’40. I had on my sister’s big felt hat, what they called a “Gone with the Wind” with big white brim, and a black dress with the white doodaddies down the frontside here, and high heels. Well why not? I was fifteen; I was very grown up [laughs]. And I pressed in through there. I had to walk two blocks south from 8th to 6th, because I rode the fairgrounds streetcar that far. There were these two older men sitting there. Well I knew Charlie; I know him and his wife Bessie. They were just dancing friends with Mom. She was between husbands at that time. My dad had left home, ran off with a red-headed woman [laughs], back in ’38 I guess it was. So I saw these two sitting there, and I didn’t pay any attention to them. Momma said, “you know Charlie, and that’s Harold.” I said, ‘Hi,’ and walked on in the bedroom. That’s all that was said. After they left Momma informed me that said Harold told her he would kind of like to go dancing with me Tuesday night down on Second Street because Harold wants to dance with you. I said, ‘Oh thrill me to death. That’s practically a date.’ He didn’t ask me himself, but he wanted to [laughs]. I went, and he ignored me [laughs again]. Of course, by golly, he did clean up nice. He had the pair of pants with the suspenders, sort of high waisted things, and striped shirt. And he’d wave that sandy hair just right, sort of like how I’ve got mine now. Oh, he was pretty, and he had blue eyes, and he didn’t dance with me. And I said, “I might as well go down to the car and read my paper.” I liked to read. I’ll tell you about getting on to reading later. Pretty soon, here he comes down. And he sat there and talked a while, and finally talked me into going back up. I danced with him, and I don’t dance—I didn’t dance good. My thing was the show. I wanted to go to the picture show, and he wanted to go dancing. So of course, we got to dating. We’d go to the picture show first. Actually, we’d stop there at Broadway, at 3rd street, on the east side of the street across from the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. And there’s a little grill in there. This guy sold six hot dogs for a quarter. They had chili on them and onions and then you could salt and pepper them. And that’s when Pepsi came out, in the late 40’s. [Singing] Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot. Twice as much for nickel too, Pepsi Cola’s the drink for you nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle. [She breaks into laughter]. A favorite little musical. Well we bought that and the two pops. That was twenty-five, thirty-five, cents; and I wanted potato chips. For forty cents he fed us supper, and then we went to the show, and then we went to the dance.
B: Do you remember what show you went to?
D: Most any of them. The Rialto was one of the nicer of the three there along…
B: That was at Robinson and Grand.
B: Yeah, when Grand was grand. Then there was the Warner2 up there across the street between Robinson and Midwest. Not Midwest, Robinson and Walker. No, it wasn’t Walker. What’s the next street? Broadway, Robinson, Harvey. It was on Harvey. We seldom ever went on up to the big shows. The Criterion was too expensive, and so was the Midwest. So it was one of the three: Majestic, Folly, Rialto, or Warner. There were four on Grand. The Folly was a pretty nice one.
B: How were they different from the Criterion?
D: Oh the Criterion was that great big brand new one, a fairly huge thing, very modernistic, had two great big round mirrors on either side of the lobby as you walked in. So you could look across the lobby and just see yourself repeated in circles, getting littler and littler.
B: Was it different inside?
D: Oh yeah, very plush. And yeah, you didn’t go in there for a quarter. I think it was forty cents, maybe even fifty. Some way with the Midwest. The Midwest was more like a medieval palace, big chairs out in the lobby, stars in the sky up above, and beautiful colonnades. It was a very classy theater. What was the name of the jewelry store? I can’t think right now, but they always had a display in the winter, an animated display.
B: Was it BC Clark?
D: No BC Clark was over further. This was the corner one. It seems to me it had a ‘Mac’ and something with two ‘Es’ in it. McIntee’s? It might have been McIntee’s Jewelry. The Majestic was the one we kids always went to Saturday morning, ‘cause you could sit in there for four hours while your parents caught up on everything they had to do. The advertisement in the paper had this tiny coupon that you could clip out. It was free, the paper, was. But you could clip this out and you could get a nickel off the show, instead of having to pay your whole dime. This gave you another nickel to spend. And like her, I remember…the last lady you were talking to. The…[she taps the table as she tries to recall the name of someone apparently present from a previous interview]. The candy bar she mentioned.
B: Three Musketeers.
D: Three Musketeers. They were actually separate pieces, three separate chocolate coated pieces. And yes, they were delicious. And yes, they were bigger then. But nowadays, you know, candy is candy. It still puts on weight., but I stayed pretty skinny while I was small. After Momma had my tonsils taken out was when I started gaining weight.
