Odis Walter Johnston

This manuscript was written by Odis Walter Johnston in 1965 just two years before his death in 1967. He was a man who cherished deeply the memories of his life. As you will read, it wasn’t an easy life; but with character, discipline and dignity, it was a life filled with success. He loved his family. His life evolved around those he loved so much. He was worthy of the respect and love of his family, that love and respect did not dissipate with his "home going." It still lingers and grows daily. We all rejoice in knowing that this love will reach the ultimate very soon, for we shall be with him again in eternity. He will not have to shed tears from a tender heart, but we will be rejoicing together with him.

Darlene Johnston-1979

I received a copy of the story of Uncle Odis’s life from Darlene in March, 1995. If you compare it with Mother’s Memories, you will find many similarities. They both remembered some of the same things. I found it very interesting, I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Note:

Darlene is married to Tom Goins, who is a minister in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, at the Assembly of God Church.

Joann Thomas Lingo

I wonder if young people have any idea what young people and Father and Mother had to go through with 60 or 70 years ago. I am 75 and I know what we went through with, and most people that I know, I am going to write down the facts the best that I can remember them.

In our family there were 7 boys and 6 girls. None ever died till they were all grown. All born in the Missouri Hills, in Reynolds County. I hardly knew what medication was except for coal oil and turpentine till we came to Indian Territory. I was the 11^th one in the family. There was one girl and one boy after me. Ever since I remember we lived on what we grew on the farm. The farm was small in those hills. We just grew enough corn to make our bread and feed our horses. Many times not enough to do till the next crop got ready to go to the mill.

We would take the soft corn, take a piece of board and a piece of tin, punch holes all in the tin with a nail, put it on the board with the rough side up. Then take the ear of corn and rub it on the sharp holes that was punched with a nail and make meal. They called it a griddle lots of times. I have seen them go to the field get corn and (what they called) "grit meal" for breakfast. I wish I could taste some of it again. It was good and everything they put on the table was good. No one said anything about the grub on our table not being good. If they had, my Ma would have said, "Just go on, when you get hungry it will be good." But you seldom heard her say that for we were always hungry. We worked hard and ate hard and go get enough food for 15 people wasn’t an easy job. Lot of the time other people stayed with us. On Saturday evening you would see a family come driving up in a wagon to spend the night and next day with you. They lived ten miles away or maybe more. We would put the team up and they would stay till Sunday evening. Everyone had a big time.

All we ever got at a store was salt, green coffee, soda, and a little sugar for coffee. Some times there was no matches for weeks. We’d just make a log pile in the back yard. If the fire went out in the stove we’d have to go "get fire." Some times our neighbors came to get fire before they could get breakfast.

We had some sheep. We’d get the wool, pick the trash out by hand, cord it and spin it on a spinning wheel to make yard then run it into the loom to make lisazycloth for shirts, lots of times pants. Mother and the girls knit the socks and gloves. They made all the cloth with their hands. They washed on a rub board down by the spring. They’d build a fire under a big kettle to heat the water. After all we seemed to have a big time, anyway, us kids. We didn’t know what was on the mind and shoulders of that little old Mother of ours. She weighed 90 pounds, with nerves of steel.

I remember when I was about 6 years old, we bought and moved onto a place that was all timber. We had to build a log house, log barn, and dig a well. We dug it 80 ft. deep and got no water. Had to carry water a quarter of a mile from a spring. We had to cut all the timber from that farm. The trees were very large, some 3 feet in diameter or more. All the trees were sawed up in logs 10 or 12 feet long and all piled by hand with what we called hand spikes. A pole about six feet long stuck under the log and pile them up as high as your head to burn. The neighbors would come in and have we called a "log rolling." They would get enough men under a log to carry it to a log heap. Pile those big logs as high as your head or higher, put fire under them, and they would burn for days. Surely we had better men those days then we do now. Anyway we cleared up 25 to 30 acres of land and it was good land. We had crooks in those days, but my Father could never believe that, till it was too late. He found out a neighbor had bought the place so we had to move. Father would rather move than have trouble.

That was in 1899. We moved into another new place and had to do the same thing all over again. Clean it up and build buildings. We were back on the stump so to speak. By that time three girls had married. Three boys and three girls rode freight trains to Indian Territory. That left eight at home, 5 children, Father and Mother and Grandmother Johnston at home. Grandmother died in 1901.

So after we were all settled on a new place, in 1901 came the dryest [sic] year the country ever had. People didn’t make any corn. Just some wheat. There wasn’t much wheat grown as corn was the only crop. The county had free range and we had some hogs in the woods, but the winter of 1899 and 1901, the Chollrie hit the hogs in the woods. Being free range there were no hogs left. So we had nothing left but eight mouths to feed and a team of horses. No welfare and no Red Cross. We had to do it all ourselves. Father said there had to be something done. He heard they were hiring wood choppers at 50 cents a cord. Take the timber as you come to it. So he took the two boys older then me and went and batched and cut cord wood. I stayed with Mother and my youngest sister and brother at the home place. It would a long time before they could send any money if they could make any to send. So Mother said, "I don’t see how we are going to stay here. We have nothing to eat but wheat bread." The wheat bread made her sick when she ate it. So she said, "We are going where they are." Well, we had one mair [sic] and one blind horse. I thought it was the finest team there was. I loved to work horses. We started to get ready to go to where Father and the boys were. Leaving everything at the old home place, including the farm. I was 12 years, the oldest boy left.

