Description:
Jeanie Abts talks about creating the gardens in Choctaw, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma Voices: Jeannie Abts
Interviewee: Jeannie Abts
Interviewer: Herb Abts
Interview Date: 12/04/2007
Interview Location: Choctaw, OK
Transcribed on: 10/29/2017
Herb Abts (HA): My name is Herb Abts. My wife Jeannie Abts is here with me this morning. Uh, she’s a city council lady and uh, she’s responsible for all the gardens here in, uh, city of Choctaw. And, uh, I’ll let her tell you about the gardens and how they got started.
Jeannie Abts (JA): When I first got on council, I went to a Main Street program that was held up at uh Ponca City. And, uh, at, of course Main Street is very active in Oklahoma but, you have to have the old buildings and that’s our problem, we don’t have any old buildings left in Choctaw. But during that conference, uh, they took us up to, uh, let’s see, was it Newkirk--it’s the, uh, uh, county seat. And so that city had the old buildings and they had the county seat and so that helped them, but they were trying to redo things around the town, around the town square. And basically, what it was was landscaping, and that was, that was the whole thing. And so, uh, since we couldn’t be part of the Main Street program, you could get, uh--I don’t know if they still do this—Another wing of the program was called Design Works. And they would come out and look at you town, spend, uh, two three days, interviewing people and coming up with ideas of what you could do to improve your town. And, uh, when they got through with their report, the thing they targeted to…really change was the shopping center. Well, that was publicly owned, privately owned, and so, they could care less about improving Choctaw. And, uh, the only other thing they said that was something that could be done was, they noticed our area between 23rd Street and the railroad tracks and the creek over there that was, tall weeds—it wasn’t mowed as well as it is today—trash in it, there was left over stuff from the railroad track in—it was just, it was just really an ugly site and, uh, one of the, one of the things that the program, the Design Works program did was, they had a film. They had this man coming into this town. And he was coming in for a meeting, and the secretary of the person he was coming to meet had was driving him, and had picked him up at the airport driving him into town. And so he’s driving along and he’s looking at all these things, he’s, you know, in his mind, he’s not saying this, but, you know he’s saying that, you know, man this is terrible, look at all these signs, look at the weeds, look at the trash, look at the cars and the—oh my gosh, he could be driving right in to Choctaw! You know, when you live in a town, you don’t look at those things, cause they’re always there. But if you come in as a stranger, that’s what you see. And so when the Design Works, the thing that they said was, uh, to do something landscape-wise, of course I didn’t have any kind of ideas as to what it became—But to do something landscape-wise on the south side of 23rd Street. So that’s what got me started…doing it. And uh, I started with, uh, I got a grant from the Margaret Annis Boys Fund. That’s, uh, in the Oklahoma City Community Foundation. And they have, they’re, it’s just really—It was a fund for people in, uh, projects in Oklahoma County…in landscaping in public areas. So it was just ideal…project for that, uh, found. And the first grant I received in February of ‘97 and it was for $6,255. Now it only pays for plants: trees, shrubs, and perennials, no annuals. And, uh, so we began work on the gardens that…start at Harper and go east. And, uh, volunteers came out and helped and, and--That summer we had some volunteers coming and helping us cause—It was, uh, we had to just plant in what was there because there was not time with the grant, you only had six months to use it, so you couldn’t go in and kill stuff off with Round-Up and really do a good job of cleaning the area; you just had to plant in it. And, and it’s, it really, uh, has been a very tough area, because, when they widened 23rd St, where did they park all that big old heavy equipment and all those supplies and all that stuff but right there. And the ground was as hard as the road. And it’s so thoroughly compacted that we still, we still work on it today cause, uh, you just cannot get it to where it’s, uh, got air in it unless you pick it up and beat it up and—I had a man with a tractor and a, a big rototiller on a tractor and it just rolled on the top of it, it’s so hard. So it’s been, it was really great soil, it was very good topsoil, but it’s just so compacted it—So, even, even today, uh, after all these years later uh, we still fight it. It’s worse in some bits than other. I had one area where nothing wanted grow and apparently there was a fuel spill there. We had to work that out. We constantly put, uh, leaves and, and new mulch with grass clippings. And, we find people who have people who have really well kept yards, we have some of them we pick up their grass clippings all the time. Of course they fertilize like crazy so I get all the fertilizer because (laughing) it’s coming up in the, in the green stuff.