B: That’s interesting. So that night…
D: You could go to the show and spend four hours there, like I said. And that was the Majestic, the one closest to Broadway. In much later years after he was born, our son was a good trotting age, probably not yet three, the Majestic didn’t have an open lobby. It didn’t have you going into your ticket booth out here before into the lobby. It had folding doors all across the front of the building. They could fold back I guess, but basically, they were closed. This was early afternoon, and the show was already open. And we were rushing madly. We’d had to park down on California; there wasn’t any parking spaces up there and we wanted to go to the ten cent stores. Chris, Grant’s, and something else, there were three five and ten cent stores. So we were buzzing along there, swinging him between us, him and these little yellow boots. And all of a sudden, he dug those boots in and said, “I smell a picture show.” [laughing] The popcorn was popping. Oh, shoot. Lovely things pop into your mind about kids.
B: So that first time you went out with Harold, where did you go after the show? You said you went dancing.
D: Yeah. By then it was Saturday night in Capitol Hill. They just called it Going Dancing in Capitol Hill. Actually it was above a big furniture store right on the corner. I think a bank is there now on 25th St. What was it called? It had another name besides “Commerce,” didn’t it? 25th Street was Commerce?
B: Yes.
D: Huge, wide, I think it was like an IWOOF hall or something like that. Then you had wide stairs to go up to it and then a big dancing area. Not as big as the one down on South Walker, but it was a big one. The one over on 2nd St., which would be Couch Dr. now, just west of Walker, just a narrow building twenty-five to thirty feet wide. It just had some narrow stairs to go up because it had another business down below. Most all dance halls did.
B: That’s over by where the art museum is now, or the Center Theatre? Kind of back behind there?
D: Yeah.
B: This was in ’40, you said?
D: Moved down there in ’40. We met in—probably it was right after Labor Day, because I remember it was September, but it had to be on a Saturday I guess, because I wasn’t in school that day. I was in school; I went to Central High School for seven months. So on the March 29th afterwards, we’d convinced Momma that I wanted to get married and he wanted to get married. And we thought that we should marry each other, because we liked each other or something like that. She said, “You’re too young. I haven’t taught you anything yet.” But we kept pushing at her and pushing at her, and by the end she was remarried. I didn’t get along good with the step-grandad. Me and my little sister, Ola Fae, we kind of tended to be like real siblings, and fought. She said, “Well, I’m going to California to my Great Aunt Hettie’s funeral. She’s left me something.” She didn’t know what. She said, “If you still want to get married when I come back, I’ll let you.” When she drove back into the yard, we said, “Can we get married tonight?” She said, “You have to get a license.” I said, “I know where you go to get a license on Saturday.” This lady, the court clerk lived up on 13th street, and there we were down on 700 E. 6th. She lived in those pretty houses along that 13th Street drive. Went up there and—
B: So she could issue it from her house?
D: She could issue it. We got the license and went out to try and find our preacher first; I’d gotten saved and was baptized when I was fourteen. Well I’m a late fifteen, because I was born in May, and this is March of next year. So it was a Saturday, the 29th and we couldn’t find the preacher. He was a young unmarried man. Evidently, he had other things to do besides study for his program the next Sunday morning. But we went over and visited his sister while we waited, thinking he’d just gone out to supper. We called down there, and there was no answer. So I finally asked Rae, “where’s your preacher? Does he marry people without appointments?” And she said, “Oh yeah.” And she gave us his address. It was over on Commerce St, down there near Pennsylvania on into the divided street. And he wasn’t home. So we went on our usual date, you might say. When we dated, we used to drive out to Britton. 93rd and Western I think, there was a drugstore there that you could get in that general area. They sold what they called, walking sundaes. It was two dips of ice cream in a paper cup, with chocolate syrup, and then we’d buy a five-cent sack of peanuts and share them. That was delicious. As a matter of fact, I fixed one the other night.
B: I’d never heard of that. A ‘walking sundae.’
D’ They were ten cents apiece. And then we spent a nickel on—We spent a whole quarter on just eating. No telling what he spent on gasoline, I think it was $0.15 or $0.16 cents a gallon. And when you’re making $0.12 and a half an hour, you’d work two hours for a date like that.
B: But you were worth it, I’m sure
D: I’m sure I was. I had him convinced.
B: So did you find a Justice of the Peace?
D: No. We just kept going back and going back, and neither one of them showed up. Finally, I said, “Well let’s make one more round.” It was already midnight, and he said, “They ought to be ahome by now.” It wasn’t my preacher, but the other preacher’s house was dark. And I said, “You know what he could have come on and gone to bed. Go ahead and knock on the door.” So he did. And the preacher came to the door, he’d pulled his pants on, and what might have been a pajama top. He came to the door barefooted. Harold told him what he wanted, and he said, “yeah I can do it.” It was a ceremony that didn’t use rings, but we had our rings. We had paid ten dollars for an engagement ring with a jewel in it, and five dollars for the—And it only took us about three weeks or four weeks to pay for it. But he married us, got his wife and daughter up as witnesses. They just came out in their robes and had their house shoes on. Ladies dressed more formally than men. Anyway, then they went to sign the certificate, and they didn’t have any ink. Oh dear [D sighs]. Here I am, married with no proof. But luckily mama believed us. He said, ‘We’ll have it for you tomorrow, just come back over after church.’ Well, we went back after church and we picked our marriage certificate up, and that was the palest blue ink I ever saw. I should have brought it to show you, but I really think it was signed with washing bluing [laughs]. I really do.
