Jewel Moore Gresham's Early Years in Oklahoma, 1922-1926

Sometime before she died in 1994, my mother-in-law, Jewel Moore Gresham, either wrote down or dictated some memories.  This is the third part of those memories, from the family's early years in the Marlow, Oklahoma, area, from sometime in 1922 to about 1926.  

Part one (Texas, 1914-1918) is here:  https://abt-unk.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-mother-in-laws-early-memories-abt.html.  

Part two (Bray, Oklahoma, 1919-1922) is here:  https://abt-unk.blogspot.com/2021/09/jewel-moore-greshams-early-years-in.html

Jewel's oldest sister Ivis Moore played on the 1922-23 Marlow High School girls basketball team.  Image from the 1923 Tepee yearbook at Ancestry.com.

1922 was the year we moved back close to Marlow. … I don't really remember moving, but I do know I started to school in the third grade in Marlow schools.  Papa¹ and all the older kids would go back to the old place on weekends and finish harvesting the crops.  I had to stay with Mama² at the new place.  I remember wanting to go back with them, but "no," they wouldn't let me.  Then, one time, Papa said I could go back.  I remember returning to the old place and going to all my play places and feeling sad.  

When I started to school, I remember sitting at my desk and my legs were shaking like a leaf.  But things got better.  My teacher's name was Vella Frazee.  She really liked me - in fact, you could say I was the teacher's pet.  I think she liked me because I was smart.  I got to be the Christmas angel.  Mama would make me an angel costume, and I got to sing songs and flutter my wings all over the place.  Mama had taught me songs, and I always got to sing my songs to the class.  The third grade passed, and I was promoted to the fourth grade.  My teacher went home to a small town in the Panhandle.  I got a beautiful card from her.  It had a picket fence covered with roses.  I wrote her a card.  She never came back to Marlow.³

Papa had much work to do on this new place.  He put a drainage ditch through the "willow flat," and the soil was rich.  We always had a garden there.  He had to cut all the black jack trees down, and grub out the roots.  I'm sure it was hard work.  He was about 44 years old at the time.  He rented other land from someone, and we planted corn and cotton.  We had a barn, but I can't remember when he built it.  And we dug a storm cellar.  A cellar is a "must" in that country.  We all worked in the fields.  I got the measles, and all the other childhood diseases.

We had some neighbors.  To the north were the Carsons.  He had race horses and he peddled moonshine.  To the south were the Stewarts.  They had three kids; J. D., Edward, and Jean.  Mrs. Stewart possessed great "powers," or so she claimed, and was very religious.  She and Mama became good friends - each helping each other when trouble came.  I remember Jean had typhoid fever one summer, and both Mama and Papa helped nurse her.  To the east were the Cosseys⁴.  They had three kids, Kenneth, Bryce, and Mary Kathryn.  We didn't get to know them too well, but later, they moved by us when we made another move.

The fourth grade was a real nightmare.  My teacher was an old maid named Henry McMurry.  She only liked the children whose father was on the school board.  One time I recited the poem, "Excelsior," and she did give me a gold star - and that was it.  There was a happy memory in the fourth grade.  There was a boy, his name was Glen Rubendall.  He liked me, and he gave me a valentine.  The verse was: "My heart is as big as the ocean, and if I had the sand, I would ask you for your heart, and ask your father for your hand."

Things got worse in the fifth grade.  Another old maid - she looked like Dixy Lee Ray - grey hair, short and pudgy.  She had a rubber hose to whale the little boys with, and she used it often.  But it was here that I learned long division.  One day the principal came and got me out of the room.  He told me I could not go to Marlow schools, because there was a grade school close to where we lived.  It was called East Ward.  It was a one room school.  It seemed that the Cossey's son, Bryce, was in the fifth grade, and he was going to East Ward.  When they found out I was going to Marlow, they told the principal and that was why I couldn't go to Marlow schools.  So I went home and told Mama and Papa.  Papa went in to see the principal, and the principal told him that he could pay $149 a semester as tuition.  So I continued on with the fifth grade under Mattie Kincannon.  

I never had any trouble with my classes.  The sixth and seventh grades are all just a blur.  We had a big school ground, and we played games at recess.  Our favorite game was "pop the whip".  You put a bunch of kids holding hands together, and you made a short run and then started whipping each child.  The kid on the end got turned over and over.  We played baseball, and we had swings.

In 1924, Grandma Moore⁵ died.  Papa and Ivis⁶ went to her funeral in Lewisville [Texas] on the train.  Ivis was a senior in high school.  She was on the basketball team.  I believe she played guard.  The team was pretty good.  They would play different schools.  One year they won the championship, and Ivis was one of the reasons they did.  A businessman decided to take the team out to dinner.  The principal, a Mr. Gray⁷, was their coach, and for some reason, he didn't include Ivis in the dinner.  She was very hurt, and when he had the gall to ask her to help the team play an exhibition game, she just told him, "You didn't have the courtesy to tell me about the dinner.  I don't want to play on your team.”  

I realized early on that farm kids were discriminated against.  Of course, most of the town lived off the raw materials we produced, but that made no never mind.  One time Mabel⁸ was in a spell-off.  There were just two girls left.  The principal's wife was giving out the words.  Mabel missed a word, and when the other girl very slowly started spelling the word, the woman would shake her head "no" if the girl made the wrong selection, and when she made the right selection, the woman would nod her head "yes".  So, guess who won.  Marlow is such a tacky place.

Full page from the 1923 Tepee yearbook at Ancestry.com with the 1922-23 Marlow High School girls basketball team.  You can see their record was 7-2.

NOTES

1.  Papa is Jewel's father, Tandy Clayton "Clayton" Moore, 1878-1964.

2.  Mama is Jewel's mother, Nancy "Nannie" Flora Jones Moore, 1882-1969.

3.  Vella Frazee was only 19 and probably starting her teaching career when she taught Jewel in the third grade in 1922.  It appears she left Marlow to attend Northwestern State College in Alva, where she apparently graduated with a B.S. in 1925, and became superintendent of a consolidated school in Watonga, Oklahoma.  She went on to teach mathematics at various high schools in the state, earn a master's degree at University of Oklahoma, and was an assistant professor of education and supervisor of mathematics at Northeastern State College in Oklahoma in 1951.

4.  On the 1930 United States Census, the Cossey family is listed just before the Moore family in enumeration district #26, Wall township, Stephens County, Oklahoma.

5.  Grandma Moore is Clayton's mother, Angeline Elizabeth “Lizzie” Peach Moore, 1859-1924.

6.  Ivis is Jewel's oldest surviving sister, Ivis Moore Mew, 1905-2004.

7.  Mr. Gray is the Reverend James Volley Gray, who earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Oklahoma in June 1918.  He became principal of Marlow High School in 1921, and went on to become a Baptist minister later.

8.  Mabel is Jewel's older sister, Beulah Mabel "Mabel" Moore, 1910-1932.

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