So anyway, we did that and uh, I wanted to have some sort of sculptures in it. But, you gotta watch out because if you make something somebody can climb on then you got the liability of it. So I was trying to figure out what to do when a picture came out on the front page of the Daily Oklahoman. This still burns me because this has never been on the (laughing) front page of the Daily Oklahoman. The, the picture that was, was of Hominy, which is of Tulsa. And this artist—there’s a, like a high hill over the, looking at the downtown area, it’s just a little small town. And he made these shadow sculptures of a band of Indians looking over the town. And, uh, we found his shop and, hear he had gone to Tulsa about 15 minutes before that. But I saw what he had, how he had made them. You couldn’t really get up to them. But he had some little sculptures, in this—And they were just shadow sculptures. So, well, that was an idea, because it’d be kinda hard to crawl on, climb on them. And still hadn’t really figured it out, and then we heard about, uh, in Caldwell, Kansas there’s the, uh, Ghost Riders of the Chisholm Trail. So we went up there. Well, you couldn’t get real close to them, either, because there was a railroad track, and a creek and everything, and they were kind of up on a hill and they were—Cattle, and, cattle, uh, drivers, and, uh, chuck wagon, and so on, you know, going and going down this hill. And so that’s how I got the idea of the Ghost Riders of the Oklahoma Land Runs, because, Indian Meridian out here, one mile over, was the east boundary of the 1889 Land Run. So, the first sculptures are of the Land Run, in the first gardens east of Harper. And, uh, I knew what I wanted and I drew them up and we took them over to City Hall and blew them up on the wall of City Hall, and put some plastic there and drew around them, and then went over to the fire station and—Susan Johnson who’s the administrative aid there is a very good artist and she said do something with the horses. And, uh, we even went so far as to, the fire chief, who had a horse, we went out to his horse, and took a tape measure and measured the horse (laughing) to make sure we got these to be…in the right proportions for life, uh life size. And, uh, then after I got the money for, uh, collected the money for the metal, the firemen went and got the metal, brought it back, took my patterns, cut them out, uh, welded the—Well let’s see, first they, they cemented in the posts and then they brought them in and welded them to them, so—In a small town like this, the firemen, they’re my best friends. They’re just great. If you need something, they’re there to help you with is, and so—They have made actually all of the, the sculptures that are—And there’s quite a few, there’s uh, seventeen, uh, nineteen, nineteen sculptures altogether. Uh, so then people said, ‘Why did you do it across from the shopping center? That looks so crummy! And if you make them smaller, I’m sure people will volunteer to take a bed.’ I’m still waiting today for that, but anyway, we put them in (laughing). And so, those are the early settlers.
And the city had a couple of wooden wagons that are part of the displays over there, and over the years they’ve kind of…gone, fallen, have fallen apart. And that, boy scouts replaced the one which, actually it was a chuck wagon but we just pretend it’s a covered wagon because it has the little stakes around the top, yeah, the, cause that was covered just like a covered wagon just smaller. And, uh, then the other wagon, uh, I was pretending it was a buckboard and had one horse just running to take it, the guy into town. And uh, Fanly(?) the fire chief says ‘That just bothers me so bad. That is a farm wagon. It looks like that horse is just broke loose. You need to have two draft horses pulling that wagon.’ I said, ‘Well then I’m going to have an extra horse, what am I going to do with that?’ So we end up coming up with the idea where there, uh, in the middle where there’s the water drainage area from the north side, the horse is running, and so that’s why we have this running horse, and the guy has fallen off, cause like he went through the ravine and he fell off.