B: Wow, they were desperate for ink.
D: But it lasted for fifty-four and a half years. Isn’t that wonderful? Well fifty-three and a half years, because I met him in ’40. He died October 3rd, my mother’s birthday, 1994.
B: Now, how old was he then, if you were just about sixteen?
D: Well he was old enough to know better. He was twenty-four. There were eight years and ten months between us. And his birthday is the fourth of July. Well it was several, several years, probably a couple or three decades, before I realized that Cinco De Mayo is also a holiday.
B: You’re both born on holidays.
D: A couple of firecrackers. Got together and just fizzed, lasted and lasted. He put up with so much. I got on the board, Caddo Electric back in the last years, and he enjoyed that as much as I did. He got a kick out me.
B: Well, what was he working at?
D: He was a carpenter. When he came to Oklahoma City, I think one of his first jobs was a ‘Gandy Dancer.’
B: I’m not sure what that is.
D: Oh good, then I get to tell you too. [Singing] A Gandy Dancer was a real man; his work was never done. Working weary all the long, long day, ‘till the setting sun. [Speaking] Actually, it involved laying rails. Now he didn’t get to carry the rails, but he and the other boys rustled the gravel and the ties. It was probably a pretty hot job.
B: I imagine. And that’s cool, and I don’t think there’s any librarian songs. So he was lucky to have his.
D: Oh yes there is. [Singing] Marian, the Librarian [laughs].
B: That’s right, the Music Man. I totally forgot. I know you would know it.
D: Then he worked trying to sell labor, knocking on people’s doors and asking them if they had any electrical device that they wanted to have repaired. You’d take them into this man, and he would say, ‘I have to see what it is before I pay you.’ He didn’t last there long because he knew that guy was cheating, taking more money than he should and not paying him for all he took in. Finally, he got a job to work as a carpenter. Or I should say a carpenter’s helper because his big job was digging the ditches for the foundations. He was just beginning to do a little woodwork when we met. He was born in Caddo County on the farm, the baby of eight children. So I got the runt of the litter, but he was the best of the bunch [laughs].
B: I wondered, where did you go for elementary school?
D: Emerson.
B: Did you stay at the Francis house for a while?
D: Yeah, but first we lived down south of that new Nazarene church that was building down there on sixth street. And then we moved two blocks north to halfway between 7th and 8th, the 800 block on North Francis. Shotgun house on 6th street, and I guess that one down there. Still north Francis, north of 4th street and then moved after that one and I guess were in the 816 when we started the business, when started to school. I guess I started the school in ’30 because I would have been five that year. Kindergarten at Emerson School was held in the basement. It was a big brick school; it’s still there.
B: Yeah, it sure is.
D: They were just building on the part. The new part, I think they’d just finished building, I think the back on the west end of the block. When I transferred, I had a chance to get a bigger building at 26 West Park, that was it. It was just in a more business area and out of the residential.
B: And this was the park that’s the half block between 10th and 11th?
D: No, not ‘a park,’ Park St.
B: Yeah, was in a kind of…wasn’t it kind of half—
D: Well it was the first block north of 10th street.
B: Okay so it took the place of 11th?
D: No, 11th is the second block
B: So it skips a block, then?
D: But they hold the same numbers from Park to 11th. It’s still the 1100 block.
B: So that was off Park and Broadway Circle.
D: Broadway Circle, circled west from Broadway. And I lived a half block east. All the alleys in that part of town were paved, at least in the business area. In the fourth grade at Emerson school, I was sitting in my seat with my feet out in the aisle, and the teacher walked by. She said, “Dorothy, put your feet under the desk.” I was never so embarrassed in my life. I sit there and I think I cried the rest of the afternoon. ‘I was a real outgoing kid.’ No actually, I was extremely shy. I don’t know why, but I didn’t like to do sports even though they forced us outside for PE, physical education. I managed to hit a homerun on a baseball. You talk about sheer luck, that was it. So that’s a good memory from there but there was an alcove built between the old school and the new school, where they joined. And that was just around the corner from those tiled big, big iron circles, you know like a silo, built upwards. You had to get in on your floor and there the teacher pushed you. You went spiraling down into the dark until you got to the bottom and another teacher caught you and set you down. I was scared to death that I would get stuck in that thing. Because, it was huge, and must have been six feet across. You had a big circle to go spiraling down in.
B: Yeah, but it was pitch dark.
D: It was always just fire drills in school, thank goodness. There was never a fire in school that I know of.
B: In that school they were probably really vigilant about that because that school burned down before you went there. That’s why there were two buildings.
D: They had drills pretty often, I wouldn’t say once a month, but pretty often. I really enjoyed going to school there. I had a ball down there in that basement. A huge basement, they had two or three sandboxes which were literally sandboxes up on legs. You could stand up and play in them, big tunnels, maybe wider than this table. This is what, not quite thirty inches? I think probably three feet wide.