So when we thought of going the mair had no shoes on her feet. Out there were so many rocks, she couldn’t work anyway. She had to have shoes on her feet before she could go, so it was up to me. I had never done anything that before. Only seen my Father nail shoes on horses. It had to be done. Mother said, "Son you can’t put shoes on that mair." I hunted up some old shoes and nails. Fixed her feet and nailed them on and they did just fine till we got to where Father was and a lot longer. I suppose if I had had any thought I would not have been so eager to put the shoes on her so I could move. For when I got there I went to pulling a cross cut saw from daylight till dark, six days a week. If any 12 year old boy has never tried this or a man either, they should try it just one day. Day after day we had to do this, getting 50 cents per cord. Some days if we worked very hard and had good timber, we could make $3.00 to $3.50 per day all five of us working.

Timber was never very good, all oak timber. I have heard my Mother say we ate 25 pounds of flour a day. Perhaps it was cheaper than everything else was, was one reason. Anyway eight people couldn’t eat very good and get cloth on that money each day.

Well, we cut wood about 12 months. One of my older brothers came home and wanted Father to let him take six of us and start to the Indian Territory. Left Father and two brothers to make money and come on the train. One thing I haven’t been able to understand as our going to Indian Territory in November. We loaded up what we could get in the wagon. We all had to walk. We had a very nice small team. One horse was blind and the other was a mair about 15 years old. Her name was Jip. She used to play sick when they went to plow with her. She would lay down in the field. When they would take her to the house she was OK. When they would take her back to the field she would lay down and grunt.

One day my older brother got wise. He said, "I think I can cure her." So he took her out in the field. When she laid down, he took a switch and put his foot on her head and gave her some of the switch. Old Jip never got sick any more. Anyway she was half of the team we started to Indian Territory with. I believe we just traveled one day. It was a beautiful warm day. That night it turned very cold. We got a heavy snow about 12 inches deep. It was so bad we couldn’t travel. We found a one room log house. The farmer told us we could stay there till the weather broke. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but long enough to spend what money we had for eats and horse feed. So we decided to go back to the woodcutting. I guess my brother had decided by that time it was the wrong time of the year to go to Indian Territory. Anyway we headed back. It was not a pleasant trip for me on the road back for I realized I was going back to that saw handle. Sure enough, I did.

We cut wood all that winter and it was a very bad one, had lots of ice and snow. Then before spring the blind horse died. So Father traded old Jip for a larger horse. It was like trading one of the kids. We raised her and she was just like one of us. Then we had to get another horse if we started to the Indian Territory in the spring of 1902. One of our cousins had a large mair so Father made a deal with him for $40.00. Meantime, our oldest brother Bud, came down to help us cut wood. He was a good worker but just made one more mouth to feed. And that was all we were doing, just making enough to buy our grub. So Bud said he would get him a job on the section and pay for the horse so we could go. But we would have to have enough money to start on. Everyone worked toward that idea. So we all cut wood. Times were very bad, but we had to take it as it came. So at the last of the week when they checked the wood, Father figured we had $15.00 left over. So he told us to get the wagons loaded, we are going to start for Indian Territory. He said we don’t have much money, but we can’t worse ourself. We can’t stay here.

So we loaded up what we could get on the wagon and left the rest. Started west for Indian Territory. I can’t forget that morning. I don’t think there could have been anyone more happy than we three boys were that morning when we told that old wood choppin [sic] goodby. I am very sure that my poor old Father and Mother was just as happy although they had to worry whether we could ever make it on $15.00 or not. That didn’t bother me. Just getting started was the thrill. But thrill turned to sorrow. I believe it was the first night we camped, old Ben, one of our horses got very sick, so did I. I can’t speak for the rest, but I don’t think I have ever been so sick. I was sure that horse would die and we have to go back to the wood choppin. I didn’t know anything about praying or I could have got in dead earnest that night they were working with him.

So, I got me a quilt and wrapped it around my head. I am sure it wasn’t hard for we had walked all day. I suppose I was tired, but not as tired as I was sick. I’m sure I never awoke till morning when I looked up and saw Old Ben standing there eating. No one knows how happy I was. I speak for my self, I am sure the rest felt the same. I’m sure my old Mother was praying. Well, we got a little to eat (I am sure it was a very little) but that didn’t bother me. We fed the team and was ready to start west again. Mother rode in the wagon and the other eight walked. But we were glad to walk. It was much easier than pulling a cross cut saw and stacking wood.

