Jewel Moore Gresham's Junior High Years in Oklahoma, 1926-1929

Sometime before she died in 1994, my mother-in-law, Jewel Moore Gresham, either wrote down or dictated some memories.  This is the fourth part of those memories, after the Moore family made another move in the Marlow area, from about 1926 until Jewel's graduation from junior high school in May 1929. 

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

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

Part three (near Marlow, Oklahoma, 1922-1926) is here:  https://abt-unk.blogspot.com/2021/09/jewel-moore-greshams-early-years-in_01612288476.html

Jewel's May 1929 diploma from Marlow Junior High School.  Note that her first name is spelled with two Ls, although she always used only one L on all other documents.

 

We made another move, and somehow, I can't remember the exact year.  But it was 1927 or 1928, or maybe 1926.  We traded at a grocery store run by Mr. Talley².  He liked Papa¹.  Mr. Talley's wife³  had a brother⁴ who owned some land, 120 acres, north of Marlow (the place you remember).⁵  The family living there wanted to move, because their boys had all left home, and they couldn't handle that much land.  So he offered the place to Papa.  We must have had some money, because they bought a new bed and a rug for one of the rooms.  Mama⁶ even made some curtains.  This room was our "parlor". 

 

Ad for an oil cook stove similar to the one described by Jewel, from the January 29, 1921, Country Gentleman magazine, via https://www.flickr.com/photos/dok1/17104875289/

We left the old wood stove behind, and bought an oil cook stove.  It had four burners.  Two heated the oven, and two were for top heating.  It had a glass jug at one end.  You filled the jug from a 50-gallon barrel.  Then you screwed a funny top that had a valve on it.  Then you put it in a bracket, and fastened it down, and then you inverted it into a oil pan.  As the stove burned the oil, that valve in the jug would "glug - glug" and the oil would run out of the jug into the pan, and down a pipe to the burners.  If you turned the wick too high, the burner would smoke like crazy.  It wasn't the greatest invention, but it was better that the old wood stove.  We used this stove many years.  Years later, Audie⁷ and I had a broom corn crop, and we made about $200 on it.  We took $80 and bought a new stove.  It was a beauty.  It was ivory enamel.  It had five big burners.  Three for top cooking, and two for the stationary oven.  It even had a temperature gauge on the oven.  They had improved the product quite a bit.  

After we moved there, Papa planted 60 acres of cotton.  It was a good year "weather wise," and since everyone else in the county had planted cotton, we had a bumper yield -- and guess what!  Cotton prices fell to 5 cents a pound.  That was about 1928, maybe 1926, and it was the beginning of the depression for the farmers.  We tightened our belts, and life went on almost as usual.  It took another year for the stock market to fall, and then things really got bad.  

Separating the milk [cropped] / Dennis Jarvis / CC BY-SA 2.0

 

We would supplement farming income with cream and egg sales.  Papa bought a cream separator.  After milking, I think we had three jersey cows, we would strain the milk through a cloth into a big bowl at the top.  This device had a crank, and two spigots along with some inner thing the milk passed through in order to separate the cream from the milk.  First you had to turn the crank until you got it so fast - it would have a hum when it was fast enough.  Then you would turn a spigot, and the milk would flow down through this machine.  The cream came out one spigot, and the milk came out the other.  We had no refrigeration, so this process was fine in the winter and cool weather.  But in the summer, we would have to take the cream off every few days to the creamery.  With the sale of cream and eggs, we would have some cash.  In the winter time, the oil in the separator would get stiff.  When Papa renewed the fire in the wood heating stove, he would put some of the hot ashes in a metal pan, and set it on top of the metal housing that held the oil.  By the time he brought the milk in, the oil would be warm enough to let the crank turn easily.

We had a big garden, and we planted lots of tomatoes, cantaloupes and watermelons.  Papa would peddle them up and down the residential streets, and the little old ladies would come out and buy fresh things.  He would get so mad at some of them, because "they stick their thumbnails in the tomatoes."

I don't really know how the labors of the farmers ended up cold cash in the pockets of people in Chicago.  Every year just before cotton harvest, the government would put out a report on the cotton crop - just like they do here in Washington on the apple crop.  If the report said there was a big crop, the price would start dropping, and continued to drop all during the harvest.  After the harvest, the price would stabilize and then start rising.  By spring, when the farmers had none to sell, the price would go way up.  Then the farmers organized a co-op.  If they didn't need to sell their bales of cotton to pay their bills, they would store at the co-op.  Then, in the spring, they had a little money to buy more seed and plant more cotton.  

Sometime in 1926, Grandma Moore's⁸ estate was settled.  Papa got $1,000.  Just about that time, he got word that Aunt Sue⁹, who was Grandpa Moore's¹⁰ sister, had died over at Lawton.  I remember Papa on the phone telling ever who was calling that we would be there.  He took $485 of his money, and bought a 1926 Model A Ford car.¹¹  We went to the funeral.

Ford Model T, 1926 [cropped] / 

National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution / CC BY-NC 2.0

When I was in the eighth grade, we were moved into a new junior high.  It was a nice building.  The classrooms were on the outside perimeter.  The center was a big auditorium with a stage and everything -- even had a balcony.  At one end of the building was a large study hall and library, plus the bathrooms.  The principal's office was in a room at the entrance.  We even had an art teacher.  I guess in the eighth grade, I started having trouble with math.  I remember one problem of how much water could run through a pipe if it was going so many feet a minute.  Also, I was beginning to play and have fun.  One day, my girlfriend and I were tossing paper airplanes across the aisle in history class. The teacher sent us to the principal's office.  I don't remember what happened.  Our principal's name was Mr. Williams.  When I was in the ninth grade, Mr. Williams chose me to be his office girl.  I had to answer the phone, and record all the attendance records.  The only subject I had trouble with was algebra.  I graduated in 1929.

Above and below - From a Marlow Junior High School Class of 1929 program.  Note her first name is spelled with two Ls, although she always used only one on all other documents.

NOTES

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

2.  Charles Anderson (C. A.) Talley is listed as the owner of a grocery store in Marlow on the 1920 and 1930 censuses.

3.  I believe this is Charles Talley's first wife, Nora Long Talley.

4.  I believe the brother referenced is Thomas Albert Long, whose daughter, Ola Long Smith, apparently inherited the land.

5.  Clayton and his family lived on this property at least until his death in 1964.  On the 1950 Census, it is referenced as being in the NW 1/4 (northwest quarter) of Section 5, Township 2N, Range 7W, and "proceeding south on S Road" with the entry just before having the directive "proceeding east on county line to S."  The county line (with Grady County, to the north of Stephens County) is at Stephens County Road 1610 (also called N Countyline Road), and I believe the "S Road" is today's N2820 (or CS 2820).  I think the land Clayton rented and farmed was on the southeast side of this intersection.  A known neighbor, M. C. Hallmark, is described as living in the NE 1/4, Section 6, Township 2N, Range 7W, off this same road 6 - which would be to the west, across the S Road.  A 1941 Oklahoma state highway map (used to map the enumeration districts for the 1950 Census) shows one house on the east side of this road, in the northwest quarter of Section 5.

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

7.  Audie is Jewel's older sister, Audie Ruth Moore Cook, 1911-1969.

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

9 and 10.  Aunt Sue was Clayton's aunt, Susan Nancy Moore Dinkins Robertson, 1867-1926, the younger half-sister of his father, Thomas Jefferson Moore, 1852-1904, who was Grandpa Moore to Jewel.

11.  Jewel probably meant that her father purchased a 1926 Ford Model T.  The Model A was not introduced until December 2, 1927.

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