B: Wow.
D: They taught you to sing little songs.
B: Do you remember any of those songs? Any favorites?
D: I’m not sure I do. [Sings] Good morning to you. [Speaks] No, that’s first grade, because we were always sitting at the desk. I really don’t remember.
B: Were you a pretty good student even if you were shy?
D: Fair. More B’s and A’s than C’s and D’s. Except that D in the fourth grade in Reading. Oh no. I couldn’t believe I had, but I did. And even Momma was upset about it, because I read at home. But after that, I really read, and still read. I’m up to the 119th book this year. I didn’t start keeping track of them until—you know they had those elderly reading classes in February and March. I first—It wasn’t the first year I moved here, because it was already in October—so in aught-four they started, and I started to keep track at home as well as there. From the first of February ‘till December, I read over 264 books that year. But that was making the transition from the farm back here to Midwest City, so that was some way to pass the time when I didn’t have any place else to go. And I still drove then. I got my driver’s license when my last baby was born. And it’s a good thing I did because he really used me. I drove a ton and a half plate trucks out to Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company up there on North Santa Fe, and downtown to Campbell Glass. And one year, I was dressed up and asked him: “What do you think honey? This is just a little town here in Midwest City and everyone in the neighborhood knows me. Can I wear my witch outfit to work?” He says, “If you want to, honey.” And then, of course, it wound up that he and fella that he worked for were both busy. A car came in and we didn’t have the glass in stock. I had to drive the plate truck clear out there to pick up a windshield. And there I am driving this ton and a half plate truck in my false nose—made out of putty, I made it myself. And my hair was out this hairbrush, that I used for wart hairs. Green, wig on, and my face I used sort of a Kabuki type paint. Very vivid. Very redolent [laughs]. You can imagine how I felt it would feel to drive up beside that plate truck with this woman, and she glances over and grins at him [laughs].
B: It doesn’t sound like you were too shy.
D: Well by then I had outgrown it. I had outgrown it to about 170 pounds.
B: Where did you go to junior high? Do you remember?
D: Well I went first to Webster3, but somehow or another—see that’s within walking distance. 26 West Park is in the first half block west of the tracks, which is the dividing line. And Webster, I think, is in the 600 block. It was past Lincoln. I don’t remember what the north and south streets were. But a lot of the kids there were so well dressed. It’s sort of like kids going to Classen, because a good part of the Classen kids were uppity, and a lot of them came from better homes. And my daddy was a working man, and he’d left by then so…
B: Your mom was just doing what she could to get by.
D: So I wasn’t happy there. So I could go Roosevelt, because it was on the streetcar lanes. I could go Downtown and didn’t have to transfer. Well sometimes you did have to transfer, but most I didn’t have to transfer. But still, that would go Downtown, and then over to Western, and back up Classen. So I could actually walk across town from Broadway to—
B: Yeah, because it’s on 10th and western right, or 9th, or whatever?
D: It’s between 8th and 9th.
B: So that was straight shot but it was still probably half a mile.
D: So I walked a lot of the times. A lot of the times I would catch the streetcar if the weather was bad. But if you didn’t make your connection, you could be late to first class, so I had to get up earlier on those mornings, when it was cold.
B: Do you remember the winters being a lot colder then?
D: No, not really. Like most winters in Oklahoma, you have two or three days of bad weather than you have dern (darn) near summer or spring.
B: I’ve talked to a few people and they said thought the winters were colder. Then after they thought about it, thought it was because they didn’t have any way to get any heat. So, it probably just seemed colder. They had heaters and stuff, but not like the full air conditioning and heating systems we have now.
D: Well your bedrooms weren’t heated, generally. There at 26 West Park where they had the glass shop when Daddy and Momma separated—And he did, he left the house, and business, and everything to her. And the new car, which I think is what attracted the lady that he left with. Nonetheless it was nice. I remember, next door to Hogue Hardware, there was a vacant area between the buildings, but it had been paved. So, I could skate down the alley, up the hump on to that, down the hump, down to the corner of 10th and make a circle because the sidewalks the twelve feet wide at that point. There was a perfectly good skating rink, across the street and south of 10th street upstairs. I went up there a few times. But you could just go in one direction, and I was street skating back and forth, up and down, around and about. I’d rather of have skated on the street, well, not on the street but on the sidewalks and alleys. But I didn’t really like to walk down the streets. I liked to walk down the alleys. It seemed they were friendlier or something. So I would walk from our place—sometimes the alley between Broadway and Robinson was cleaner and neater, and I would go up there—go down to 10th street, then cross it and go up to that alley and then down that alley to 3rd street where I’d come off, turn around the corner, and there was that nice south big entrance to the Carnegie Library. One of my favorite buildings in town. And since I was such a reader, I would make the trip two or three times a week.
B: What was it like?