I don’t know just how many days it took us to get to Granby, Missouri, but I suppose we made about 20 or 25 miles a day. But it was a wonderful trip. Anyway I still don’t see how we did it on $15.00. Granby was where we run out of money. They had lead mining in Granby and my Father and brother Rube got a job. The rest of us wasn’t old enough to do the work. But brother Noah did carry water for the hands. In a few days, Fred found out we were at Granby. He, Bud, Babe, Sherman, May and Annie went to Indian Territory in 1900. Fred had saved a little money, so he came to Granby to meet us and help pay our way on to Muskogee, Oklahoma where we found our first cotton picking job for Sherman and May. We picked their cotton and moved on east of Checotah where we picked cotton as long as it lasted. There we lived in a one room house. We made a deal with Jack Hail to make a share crop near Brush Hill on the North Canadain [sic] River. That was our first summer in Oklahoma. We lived right on the back of the river. We had lots of fish and believe me we had lots of chills. We had never been sick, we didn’t know what it was. But we found out. And we found out what quinine medicine was too, or chill tonic. I put quinine in coffee and took it to the field while I planted cotton and drank it to break the chills. Had the Janders so bad the whites of my eyes was as yellow as a pumpkin and we didn’t go to no doctor.

All of us had the chills before the summer was over. We just survived the summer and winter with another share crop one mile north of Checotah for Jack Hail again. Just did get to that year. However, we did a little better. We grew a lot of vegetables to eat in the garden, lots of peas. But made no money, just enough to pay our grocery bill by picking cotton for others after ours was out. That was 1904.

We got a place near what was called Creek Indian Territory at that time. It was later named Welty. The Creek Indian Postoffice [sic] was claimed to be the worst place in Indian Territory for outlaws. They came from every place to that place to hide. We weren’t outlaws. Bill King, a good neighbor who had moved to Creek Postoffice packed our belongings on his wagons to move us. We had gotten one cow and we were leaving that place about January 1, 1905. It was misting rain as we went across the prairie around Council Hill. It rained hard and got colder and colder till the ice was about 5 inches thick. The team had no shoes, the cow didn’t either. Some place between Okmulgee and Council Hill we found a little timber. We had no choice but to stop right there even if there was five inches of ice and our two wagons loaded to the brim. We had no choice but to build a log fire and when it got bedtime, nothing to do but put our straw ticks down on that five inches of ice and bed down.

Some of you may not know what a straw tick is. It is ticking sewed up as large as a bed stuffed full of straw or hay. Well, the wind was 40 miles an hour out of the north. Doesn’t seem like we have such northerns now days. We hadn’t had any cold weather and we weren’t dressed for any such weather, I’ll tell you that. Mother had made some pumpkin butter and we had some peas and that was it. There was about nine of us. We were there about three nights before the ice was gone. We would sleep on the ice. It would melt and we would dry out ticks the best we could through the days then sleep on a new patch of ice the next nights as the ice was better than the mud where the ice had melted.

In about three days the weather turned very nice. I never forgot the bridge on Deep Fork west of Okmulgee. It was the same as it is now. Every time I cross that bridge, I think how nice the sun was shining that day, and how I was enjoying it when we cross that bridge. It took us a day to go to Buckeye Creek west of Okmulgee where we camped all night. At that time the pecans were in piles. You could just help yourself to them. The next day we went to our new home about three miles south east of Creek Indian Territory. One mile south of what is now Rock School house. There, we unloaded Bill King’s wagon on the ground in a little clump of timber. We only had one mair that we drove from Missouri. The horse we had died. The mair had fallen on the ice so much, she lost twin colts so she wasn’t any good all summer.

Anyway, we was moved and unloaded in the woods without even a team not even one horse that we could work. Some way the Lord has been so good to us to let us get there. We got a one room log house put up. I can’t say it was a neat job, but it was a log pen. If we had had a floor in it and mud dobbling in the cracks, it would have been better. Anyway, we got a clab board roof on it. I’m sure you never saw one. It kept out most of the water, but not the snow. Well, the cracks was so large you could almost stick your head through them. I don’t know how long we were putting it up but I am sure it wasn’t over two days. Anyway, the weather didn’t wait on us. It turned so cold we couldn’t put mud in the cracks. No door, we only had opening for a door, but we had no shutter for that.

So it began to snow, and did it ever snow. It snowed about 12-14 inches. And just as much in the house as there was out of the house. Don’t think you don’t turn over easy when you have about four inches of snow on top of your quilt. It’s warm to sleep under as long as you don’t get it under your cover. That snow stayed on about two and a weeks and was it cold. After all I can’t help but believe that God was watching over us while Mother was the only one that knew anything about praying. God made a way for our escape. When we were plum without anything to eat, no money and no way to go get anything if we’d had the money. There was only one family that lived any place close. My Mother had spunk enough to go to that neighbor and tell her our trouble. She took my sister Rosie who was the only one that wanted to go.

