A Word Picture of My Hometown, Circa 1949 (A Reprint)

I've been thinking back on my childhood in Oklahoma more than usual lately and came across a blog I did about the town of my birth, childhood, and teens. I'd like to re-post it below:

Courtesy of Wikimedia

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Broken Bow was a lumber and farming town situated in the rolling hills and green forests of the "Little Dixie" Baptist bible belt of southeastern Oklahoma.  The town sat nine miles west of Eagletown, an important Indian trading community on the Arkansas border back when the two states were known as Indian Territory. Eagletown, now reduced to no more than a nondescript service station, huddled beside the highway as busy travelers whizzed past without noticing.

Broken Bow began life as an Indian village called Con Chito. Over the generations, it waxed and waned and died and revived until two brothers by the name of Dierks incorporated the community in 1911, naming it after their hometown in Nebraska.

The town of roughly 2,500 souls fastened itself to the narrow blacktop highway coming in from Arkansas and the railroad tracks paralleling the road. Most commercial businesses clustered along the two paved downtown streets running north from the highway and a couple of graveled roads pacing them on the east and on the west. The Dierks Lumber Company sawmill, the town's largest employer, lay on the other side of the railroad tracks where the highway turned south and ran twelve miles through open farm country to Idabel, the McCurtain County seat, and beyond to the rich river bottoms. From there, it crossed into Texas after another twenty miles.

Broken Bow was the kind of place where no one knew his own address. A family lived three blocks east of the feed store and one block south, second house on the left, or some such descriptive direction. There weren't even street signs when I was a child. Nor was there postal delivery, except for rural routes. Town mail was collected from rented boxes or the free general delivery window at the post office.

Generations of children measured their growth by running down the sidewalk on Main Street and jumping to touch the rafters of the wooden overhang protecting pedestrians from the blazing sun or heavy rain squalls. The drug store on the uphill corner of this block-long shaded section boasted a soda fountain, making it a magnet for the younger set.

The town's most popular Saturday night pastime was parking head-in to the curb along the main drag as near the drug store as possible. Entire families sat in cars and trucks to indulge in some serious people watching until it was time for the picture show half a block down on the other side of the street. It was a good way to keep up with budding teenage romances and the state of the neighbors' marital relationships. Sartorial splendor was considered anything beyond a gingham house dress and bib overalls.

The Broken Bow High Savages annually engaged the Idabel Warriors in the "Little River Rumble," one of the oldest football rivalries in the state. Back then, the schools were segregated, of course, and remained that way until 1964. In fact, although were were in the midst of the Choctaw Nation, I don't recall attending class with any Natives except two boys a few years behind me. However, the school secretary was a Native American... a Hopi from distant New Mexico. For what it's worth, the first year that two black players were permitted on the team, Broken Bow High won the championship in their division.

I fondly remember the town as an easy-going, not-much-happening place where my grandmother and I rocked on the porch in the early summer evenings, while my grandfather sliced open a plump, red-meat watermelon. The setting sun caught in the topmost branches of the chinaberry tree in the front yard and played among leaves ruffled by a gentle breeze. Often, as heat waves slowly dissipated on the asphalt highway and the delicate scent of roses and hydrangeas and morning glories flooded the porch, we'd hear a family on the far side of the railroad tracks harmonizing familiar gospel songs. Sometimes we joined right in. I've always wondered if they heard us as clearly as we heard them.

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Ah, those were the days. At least, that's the way I view them from today's perspective. In truth, they were as stressful and troublesome as those I sometimes experience today. The problems were just appropriate to the time. I hope this re-post provoked thoughts of your own times past.

Be happy to hear from you at dontravis21@gmail.com.

Gonna leave the links to me and my writing below:

: dontravis.com

Email: dontravis21gmail.com

Facebook: dontravis

Twitter: @dontravis3

DSP Pub ebook: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-bisti-business-by-don-travis-360-b

DSP Pub paperback: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-bisti-business-by-don-travis-361-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Bisti-Business-Vinson-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/BO1MSATKCO

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-bisti-business/id1161475375?mt=11

Barnes&Noble: http://ww.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bisti-business-don-travis/1113760492?ean=2940157409005

As always, thanks for being readers.

Don

New blogs are posted at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Do You Remember Those Old Telephones?

Last Friday evening , a friend I were having dinner at Charlie’s Front Door in Hoffmantown Center on Menaul. Bobbi is the considerate lady who saw to it I survived the first month after my back surgery last August.