D: Oh, it was beautiful. There was a picture not too long ago in one of the papers. I thought I’d cut it out but I’m not sure I did. It was a very rococo building and the south side of it had a curved. I don’t know if it was curved in front, but it was curved in back. And there were niches where you could have stood statues. I don’t think there were any statues at the time, but the colonnades in front were very decorated at the top. And it was a big ‘stone’ building, not rock, but what I would call a stone building. Inside it was very plush, very nice, very quiet, carpeted. Yet I could go upstairs; a few times I got books from upstairs. But basically, I was restricted to the children’s area.
B: Oh? Did they not really let you go to the adult areas or grown-up books?
D: Yeah, when I got older, out of junior high, you were free to go most anywhere in there.
B: Were the stacks open?
D: Yes, the stacks were open. You looked for your own books. At school we were taught to use the little drawers to find out if we had the books
B: The card catalog. What was the staff like? Were they stern or were they nice?
D: They weren’t what I’d call stern. They were always polite and willing to help you find a book. Sometimes they wanted to discourage you from taking some books. Mindy asked the other lady what she’d wanted to be when she was little. I loved the Little Nurse books, something ‘Martin.’ Nancy Martin? No that was Nancy Drew. Sue something, was a Nurse. I loved those. A Red Cross nurse, they called her. There were several books on that, always interesting to me. I like medical terms. My daughter grew up and is a medical transcriptionist [laughs]. So I still know medical terms, somewhat. And I keep all my little medical books to look up things, and I can figure out a diagnosis. I have told my kids, ‘This kid’s probably got strep throat. You should take him to the doctor.” Sure enough, he did. But then I had strep throat enough, I oughta get fairly familiar with it.
B: Yeah, you would know.
D: Yeah and that Doctor would come to call, you know. And you have those picks about ten inches long, just a little straw-like piece of wood with a great big blob of cotton on the end, like a huge q-tip. And he’s put the wooden thing down on my tongue to hold my mouth still, stick that way down my throat with iodine on it [D makes a disgusted sound, and then laughs].
B: It must be terribly painful anyway with the strep throat.
D: Yeah it was a sore throat. And it always had a funny taste. You don’t have the old alloy…
B: The fillings? I did have them.
D: When you get a dime in your mouth and touch it to that it’s the same identical taste. To me, I knew I had strep when I had that taste in my mouth. And I did. It’s a wonder I didn’t have some other thing come from it, I had it so often. But like I said I grew right up. Oh and after Daddy left, during divorces, for kids they’re bad enough. I guess they’re almost second nature now. But at that time ‘37 or ’38, I would feel so sorry for my little friends whose mommas and daddies were divorced. They were poor little children of divorce. And then all of a sudden, I was one. It didn’t sit well at all with me. My little sister actually saw her [the woman for whom her father left]. She came by to pick Daddy up, and she [her sister] saw her when her daddy left.
B: That must have been terrible.
D: It was, it truly was. That first time he left he didn’t tell anybody. He just disappeared, and Momma would lay there and cry, and moaning say she didn’t know where he might be and that he might have been beaten in a ditch or maybe even dead. It was a terrible thing to put a woman through, but he came back. He just didn’t stay.
B: Did she continue to run the glass? You said she had a store.
D: Well she ran the glass shop for a while, but my brother by that time, well he volunteered for the Air Force, before we were in the war. They had him overseas for four years in England. I know he was over there before we were in the war. Some sort of lend-lease thing with the Air Force. He was one of the few men that actually did, in the service, what he did at home. Replace windows in the aircraft. Of course, he was working with plexiglass rather than glass. And my brother-in-law, when he went, was in the engineer corps, but he was a cook. His mother and dad had raised him in a café [laughs].
B: The one time the army knew what it was doing, one of the few times. So your brother, did he learn the glass trade from your dad?
D: Yeah. When he was thirteen, he was driving cars. You didn’t have to have a license at thirteen, or you could get a license at thirteen. There was no --
B: He was delivering glass?
D: He was delivering glass, setting glass in the houses, helping make dust tops. People used to put a lot of glass on their—
B: Tables and desks
D: Fancier highboys and dressers and the fancy tables in the front room. That sort of thing. Talking about tables, that reminds me of one of my favorite playing places. When my little sister was like one or two, because she couldn’t crawl over, we had a hexagonal table in the front room. It didn’t have any drawers or anything in it. It just had legs high and stretchers down low. Well she couldn’t get over the stretchers so I went in there, and that was my playhouse and [singsong] she couldn’t get in there [laughs].
B: Now you got married when you were almost sixteen, so did you go to high school?
