Moving On

Life stands still for no one. I'm walking upon my Ninty-Tooth birthday, ready or not. My beginnings were started in an old farm-house in the country. There was no store on the corner but there was a mailbox on the corner that brought any news to us and by the time we received it, it was getting old. 

Our water came from a big hole in the back yard. It was covered and had a pump and it was a hand-operated pump. We used the water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and washing our clothes. That is until one day my Dad took the cover off the hole to have a look and it was a look I can never unsee. It had rocks in the wall of the well and a few families of Frogs had moved in. It is no wonder we had all those vomiting problems. 

I don't believe the sun went down until my Dad was having a well drilled in the meantime he brought home a big milk can full of clean water for drinking. 

Us kids and there were four of us at that time, took turns with the Chickenpox, Measles and Red Measles, and whooping cough and I had a never-ending earache.

We had no choice but I do remember someone coming to our little one-room school and giving us a shot in the arm. It must have hit the bone because my arm ached for months after. I don't think it prevented anything, we had all the diseases that came along. 

This is our family in about 1944. One was missing, our brother, Ray was still away in the Army. 

Lorrene, Benny, Mom, Dad, Carol, Cecil. In the front row are Gene and Hollis. 

The Black Machine

I'm so old I remember when we got our first phone. I was in my teens. We had a two digit phone number. It was a black thing with a dial and was attached to a wall in the dining room. The city had phone booths on the sidewalks with a phone that had a slot for a dime. When you made a call you dialed 0 and a woman's voice would answer and say "number please". They were so polite they never forgot to say 'please'. It wasn't a robot, it was a real live human being and always women. 
The home phone was paid monthly and didn't  have a slot. 
When the home phone rang the family would get so excited and knock each other out of the way so they could answer the black machine.
 How we hate the sound of a ringing phone so we have it set up to take messages so you don't have to touch the phone.
Now we seem to be returning to the early days everyone has a small phone they can carry in their pocket and some never put it in their pocket, they stare at it constantly. This is because it now has the internet and games. I'm not sure why they still refer to it as a phone. Some even stare at it while walking down the sidewalk. They made it illegal to use one while driving because some folks try to talk and drive at the same time and many people just can't master that skill.
Please leave a message.

The Sun Comes Up

I wasn't born here, but this was the era when I was born. In a little farm house on the Plains of Oklahoma. The old car looks like the one my dad owned when I came on the scene. Life was so boring then, but no one knew it. The cows had to be  milked and the eggs gathered on a daily basis. Church was the highlight of the week. Neighbors gathered at the little country church and exchanged tidbits of their lives. What in the world did they talk about? Crops and cows for the men and canning, gardening and kids for the women? The mother was usually expecting another baby.
Our house had a tiny kitchen with a stand in one corner with a water bucket and a wash basin setting on it. A wood cooking range, an oval shaped table on the west wall with a bench behind the table which three of us kids sat on. Grandpa lived with us and he sat on one end of the table and Dad sat at the other end. Mom was a great cook and always had a nice meal. I remember we had lots of fried potatoes. She grew a big garden and canned everything We had a cellar to store the canned goods in. 
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That's my life today. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. 

Till next time.

The Beginning Roots

 My Grandpa, Jasper Lockwood built this house in 1900 for his family of six.
 My Dad was born here in 1900. We lived here when I was a kid.

Then I grew up and got married, but not in that order.

We had a family of three.

They had families shown below. 

Deena

Trent
He lost his life at 12.

Cora

All six Granddaughters

Laura, Emily, Molly, Katie

 

Now the Great Grand kids.

Anthony (AJ)

Tylor (the real "cool age")

Dylan

Chloe

Leah and Chloe

Shelby

Great granddaughters

Great Grandma with the Greats

Another Chapter of My Life

The family moved from the Rio Grande river bank to a small town nearby. It was late in the summer when they took the tent down and loaded everything into the trailer.