Then I found a, a nice big log that was actually on this piece of property here at the library. I said, “Gee that, that’d just work real good to sit on,” you know, and I didn’t have any benches down there then, so I asked the city if they could get that log down there. Well about two weeks later showed up this big tree. And (laughing) I’d like to know how he ever got it there, it was like 35-foot long, and it was, it was huge. And what it was was a tree that went down in the property with a tornado that came through here in uh, ’99, that went down on the property to the west over here where the park is. And so, uh, here I’m agonizing, you know, what am I gonna do with that thing, it wasn’t something you could sit on or anything. And luckily one of the fellows the, actually it was the brother to the fire chief, uh, uh—what was his name? Uh, our fire chief was Dave Newby and it was, it was his brother came up to me one day and said, “I know what you can do. Why don’t you make two guys cutting that tree up?” I said, “What a great idea!” That’s what they did do. So we turned it so it faces 23rd Street to, to where the guys are standing right there. And so the firemen made me the, the two men cutting it up, which has been on of the most mentioned, when people talk to me the most mentioned sculpture there is. And that’s what you call making lemonade out of a lemon.
So, over the years now the, the tree pretty much rotted away, and I needed a new tree. So, uh, the guys, the city guys had taken one down, and so they brought it over and removed the other one. Well, in the meantime, I found an actual saw blade at a garage sale, and uh, so we took up the sculptures and took them into the first station, and the firemen cut off the old made saw blade, and we bolted on the actual saw blade. So they actually have an old saw blade that, on that sculpture now.
So, uh, anyway, kind of got off of—The gardens on the west side I got another Margaret Annis Boys Fund for $3575 to put those gardens in. And, um, over the years, basically we’ve paid for everything that’s gone into the gardens, the water system, the sprinkler heads, and everything we’ve paid for ourselves. The--About two years ago, uh, city manager made a fund for, called landscaping, and, and is putting some money into it now, so that there is funds there. In fact, the firemen this last year replaced two of our bridges that were wooden and really had gotten termites in them and all--Replaced them with metal. We have a third one yet to go. But, uh, I got the moneys and was able to get the moneys through the city for the metal for those bridges.
Uh, yeah, along the way the new, uh, parking lot had been made around city hall. What was there to start with was pretty needing of some help, and in the process of building it they put in two planting areas. And so there they sat. So, I had already put the one bed that’s out on Choctaw Road. I had done that when I first went on Council. So then we planted the other two in, interior ones and maintained them.
Um, I can’t stand the back of the shopping center, so up Harper, behind the shopping center, we’ve planted shrubs there for about two blocks, and we take care of them. We planted the shrubs over here in the Library Park. They call it Team Ginker Park, but we always call it the Library Park. And we’ve maintained that and try to keep the grass in good shape with, you know with…weed killers and stuff.
Uh…in uh—Back on 23rd St, in 2000, year 2000, I received a grant for 2600 from the Kirkpatrick Family Fund, uh, the community foundation. And with that, I made the stone stands that are down on 23rd St, and they’ve got lights in them and plaques of history. And that was very interesting. Not growing up in Oklahoma, I did not have Oklahoma history, and of course I just read about the land run, but what an interesting time that must have been. And so there’s plaques of history. There’s 17 stone stands that I built in 17 days, thinking I need to have them done for the old-timers’ do—It didn’t really matter at all, but anyway—Uh, and put plaques of history on them.