D: I went that seven months, but I didn’t think married ladies needed to go to school. Fiddle-de-doo. So I quit school and didn’t think a thing about it until after we sold the glass shop and he went to work for Tinker Field. Well actually it was in between the hiatus of selling the shop and him getting some sort of a job, we both decided I needed to go to work too. The kids were in school, so I started looking for a job. But I didn’t have any experience. But switchboard work ads almost always said, ‘no experience needed.’ Well I went out for it and not a one would hire you if you hadn’t been one before. So I decided I was going to go to a talent agency, a place to get work and they can get it for me. I walked in and she said, ‘yes, I believe I’d love to represent you, but I have a little test you’ll have to take. So I took her written test. She graded it. She said, ‘wow did you know I’ve only had one person make a higher grade than this, and it was a fellow that just wanted a part time job while he got his Masters.’ I hadn’t finished high school, but I had never quit reading. Read, read, read, some of it must have stuck because. She asked me if I knew what the GED was about. I said, “Oh yes. That’s where you can get a diploma if you’re out in the service.” She said, ‘No it’s not just for that now. Anybody can get one.” She called out to OCU. Dr. Sunshine Atkins was in charge of that program, and it had already closed for the day; it only went until noon. So she said she could come out tomorrow and so I went clear out to OCU. I was driving by then. I had started driving several years before. Anyway, I drove out there, took their two tests that morning, and made such a good grade on one them that had to do with social studies—my worst subject in school. So I took it and totally blacked it out. I did well on it. The next one was still pretty fair, I guess. They said if the monitor was willing, I could go to her house after lunch and take another. I went to her house and she let me take two. And so I only had one more to do. They only required five and you only had to have sixty-five percentile to pass. So right off the road, no studies, no planning ahead of time, I just went in there and took two that morning, then two that afternoon, and went back the next morning and took the last test, which was math and oddly one of my best subjects in school. I just barely passed it. You started using one of those little adding machines and letting the machines do your thinking for you [As she speaks you can hear fingers drumming on the table]. It affects you. Anyway I did pass, and they sent me up to the state capitol to get my diploma, and then go Downtown to Aetna. And I got that job too.
B: That was Aetna Insurance?
D: Oh yes. For processing insurance claims on Medicare. They were separating Medicaid and Medicare at that time, and there were needing processors. So I got right on there, and luckily I was used to using the same type of adding machine with my business, so I was kind of familiar with it and didn’t have any trouble.
B: Why don’t you tell us who your—
D: Let me tell you what my grade was on my GED.
B: Oh yes.
D: I made a ninety-five percentile. Made me feel a lot better about myself.
B: That’s great. You didn’t get ‘uneducated’ by high school.
D: I know I missed a lot, and I missed never having a graduating class reunions or something, but I had only been in that class—that was when both Webster and Roosevelt [middle schools] went to Central---well some Roosevelt I guess went to Classen.
B: You mentioned that you had been on a farm. How did you get to the farm?
D: Harold’s daddy, back in 1901, was working with his brother on a steam rig outside of Rushville, Indiana, steam threshing machines. They got into Kansas when the day came to go down and sign up Caddo-Kiowa-Comanche land opening. No more races to run. By that time they realized that too many people disappeared in runs who were never heard of again. In other words, the claim jumpers killed them, buried them, and nobody knew anything about it. They just didn’t show up anymore. Well there was enough static about it that this went to lotteries. Both Cliff and his Uncle Lou signed up, but Cliff actually had his name drawn. So he had already had—no, this one girl was born right after the drawing because they named her El Reno. But they came down with Grandpa coming ahead of the family. He came down on what they call an ‘immigrant box car.’ It had a little room, not much bigger than an outhouse, but big enough you could sit or sleep in out of the rain. Your stuff was all in a flat bed, with stakes on the side that you could tie stuff to. And he brought down lumber that was milled off the farm there in Rushville, Indiana. He got to Minco, unloaded it, started west, he and another fellow, were driving two wagons carrying this stuff that was on the boxcar out to Cogar, which was just three miles inside or west of the Caddo County line. It got dark; then it got darker. They decided they’re better stop because they didn’t know where they were. So they camped out, got up the next morning, and Cogar was just three miles west of them [laughs]. They were decked out on the line. But that’s where the farm came from. And of course, there’s Harold and six other brothers and sisters. No, five. There were eight of them all told born at Cogar. He proved up on the farm, got the warrant from Teddy Roosevelt in November of 1907. In April of 1907, they gave an acre to the church. There’s always been a church. Sometimes it was just open and passing preachers would come, but there was always church at that building. Then sometime during the war they moved it, took it down off the high weight, and put it on a slab floor and remodeled it nicely. And it wasn’t right on the corner, but it was equivalent to half a block south of highway 152. So after Papa died, I could drive myself to church and I didn’t even have to use the seatbelt. But there was a well on our place. I only went to go for the second layer in the well. They asked again, and I said I don’t really want money as bad as I would like to have a graveled road up to the farm. They graveled it; they just didn’t tell me I’d have to upkeep the gravel. It’s a good thing because in ‘98 Harold had been gone for four years and I was having trouble keeping the grass down. It was coming up through the gravel and all. They decided they wanted a community volunteer fire department. We were sort of between, about four miles there, there was just no actual resident that we were within their radius of service, so they decided to start one. So, it was in ’98. Both Grandma and Grandpa had given an acre to the Church in aught-eight. In ‘98, nobody was left but me. And they needed someplace for the fire department. They thought they were going to get the one up on the corner, a mile east of us where The Rain Man had filmed the telephone booth scene. So, I thought, ‘Well, they didn’t get that. They decided they wouldn’t sell that acre there; they just wanted to keep that corner. I thought, well the church has already got part of this corner, so I asked them if they’d like to have that acre there. Well, they did but they came back and asked me if they could have just a third more because they wanted to turn the building one way and have—
B: Road access?