The house was one half mile north of Center, Co. It was a white two story house with an outside toilet and a large yard with a small shallow lake next to it. The three school kids walked the half mile to school.  They lived in the kitchen and one bedroom. Other rooms were closed off to preserve heat; the only heat source was in the kitchen. It had a potbellied stove near one wall and the opposite wall had the very large wood burning stove. It had a reservoir attached to the end of the stove. It held warm water for doing dishes and their hygiene. It only held warm water while the stove had a fire in it. A small table located on the wall at the end of the stove held a wash basin and water bucket which held the drinking water. A ladle was kept in the bucket. Everyone drank from the same ladle.   There was no concern about exchanging germs. The dining table sat next to the wall by the potbellied stove with a bench on the back side for the kids to sit on.

The upstairs rooms were only investigated the day they moved in. The upstairs had three rooms and one room had a massive amount of funeral wreaths and dead flowers strewn all over. The mystery of the flowers was never solved. Their imaginations, fueled by the funeral wreaths and dead flowers, led to their belief that the upstairs was haunted by a ghost or possibly numerous ghosts. They all heard the eerie sounds coming from the upstairs night after night. They made sure one bed was placed in front of the door to the stairway to block it from the ghosts. Just in case they can’t walk through a door. This bedroom was actually the living room of the house. The main entrance to the house was in this room and was also blocked by another bed. They only used the backdoor entrance. They continued to share the house with the ghost, and had many conversations about the cause of the dead flowers and wreaths and what might happen if one went upstairs. This was not entirely a kid issue; the parents were also concerned about the overhead noise. Another mystery was the door to the other bedroom which opened from the kitchen. It was stuck tight during the day and very difficult to open, but it never failed to come creaking open during the night. One day Naomi was visiting and the door problem was explained to her. She said, “I think I can solve your problem”. She saw a heavy dresser sitting next to the door and the door swung open into the kitchen so she tugged and shoved, and with some help moved the dresser in front of the door. It took care of the problem, but created another one. The next morning the mom wanted something from the closed off bedroom and the dresser was in front of it. She was somewhat miffed about her sisters’ actions and wished she was there to move it back where it belonged. 

They planned to live there until the spring thaw at which time they would hightail it back to Oklahoma if enough money could be earned. The story went on forever, but this is another chapter.

 

From left to right: Dennis, Letha, Carol, Gene, Hollis, Bennie, Lorrene, Ray, Cecil.

The parents and the four on the right were the only ones in the Colorado episodes except for a baby sister that did not survive. The parents and the three men on the right are now deceased. Only four of us left.

The Way You Wish it Wasn't

I’ve been hanging around for 86 years, and I’ve seen a lot of new inventions in those years.  I have been wondering which may have been the greatest invention of all time. I’m not sure, but I bet toilet paper caught on pretty quick. Who invented toilet paper? No, they didn’t teach that in school, they taught you who invented the cotton gin. Who cares who invented the cotton pickin cotton gin. I don’t think I’ve had any use for that piece of knowledge in my entire life. What a waste of my school time. Even if I were on Double Jeopardy, they wouldn’t ask that one. 

I don’t know when it was invented, but the bread toaster was a great one in our household. We never had toast. My mother would make a pan of biscuits from scratch each morning. Mixes were not in existence yet. She also had to build a fire in the stove to bake them in. The first toaster we had was not automatic. It had a panel on each side that you dropped down so you could flip the toast and burn/toast the other side. Someone had to man the toaster because you had to guess when it was done. I wonder how many slices of bread went up in smoke in those days. 

Speaking of bread, my mother always made our bread, and one day we bought a loaf of bread from the store. We were bowled over because the bread was already sliced. What will they think of next! We constantly hear the expression ‘the greatest thing since sliced bread’. I still think we should say ‘The greatest thing since toilet paper’.

We even had electricity in our house. Many people didn’t have it yet in our area. We lived without it for a few years. It was like camping forever. Who wants to camp forever?

