Description:
Ninety-nine year old Ida Mae Wilson talks about her life growing up on a ranch near Ardmore, Oklahoma, about her time as a telephone operator in the 1920s, and more.
Transcript:
Interviewee: Ida Mae Wilson
Interviewer: Monica Knudsen
Interview date: 11/10/07
Interview location: St. Ann’s Retirement Community
Transcription Date: 7/28/20
Transcribed By: Alex Hinton
Note: There is a persistent rattling sound throughout the interview, possibly ice in a glass.
Interviewer (Monica): Can you tell me your name?
Ida Mae Wilson: Ida Mae Wilson.
Monica Knudsen: And your birthdate?
Ida: December 24th, 1907.
Monica: My name is Monica Knudsen, and I am a volunteer for the library. We are at Saint Ann’s Retirement Community at West Britton Road in Oklahoma City. Now I’ll ask you some questions. Where were you born?
Ida: In Ardmore, Oklahoma.
Monica: And you grew up in Ardmore?
Ida: I grew up there.
Monica: You grew up on a ranch?
Ida: The Penn-Elm ranch.
Monica: What was that like?
Ida: Oh, it was wonderful. They raised the white-faced beef cattle. Ardmore was a small town. They shipped them... took them to Ardmore, and they shipped them to Kansas City. It was regular beef cattle; they raised beef cattle.
Monica: As a child, did you have chores to do on the ranch?
Ida: No, we didn’t. They had hired hands to do all the chores. We just ran and played. We had a lot of room to play.
Monica: Good for you. Did you ride horses?
Ida: Yes. We rode horses.
Monica: And who were your parents, their names?
Ida: Parents, Charles S. and Ellen Woody.
Monica: And what were they like?
Ida: Oh, they were wonderful. My father and mother both were just great. My father was so wonderful.
Monica: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
Ida: I have one brother. Well, I had one brother; he’s gone now. But I still have a sister living in Oklahoma City.
Monica: And next month you will be 100 years old, yes
Monica: Congratulations.
Ida: Yeah, the 24th of December.
Monica: Yes, and we hoped, as we were discussing earlier, that you can tell us of all the changes and the things you’ve seen in the years you’ve lived. Where did you go to school?
Ida: Prayer Valley. It was a country school.
Monica: Was it a one room schoolhouse?
Ida: Uh-huh, it was a one room schoolhouse. [She seems to laugh here.]
Monica: What was that like, because kids today don’t have the experience?
Ida: Yes, it was wonderful. They had a real good teacher. It was a man teacher, Mr. G.C. Adams. I’ll never forget him. Then we went from Prayer Valley to… [she pauses in consideration] Another school. I can’t think of the name.
Monica: So, when you went to high school you left the one room schoolhouse and went to a bigger school?
Ida: No, we went to Ardmore to high school.
Monica: But that was not a one room schoolhouse?
Ida: No. Ardmore wasn’t, but Prayer Valley was a one room school.
Monica: How many grades was that?
Ida: It was through the sixth grade. And then I went to the Plainview through…I’m trying to think. Plainview through the tenth? Let me see. No, they might have been through the twelfth. But I made to Ardmore and spent my high school year in Ardmore.
Monica: Do you have an outstanding memory of your days in the one room schoolhouse? Something you may have learned or something you did at recess?
Ida: Yeah, we played a game they call jacks. And it was the metal deals that you played with a rubber ball. We played jacks.
Monica: Who were you grandparents?
Ida: My grandparents…Elizabeth Stevens, and I didn’t know my grandfather. He passed away when I was little. Elizabeth Stevens was my grandmother.
Monica: And did you spend time with your grandmother or grandparents?
Ida: Yes.
Monica: Where they ranchers also?
Ida: I spent time with them. Weekends and afterschool sometimes we’d spend time with them and…[pauses]
Monica: Now, would you mother help out on the ranch? Was she doing chores or was she mainly staying home and taking care of the children?
