Column/Opinion
Pauline Rodke
More of that 90-99 degree weather and it’s September already!
What can we expect next? We never know in Oklahoma!
We are sure glad we do not live in New Orleans!
The Paoli Pugs will be playing Graham-Dustin at 7:30 p.m. on the road this week. (We incorrectly had this listed as a home game in last week’s column.) The first home game will be September 10 at 7:30 p.m. against Bray-Doyle.
PAOLI HISTORY #75
Let’s go back to the 1800s again in Paoli. Mr. Maurice “Porter” Anderson interviewed Frank Noble in the 1930s. Mr. Noble was born near Bonham, Texas, in 1888 and in 1889 his family moved to Indian Territory and settled at Paoli, not far from Pauls Valley. The trip was made in a covered wagon and it was rainy and muddy all the way. Mr. Noble recalled that they had a great deal of trouble “making it” through the Texas black land mud, as the mud would collect on the wheels of the wagon so badly that the wheels had to be cleaned off so the small team could pull the wagon. The mud would soon collect again on the wheels so that the wheels had to be cleaned off again and again and again.
The Noble family farmed near Paoli for about four or five years, raising mostly corn, as cattlemen would buy all the corn they could raise and the cattlemen would come to their farm and get it.
Their farming tools were small one-horse plows the first year, but the second year they got a cultivator. Frank remembered he got to ride on the cultivator and drove the team while his father walked and guided the plows. The first house they lived in was a dugout.
The school was three miles away and Frank had to walk to and from school during the three months the school was open.
After farming at Paoli for three more years the family moved to a place thirty miles east of Shawnee and leased a large farm from a Creek woman named Lucinda Jones. They originally leased it for five years but they stayed on the place for seventeen years. The Noble family farmed on a large scale since they had three boys large enough to farm and they sub-leased part of the land.
Corn was the principal crop and in 1895 they raised 11,000 bushels of corn. But the price of corn that year dropped to 15 cents and 25 cents a bushel and often the farmers could not even sell it for that price. So they would take 10 cents a bushel if the buyer would take 100 bushels or more. Still they had corn left over.
A woman by the name of Alice Davis owned a store at a trading post nearby. Bill Cook and his gang of outlaws came by the Noble farm one day and wanted to feed their horses and get something to eat themselves, which they did, but one of the outlaws stood guard over the horses while the rest of them were in the house eating. The had their Winchesters strapped to their saddles. Frank and his brothers offered to help them unsaddle their horses then re-saddle them after they ate, but the gang would not let them help.
Cook’s gang sent word to a nearby store called Norberg, eight miles north of Okemah, that they were coming and would rob or “stick up” the store; but the owner thought nothing of it. So one day the gang appeared at the store and took all they wanted and then rode away.
The Noble family farmed the same land until 1908 when they moved to Osage County and continued farming there.
Some of the Noble family’s experiences were familiar to our family as well. We knew about what black mud can do because we had it on a small part of our farm west of Paoli. When it was muddy and we walked across it to get to our well, our feet would get three times bigger! That black mud just won’t stop clinging to your shoes.
The farmers on our farm had to put up some corn every year to have corn for the milk cows in the winter as well as some hay and grains.
The best year for broomcorn on our farm was in 1946 when a bale of broomcorn at Lindsay broom factories brought in $400 a bale! It never did that before or after, but I was lucky, it was the year I went to A&M and one bale paid almost all my expenses. I also had two part-time jobs in Stillwater. I even had enough money to take a bus home on holidays.
These historic stories remind me of some of my own history.
Yours for this week, VPR (V is for “Vera,” my favorite aunt! Another good memory.)