The day our new refrigerator was delivered was a day of celebration. People kept their food in ice boxes. People continued to call the refrigerator an ice box for years. I think some still do.

Our first washing machine had a gas motor. You pulled on a cord to start the motor. It was something else for us kids to fight over. It went like this. I get to pull the cord. It’s my time, you pulled it the last time. Did not. Did so. We didn’t have many toys in those days. On wash day everyone gathered around the washing machine, and watched the agitator go back and forth. As I recall, we had to bolt the washing machine to the floor because it danced all over the porch.

Those were the days I don’t want to relive. 

Life in the Forties

 

This was my second home away from home back in the 40's.

In the bottom apartment lived an old grouch and her husband.
We called her Mrs. McGlothern, and  he was MAC. Only the roles were reversed. They did not make noise.  I called her Mrs. McGrouch when she wasn't within earshot. Mac always carried a bottle of wine around in his pocket. They were very quiet, and since they were the owners and proprietors, they set the rules. Mary and Andy lived on the second floor, and they loved music, the louder the better. The Angels, known as Yours truly and husband lived on the top floor. Angels always rise to the top.  Nine PM was bedtime for everyone in the building, bar none. We could also take two baths a week. That's right, two of um!
When nine o'clock came the music didn't die down, and the broom on the first floor came out and the ceiling took a beating. Mac was assigned the broom job, and he enjoyed it. It was the only noise he was allowed to make. The next morning Mrs McGrouch would go stomping up the stairs and bang on Mary and Andy's door, and threaten an eviction notice, but it never became an actuality. Two or three nights later the scene would play over again. Another couple, Herb and Lorraine, lived there. We became life long friends with both couples, and had many fun times together. We all shared the same bathroom, and the same community sink in the hall way, and the same icebox, and I do mean ice box. It was also in the hallway. The iceman came two or three times a week to put a new block of ice in it. We each had a turn of emptying the water pan that caught the water from the ice. We also had a milkman that delivered milk. It was left on the front porch, and each neighbor would pick out what he had ordered. I believe I am the only survivor of that group.

The cows finally came home, but pigs still can’t fly.

 We have finally arrived, nothing left to invent or is there. Once upon a time the world was not so complicated; telephones had one purpose, to relay messages vocally. Now they do everything, but pick your teeth. Before phones there was only one way to let someone know where you were or to ask a question. Not so long ago I observed a lot of people shopping in the grocery store, and talking to themselves, until I learned about the hands free method of talking on a phone without a visible phone.  

 Party lines didn’t mean a line to a party. It meant your personal business was being shared by anyone that happened to be on your party line, such as the modern Facebook and many other ‘tell the world about it’ web sites.  If you wanted someone to know something you had to get out the stationary and a pen, and actually write it out and send it by mail.  Wouldn’t it be terrible if we had to go back to that?

My mother was born in 1905, and she once said the one invention that she appreciated the most was the electric washing machine. She was speaking of the first one invented with a wringer attached, and the wringer was not automatic, you had to guide the item through it while turning the handle.

 It wasn’t long until a way was made to make the wringer automatic, but you would still guide the item through it. Finally the spin method was made. Families had large families, mainly because a sure fire method of birth control had not been discovered, and that is very likely the reason I am here. One brother is only two years older. There were eight kids. The Mom of the family did a huge laundry each week with a washtub and scrub board, and then had to hang it on a line outside to dry. The electric dryer was another great invention.

I remember our first radio and how much we enjoyed it, and going from an ice box to a refrigerator. I thought the microwave was a fabulous invention. I would hate to live without one now.

Watching the evolution of the computer age is amazing. We probably haven’t seen anything yet.  I believe pigs will fly.

Similar to the one we had.