Ida: Well, my mother, she stayed home. My dad, they had several other men too working there, but he ran the ranch. They had hired hands that worked there, several hired hands. It was a big cattle ranch.
Monica: Do you have memories of specific things your father would have been involved in as far as running the ranch?
Ida: Oh yeah, as far as the men running the ranch, he took care of the cattle and salted all of the feed. They had to take the feed out in the pastures to the cattle. He would have overseen all of that, what cattle were being fed. And they had two big silos. Big and metal, or were they concrete, and full of food. He had to have the hired hands take the food out of those big metal, or concrete, things. So, he had those hands to do that for him.
Monica: Did you mom have a garden? Did you raise your own food?
Ida: Yes, she had a garden, and then we had a big orchard. We had all kinds of fruit like apricots and peaches and apples. We had a big, big orchard there.
Monica: You mentioned that you rode. Did you have a favorite horse?
Ida: Horse? Yeah. We, my sister and I both, had favorite horses that we rode. Mine was Prince and hers was Dolly.
Monica: I assume that you got thrown too.
Ida: Yeah, I got thrown. I got thrown a couple of times, but my sister never did.
Monica: She was lucky.
Ida: Yeah, she was. I was thrown and one time it knocked the breath out of me, and I said, “Don’t tell Mother.” Elizabeth, she was with me. We were doing something we weren’t supposed to do. We were running a race. I was on one horse, and she was on the other. My horse stumbled and knocked me off and knocked the breath out of me. So, I told her, “Don’t tell Mother. She won’t let us ride again.” [laughs]
Monica: How would you describe yourself as a child?
Ida: I guess I was quite lively. We of course we had a big place to run around on. We did ride horses a lot. We lived two and a half miles away from the schoolhouse. They would take us to school in the buggies, the hired hands would. Then they’d come and get us in the evening when school was out.
Monica: Did you have opportunities to go visit people on neighboring ranches, or was your time, say when you came home from school, spent at home? I mean, they didn’t have cars to run around.
Ida: Well, yeah. We had girlfriends that lived on other ranches. They went to the same schools and we’d go visit with them. The Morrisons had a big ranch, and they had children. We would go to their ranch, and then the Herndons had a ranch. We went to their ranch; they had a big ranch. Also the Pascals. So, it was different kids that we played with. We would go to those ranches.
Monica: To get to those places, would you go in a buggy with a hired hand? Horseback?
Ida: Yeah, we’d go in a buggy, or ride horseback, go in a horse. We would ride a horse. A lot of times we’d ride the horses, or they’d take us in the buggy.
Monica: When did you first get a car?
Ida: Car? I was nineteen. 1927 was our first Ford. It had little tires about this big around. Little bitty tires.
Monica: What is your best and worst memory of childhood?
Ida: Well the worst memories of it were cold weather when we had to go to school. You know, when it was snowing and all. My mother used to put a brick in an oven and heat it and put what they call a gunny sack over it. They’d wrap it in the gunny sack and then she put it in the buggy for us to keep our feet on, keep our feet warm until we got to school because it was two-and-a-half miles to school.
Monica: Two-and-a-half miles in a horse and buggy? How long a ride is that that? How many minutes would it take you to get to school?
Ida: I think it took us at least thirty to forty-five minutes. A horse doesn’t go very fast.
Monica: And Oklahoma, of course, we talk about the “wind whipping down the plains.”
Ida: Yeah.
Monica: Was it always windy, do you have memories of it being out-?
Ida: Oh yes, of that cold north wind in the wintertime. Yes, very cold. Mom used to give us— with our caps we’d have a stole to go around us and wrap around our necks. It was so cold before we put our coats on, you know? Because it was so cold.
Monica: So, what would your best memory of childhood be?
Ida: Best memories? I had a lot of good ones.
Monica: Well, how would you describe a perfect day when you were young?
Ida: Perfect day when I was young. [She considers]
Monica: Or any favorite stories from your childhood that we may not have already talked about.