It was about one half mile away. They took off one morning. It wasn’t long till we saw them coming back. They had a 25 pound sack of flour and a shoulder of meat. I never forgot how happy I was when I saw them coming. Mother said she decided it was time to drop all pride and act. The old lady’s name was Thashburn. She had been there for several years and got a war pension. I am sure God blessed her for her goodness for that one deed.

Well, warm weather came. Then came the problem of getting a team and some tools. We had no security or no money. We did have the mair that lost the two colts. But that wasn’t much after all her bad luck. This was 1905.

My oldest brother, we called "Bud" had come from Missouri where he had stayed in 1902 to work out the horse we bought on time. When we left Missouri we paid $40.00 for her. He worked on the section till her paid her out. As long as it took him, he surely didn’t get much wages. So, Bud and my Father got a team and a sod plow some way. So when it got warm, I started plowing. I loved to plow. We just had to watch the team. Breaking sod was a hard job with a team. But I liked it so well, I didn’t want anyone else to do it, and I don’t think anyone else wanted to, after I’ve thought about it. I didn’t hear them begging me to let them plow.

Well, when the grass began to grow, we turned the team on the grass at night and let them graze about an hour at noon. We didn’t have any pasture fenced, we just turned them out on the Indian Territory. Sometimes I had to go a mile, other times lots more. In the morning the grass was so high you couldn’t keep dry riding a horse and it was always my job in the morning, when the grass got so high you couldn’t keep dry, to look for the team. We lived in the timber. The prairie was a mile away and the horses liked that grass. So that was where I had to go to get them.

Well, we had to have the plow shears and cutters sharpened if you plowed that sod, but we had no money. Mother had a few hens, they laid a few eggs. Of course we liked eggs just as we do now, and a thousand times better. But we didn’t get to eat any eggs. We took them to the store, and they wouldn’t pay you money for the eggs, you had to trade them. So we traded them for tobacco and gave it to the Blacksmith for sharpening our shears. Anyway we got the plowing done by keeping steady at it. Then we planted the cotton seed just on top of that sod. Some of the seeds we just sowed by broadcasting it and didn’t do anything to it till we picked it. Sometimes we took a howe [sic] and cut out some blue stem grass. We made pretty good cotton. We made a garden, raised some hogs, and broke up timber land for corn. Prairie land wouldn’t grow corn the first year. So, by fall we were doing pretty good. When the corn got hard enough, we’d have gritted meal for breakfast. That was before it was hard enough to take to the mill.

Well I believe about 1906 we hit the jackpot. My Father got a pension from fighting on the northern side in the Civil War. He got $12.00 a month. Think about it! That cured a sore thumb. We made it just fine then. Father had a stroke in the spring on June 12, 1909, and he went on to heaven. He had never been saved till he had the stroke, then he got wonderfully saved. He said he didn’t want any more medicine. He said he had seen heaven and wanted to go on. He never took anything more till he died. He said the only thing he regretted was he lived till an old age, then when he had to call on the Lord, He helped him when he had done nothing for the Lord. He advised all of us not to live like he did.

Well, we went on farming another year. Mother got $10.00 per month of his pension. We did just fine. Mother’s health wasn’t good so we decided to have a sale and go to Missouri. Made a bad move. We made a crop at Monett, Missouri in 1911. We made nothing. We came back to Afton, Oklahoma, made a crop north of Afton, we did worse so we sold out in 1912. Rube and I went to California. Sib and Ma came out later. We were there till 1914. Then I came back to Tuskegee and bought 60 acres from my brother. Mother stayed with me and cooked for me. Rube stayed in California and got me the money to make a crop, which I did. Rube came back that fall and helped me pick the cotton which was all we had except a small patch of corn. Well, we picked 18 bales of cotton that fall. It was worth 6 cents at the first, so we decided to gin it and hold out for a higher price. But our debts decided for us to sell at 6 cents so we hauled it to Okemah with teams and sold it. It just about paid the interest on what we owed.

We went out on the farm north of us, a farm I later bought, and picked cotton to get our groceries. We picked six days (the two of us) and picked 6 thousand pounds of cotton at 60 cents per hundred. We took the money, went to Okemah and bought groceries, and I am sure we spent it all for groceries. We had to make them go a long way, for we had no more money coming in till next fall. And if we had to get it from cotton, we didn’t expect to get much then. But, we had bought the place from another brother, Fred Johnston. He was nice to us. When we bought him out, he went to California and stayed a year. We couldn’t pay him much so he came back 1915. He built one room where our house was, the middle room. We all made a crop that year. We had onions, cabbage, sweet peas, cotton and corn. We had plenty of meat, so we had plenty to eat. But the market for that kind of crop was a problem.

To find a market at all, we had to hall our produce to Okmulgee, 28 miles Southeast, ur Drumright, 40 miles Northwest, which was our best market. It took about three days to Drumright with two loads. We peddled it from house-to-house. There was quite an oil field that opened up at Drumright, so the market was some better there.