D: Well, they had road access. They were right on the highway, right down at the bottom area, coming down from the well site and stayed flat for another mile and a half. So, it was a good place to come. (unintelligible) Good access. Safer access to the highway. And I said, well sure. Actually, I just went ahead and gave it to them. Then the church wanted to know if they could buy an acre from me. They weren’t playing but $450 an acre, which for farmland, isn’t very much. I said, ‘Well no, I’ll just give you another acre.’ They had been having sales and had $1700.00…? I don’t know what they had. Anyway, they’d saved quite a bit of money for it and built a lovely fellowship all separated from the church, but now connected with a little hall. The brides could dress over there and still come to church without getting in the wind and rain. So, I really enjoyed being able to do that.
B: Since you grew up as a city kid, you didn’t have any trouble getting into—
D: You know, the Caldwell actually had never really farmed the place. Grandpa hadn’t bought or rented the school quarter north of us too, but he always rented it out, even Harold was growing up. Oh they might go up and hoe or something, but as far as actually being the farmers themselves it was just - what do you call it when you rent the farm out? Shares. Sharecropping. Not exactly shares, but yeah. You got a share it and you had to pay a share of the fertilizer and stuff to bring on the crops. One time Grandpa put in, well they look like pretty flowers, but it’s castor bean. Beautiful plant, but the beans in the raw state are poisonous. So while I’d love to have some, I’ve seen a place up on Reno that has them around. I think it’s the old Hardy place. Theirs is just a real pretty trim around the house, but they didn’t turn out too well. So they did soy beans for a while, they did real well, and mung beans too. But wheat was never really a big producer. You got a pretty good price for it, but it was too sandy, too blow, so I had it in ‘CRP.’ Well actually, Papa and I put it in CRP, “crop reduction program,” because of it being blow soil. It needed to be held down with buffalo grass. That was pretty successful. But after he died, I had trouble finding anyone to do the weed work and stuff like that. There are no warm bodies available. There are families working what few they had. They don’t have big families like they used to where they had excess kids to rent out.
B: Now you mentioned the REC. What did you do for them?
D: I was a trustee. You didn’t run it you just oversaw. You didn’t really have rights to hire or fire, but you made policy and attended the big conventions. Had to learn where things were going. I tried to get them to go in for central control while I was still on the board, but they didn’t get around to doing it until after the turn of the century. Well no, it must have been a couple years before that, but it was several years after I left the board. Ten years, maybe seven.
B: When did you start doing that?
D: ‘78. Julian moved to Minco and that left his spot vacant. Four of us ran for it, and I got it by four votes. Narrow margin, but in that little district it only took forty-three votes to have a quorum.
B: We didn’t talk about your kids very much.
D: Oh the uglies. Yup. Well let’s see. Two were born while Harold was still in the service. He was in the fourth infantry division, the clover leaf group. He was one of the D-Day…he went down to Utah Beach in the second wave ashore. He said, the 605, they got on the ladder boats and headed to shore. They’d been sitting there watching the big ships further out. He said they looked like boxcars as they went over.
B: Wow, the shells from the big fourteen-inch guns.
D: I guess they would look big. They were sitting in a landing bar up there watching them go over your head. The Utah was the flat beach. He hadn’t died yet of cancer. He was already diagnosed and not really going very much, there in ’94 when they had all the fifty-year anniversaries and the signs and things over there. And we’re sitting there and he says, ‘Oh Momma come quick. That little road, you see that road to the light? That’s the road we left the beach on. That’s Utah Beach. So, he was so excited about that. He kind of wanted to go, but of course his health wouldn’t let him go, he’s been diagnosed with cancer, so…Anyway, he was one of these ‘gentlemen’. He got into a fist fight with the neighbor once over our boy, but that was once. And I think if he could have put a fence around that farm and left us all in there, he’d be perfectly happy. He didn’t require outside people, He worked for a while for the railroad, worked as a carpenter for years like I said, and worked for my sister for a few years in her glass shop. And then that, almost three years, for the railroad was just as they were switching from being agent operators to the central controls system out of the big towns. He said he thought they closed probably thirty stations after he worked them. He was always just on the extra board. He spent the whole summer of, probably ’57, at Rustin, Louisiana. He worked the Arkansas division; they wouldn’t hire him on the Oklahoma division of the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company. They were looking for operators down there. I don’t know why I needed my birth certificate, but I needed it and we went down to Arkansas to get it. We drove to Little Rock. So, he went in the station there in the big office. And they said, ‘Yeah, if you can pass the physical, you’re hired.’ But he couldn’t take the physical down there; they wanted him to take it up here at El Reno. So, he didn’t. Next thing you know, he wore a ‘Railroad Man in dress-up’ suit. He liked work in it, but he also enjoyed actually being in the army. Several little things happened that were interesting. They were practicing landing one Thanksgiving. I don’t know why they’d be out on the Gulf of Mexico in November, but that’s where they were. Just before they shipped up to New Jersey to go overseas. But they go caught in the fog out there, and nobody could figure out the direction. They sat out there locked in the fog, all during the time all the rest of the guys back on base were having their turkey dinner [laughs].