The Way it Was

We had a well with a pump just outside the back door. We had a bucket that sat on a separate small table. A wash basin sat on the table also. Our drinking water was in the bucket and a dipper which everybody used. Nobody was afraid of a little germ. We had a cupboard that was not built in. It was a piece of furniture. We had two of those in our kitchen. I have no idea how we were able to keep all our dishes in those two cupboards. A large family meant a lot of dishes and they were all dirty after each meal. To do the dishes, you had to heat the water on a stove that had to be fed wood constantly. The water was heated in a large tea kettle. The dish pan and another one for rinsing was set on the other cupboard. There was no place to set a draining rack. I don’t think anyone had ever heard of a draining rack in the 1930’s. Well, nobody in my house anyway. Female’s washed dishes, men only did outside jobs. Women also did outside jobs, such as washing clothes and hanging them up on a clothes line to dry. Tending to a garden in the summer months. Gathering eggs and bringing in kindling and wood for the stoves was done by both female and male. That is just the way it was. I don’t believe anyone thought they were being treated unfairly. On a farm there was plenty of work for everybody. Men usually milked the cows, but many women also helped with the milking.  I often heard my mother say, “I never milked a cow in my life, and I ain’t going to either‘.  I thought that was a good rule so I never milked a cow in my life either and I ain’t going to.
In the winter months, the clothes washing procedure was moved to the back porch, which was screened in. It was just about as cold there as it was under the tree. It didn’t take nearly as long to do the laundry in the winter months as in the summer. At least you didn’t have to stand in the snow to wash the clothes. Everything was hung on the line to dry, freezing or not. They were frozen dry, and when you brought them in from the line it would be like bringing in the wood. Everything was frozen stiff. When they thawed out, they would dry rather quickly. Stuff was draped over everything in the house. It’s no wonder everybody was sick most of the time. Colds, and stomach ailments is what I remember the most. Of course if one person caught something, everybody would end up with it as well.
That is just some of the way it was.  Remember this, the next time the Pizza delivery man is running a little slow.

What's New

A few things have happened since I was a puppy, but most things are not new they have just been reinvented. Here is my list.

GPS                    A map in the glove box.

TV                      The Daily Newspaper.

Facebook            A party line

Google                A Dictionary

Laptop                Having a kid under two

Microwave          Cook on high

Land line              A line dividing your property

A Cell                 A room in prison

Alarm System      Having a watchdog

Keyboard            A board with hooks to hang keys on.

MP3 Player         A Transistor radio or a car radio. You could listen to music where ever you went. Imagine that! Now when a car pulls up beside you, their music is so loud their windows are bulging out. 
                     

Back On The Farm

The following story is a rerun from years ago. 

I recall an incident that happened back on the farm where I grew up. Grandpa lived with us since Grandma had passed on. Our Daddy was the preacher of the little country church. It was a very devout household and we learned very early on that there was a code of ethics that you lived up to or else. Bad words were on the top of that list. No bad words. Us kids soon learned to follow that rule, but Grandpa just didn't seem to get the message. I don't think he really gave a gosh darn about the rule because he used them all the time. One time he hooked up a team of horses to a wagon and went to a field. I don’t remember what he was doing, but it doesn't matter. When he started back to the barn the horses got spooked over something and had a run-away, they took off like flying rockets over ruts and brambles and kicking up clouds of dust a mile high, and the wagon looked like an air born missile. Some of us kids were outside and saw them coming in our direction. We were worried that Grandpa had been thrown out and may be hurt bad because we couldn't see him in the wagon. We didn't know how we were going to get the horses stopped. We thought they might even run over us. Well, not to worry, horses are smart because when they saw the house they came to a screeching halt almost at our back door. I don’t know for sure how horses think, but I think they must have thought they were safe now that they were in their own back yard, or maybe they thought the fly that had been chasing them, was no longer a threat. We've got to go find Grandpa! About the time we were talking about finding Grandpa, he managed to pull himself up and was standing in the bed of the wagon. This is the point when he began to badmouth the horses with some more of those forbidden bad words. There were some words that our tender young ears had never heard before, he finally ended it with, "I see we finally got here." Maybe you would need to be there to get the humor of it, but we thought that was about the funniest line we had ever heard so we began to snicker and chuckle a little. At the same time Grandpa climbed out of the wagon and staggered around in front of the horses and begin shouting those same words to the horses again, in case they had not heard him the first time. He had raised his voice to a full roar. By now we had collapsed into a full-blown laugh seizure. We were laughing so hard we couldn't stand up. I guess Grandpa must have noticed this because, all at once, he turned his verbal abuse from the horses to us. Grandpa sure knew how to take the humor out of something because we snapped to attention and things began to simmer down and it was back to normal. Grandpa was just having a bad day. 