Uh, in 2002 is, uh when I got a grant to do Main Street. Uh, when the tornado came through and wiped out a bunch of stuff—Came right up through this way—Uh, Main Street was just really a mess, and, and the city got some…I think it was CDBG grant funds to redo Main St, and in, in with that came that design for what there is there, the planting areas and the circles at the two--there’s two blocks long of the landscape part. And, I, I tried to tell the other council people how big those beds were gonna be, and we didn’t need them that big—I took the City Manager down and said, “Why don’t you have more parking? We don’t need this big of beds.” Well, everything was on one little sheet of paper. Well, two blocks on one sheet of paper it doesn’t look like much, but you blow that up and it is. And it made those beds really quite large coming up Main Street, and we spent a lot of time working on them, because that’s where people go slow and can see it. The ones down on 23rd St, they drive by 40 miles an hour and they’re 200 ft away, and so, they’ don’t see weeds, but they sure do here on Main Street and we spend a lot of time there. So in, in uh, 2000, then uh—No, in 2002, uh, I got the grant from another Margaret Annis Boys grant—So there’s three of them that I’ve gotten of the Margaret Annis Boys Grant—And that was for $9000 to plant on, up Main Street. And, uh, Choctaw Library has the Library Guild and members of the Library Guild helped some with the planting of that. Course, no one thinks about afterwards (laughing), you know, they think they just put it in and it’s gonna be that way, and it doesn’t work—
Uh, then in 2002, uh, I got a grant from the Oklahoma City Retail Merchants’ Foundation out of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation for the gazebo that’s right over here in the middle of, uh, Gilbert and Main. And I found out then about the old school bell that was the original school bell for the original school and, and was used up to about, apparently, uh, around 1945 or so when they built the school that’s up there now and actually put an electronic bell system in. Otherwise, they used this bell. So, after they didn’t use it anymore they made a stand out on the football field. And at that time the high school was up here on 3rd St—And had the bell in this stand, and if they made a touchdown, they rang the bell; if they won the game, they rang the bell. And then they built the new high school down on 10th St, and that became the junior high up here on 3rd. Well, I don’t guess there’s any more destructive people around than junior high boys. They’re bound determined there’s gotta be a way to tear everything apart. Well, they were working on this old bell. They were doing everything they could to destroy it. And so they took it away and took it down to the bus barn. And had it in the back corner of the bus barn, and someone who worked at the bus barn, then, ended up telling me about it. And, so, with the help of the vo-tech, and then the city helping to get it all up, there’s a tower up here on Grand and May…Main, that has that bell. I haven’t—I haven’t gotten my stand with my history plaque on it yet, but I, I do wanna, to—So that people do know in the future that was the one and only school bell for the school.
Uh, in, in 2004, the City hired us and employee. And that’s who I was peeking on (laughing) down here to see what he was doing. Kenny Anderson has been our employee since then, and, uh, I told him he, he needs to realize this is going to be his only job he does til he dies, because one way or another—If he leaves, he’s gonna die in the beds. If he stays working, he’s gonna die in the beds. He doesn’t have choice (laughing); he’s gonna be there. Cause he didn’t know anything about gardening, and we—Everything he knows about gardening we’ve taught him, and he feels pretty good about it when people stop and ask him about things and he can tell them, you know, cause we’ve had him now for three and a half years. And, uh, before that it was just Herb and I, all the time. In fact, went to a 4th of July thing out at Tinker, and I guess they were being facetious—“Well, I thought you’d be working in the beds.” Well it was a, it was late, beginning to be evening time for the 4th of July things—I said, “Oh, we already put in 5 hours today.” And I think they, they were just being facetious. They didn’t have a, any idea that we really, we worked days, and nights, and weekends, and all the time. And after we got our City employee I said, “You know what? He comes in the morning. He goes home after work. And he doesn’t come back in the evening, and he doesn’t do it on the weekends. So, what the heck are we doing that for when we don’t even get paid?” So, we quit. We started having our evenings and weekends. And uh, uh--
Woman: So—I’m sorry to interrupt, but—You and, and your husband Herb, were you the main workers in these gardens at this time?
JA: Uh, most of the time, put the word only…only. That’s a lot of gardens.
HA: Few volunteers, but, uh—
JA: Yeah, once in a while somebody would volunteer, but—
Interviewer: How long did you it?
JA: Well, we’re, we’re into the—
HA: Since 97. Thirteen years.
JA: Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, we get up every morning and go to work. (laughs) And so, uh, last year then the city actually put in the funds for a summer hire. And this year I got the funds for a second summer hire. But keeping summer hires is really hard. People just don’t last. It’s, it is not easy work. It’s not at all, really—
HA: (speaking over JA) Hot, dirty.