B: Thanksgiving, oh no.
D: But then they went from there up to New Jersey. He did this in several places. Down at Camp Walter for a while, that’s Texas. Went down there, but I was already pregnant by then. I think it was that trip to Fort Sill in August there [laughs]. Anyway she came long end of May in the next ’43. I remember he was in New Jersey by then, when she was born on May 7th over at Wesley Hospital over on 12th street, I think, between Robinson and…
B: It was like 12th?
D: 12th and Robinson, basically. Beautiful place. She was born there. It was a rainy day. I went in at 3:24 that morning—No, that’s when she was born— on May 7th. Matter of fact, I was popping so quick that the doctor hadn’t gotten there yet. When he got off the elevator, my momma grabbed him and said, “You get in there. We’re having that baby!” She was born at 3:24 AM and by nighttime that same day I was the ninth bed in an eight-man ward. Rain brings on ladies when they get into that time of day. Anyway he got to come home, but it took him two days on the train to get home, and he was allowed two weeks at max. He got about three trips into the hospital to see his baby girl and talk to me. Well, at least he got to see her. And I thought, well now he’ll be gone overseas, but he didn’t. While they were in New Jersey they came down, about half the fourth motorized infantry division came down with ptomaine poisoning. He didn’t have the sickness, but they kept them together instead of separating the sick out. They sent one batch on over to England and he was still there when she was born on the 7th of May, which was two days after my 18th birthday. So, she and I kind of grew up together, while Papa was gone. He didn’t last long on that. Jimmy Cagney was on the boat with him. I think he was on the QE, “Queen Elizabeth.” Of course, sure he saw him perform, but he didn’t speak to him. But it’s kind of interesting to say that he and Jimmy Cagney went over there [laughs].
B: So how many children did you have?
D: We had three. Phyllis was the first one. Gertrude Catherine, named after her Grandmothers. Harold’s mother’s name was Gertrude Catherine, and I found our years and years later, probably twenty years later, that her first name was Lula. Lula Gertrude Hattie Catherine. I could have had Lula Hattie, or Hattie Lula, but I liked Gertrude Catherine. She wound up being ‘Trudy’ for a long time and then in school, about the second year in school, it switched to ‘Tru,’ and stayed Tru even after she was married and teaching herself. But she was in the band, and when she went up to—it was Central State College then, you know what it is now—they couldn’t find her transcript. They looked and looked, there was no Gertrude Catherine anywhere. So, one of the office girls down here in Midwest City thought she should tell them to look under ‘Tru.’ Yeah. They are still carrying her under the name ‘Tru Caldwell’ and then put her in with the (unintelligible) [laughs]. But yeah, she had no problem there. She was president of her dorm. She did have to switch from—she wanted music for her minor and she’d played nothing but percussion all through grade school. She called me one day after she’d been in class and said, “Momma, I just got through music class. Why didn’t you tell me there was notes that had names?” I said, “I’d never thought of it. I just knew it for so long myself.” So, she graduated. Just before she graduated, she married John Niemeyer. He’s still around town here, good boy. Sorry.
B: You’re fine. I think Jason’s going to cut us off here. I want to know real quick if you have any words of wisdom or sort of life lessons to pass along to everyone.
D: Yeah. When you really get down, remember there’s no place to go but up. And that happens. You only have to wait a couple of days, but yeah. The sun’s gonna shine. Talk about things. And never take a fight to bed; that ain’t no place to fight. And try to find something funny to laugh at. That’s what he would do to me, that country hick. I’d get so mad at him sometimes, steam would just about be coming out of my ears. And he’d say something country funny, and I get tickled, and you just cannot fight when you're laughing. I guess that’s it, because God is right there with us. I have had so many blessings, even a miracle with backache once. I love to go to church; I love to sing at church. And I got to sing at the fiftieth anniversary of the run on the stage in the Municipal Auditorium, me and every other kid in a music class in Oklahoma City.
B: You were there.
D: Yes, I was there.
B: Well, I can’t tell you how much we appreciate you coming in and sharing with us. We appreciate it and we hope it’s something that’ll stay with your family for a long time.
D: I hope so.
B: Thanks.
[Interview ends]