My Roots

This old house was built  in about 1889 and my father was born here in 1900.  His father and brothers built it so they could move out of the dug-out they had been living in.  Grandpa had homesteaded the property.  My parents moved into it when I was about 4 years old.  We lived there until I was 14, except for a couple years we lived in Colorado.  This house was an oven in the summer months of Oklahoma. We did not have that air conditioner shown in the photo. It was a freezer in the winter months.  One of the trees in the front  is a mulberry tree and the other is a walnut tree.  I remember because we enjoyed the walnuts and mulberries. The back room was a screened in porch. The cedar tree in back was there, but it also grew up. The lower limb was just the right height to use for a bar to chin ourselves. We climbed all the trees. I had two older brothers, and what they did, I did. My mothers protests didn't deter me.  I had to wear a dress because I was a girl and I was constantly tearing my dress.  Once in a great while Mom would let me wear a pair of my brothers overalls, but I think it was a sin for a girl to wear boy clothes so it didn't happen very often.  

Time moves on and so did we.  We moved to Stillwater, Ok into a house with a  real  bathroom  inside and  running water. I was in high school by now and made new friends.  This picture is me on the left and my friend, Ruth Ann.  We were the best friends and found all the fun things to do. She came from a very poor family and I loaned her clothes because she didn't have hardly any clothes. I remember the clothes she has on in this picture were mine.  Her Dad was an alcoholic and it seems her poor mother was always sick in bed, and having another baby. When my oldest brother came home from the war the two of them met and married soon after and they moved to California. I missed her so much I thought I would die. It was the last time I ever saw her. A couple years later they divorced and we lost all contact with each other. Just two or three years ago my daughter  found her name in some records on the computer. She sent the link to me and It was definitely her, she had just passed away a couple years before. She had married again and had three boys and a girl. She named her daughter after me. The tears came when I read that. She must have missed me as I had missed her. I told Karen I wished I had named her Ruth Ann. She said, "That's okay, Mom."  

The old days

This is Glencoe, Okla. January1914.  I now have a few relatives living around there, because of my parents, I might add. Have you  heard of this fire?  I remember Glencoe having a store called Jake Bunn's. I believe that is the correct spelling. That store became famous in the state of Oklahoma because it had shelves that went to the ceiling and all shelves were filled. I doubt if any inventories were taken. It was famous because if anyone was looking for an item and couldn't find it they would be advised to go to Jake Bunn's. He had everything, and knew where everything was. 
My Dad was 14 years old when this fire happened. He could have been in this photo for all I know. It has been rebuilt and may even have a fire dept by now. I'll bet they didn't have one then.  I am enclosing the link that the picture came from. It has a very good story taken from a letter a woman wrote about when her family moved from Kansas to Oklahoma. Also has a few more pictures. 