In the spring of 1915, we got about three bushels of sweet potatoes. We didn’t know how to bed out sweet potatoes. Our Mother bedded them in a garden with manure for a hot bed. So we did that and got them too hot and had to take them out and cool the bed. Anyway, we started with 3 bushels and no market. So in 1915, from Mother’s experience, we started to build a house by making a basement. Then one story above. We put the stoves in the basement and the potatoes above, like Mother kept them over the old fireplace in Missouri. That was all we had to go by. We did know we had land to grow them on, but that wasn’t all we had to do. We had to keep them, then find a market for them.

So, in the Fall of 1914, we built the basement of our house then in 1915, we put the other story on it. The house had no lumber, but some oak for the floor and for the doors. The rest was rocks and poles taken from the woods. But we had good luck keeping them in our house, so we planted more next year. But when we went to sell to the stores, they would say no, no one wants to buy sweet potatoes, and they won’t keep over night. We found one store in Bristow who would take a few by us telling them, if they didn’t sell, we would pick them up, then we had to do them all that way. That was the way we started, slow but sure.

Then the war started, and we got a better market and paid our debts pretty well off. It was sure a slow process. No county agent to go to. You were pretty well on your own. Swim or drown. The U.S. Government couldn’t give you a sound way to keep sweet potatoes. We got all we could from them. Afterwards, finding out that if we did as they had said, all our sweet potatoes would have rotted. Anyway, our plan worked fine. We didn’t grow but 2 or 3 hundred bushels the first year. But they helped, for we could trade them for groceries and they were good to eat.

So, in 1916, our brother Fred moved to Hoffman, Oklahoma. We still hadn’t paid much more than just the interest on the debt. So we changed sweet potatoes. The ones we had the first year was Missouri Queens, a white potatoe [sic]. So we got some of the nancy halls and we bedded about 15 bushels. We built more storage in 1916 and 1917 and grew more potatoes. It wasn’t easy. It was all hard team work. No push buttons or electrical starters. Just an ax and some sledge hammers, shovel, log chane [sic], weak mind and strong back.

We didn’t have cement the first year. We put the basement walls up with mud for morter. Joint and rafters was poles. Doesn’t sound like 1965. Everything came from the woods, except the iron roof top. Well, my dear old Mother was doing our cooking. How often it runs through my mind how I could have helped her in her work, but she never complained. If she had maybe I would have realized how much she had to do. If I brought someone in for dinner, I didn’t think anything of it. Well, I suppose that is life. You live and learn. Sometimes we are just too slow.

Rube wasn’t there much, he was just out and in. So along about the middle of June, 1917, I met Elizabeth Hagee at Welty, Oklahoma. After about a month of persuading, she decided to come over as my helper and advisor, which was the greatest time of my life. She was the best cook, housewife, companion and Mother that ever came from Missouri. She hadn’t been in Oklahoma long, to my good luck. Maybe she hadn’t learned to be an "Okie" yet. Anyway, we lost no time. In 1918, December 24, we had a big boy. Our first one. No one will know how happy we were with him. My wife and I didn’t want so many children, but seemed we just kept it up. Everyone of them was so sweet after we got them we wouldn’t take a million dollars for one of them.

Anyway, the Lord saw fit to take three of the jewels without our permission. And we really thank God for the ones we have left. The most wonderful grandchildren anyone could have. Everyone married wonderful husbands and are doing well.

O. W. Johnston

"Sweet Potato King of Oklahoma"

Memories

Nora Eller Johnston Thomas

This FAMILY MEMORY BOOK and the information herein has been written for my children, Kathy, Carol and Danny, and all my family to keeps records for future generations. All the information as been obtained by talking to my Mother, sisters and brother. I also wrote to and received information from other members of our family, including Aunt Jewel Thomas Hager, her daughter Dorothy Piehl, and Uncle Howard Thomas. Aunt Jewel and Uncle Howard are now both deceased.

I would like to thank all who participated in this family project. My greatest thanks go to Danny and Ray who spent many hours teaching me how to operate my computer, which was no easy job for them. My thanks also to Kathy who spent many hours at the Latter Day Saints Church to get information that I would not have obtained any other way. My thanks to Wally for putting up with me typing so many hours and listening to me complain when my computer would not cooperate with a dummy.

Most of the story of Mother’s life was dictated by her. It is written the way she remembers her family and the things that were most dear to her. It also includes some thoughts from members of the family, and some things that I remember.

Remember while reading it, that everyone remembers the past, sometimes in a different way. I hope you enjoy reading it. I have a cassette of Mother speaking about things that she remembered, she was not happy about doing it, but consented to a few minutes of answering questions about her life, it was made in 1980.

It has taken me years to compile all the information. There are 1,500 names in our FAMILY TREE MAKER. It has been interesting but hard work. There are still more names and information that I would like to include, and there will always be changes and additions that have to be made. All of you can help keep the information current by sending any changes, such as births, marriages, divorces, or deaths to Joann Thomas Lingo, Kathy Lingo Padgett, or Danny Lingo. If you find that any information is incorrect, please contact me so that we may correct it.