JA: In the summertime it’s hot—yeah, you’re, you’re dirty, you’re sweating—I carry a towel on my waist. I keep wiping my fast because, y-sweat runs in my eyes, you know—it’s, it’s not, uh, it’s not the easiest work, and I don’t know—If somehow we could find some way to keep summer hires, it would sure help, cause when we had them, and then this—Oh, for about a month I guess we had the two summer hires, the end of the summer, and you know, both ended up, due to different circumstances being gone, and so we’re back to just Kenny and us.
So, uh, uh, we started the—we formed the Choctaw Parks Foundation, uh, I don’t know about, oh, I don’t know three or something like that—Uh, because I needed to have a foundation in order to have an endowment fund in the Oklahoma City Community Foundation. So last year, with an $8000 grant from the Kirkpatricks, I ended up raising $12,000 to have the 20,000 needed and start an endowment fund for the perpetual care of the gardens in the Oklahoma City Community Foundation. Now, I really need a million dollars in there before they’re gonna get enough to pay $50,000 a year to pay employees to work on it, and so I got it figured at somewhere around, uh, June of when I’m 173 I might have enough money (laughing) at the rate I’m going. So, we have, we have constant fundraisers. Last year, uh, we started the bike ride, and with the Land, connected with the Land Run, and that’s gonna be an annual thing as a fundraiser. Uh, we were at, oh, Germany’s, uh, Octoberfest, and Halloween in the Park. And uh, first we, last year we just sold hot chocolate, well then someone suggested about—“Gee, be nice to have smores,” you know. So, developed a smore kit, which is a bag with a marshmallow and, uh—I use those Kebler’s Fudge Shoppe cookies, cause they already got the chocolate on them—Two of them in the bag. And then it’s a do it yourself project cause you got a fire going, and they roast their marshmallows and make their smores. So, that’s gonna be, that’s kind of our trademark now, and anytime there’s anything going on we show up with our smore kits, and, and that’s all funds that we’re raising for the endowment fund.
Woman: What, what brought you to gardening, was it just the interest in your city, or have you always been a gardener?
JA: Well, we both always, uh, enjoyed—
HA: We had a huge garden at our house. In fact, it gets left with no attention, cause for years we were doing it seven days a week here at the city. And we were never home.
JA: (speaking over HA) So we had to recoup ours at home.
HA: We’re trying to recoup it now.
JA: Uh, but—
HA: Improve the city is what her intention was.
JA: But the reason I started doing this, and, and—Honestly, if I had known when I started that we’d be doing this the rest of our lives, I probably wouldn’t have done it, you know.
HA: And alone, basically
JA: I wouldn’t have done it. But, when you actually look around, you know, Choctaw’s really starting to come to be. Okay, what’s the difference between Coldheart, Choctaw, Harrah, Luther, Jones—what’s the difference? The difference is the landscaping. But then I’m prejudiced, so I say that, but—You know, it’s how the town looks, and definitely landscaping totally changes the looks of a town. Now, a lot of towns are discovering this. Midwest City—Oh, it’s been about five, six years ago—they started doing some more landscaping, and it was very noticeable to me what they were doing. It just makes it look a lot nicer.
HA: Well, several people from the area use 23rd St also. You know, stop and realize we’re the one working there all time, and talk to us, and ask us about different flowers, and say how nice it is. And some have actually donated to our fund also, even though they live in Harrah because they say it’s so nice driving through here.
JA: You know, they, some of them see it more than Choctaw people, cause p, Choctaw people live further south, don’t come, they don’t drive 23rd St. They drive, you know, Reno or 29th St into town to go to work, and don’t really see this. So we have more people who live outside of Choctaw who drive by here.
HA: One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is this creek that runs right behind the library. Uh, it’s full of weeds out here, but if you look further south at Hillburg, that’s what we’ve been working on, and I’ll let Jeannie tell you a little bit down there and what here plans are.