  The link is: Aunt Beulah's Story

Back in our Ruffing it Days

My Grandpa Lockwood lived with us when we were growing up. Or I think I should say we lived with him, since he is the one that owned the house. He must have been permanently depressed. I don’t remember ever hearing him laugh. Or maybe there was nothing to laugh about. It was his house and his wife had passed on and sometime after that we moved in. There was my Dad and Mom and three brothers and myself.  That was no laughing matter. He was extremely deaf and if somebody did happen to say something funny he wouldn’t hear it.  He kept the fire going. He sat in his rocker, which sat as near to the stove as possible. The stove was a pot bellied wood stove. He fed the stove wood almost constantly. He would bring wood in from the woodpile each day and he would split the wood and stack it and whatever else you do with wood. That was his job. I think he assigned it to himself. When it rained he would get up and go to the front door and open it and turn around and say, “It’s raining”, and go sit down again. Ten minutes later he would get up and go open the door and turn around and say, “It’s still raining”. Out side of giving us a weather report on a regular basis and taking care of the stove, he didn’t have much else to do. In decent weather he would take a long walk each day. He walked with his fingers locked together behind his back. He walked all over the farm and when he returned he would lie down under a shade tree on the hard ground and take a long nap. He lived to be 89 and that was a very long life in 1941. He never went to the doctor that I knew of. Except one time when he was chopping wood the ax head flew off of the handle and hit him in the head. It caused a large gash and much bleeding. Dad took him to the doctor and he came home with a large bandage wrapped around his head. I hope he got pain medicine from the doctor. Nobody went to the doctor unless you were seriously ill. For one thing doctors didn’t have the medicine or tests for everything then as they do now. We gripe a lot about our medical care and those things, but we still are much better off now than back then. In those days if you were ill a family member would go to the doctor and explain the ailment and if there were a medicine for it, the doctor would give it to you. I am not positive about this, but I think the doctor kept medicine in his office instead of writing prescriptions. I guess I could have researched that, but I don’t have time. I’m busy writing this for the blog. This is all for now. 

Dancing Leg to Leg

I once attended a dance when I was young and agile, and a man in our group asked me to dance. I told him I didn’t know how and I was just watching. He grabbed my arm and said, “I’ll teach you how.”  We went out on the dance floor. He pressed his leg into mine and said, follow my leg, and away we went. We went everywhere his leg said to go. I am not kidding you by the time that dance was over I knew how to dance. I had just never tried before. It was a two-step or a waltz, depending on the music. Sometimes there would be a couple that knew how to do the ballroom dancing. I wasn’t one of them.  At another dance I was dancing with a man who was extremely tall so I made a comment about how tall he was. His answer, “I was born in Texas.” So I said, “ I bet you’re glad you were not born in Rhode Island.” He said, “How come?” I said, “Oh, I’m just making small talk”. I think only one of us was sober and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him.  I don’t dance anymore. I do well to get to the mailbox and back.
I don’t know how or why I thought of the dancing after all this time. Right now I am going to dance off to bed.  

Time Marches On

Charles Lindbergh

I have just been sitting around thinking that when my knee gets on the mend I need to find some interesting things to do.  Other than house cleaning that is. House cleaning is something that really needs to be done. Just in case somebody drops in. If the house is clean you do not have to smile and bear it; you can smile and mean it.

I could join the Senior Center and take up something. I wonder what they do over there.
I am not necessarily inclined to volunteer for a job. I know somebody has to do it. Well, let somebody do it, I won’t stand in their way.
We hear a lot of complaining about how bad things are today compared to a few years back.  I guess it depends on how far back you want to go.  I remember when toilet paper was an outdated Sears Catalog. To go to the bathroom, meant a few yards out back to the little brown shack. It didn’t matter if there was three feet of snow. You had no choice. This was for the little kids as well as the older folk.
Another, not so fond, memory was the schoolhouse. Ours was located exactly one and a half mile from home. You had to hoof it because there was no yellow school bus. Again it didn’t matter if there was three feet of snow. Nobody had a cell phone so the parents could be called to let them know you made it okay. They knew you would be safe.

Recently a family finds their 10-month old baby missing from her crib and it is front-page news until another one happens. Back in 1932 a baby belonging to Charles and Anne Lindbergh was taken out of his crib and his body was found two months later. It made front-page news for years. Charles Lindbergh being a famous aviator was part of the reason it was talked about for so long. Famous aviator? do we still have famous aviators?  