JOANN LARUE THOMAS LINGO

13716 WILDER AVENUE, NORWALK, CA 90650

I was not born in a hospital. My Grandmother Johnston was a mid-wife to all of Mother’s children. I was born in Missouri on March 1, 1887. The first thing I remember was when I was five years old, I had what they called worm fever. I had five doctors trying to cure me. I was weak for a long time and I could not walk. I remember asking Mother if I could get up, and I fell trying. Anna, my sister, picked me up and put me back to bed. We lived five miles from Salem, Missouri where my Father was a carpenter.

When I got big enough, about seven, we walked four miles to school and we had to cross the Missouri River. There was no bridge to cross, only a log to walk on. If anyone had slipped off, that would have been the last of them, because everyone knows what a bad and wicked river it was. We did not have running water in the house, we carried it one mile every day. Everyone big enough, had a pail to help carry the water. My Grandmother Johnston lived alone, up on Ozark Mountain in Missouri. When I was about eight years old, I stayed with her and cooked for both of us. When she got sick, my Father took herinto our home. She died of natural causes when she was 85 years old. I went to school until I was about eleven when my sister, Minnie got married and moved to Saint Louis, Missouri. I stayed with her for a year. When I was fourteen, my Father sold our beautiful two-story home and we moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma, it took us six days to go there by wagon, we had to camp along the road. We got out on the road about fifty miles and it rained and the ice froze the horses, they could not walk any further, one mare fell, and lost twin colts. We were near a coke oven and the boys and my Father and brother, Odis and I cut cord wood to get warm, I sawed wood all day, we ate mulberries along the way and bolsa apples. The mulberries were covered with bugs, but we had already eaten a bushel of them before we noticed them, so we figured we might as well eat some more. We camped out when we could find a good spot. There came a big snow before we got out camp built and I had more snow on me, but Mother said "Slip out and don’t let the snow get into the bed" and the next day it was so cold the snow didn’t even melt, so I got back under the snow, but it was fun to all of kids and especially to me. I don’t think I rode over two miles all the way to Oklahoma. The other kids and me walked or ran behind the wagon all the way. Mother was sick and we were heavy-loaded and she had to ride most of the way.

Soon spring came and we landed in Oklahoma. I went back to school until I was 16. We lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma for about three years, then we moved to Welty, Oklahoma, where my Father leased some land and farmed. While we were in Welty, my brother, Bud became engaged to your Dad’s sister, Geneva. She had tuberculosis and did not live to get married. Geneva was so sick, she begged me to come and stay with her, I did, until she passed away.

Thinking back further, I have to mention my Dad’s Grandfather. He was born in Kentucky and was killed in the Spanish-American War. Grandma lived in a log cabin and one night a black panther got on the roof, crying and clawing to get in. She had just delivered twins and the black panther really wanted those babies. She hit his paws with an ax, but she was afraid to cut him and really make him mad, but he finally went away. She raised her four children alone, never remarrying.

I was at King’s house when I met your Dad. He had a farm, cotton and corn and everything and he lived in an old cellar with a dirt floor. He said we could live there until he gathered his crop. I was as happy as if it were a mansion. We were married on the tenth day of November, 1907. I was twenty years old and your Dad was thirty years old.

Your Dad had a daughter, Marie, (5) to take care of, so I had a little family as soon as I was married. Marie’s Mother was murdered, no one knows who did it, but there is a story that a traveling salesman came by and tried to make Dora leave with him, when she turned him down, he killed her. Lela was born almost two years after we were married. After she was born, we moved to a new home on Hoffman, Oklahoma. Your Dad was a carpenter and he contracted work, and had a good business. We got some horses, but two of them were killed on the OK Railroad by a train. We got the money for them and your Dad put the money into a snack bar, and we served chili. We did so good from there we went into the grocery business, we had two stores. He let Easley, a friend, (and a crook), run one of the stores and he almost broke us. His brother ran part of it also, and he did run us out of business, by taking all the profits. We delivered groceries on a wagon drawn by a pony. We finally bought a new 1918 Studebaker, the year Son was born, and then delivered groceries in our new car.

In the early 1920’s your Dad became High Sheriff. Sheriff Knute of Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, was chasing a black man who had killed someone. He deputized your Dad to help find him. They both chased him and the sheriff saw him sitting on a fence, and started after him. The black man shot the Sheriff in the head several times, and then ran off, the sheriff died in your Dad’s arms. Your Dad then took Sheriff Knute’s place as Sheriff. While on duty, he caught a man hiding in a mine running a whiskey still. He arrested him and put him in jail. He had a partner that Dad didn’t catch and one night his partner caught your Dad out on the street and hit him in the eye and face with iron knuckles, and put his eye out. The man was sentenced to seven years for hitting a Sheriff. Your Dad was always busting up stills in those days. Many times, he wouldn’t arrest the town drunks, he would bring him home and put him to bed in our home and let him go in the morning. He was an easy-going man.