Ida: I don’t know. I had a lot of perfect days. I really enjoyed life.
Monica: Well, here’s one thing, as you’re talking. I remember my mother, who grew up on a farm. Christmas was a very different kind of celebration then than it is today. What would you all do at Christmas time?
Ida: Yes, it was. We always hung our stockings up, you know, on the fireplace. We got a lot of fruit and candy. Each one of us had those regular Christmas stockings and we had our names on them-
Monica: What did you decorate your tree with? What did you hang on the tree? Were they homemade decorations?
Ida: We had shiny…what are they called? Icicles. We put icicles on our tree. And then we had real shiny…they were threads, but they were real fuzzy and Mom would hang those on the tree.
Monica: Was there a favorite toy or doll or something that you had that you remember these years later, that you had for Christmas?
Ida: A story of Christmas time?
Monica: A doll or a toy? Oh yes, I remember very well. They made the glass head dolls then. And we, when I was twelve and my sister was ten, we got us our dolls with the glass heads. They had real pretty faces and black hair. It was all painted on; you’ve seen them. [Monica confirms]. That was one of the most memorable— getting those dolls.
Monica: Was there a teacher or teachers who had a strong influence on your life?
Ida: Yeah, Mr. G.C. Adams was one of those teachers, and Ms. Williams. Two teachers were very much—I’ll always remember those two teachers.
Monica: What lessons did they teach you? What did you learn?
Ida: Mr. Adams taught history, and the other one taught English and something else. Reading.
Monica: Do you have a love of your life? Were you married?
Ida: No, I didn’t. Well I went with one boy a couple years, but the second boy I went with, we went together two years and were married. My husband passed away. That’s the only two boys I went with any length of time.
Monica: Who has been the biggest influence on your life and what did they teach you?
Ida: Influence in my life? Well, I guess my mother and dad, because they always taught me to be honest and they were both wonderful Christian people. I guess my mother and dad.
Monica: Now you mentioned that you grew up on a ranch. Was your family part of the Land Run? How did they come to have the ranch?
Ida: No, they weren’t with the Land Run, but they…my dad knew Mr. Pennington, who owned it wholesale. That’s why we moved out on the ranch. I don’t know where he met Mr. Pennington, but he owned the ranch and wanted dad to move out there. We were little when we did. Of course, we grew up out there.
Monica: Did you live there until you left home?
Ida: Yes, until I was sixteen. And then I moved to Ardmore, Oklahoma. I went to school there a year. I finished high school in Ardmore.
Monica: And when you were out of high school, where did you go from there?
Ida: My sister and I moved to Norman to go to school, and we went to work for the telephone company. We wanted to go to night school in Norman. We transferred to the telephone company in Norman, and then we went to night school in Norman.
Monica: Can you tell us about making telephone calls? What year did you start working for the telephone company?
Ida: Oh goodness, [she considers] I think it was 1926.
Monica: Can you tell me what it was like to make a telephone call in 1926? What did you—
Ida: We had to ring our telephone. You’ve seen those telephones that hang on the wall? Well, you had to crank them. That was the first telephone we had. And you cranked it. They had rings. Our ring was 515. And 515, 5 was a long, and 1 was a short. So a long, a short, and a long was our telephone number.
Monica: When you started working for the telephone company, were you a telephone operator?
Ida: Yes, I was for about six months. Then I went to what they called “the desk.” It was Information. I was on Information for about a year. Then I was supervisor the rest of my entire forty years almost.
Monica: So, the operators would connect people. They would sit at a switchboard, wouldn’t they?
Ida: Yeah, at the switchboard. Yeah, they had two cords that were even. The two cords were together. In other words, you would answer with one, and the other cord you’d put it in the board with their number.
Monica: So, the board had each person’s telephone number on it. How many—What kind of an area are we talking about? Like the entire city of Norman? Would have all the telephone numbers on the board?