JA: Actually, it’s not a creek, and that’s where I want to put in some more sculptures and, and uh, history plaques when I get finished. It’s a springs, and that springs was there way back before the Land Run. The, the springs was here. After it, the Land Run, and people were settling this, you know, starting off, uh, they didn’t have water unless they got a well dug, or they had to go clear over to the river. And so the—they sunk barrels in the ground at the lower part of the springs down here, and so it became known as Barrel Springs, because that way the, the barrels would fill with water, and people could come get their water. And, uh, it was, it was always, uh—In early Choctaw, I’ve heard, you know, the Hesters talking about, you know, it was a, it was a kind of predominant part of Choctaw that these springs were there. And so they run with water all the time, but it’s just a springs. And, uh, uh, I was gonna do, uh, actually I was gonna do behind the library and there got to be a real problem over a bridge and all, and I said forget it. The City Manager said let’s do south. Well, none of us had an idea what we were getting into. We have, by this point—of course, this is just time that we take away from the gardens to work on this, and so it’s usually only the winter or early springtime—We have put down over 150 ton of rock. Every rock has been handled at least once, if not several times, by hand, because it’s all dry stack. There’s no cement, so everything has to fit in place right. So you have to find the right rock to fit in that hole. And when we get through, then, we make bigger rocks as cap rocks, and when we get on we make sure that you can walk all along those rocks and won’t fall in. Well, it’s part of an active drainage system for the city, so we’ve had some problems to overcome, areas where the water would come down and just push some of the side in, and so—It’s kind of a learning process all along. Uh, there’s eventually going to be a path going down there. And then, like I said, I want to have, uh, uh, plaques of history to, to tell what that is, cause most people don’t know.
Oh then—I don’t know if you noticed, across Main St there is a Christmas tree form. Uh, that, that began its life as a display in Heritage Park Mall, where they hung poinsettias on it, for the tree in the, uh, middle of the mall. And, when they got through with it—I’m not sure how Choctaw ended up with that tree, but, uh they just, uh, ha, set it up, and it’s a pretty good size, 25 feet tall, pretty big around, uh, wrapped it with green garland. And so, a couple of years ago I guess, the—it’s always the firemen’s job to put all that stuff up, and so, uh, you know, I hear tell from the firemen, “Man, we’re not putting that thing up again. That thing’s scary. That’s trash.” Oh, boy. I went to see if I couldn’t have it. I went to City Manager and I went to Public Works Director and told them, “Okay. Now, that tree is mine. And they had put it down there where it stands today and used it there, and actually the top part had fallen off at one time and bent it, and it was literally tied together with wire coat hangers. So, here nothing was done. I needed it all welded together and solid, and, and towards the end of June I ran into one of the Streets guys, and, uh, he said, “Boy, um, I gotta get that piece of trash hauled off.” I said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Don’t you know that’s mine? I, uh, you don’t haul that off!” I said, “I need that welded together.” So, what it is, uh—I was able to get, find some chick wire from, that was given to me, pieces of chick wire, we wrapped around it—and thank goodness we did, because it wouldn’t of worked last winter like it did. But it’s going to be covered in vines. And I’ve got the vines, you know, starting to grow on it. And so, in the summertime it’ll have various vines and be blooming all the time. It did some this year, but it’s not too impressive yet; it takes some time for that to grow. But, last winter we had some pretty cold weather, and it has to be below 25 for it to work, but we plumbed it up, and we put water on it and got pictures of it as an ice tree. That was really pretty neat, but, uh, every time we—was it four or five times that we got ice in—every time then we, we plumb it afterwards, cause there would be, there would be bare spots, you know. And, if it’s not down to 25, even though the water comes in a hose clear from a bed, oh, 300 foot away, it’s still warm enough, when get up there, it’ll erode right where the sprinkler head is. So, trying to keep it, get it covered last year, we would come up here in the middle of the night, and we’d be se, moving sprinklers around and we’d set them on ladders and so on. (laughing) One night was particularly icy and nasty, and we didn’t want to pull in for fear we’d get stuck, so we were on the edge of the road. And we’re, uh, they’re working, trying to set our sprinklers, and it’s like one o’clock in the morning, and here comes a police car. All of a sudden I can see, you know, the lights, colored lights—Well, he turned on his overhead lights cause he thought somebody had run of the road. (laughing) And he got up there and saw it was just us stupid Abts, and he turned his lights off and drove off. They all expect that of us. So, that, I wanted that for the sculpture, the winter sculpture was what I wanted it for. And so, uh, eventually it will—And, and the only thing that held that water was the wire last year, because this has big…openings where they just hung the pots. So, it, it wasn’t solid at all, and if it wouldn’t of had that little chick wire it wouldn’t of held anything. I got, got pictures of it, it’s just, it was just, I think, spectacular. And what—The first time that we had it frozen, and it never was this way again, but we went that morning and looked at it, and I was standing where it was—The tree was in the shadow, and the sun was behind it, I was on the shadow side. Looked up there, and it was a beautiful clear day, and it was just like rays of heaven shining around the top of that tree. It was just gorgeous. The tree was just sparkling in the sunshine. So, but, that, that’s been our latest project, so—
HA: Since the interview started, we haven’t mentioned about the site down there where we’re gonna put the time capsules. That wasn’t mentioned.
