Where the Trail May Lead

Stevie Joe Payne

That is I sitting in front of Pawhuska High School except that I wasn't.  The photograph was made by Charlotte at Osage Hills and used in publicity for the my book "Pawhuska Kids' Stuff."  I later took the Osage Hills rock, trees, bushes, leaves and branches out of the photograph and secretly replaced them with the photograph of the wall from Pawhuska High School.  One more alteration to mention is that the letters on the real wall are not black and orange in color but simply aluminum.  I photographed the wall and colored my photograph to make the wall look as I wanted it, black and orange.  I tell people that I am a member of the class of 1962 and I am; but I did not graduate in 1962.  I graduated in 1967 as a member of the class of 1966 and from College-High School in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  I attend my Pawhuska class reunions whenever I can and I attend the all school reunions which are the best type to me.  Pawhuska is home and holds a special place in my heart and it always will.  But I don't want to sail under false colors and claim graduation with my class.  In 1960 I began my junior year of school and I was very unhappy, running with kids that I liked but we were not the best for each other.  We were not bad kids but we certainly needed guidance and, perhaps, a strong hand, maybe even across the back side.  But we didn't get that.  By January of 1961 I was not doing well and I was more depressed and in a downward spiral that could lead only to trouble.  I was asked about and even considered military school and then I went a step further.  I enlisted in the United States Navy, that Great Canoe Club of the Southwest Pacific Ocean, as we called it.  All my life I had thought I would join the Marine Corps.  My friend Charley Edgar had enlisted in the navy on a kiddie cruiser enlistment and that put me in touch with the recruiter, Chief Petty Officer Hall (Radarman).  Over the next month, I had several visits with him and he was gradually pulling me along by the nose because I knew him but I did not know other recruiters so CPO Hall charmed me into the navy.  Since I was only seventeen February 12, 1961, I had to have my mother's permission, which she gave.  A kiddie cruise went like this; a sailor enlisted before his 18th birthday and would be released before his majority, i.e. one day before he turned twenty-one yet given credit for four years.  In Edgar's case, he enlisted the day before his 18th birthday, so he served three years and received credit for four.  In my case, I enlisted about 28 days after my 17th birthday and would be released one day before my 21st birthday so I would serve just under four years and be credited for four years.  If you do the math you'll realize I was not smart but it was fine because I needed the extra discipline and training.  I was training in two disciplines at once; to be a sailor and to become a better person.  I was sworn in March 9, 1961, traveled to San Diego for three months of basic training, "Boot Camp" as it was called, then six months in Radar "A" school at Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, California.  In December 1961, after finishing school, I was assigned to the USS Point Defiance (LSD-31), my only ship, where I served until January 22, 1965.  I was a 3rd class radarman (E-4) at the time of my honorable discharge.  Connie and I married January 30 and we struggled for several months as I sold insurance to make a living.  I had a GED for high school via the navy and a one year college GED; none of these were accepted in the civilian world in 1965.  I returned to Pawhuska but settled in Bartlesville working what job I could find and then I returned to high school at College-High.  Everitt K. White provided me a job working in the outdoor advertising industry.  I went to school from 7:00 AM untill noon, then worked for Mr. White until day's end, whatever it turned out to be, and did my home work. I completed my last full credit with a correspondence course in 1966 and was awarded my diploma in June of 1967.  Between the navy, my wife, my mother, and some help from some really good people, Everitt K. White and Principal, John Haley, I turned my life around from the hurt and confused kid that I was in March, 1961, and became the young father who went to work for Phillips Petroleum Company in March, 1967.  I retired from Phillips thirty-three years later.  About the Point Defiance; I served in the Cuba Quarantine of the October 1962 Missile Crisis, went to Viet Nam in 1963 for the Nho Din Diem coup d'etat, and served with the bathyscaph Trieste in the recovery mission for the lost submarine USS Thresher (SSN-593) in 1963.  I served in two missions to WESTPAC and a mission to Christmas Island for nuclear waste recovery.  I owe a word of thanks to my friend Kenny Carman who was the first to tell me how to begin the process of returning to high school at age twenty-one.  I graduated from College-High but my heart belongs to Pawhuska High School, Class of 1962.

The USS Point Defiance (LSD-31)

In Days of Auld Lang Syne

Jackie Sue Ferrier Clouse, Gary Weyl, Renee Coday Weyl, Pawhuska High School alumni, class of 1961