Ida: Yes, you would have all the numbers. They would always be up there, and every operator, I think twelve or fifteen in a row, they all had those plugs. The little lights would come on and they would answer the lights and take the other cord and ring the number that was up there. My goodness, it’s been so long. [both laugh] It was so many years ago. I have to stop and think.
Monica: Well, I remember my grandmother talking about party lines. Did they have party lines at that time?
Ida: Yeah, they had party lines. The party line, you could listen, you know. My dad, we were on a party line because we were on a ranch. There was eight or ten people on that line. Dad would say to the women, “This is Mr. Woody. Would you let me interrupt you? I want to call a veterinarian about a sick cow.” [both laugh again]
Monica: My grandmother got a lot of entertainment from her party line too. What are the most important lessons that you’ve learned in life?
Ida: The most important lessons? Oh my, I’ve learned a lot of them. [she pauses for a while here] I guess most important is what my dad and mother taught me. To be honest and [another long pause].
Monica: If you’d like to think about that a little more and then jump in later on, we could do that. How did you meet your husband?
Ida: I met him at OU, at school.
Monica: And you mentioned that you went to night school. Are you talking about college classes?
Ida: College classes, yes. I met him in Norman. He lived in Iowa and came down to go to school, and I met him at school. We went together a little over two years. Then when he finished school, we got married and he went to work for someone out at the Capitol building in Oklahoma City. Later he was transferred to Tulsa, Oklahoma and we lived in Tulsa for twelve years.
Monica: Do you have children?
Ida: No, I have no children.
Monica: What would you say were the best times and most difficult times in your married life?
Ida: Difficult times? I don’t know. I had a real happy marriage.
Monica: Do you have any advice that you would give to young couples today?
Ida: Oh yeah. [She considers] Love each other. When one is angry, don’t say anything until they get over their angry spell and that saves a lot of trouble.
Monica: That’s great. That’s good advice. Do you have any favorite stories from your marriage, about your husband?
Ida: Favorite stories about my husband. He’s a wonderful man. [pause] He was a big tease, sometimes. He’d call me and tell me, “I’m going out of town. I’ll be gone a week. I’ll see you when I get back.” He was always a big tease like that. I’d say, “Where are you going?” [laughs] We had a lot of fun.
Monica: That’s good. Did you travel, go places?
Ida: Yeah, we traveled a lot on his vacation time. We went to quite a few places.
Monica: Where did you travel to?
Ida: Colorado, New York, Tennessee. We went a lot of places.
Monica: Well, having grown up on a ranch, what kind of environment do you prefer? Do you prefer living in the city, prefer being in the country, or—
Ida: Well, I think children miss a lot when they’re not raised on the farm because you have so much more freedom on the ranch, and they don’t learn so much meanness to get into.
Monica: Well having grown up on a ranch, do you have any interesting snake or tornado stories?
Ida: Tornadoes, yes. We had a cellar, or whatever they called cellars then. It was concrete. We’d go down in the cellar when it would storm. We had some real bad storms that pulled up trees. It was real nice down there. Mom had a divan and chairs down there. We’d go down when it was stormy and stay in the cellar.
Monica: How long have you lived here at St. Ann’s?
Ida: It will be two years, the 14th of December.
Monica: Wow. Did you live in your own home until you—
Ida: Yeah, I lived in my own home. Let’s see, I lived there for fifty-one years altogether when my husband was living, but I lived there only eleven years after he passed away by myself. And my own kids [Note: This may be a mistake. She claims not to have any children earlier.] were really glad, and my folks were really happy that I moved out here. They didn’t want me to live in that big house by myself. I wasn’t afraid.
Monica: Okay. Well going back to some of your earlier years, when you were in college and went you were working for the telephone company, was that unusual, for a woman to be able to go to school, to go to college, and to be out working?
Ida: Yeah, I guess it was. Of course, I went to school at night.
Monica: Would you have been the only woman in the class?
Ida: No. Well, let me see. There were three or four of us for a while. There was the teacher our there that we knew. We paid her so much to have a night class from like 7:00 to 9:00. What was her name? I can’t think of her name now, but anyway she taught us at night.