JA: Oh, that’s right, yeah.
HA: So, need to mention—
JA: Well—
HA: How that rock sign that we spent several…days, couple of—
JA: Oh my gosh, I don’t know—
HA: Three weeks probably, building these—
JA: Yeah—
HA: Big rock, uh—
JA: Big stone, stone—
HA: Pedestals.
JA: Areas that go up—Well, as everything in projects that I start, they always turn out to be way more than I started. And so, the firemen—The two, two gals, uh, Gayla Tennyson and Margaret Meuller and, uh, the Choctaw Tourism Group decided that the gardens should be named after us. Course we didn’t know this. They just said they wanted a big sign there. And eventually, see, there’s gonna be a, there’s going to be paths along the gardens, and that area’s gonna be a parking lot. So you have to pull in there and park. And so the firemen made this sign that says, “Historical Sculpture Gardens.” It was pretty good-sized. And, and we started making our base, uh…stone to hold the sign. And I went down to start with, with, a, a metal fence post, and we dropped the sign over that, after we, we had a concrete base already we put in. We dropped the sign over the metal fence post and then started in putting cement blocks around there, and then brick to the cement blocks, and then put cement inside and that makes the whole thing solid. Well, I had intended on there being about a three-inch edge all the way around. Well, didn’t end up they were exactly in the middle. I ended up over really close to one side. And so, in order to make them look right, they became that big as, as the whole pedestal, uh, cement pedestal was. So, it became a lot bigger than I had planned on, which was just gonna go up to the bottom of the sign. And when they got that big, well I, I’ve gotta do something different. So now they go up the side of the sign, as well. And so, in the area going up on the west side we just went ahead and sealed it all up. And on the east side I got looking, because I had my…cement, uh—
HA: cement blocks had—
JA: blocks in there.
HA: Pile of holes there.
JA: I got looking down, huh, hey there’s a hole in there, we could do something with that, so—As yet we haven’t gotten in done, but there’s a hole in there, and we’re going to—It’s just, uh, it seems like if I ever have any ideas I have to do them, hah! And so we’re going to put, uh, time capsules inside that. And when we do—Not long after we decided to do that, I saw two different articles in the paper about some time capsules they found they didn’t even know about. And so, when we do this, we will want to get the newspaper out to take a picture and have it in, framed in City Hall, so they know it’s there and when to open it. So—And that’s why I’d like to have some of these other stories that people are telling about Choctaw and, somehow, get them in print so that we can, uh, put them in those time capsules.
HA: The path that will be built will start over here across from McDonalds, right in front of all the beds, go past Harper, all the way down to Stevie’s Gas Station, eventually. So now, it’s, uh the grass gets tall, and this last year it was so wet they couldn’t even mow it there, they were getting stuck. And, it’s a mess.
JA: So people don’t wanna walk in it. But once we get—you know, it’s kinda like that Field of Dreams: once we make the path, it will be used. I know it will. Now people have to walk on the grass and, you know, that isn’t near as appealing as a path.
