Oklahoma Days
According to Bee B. Knapp
We lived in Oklahoma about fifteen miles from town. My mother needed glasses, so Fred and I were left to batch. It took three days to go to town to see the doctor and come back.
My cousin Bob came over and decided to stay a while. He asked Fred how many biscuits he could make in an hour. So Fred figured it out and Bob said, "I’ll just order an hour’s biscuits." So Fred set out and made biscuits. Bob ate 36 biscuits and had some kind of spread to put on them.
One day Grandma Annie (Mrs. Grant Robinson – Florence McNeil’s Mother) had a big pot of large lima beans on the stove. Young Grant (Uncle Babe) was all fixed for a big bowl of soup. He said, "Annie how come there isn’t any soup on these beans?"
She told him they were not soup beans, but that there was a kettle of boiling water on the stove and he could pour out as much soup as he wanted.
Grandma Annie had a fast buggy horse named Lady. Lady had been in some trotting races and didn’t like to have any horse pass her. One day, coming home from church, two outfits passed Lady. Grandma Annie couldn’t hold the mare back when she tried to overtake the other horses. When Lady started to pass, the buggy tipped over. It broke Grandma Annie’s hip or leg. She never really got over that.
We lived in a white two story house a mile from Lockridge. This was an up and coming Irish community, begorrah, and the fair maidens brought suitors from near and far. For example Charlie Knapp had been an outsider.
Another outsider was Mose Lienhardt. As his name implies, he was not of Irish extraction and this helped keep him in fighting trim. It also kept the Murphy’s, O’Briens, and Osburns interested in the community social – the Saturday night fight. No doubt, this bolstered their interest in the National Boxing Champion, the Great John L. Sullivan and his fight with Jess Willard
The O’Briens were important people in town. Pat O’Brien, himself, boasted that there was no man who could beat "Me Boy John". John was the Great John L. Sullivan. Was there another?
O’Brien and Big Irvin Murphy walked big in the street. Most of the people at the railroad station, the store and livery barn joined them in support of "Me Boy John." The depot was an important place on the night of the big fight. It was the news center. The crowd lined up outside the telegraph office. Inside the keys clattered out the highlights of the fight and the telegraph operator rushed to the black board and wrote out the latest news. The Great John L. had been defeated. The Irishmen in town were downhearted until they had a few fights and won back some prestige.
Some years later, Charlie Sherod, who married one of the Knapp girls, went back to Lockridge – it was gone. Even the railroad station was gone and only a line marked a few places that had once been the track, the road and the main street. Like the Great John L. it was defeated, not by the lack of will but by time.
My dad decided to take up a homestead at the foot of Wichita Mountain. That’s where I started school the first time. It was summer school, and I wasn’t six yet. It sure was a nice place. The grass this high (knee high or better). We had to drive through an artillery practice area to go to town. This took about all day.
One time, coming home from town, they stopped us and told my dad that they’d be practicing. They said that they wouldn’t be firing close to the road and we could go on through. We got about half way through and the shells started landing around us. It scared the team nearly to death.
We had to walk a ways to school and we passed by one family, Addles, and they walked with us. Sometimes on the way home we’d play marbles or some other games. It has been a long time ago, but it’s funny how you remember some things. I looked down at that boy’s feet and asked what kind of shoes he had on. He said he wasn’t wearing shoes, he was web footed. All his toes came in one package.
Our place was a little way on the mountain, but not too far off the road. One day Fred and me were sitting down kind of close to the road. We could see the dust whirling and getting closer. It was scary. Fred said we’d better get out of there. So we ran up the mountain a ways and hid behind a rock. Pretty quick we saw a car come down the road. It was the first one we’d ever seen.
My dad had a buggy horse he got at a sale one time. The horse was never used on anything but the buggy. He could trot until the buggy almost flew. My dad didn’t let us boys use his horse much. We had to use Old Dick. Most any body could pass us. We couldn’t get much speed out of Old Dick
The mail carrier had a matching team of little black horses and he got a big kick out of passing everyone. That little team sure could go. One day we boys had my Dad’s buggy horse and the mail carrier was going to pass us. So we just let our horse go. The Mail carrier pulled up alongside but didn’t pass. He came to a bad spot in the road. By golly, he’d been passing us for years.
Aunt Pansy was married to Uncle Claude. She was a whistler. She just whistled in the kitchen or anywhere else.
I whistled some when I was small. One day Fred and I were going somewhere. A fella came along and said we might as well ride. So we did.
Fred got to telling that fella about my whistling. "He can even whistle a tune!" he said.
Fred was right proud of how I could whistle. The fella says, "That’s swell. Let’s hear you whistle a few lines of Turkey in the Straw."
I whistled a few bars and fella let on that he recognized it.
Fred was proud of me. He couldn’t whistle. He couldn’t even pat his foot. He liked to make speeches. Nothing suited him better than an audience so he could make a speech.
Where we lived in Oklahoma sure was bad tornado country. One afternoon we saw a twister about a mile and a half away. It would go down now and then and we could see stuff fly. There was a big white house on the point of the hill beside Cottonwood Creek. It headed that way. We saw that house fly way up in the air before it exploded. So my dad hitched the team to the wagon and drove over. No one was home except the lady. She had been picked up and laid down in the field. She wasn’t hurt. It was afternoon and we could see it good.