Note: Dad was a "Bootlegger" in Oklahoma, that is how he got his money to build the 3 country stores he and Mother owned. That was before he became sheriff, he was also a carpenter, and a plumber. He always said to tighten the pipe as tight as possible, then tighten it just once more. (According to Wade)

Do you kids remember clothes line night? That was the night that all the boys in town went out and cut all the clothes lines they could find. Dad had to go out and investigate but he knew very well who was guilty. They also put outhouses upon the roofs of some of the businesses around town. That was the kind of mischief the kids got into in those days.

One morning I got up, started a fire to fix breakfast, and found a skunk in the kitchen. I grabbed a piece of stove wood and let him have it, and he let Son and me have it. I never hit another skunk! While we lived in Oklahoma, Mrs. Blackmoore’s baby had the smallpox and I went to help her but she didn’t tell me it was smallpox. So naturally I got them, and brought them home to the kids. Dr. Tubbs had tried to talk me into having a vaccination, but they weren’t proven yet and I refused to have one, or let the kids have one. In fact, I ran him off our property — Midge, Lola, Lela, and I got the smallpox.

We moved to Colorado when Evelyn was three months old, in the spring of 1926. Lucille was three, Wade was six, Midge was 11, Lola was 14, and Lela was 16. Helen and Joann were not born yet, they were born in Colorado. It was in Colorado that your Dad broke his left leg. He was working for Ben Swan, driving a wagon to work, he worked on a ranch, and the wagon turned over and threw him out. He broke his left leg the second time on a railroad "Pop Car". A large rock had fallen on the tracks and he came around a corner and hit the rock and was thrown over a steep cliff into the snow, this was another job as Marshal that Dad had. He had to check the railroad tracks for land slides, or any obstruction before the train came through town. It happened out of Carbondale, Colorado, on the road to Redstone. He broke the same leg again and broke a toe and cut one toe off. Dr. Tubbs set his leg crooked andhe limped the rest of his life.

Your Dad also took care of the water in Carbondale, Colorado, as one of his jobs as the Marshal. He was in charge of piping the water from Mount Sophris to Carbondale in wooden troughs. He was also the Indian Agent for the area. Your Dad held the office of City Marshal in Carbondale, Colorado for 10 years. (FROM 1927-1936) Dean Smith took your Dad’s place as marshal when we left Colorado. When Son was a junior in high school, (1936), your Dad lost his job as Marshal in Carbondale. Mr. Barthell was ousted as Mayor, so Dad lost his job also as Bartell told your Dad that as long as he was Mayor, he would have the job as Marshal.

It was decided that Son would come out to California to live with Lola and Cliff and get a job at the Firestone Tire plant where Lola worked, to help the family out. He moved to California, but he was homesick and miserable, so Lola and Cliff sent him back to Carbondale to graduate with his class, on Lola’s wedding day, January 08, 1937. Wade came back out to California after graduation and stayed with Lola and Cliff and attended Warren School or Aeronautics, and then went to work for Lockheed. (He retired after 51 years at Lockheed.) He married Betty at age 25 and moved to Alhambra.

We moved to Salinas, California, in 1936, and stayed with Flossy and Pearl. I worked in the lettuce shed and then picked spuds. We then moved to 427 Verdugo Road, in Burbank. We lived in a small house in front of Jimmy and Camille Cash, he sang on the radio and they had a little girl, named Berta Sue. Your Dad wasn’t sick until we moved to California when he complained about his kidneys. The doctor said his prostate gland was inflamed and he needed to have surgery. Lola sent him to Monte Sano Hospital. It was three years later they found out he had cancer and he was given radium treatments. While he worked as a guard at Warner Brothers in 1945, they brought him home andp ut him to bed and he never got up again. He died October 1, 1945 at home at 1327 Leland Way in Burbank.

In 1944, just before the war was over, many employees were released from Lockheed, and Wade was drafted into the Army. While he was in training at Fort McArthur, in Texas for six months, the war ended (August, 1945) and there were too many boys in the Army, so they asked for some volunteers to go to occupy Japan. Wade claimed six dependents, us, including Betty and they discharged him for hardship. He was stationed in San Antonio, Texas when your Dad died. Wade met Betty in Glendale, while both of them worked at Lockheed and car pooled to work together. I worked at Lockheed to help foot the bills. It was during the war so it wasn’t hard to find a job. Your Dad loved to go lie outside on the lounge which he built. Joann and I carried him outside two or three times a day so he could lay in the sun. Lola would come over and help care for your Dad as well. Evelyn, Helen and Lucille worked at Pacific Telephone Company and then Lucille went to work for Lockheed, and they all helped with the bills, and with your Dad. When the war was over, Lockheed no longer needed so many people, so I worked at a laundry, then at a cosmetic plant nearby.

After your Died died in October of 1945, Joann and I moved from Burbank, California to Pacoima, Calif. I used my insurance money for a down payment on a home for Evelyn and Virgil so we could move in with them. (Mother got mad one day because Virgil had a can of beer I the refrigerator, she poured it down the sink and Mother and I moved to Inglewood, with Lola and Cliff, where I graduated from Inglewood High School, and worked at Thrifty Drug to help pay the rent and bills along with Mom’s Social Security checks.)