Woman: Yes, well, Herb and Jeannie Abts, thank you for making your part of the world beautiful. Thank you.
JA: I just thought someday somebody may want to know, “How did those come about? How come they’re there?” And actually, there’s some very interesting history on them. I found some very interesting history when I read it. Of course, I was an adult; I wasn’t a kid in school, hating having to take Oklahoma history, and uh—That had to have been, the Land Run had to have been a very volatile time. And actually, apparently they took the tree closest—I believe it was, uh, the northeast corner of the—They had, uh, surveyed, like twenty years before the Land Run, into 120 acre plots. And they took the tree closest to the corner, the one corner of the 120 acres, and put an “x” on the tree or something. Then they apparently used sandstones—and I have never seen one of these, so—Sandstones wore, wear away; they’d be very easy to inscribe into. I don’t know if there’s any even around today, which would be wonderful to have one of those. But they inscribed the legal description in that piece of stone. So, when the people came on the Land Run and staked their claim, that didn’t mean anything, because they were, you know—In 120 acres, do you imagine how many people were staking a claim? It was whoever found that sandstone and made it over to Kingfisher to file it at the Land, uh, Office over there, to file their claim. Then they had to come back and fight for the claim, because there’d been a lot of other people that were on there thinking it was theirs. In fact, someone it’s a shame that she’s not alive today to, to tell her story was Vera Wolf. And, uh, have you ever noticed down in Oklahoma City there’s a Couch Drive? What a silly name for a street, Couch Drive. Well, Vera Wolf was a Couch, and she was telling me about her grandfather. And this is what’s so interesting, I found it in the history books there! But by the time I read the history, Vera Wolf had died. Which is, I just really hate that part of it, that I couldn’t have gone back to her. But, uh, her great grandfather, no her grandfather, her grandfather was Charlie Couch. And there were the Boomers and the Sooners trying to get this territory. The Boomers were the ones booming Congress to get them to open it up. The Sooners came in here sooner and, and laid claim to parts of it. And, uh, Charlie Couch was the number two man in the Boomers. Now, the number one man died before the land was opened up. But then, wuh, I guess Charlie didn’t take over that part. He ended up becoming a legal Sooner, and he was in Oklahoma Station, which became Oklahoma City during the Land Run. So he was able to stake his claim, and his claim was where the Montgomery Ward building is. I’m not sure how big, if it was just a block, or what it was. Charlie Couch, then, was the first mayor of Oklahoma City. And, uh, at one point he had to go back to Washington, DC for something. And he had put a fence—you had to do something with your property—he put a fence around it and planted wheat in there. He got back from Washington, DC, and here someone had jumped his claim. Took down all of his fence, let his horses eat down all the wheat. And so Charlie Couch and his teenage son were there, and they started to put the fence back up, and they’re digging fence post holes and putting posts in. And, uh, this guy that jumped the claim came, and they started arguing over whose claim it was. And so, the other man said, “Well, you put in another fence post and I’m gonna shoot you!” And so, Charlie Couch just proceeds to dig the fence post, hole, and the man shot him in the leg. He refused—uh, First his son, his teenage son wanted to shoot the man. Charlie Couch says, “No, we don’t do things that way.” Well, he refused medication and five days later he died from that gunshot wound, but that teenage son was Vera Wolf’s father. And it was so interesting when she—
Woman: Did he stay on the piece of land?
JA: Hmm?
Woman: Did they keep that piece of land?
JA: I have no idea who owns it now. But it is, eh—you know where the Montgomery Ward building is in downtown Oklahoma City? That’s where it was. And that’s why there’s a Couch Drive, was because of Charlie Couch.
HA: I might mention, on these plaques of history, it’s best to start at McDonalds and head west. Uh, the flow of the—
JA: That’s the beginning of the Land Run and—
HA: Yeah, goes into early settlers—
JA: Things that had to do with the Land Run, and then the second part is, uh, the settlers.
Woman: Alright, well, that’s all the time we have—
JA: Good thing we got to the end.