Monica: Were you taking business classes?
Ida: I took English and math. There was three girls and a boy. There was a boy taking math too. I guess we all took the same thing.
Monica: And did complete a degree? Or did you go two years or three years?
Ida: I didn’t complete mine. I went two-and-a-half years, and I didn’t finish college. I didn’t finish. I lacked about a year and a half towards finishing.
Monica: Can you tell me, what were your hobbies throughout your life?
Ida: Well, we went skating and they had dances down at the university, what they called ten-cent dances. We’d go out there and dance. They had a place at the college where kids would go at night, 8:00 to 10:00, two hours, we’d dance.
Monica: Have you experienced any miracles in your life?
Ida: No, I haven’t. I guess I haven’t. I can’t think of any.
Monica: When you meet God, what would you like to say to him?
Ida: What, honey?
Monica: [louder] When you meet God, what would you like to say to Him?
Ida: That I have had a beautiful life. I really have - and a happy life.
Monica: Well, I know that you’ve seen many changes in the years that you’ve lived. What strikes you the most?
Ida: Well, one of the things was TV, because we just had a radio for so many years. So that was one of the greater inventions of my lifetime.
Monica: Did you do any air travel, like with your husband?
Ida: No, I haven’t traveled very much. I’ve been to Colorado and New York on a plane. But I enjoyed air travel I’ve been on.
Monica: And how is your health now that you’re approaching 100?
Ida: A hundred percent. Just one hundred percent. I have been blessed with good health. I haven’t been sick a day, knock on wood, since I’ve been out here.
Monica: Good for you! One thing that people always ask someone who is lucky enough to live as long as you have is what is the secret of a long life?
Ida: Well, I can’t tell anyone. Someone asked me that not too long ago here. I don’t know. I do watch what I eat a lot, and I think that means a lot. Especially in the evenings. I don’t know whether that means anything, but I think it does.
Monica: Though your life, all your years, did you always watch what you ate, or did you eat whatever you wanted?
Ida: Well, no, when I was growing up, I’m sure I didn’t. Then I’ve just watched it since I’ve been growing older. But I didn’t watch it when I was very young.
Monica: How would you like to be remembered?
Ida: Oh, my goodness.
Monica: That’s kind of a hard question.
Ida: I hope and pray that people like me. I want them to like me. I’ve never wanted to offend anyone, you know. So, I want them to remember me as not offending anyone.
Monica: Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?
Ida: No, I can’t think of anything.
Monica: Family stories or…
Ida: Family stories?
Monica: Yes.
Ida: Well, I had a brother and a sister, and we really had a good time. My brother’s gone now. My sister is still living in Oklahoma City, but she’s two years younger than I am. We always had a lot of fun together, always got along. My brother was the youngest, and my dad used to say that the girls spoiled the son. [laughs]
Monica: Does longevity run in your family? Your parents, did they live to be old?
Ida: Yes, my mother lived to be ninety-nine. My dad, well all of the men, have died in their late fifties.
Monica: Did they die from heart disease?
Ida: No, different things.
Monica: And your sister, is she living on her own also?
Ida: No, my sister is in very poor health. She’s living with her daughter and her husband. She doesn’t have a husband anymore; he’s gone. She’s living with the daughter that used to be married.
Monica: Are you surprised that you lived to be 100 years old?
Ida: Yes. I lived to be—December 24th, I’ll be a hundred. I am surprised, but as I said, I do watch—I haven’t always done this, watch what I eat, but I do now more than I ever have before.
Monica: Are you active? Do you exercise?
Ida: Yes. I think that helps a lot. I like to walk around the building. They say it’s a mile around the building.
Monica: Now you mentioned your birthday is December 24th. What was that like to have a Christmas Eve birthday?
Ida: It’s been fun. I told my mother one time, after we had gotten up in years and before she passed away. I said, “It’s been fun because everybody’s so excited about Christmas, they’d forget about my birthday.”