After Joann got married in February 1952, I got a place of my own, and after all the years with young’uns around, I loved it, but I was very lonely, but I could come and go as I pleased. I kept busy by doing my own cooking, cleaning and gardening. I was 65 on March 1, 1952. In 1971, I was 84 years old, and I was living in Inglewood. I still had my own little place where I could have flowers and plants to care for. I went to Texas to visit Evelyn nearly every year, with the help of the kids. I did my own shopping and walked up to the market. I visited Lola on 4^th Avenue and Lela in Newcastle, in Northern California. In 1975, Lola and Clifford sold their home in Inglewood and bought a condo in Downey. She bought a gift shop called the Gift Gallery in Downey. I moved to Downey in July 1975, I did not want to stay in Inglewood alone, so Lola found me a duplex near her.

Lela died of a heart attack in July 1976, so I won’t be going to Lawndale anymore. I got sick on August 25, 1980, and I had to go to Glendale Hospital. I came home on September 2^nd. Kathy flew out form Colorado the next day and stayed three nights with me, she slept on the floor of the hospital in a sleeping bag. On September 17^th I got worse and back to the hospital I went. On September 20^th, Evelyn and Karen came from Texas and stayed one week with Joann and visited with me. All the family came by to visit me including my grandchildren.

Note: Mother went into a coma on September 27,1980. On October first, Dr. Aaron Douglas, long time family doctor and friend called all the kids to the hospital and told us that Mother would not make it through the night. All of us were at her bedside, along with lots of grandchildren. For one week, Mother laid in a coma, we all expected the worst, but Dr. Douglas said to have faith, he said Mother had a lot of will power and could pull out it. On October 2^nd, Donna told us to talk to Mother, that patients in comas can sometimes hear. I (Joann) said, "Mother can you hear me?" and she nodded her head. I yelled for the others to come and see, they could not believe it. That was the beginning of her recovery. On October 20, 1980, Mother was moved to a rest home in Pico Rivera. The conditions were very bad and she hated the place. She was not gaining any strength and didn’t want to stay there. On December 1, 1980 Lola and Cliff took her into their home. They installed a chair lift, with the help of Wade, Helen, and Lucille, so she could get up and down stairs during the day. In March, 1983, she fel while going to breakfast at Spires with Lola, so back to the hospital she went. She broke her arm and had to have a cast put on it. Mother also broker her ankle when she fell at Sav On Drug Store, and she fell on a step at Midge’s, and had to have surgery on her knee. She certainly waited a long time to break bones and to have surgery.

"I am now 96 years old and I have had a very full life with the usual pains and sorrows. There have been happy times and hard times and times when we all had to work together to make ends meet. We have had the usual arguments, but in the end, we were always there for each other."

To Mother

We thought of you today, but that was nothing new.

We thought about you yesterday and days before that too

All we have of you are memories and your picture in a frame,

We think of you in silence and often speak your name.

God has you in His Keeping, we have you in our hearts.

In life we loved you dearly, in death we love you still.

In our hearts you hold a place no one can ever fill.

It broke out hearts to lose you, but you didn’t go alone

Part of us went with you the day God took you home.

You are sadly missed, but you will always be in our hearts.

FROM JOANN AND YOUR LOVING FAMILY

Dear Pat,

….and my family come from Reynolds County and arrived in the St. Louis area about 1800…trace my family back to my GGG grandparents, John and Francis Johnston. They apparently moved to the St. Louis area about 1800 from Virginia. Their oldest child, Robert, was born in Virginia on December 25, 1796. They received a Spanish Land Grant in the St. Louis area in 1802 or 1803. John apparently died in 1823 and was buried in St. Francis County. I have found Francis living with a daughter on a later census in Reynolds.

They had another son, Reuben, who was my GG grandfather and his wife’s name was Curiney Thompson Johnston. She was actually his second wife. Ruthy Hicks, his first wife, apparently died in child birth delivering twin boys, James Monroe and Marion Francis [there is a steno mark that reverses this to the more proper way of Francis Marion]. James was my great grandfather and he died in 1909 and is buried in Oklahoma. Marion died in 1861 and he is buried with Reuben in Curiney in the Johnston Cemeter in Johnson’s Shut-in Park in Reynolds County.

James Monroe married Margaret Smith in Reynolds County in 1873 and they had 13 children, all of them living to adulthood. Their 11^th child was my grandfather, Odis Walter Johnston. The family apparently moved several times as I find them in Iron, Reynolds and Dent Counties on various census. James Monroe and Margaret moved their family to Indian Territory in 1903 and first settled near Checotah in Eastern Oklahoma. In 1904, they moved to Welty, Oklahoma which is south of Bristow. James is buried in the Welty Cemetery and Margaret is buried in Carbondale, Colorado.

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