Side note: Apparently “Lady” is an old Oklahoma term for a first class broad, while “Woman” seems to be the preferred term of today’s ladies…uh, women. I’ve gotten in trouble several times of late attempting to confer a compliment by using my Oklahoma upbringing, only to be corrected by modern ladi…wom…well, females. All of this is apropos of nothing in this piece, but I’m at an age where I get easily distracted.

Back to Charlie’s. Shortly after we were seated, two couples were escorted to an adjoining table…and I do mean adjoining. We heard every word they said, and I’m certain they were privy to our conversation, as well. After learning one couple was from Dallas visiting New Mexico friends, I very politely intruded on their supposed privacy to volunteer that I was a TCU grad and familiar with their part of the country. I withheld the information that while I liked Fort Worth, I considered Dallas to be “No-Man’s Land.” Even so, there are some nice people living there, and these seemed like two of them.

Broken Bow Water Tower

The cross tables conversations continued, and when asked if I was from originally from New Mexico, I replied that I hailed from the southeastern Oklahoma town of Broken Bow. It’s a small world, folks. It seems the gentleman from Dallas likes to fish in Broken Bow Lake and at Beaver’s Bend on the Mountain Fork River. During the ensuing conversation, Bobbi made sure they knew I was a writer and shamelessly plugged my books. I could only sit and blush. I’m a writer, for Heaven’s Sake, not a salesman, and quite introverted at that. Bobbi, a retired airline hostess (I’m probably in trouble again because I’m not sure that the proper word isn’t “stewardess”) doesn’t know how to spell shy.

Broken Bow Public Library--But not the one I remember

During the discourse, I mentioned I’d done a blog post about Broken Bow and provided my dontravis.com blog address. So perhaps these new friends will be reading this one day after they finish fishing the San Juan up near Farmington. If so…hi. Enjoyed our inadvertent night out together.

At any rate, that got me to thinking about Broken Bow again (and it’s only taken me 424 words to get around to the subject I wanted to address).

When I was a kid (yes, I can remember that far back…sometimes more vividly than what happened last week), there weren’t many telephones in our little town. My grandmother had one of them. Her number was 28. That’s it: t-w-e-n-t-y-e-i-g-h-t. For a while, we didn’t have a phone of our own, but that was okay. She was just at the bottom of the hill, one block from our house. If someone wanted one of us, she’d send Granddaddy Bill up with a message. Or more likely, she’d wait until my sister or one of my brothers or I came down for a visit. Granddaddy Bill usually had a watermelon cut, so that was often.

The telephone was a long brown wooden box mounted on the wall of the kitchen. It had a big black plastic (or was it Bakelite in those days?) dish-like thing poking out of the middle, a hook for the receiver on one side, and a crank on the other. I used to stare up at it with my mouth hanging open, marveling that we could stand in our own kitchen (or my grandmother’s, at least) and talk to all the people in town…providing they had another instrument like that one in their home. And at least 27 others did, because Mama’s was number 28.

I didn’t use the phone often; after all, I was a little kid, and almost anybody I wanted to raise, I could reach by standing in the front yard and hollering. Nonetheless, I used it a couple of times. I remember the first time I did so. I stood on a chair, put that black receiver thingy to my ear and gave the crank a little spin. No good. Not hard enough. I tried again, and then a stranger’s voice came back in my ear.

“Number, please?”

“Twenty-eight,” I said.

“No, no. That’s the number you’re calling from. What number do you want?”

That was a stumper, and it was all I could do to keep from putting the cradle back on it’s hook (I didn’t know about technical terms like “hanging up” at the time) and running to hide under the bed. (I’ve already warned you I’m shy, remember?)

Fortunately, I froze instead. So the voice asked who I wanted to speak to.

“Who…who’s this?” I remember asking.

“This is Susan. I’m the operator. Who are you looking for, honey?”

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy who?”

“Dunno. Just Jimmy.”

“Where does he live?”

“On the highway out south of town?”

“Oh, you must mean the Hinsons. Just a minute, sweetheart.”

Lo and behold, I was speaking to Jimmy’s mother in less time than it would have taken me to run and hide under the bed. Unfortunately, Jimmy was off playing at somebody else’s house, but that’s beside the point.

What is the point? Try that with today’s fast, sophisticated, automated communications systems and see how far you get.

 

Next week: Judging from recent posts, it could be anything.

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.