Early Era of Oklahoma

A long time ago in a far away place from where I now live, life was so different than it is today. It’s hard to compare the two. It was quiet in the old farm house. Daddy reading his bible by the coal oil lamp. Mom was taking out the bun in her long dark hair and braiding it in a long braid as she prepared for bed. Grandpa rocking in his rocker by the wood burning pot bellied stove. 
He could no longer hear so he was very quiet as nobody could communicate with him. His life consisted of rocking, reading the newspaper, taking long walks each day. He lived to be 89 and that was a very long life in the early 40’s. There was no noise outside unless a thunder storm came up.
Grandpa may have been reminiscing about his younger years and what life was like in those days in the state of Oklahoma. 

My father, Dennis Lockwood, was born in the family farmhouse in 1900. His Dad, Jasper Newton Lockwood, had homesteaded  160 acres of land near a town that was barely in existence in 1889. It was called Still Water Valley before it was known as Stillwater.  It  was listed in a map as a town with no name for a long time. 
It didn’t attract much interest because it was hard to get to without roads.  Indians began to move into the area because of the white people taking over everything else. It became known as Indian Territory. 

President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act of 1862 so legal settlers could claim lots up to 160 acres in size. Provided a settler lived on the land and improved it, he could then receive the title to the land. 
They had what they called a Land Rush.  This is what my Grandpa entered into. They lived in Illinois or Indiana at the time. I know that my Grandpa was born in Indiana and Grandma was born in Illinois, so I am not sure where they were living.

 Some of the individuals who participated in the run entered early and hid out until the legal time of entry to lay quick claim to some of the most choice homesteads. These people came to be identified as "sooners". This led to hundreds of legal contests that arose and were decided first at local land offices and eventually by the U.S. Department of the Interior. 
Arguments included what constituted the "legal time of entry.” While some people think that the settlers who entered the territory at the legally appointed time were known as "boomers", the term actually refers to those who campaigned for the opening of the lands, led by David L. Payne. The county was named after this man.
 Several rivers flowed across Oklahoma, including the Cimarron, which received the flow of numerous small streams that flooded with the seasons. One of these persisted through frequent droughts. 

Cattlemen began to take an interest in the area because of the water from the river. It was named Still Water Creek. It was a nice stopping over place for the travelers….From there a colony of Boomers, whose presence there in 1885 forced open the Indian land to white settlement.

Grandpa came to the area alone on horseback to get involved in the Land Rush and staking a claim. Some traveled in a wagon train with many wagons and families.  They took household items and food to last for several days. There had been so much rain that the trails were soaked and muddy. Grandpa staked a claim of farmland Northeast of Stillwater. He owned the property the rest of his life and was able to attain more acres. 
They lived in a dugout while they built the house. My father was born in the new house in 1900. He was the youngest of the children. There were seven boys and one girl.  The house is still standing today, Many of the people lived in dugouts. His older sons and Grandpa built the house. It is two stories, but not very large. He had three brother that died at a very young ages. Late teens and 20's. Dad told me they died from kidney problems.  I'm not sure if that was just a guess or if anybody knew for sure.

 This story was passed down and this is the way I remember the story, my grandmother was alone in her kitchen one day when three very large Indian men came through the door. She felt they were there to kill her because that was all she had ever heard about Indians. She was frightened beyond belief. They grunted some words and she wasn’t sure what they were saying at first, but they made her understand that they would not hurt her, and they just wanted something to eat. She gave them food and they went on their way.

Grandmother was 73 when she passed away. She predicted her own death to the day, and she was not sick. She just knew what day she was going to die. I don’t know what caused her death. Maybe it’s like having faith, if you believe something strong enough it will happen. It has stuck in my head all these years. I was 4 years old and was outside playing when it happened. I don’t know why we were at their house, but I remember all the hustling and running around. People coming and going.
So I found a quiet place behind the cellar under some bushes and I sat down and fell asleep. I woke up and heard everybody calling my name.
I am in including a Utube of the a depiction of the land rush.

http://youtu.be/yxaJY8UZxn4