Monica: The night you were born, were you expected to come at that time? Were you early, or late?
Ida: No, it was supposed to have been when it was.
Monica: And were you born at home?
Ida: Yes, I was.
Monica: No hospitals in those days.
Ida: No, no hospitals.
Monica: Now you mentioned that you grew up on a ranch. Were your parents the owners of that ranch?
Ida: No, Mr. Pennington’s Wholesale in Ardmore owned it.
Monica: And what was your father’s job?
Ida: He looked after the ranch. They had ranch hands, as I said. He had to see that they put the feed out. They raised hogs too, and they had a regular pasture for them. He had two men that fed the hogs, and that was a long ways, about a mile away from the house. He had to see that all the men did their jobs.
Monica: So, your dad would have been the foreman.
Ida: Yes. [sneezes twice] I just started to say, he had to keep the men. Those two men had to watch after the windmills. They had two windmills that pumped the water, and they had big metal tanks at both of those windmills. They had to see— he always had one or two of the men keep those tanks full of water for the cattle.
Monica: And how large was this ranch have been? How many?
Ida: Oh, it was over six hundred acres. I don’t know how long, but it was a long way across it, I’ll tell you. Because we’d been on horseback and went to the far side of the ranch on a horse. It was an awful long ways.
Monica: So, you had the run of the ranch. If you wanted to go riding you could go wherever you wanted.
Ida: Yes, we could go anywhere we wanted to on the ranch. It was a big, big ranch. It was nice, a beautiful place. It was so pretty.
Monica: The family you mentioned that owned it was Pennington? Can you tell me something about them?
Ida: J.R. Pennington. He owned the wholesale house in Ardmore. They were one of the oldest families in Ardmore.
Monica: What were they like?
Ida: Oh, they were wonderful, just wonderful. They were a real wealthy family. We used to, my sister and I—they had two girls, Nanettie, and Helen, and Elizabeth, and I, we used to go and stay all night with them. Then they’d come to the ranch and stay all night with us.
Monica: So, did they live on the ranch, the family, or did they live in town?
Ida: No, they lived in town. They were one of the oldest families in Ardmore, and he owned the wholesale house there. Or his dad owned it, before he did, and then he owned the ranch out where we lived.
Monica: So how many families would be living on the ranch? How many people were actually living on the ranch besides your family?
Ida: Two other families that I know of right now. Dad has a family living about a mile from us, and then he had another one living about six miles. I think there was another, but I don’t know how far it was. Three I think; two others besides my dad.
Monica: So, during your childhood years, what kind of mechanized equipment was on the ranch? Was everything done on horseback?
Ida: Yeah, most everything they did was done on horseback. They’d bring the cattle in. They were all over the pastures, and they’d have to have men on horseback to go and round up the cattle to bring them in when they were going to ship them to Ardmore. They had to have a lot of people doing that.
Monica: Well, our hour is just about up. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that we haven’t covered?
Ida: [pause] Oh, there’s one thing I wanted to say. The Penn-Elm Ranch got its name—everyone thought it was Penn-Elm because J.R. Pennington owned it. But it got it because he forgot his quirt. They called them quirts. It was a leather thing to make the horses go if they’re riding.
Monica: Like a whip?
Ida: Yeah, a whip. And he forgot it one day, so he jerked a branch off of an elm tree down there and took it. When he came back, he stuck it down in the mud by the spring there, and it grew, took root, and made a big tree. When we moved there, he told dad that it used to be his quirt, but that he stuck it down there and it grew to make a tree. He said that’s why we named it the Penn-Elm, because it was an elm tree. He had forgotten his, and he jerked that off of there, and he stuck it in that mud and that was where the water came up out of the ground all the time, and it grew and made a tree.
Monica: That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Well thank you so much. I really appreciate meeting you today and spending time with you.
Ida: Well, I’ve enjoyed talking with you. I’ve enjoyed you very much.
Monica: It was good to meet you.
[Interview ends]