Another time we saw a big one going up that Cottonwood Valley. My dad hitched up and drove over after it passed. When he got there he saw a man and a girl sitting by what was left. The lady was out in the field, but she was killed. They could see her as the storm moved her. It lifted her up in the air. Then it just let go. It was the fall that killed her.
Fred worked at the depot in Meridian. It was a mostly black town. When we were caught up at home, I’d go in and stay with Fred a week or two. One day I left the depot to go home. I had to go right past the blacksmith shop. A colored family lived in the back. A little boy came out crying. I asked him "What’s wrong – somebody take something away from you?"
He might have been hungry.
His mother came out and said, "I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. I’ve already given him two quarts of buttermilk and he ain’t qualified yet."
My brother, Fred, courted and married Minnie Simpson. I was working for the Western Union, so at Christmas, since I was close, I decided to go down to Simpson's. I got on the train and went down. Took a big handful of cigars since I knew Old Man Simpson liked to smoke. After supper, he lit one up, then looked his pipes over and said, "This one has had time to cool off."
He filled it with tobacco and handed it to me. Later when I told Min that, she said, "Did he do that? He is always talking about what a scoundrel Fred’s brother was."
Later Old Man Simpson said to Min, "What’s wrong with Bee? He’s such a fine fellow."
We lived close to Aunt Frank and her family. In the mornings I’d go circle the yard and bring the milk cow to the barn so my dad could milk. I had to walk close to the road. One day an old man drove by with a team of mules and nice spring wagon. He waited until I got close and then he called, "Christmas Gift." I told him I didn’t have a Christmas gift. He said, "Doesn’t matter, I gifted you first so you owe me a gift."
That old man would drive by every day. I liked to be down by the road and meet him and talk to him as long as he’d stay. Sometimes he’d ask me if I wanted to ride. So he’d fool with helping me up. The wagon had a fine spring seat. He’d let me hold the reins. Then we’d drive just a short ways and he’d stop and help me off. He always waited until he was sure I was away from the wagon. He said he liked to see me because, then he’d get all the news in ten minutes. Later I got to thinking, he sure must have been a fine old man.
When Leone was a baby Grandma Brewer and Aunt Frank were taking care of Grandma Knapp and baby Leone. A neighbor’s pigs kept coming around rooting up the yard. They went to the neighbor and asked him to keep his pigs at home. He said that he didn’t have any corn and he reckoned the pigs wouldn’t do too much damage.
One day the ladies threw potato peelings out the door. Here came the pigs. One of the ladies got the gun. She held it close to the pigs head and pulled the trigger. It nearly blew the pigs head off. They got out their knives and butchered that pig and hung him up in the tree in the yard.
The pigs went home – one short. The neighbor came up asking if they had seen his pig. The ladies looked all around and said they didn’t see any pig. The neighbor found some corn and they had no more pig trouble.
We went to the Christmas tree at the school. That was some tree. There was an old fiddle and bow hanging on it. When Santa came he handed out a few things, then picked up that fiddle and really played. You’d never heard any better. He acted like he was going to give the fiddle to someone, and then changed his mind and hung it back on the tree. Later Dad went and got it and then told the folks he believed he’d just take that fiddle home with him.
He did that every Christmas.
Fred got an old double-barreled muzzle loader. Dad said to not hold it when they shot it. Fred loaded it with pebbles, glass, and powder all packed down. Then he put a cap on it.
We fixed up a stand for the gun, tied a string to the trigger. We got up on a bank behind it and pulled the trigger. There was a big explosion. Smoke boiled out. Dust rose. When we got down and looked at it – the gun had kicked back against the frame and broken the stock. My dad said it would kick. He wouldn’t shoot it.
Summer time was Camp Meeting time. The Free Methodists held a tent meeting revival on Deer Creek. Dad Knapp would load up the family and we would all join the neighborhood in the tent meeting. Ma (Florence Knapp) favored the Methodists, but she would tell a person, "Regular Methodist, not a Free Methodist." But at Camp Meeting time that didn’t matter. The Free Methodists let their emotions run free. They had singing and praying and shouting. You could listen from a quarter of a mile away if you wanted to.
One night there was a pregnant lady who got excited. She was big with child. She shouted, and then she started dancing up and down the floor between the benches. When she turned around, just ahead of Fred and me, she fell down. We couldn’t get her up. Somebody came with some stretchers and took her out and the meeting went on.
One visiting preacher had fiery red hair. He shouted and ran around the table and pounded on it. A person could hear him all over the country. When he was going to preach, the place would be full of people. He really put himself into it. He started out with a suit coat on and then he’d shed the jacket. When sweat started pouring off him he took off his shirt and kept going, hair tossing fiery red. Finally he preached himself out and fell on the floor. Some men carried him to his wagon.
We went to a Congregational Camp Meeting where a revival lasted at least a week, ten days or sometimes two weeks. I was baptized in a big pool at that Camp Meeting. Then in 1914 we heard that homesteads were opening up in Montana. There was good land on both sides of the Missouri River Basin. We loaded up and moved north.
background: Bee, Leone & Fred Knapp
about 1899