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?  These are some of the school mates who were ahead of me in school, but not too far ahead.  In a school like Pawhuska High School was in the 1950's we had a unique experience, when compared to today.  There was the one great building, Pawhuska High School, and classes from the 7th grade through seniors shared the building.  That meant that we lowly 7th graders saw seniors and juniors on a regular basis, almost daily, and they were near adults while we were yet children, teens by then, but still being formed.  We were works in progress though some might have said we were works in regress.  We were confused sometimes, no doubt.  When my class entered the old building in 1957, we found a great senior class to be in awe of, to look up to, to admire, and to be like; wonderful role models for us.  I can not help but wonder how much they influenced my class.  I know this; they influenced us in mostly positive ways, seldom in negative ways.  Yes, they had some mischief about them, but not much.  Some is to be expected of those in high school.  Two I remember were Tom Culver and Marilyn Moyer Culver, husband and wife while still in school.  They were in many things in school together and had one of those storied, long marriages until Tom's death a few years ago.  Several times I spoke to Marilyn, who did not remember me;  that was fine as seniors don't know 7th graders, let alone remember them.  I can not recall any 7th graders I knew when I was a junior.  This is really about reunions and particularly the all-school type.  My class is small now and not all of them will attend a reunion.  As a student, I knew almost everyone in my class, many in the classes above me and few in classes below me.  When there is an all-school reunion, I get to see so many of those seniors I admired so much and most of them will talk to me, not as a 7th grader but as a fellow Pawhuskan now, someone who, like they, has had life experiences that made all of us older.  I knew all three of the kids in the photograph, Jackie Sue Ferrier (left), Gary Weyl, and his wife, Renee Coday Weyl, another long marriage.  They were upper class students and we had little in common, perhaps just a greeting relationship.  I know them better now and we have pleasant conversations when me meet, usually at a reunion, sometimes something else. That's wonderful because it enriches my experiences, helps me to grow and to learn and expands my universe.  I've found that the further we are away from high school, the greater our universe becomes as we no longer limit ourselves to just our class mates and our few best friends.  We embrace the classes above and below us and find out how much we missed by limiting ourselves to a few friends.  Perhaps the universe is too great an experience for us in those years twixt twelve and twenty.  I am just grateful that so many more have embraced me and allowed me to embrace them as new friends.  Should auld acquaintance be forgot?  Not a bit of it; as Jimmy Rector often says, "Friends are forever."

New Pawhuskan

Tabbitha

I frankly did not know which blog I should write in to cover Tabbitha.  She is my niece, fourteen months old in this photograph, a copyrighted one I borrowed from a set I made for her second Christmas.  I think it matters little which blog but she is a Pawhuskan so I settled on Pawhuska Trails.  My brother Charles married later than most do and became a father even later.  I became a father at age twenty-three, Charles became a father at age forty-five.  He is a first time father at the age most of my classmates became grandparents.  When I have been out with Charles and Tabbitha and people have observed them together, I wonder how people see them.  He seems too old to be her father and maybe they think he is her grandfather but then, what do they think I am?  I am an uncle, which I emphasize because even friends forget and comment about my being a grandfather, which I am not.  My son died childless in 2003, my only son, my only child, so I won't be a grandfather.  I keep genealogy records for my family Payne, which I began in search of my own origins.  A year ago I used to say that I went back only one generation, which was my mother and father.  Then through the tools of research and luck, I learned the identity of my grandparents and great grandparents and the rest was easy.  Now I can trace my ancestry to long ago in Scotland, to long ago in Croatia, and to long ago in Poland.  My great grandparents on my mother's side, Sam and Lena Harris, were Jews who immigrated from Poland.  When you combine my Scottish, English, French, Polish, Croatia and Cherokee, I am quite a mutt.  It doesn't change who or what I am but it's nice to know.  I no longer have to abstain from conversations when someone trots out their pedigree for mine is now substantial.  Tabbitha gets some of that too, Cherokee, English, Polish and Jew, from my mother's side.  She gets Cherokee from her father's side.  It's nice to talk about our heritage but all said and done, it is my heritage; not what I am today.  I am an American, an Oklahoman and a Pawhusakan.  I have lived other places but my heart belongs to Pawhuska.  Pawhuska has changed and is changing but it has a future and the future in part belongs to Tabbitha, a new Pawhuskan, and those who share new beginnings with her.  What will they bring to it?  I can not know but I remain filled with wonder, curiosity and hope for the future of Pawhuska.  I am glad that my family continues with it, in Tabbitha.

Flanagan Hill on Prudom Street

Flanagan Hill on Prudom Street,
originally uploaded by redboots@sbcglobal.net.

This is probably the steepest hill in Pawhuska. It is short, only 325 feet in length, but it is very sudden, very steep and I know that from my many failures with a bicycle as I tried to prove how tough I was by riding to the top without stopping and pushing the bicycle. I made it only one time when I had an English racer bicycle and I pedaled fast, geared low and pumped like crazy. I was so proud to have reached the top without dismounting and I wish I had had a friend with me to prove that I had done it. Once was enough and I was only too happy to dismount and push the bicycle from then on. During snowy days in winter, Pawhuska police closed the hill and block from Tenth Street to Ninth Street and we sledded down it, only to face the difficult walk to the top again for one more fast ride to the bottom. It was great fun with great friends.

The Gathering Steps

The Gathering Steps, Pawhuska High School

In its greatest days, these steps were the place where classes joined and crammed together for a class photograph that would appear the following spring in the Wah-Sha-She, the name given our school annual and the school newspaper.  We thought little about it when the photograph was being snapped but relished its appearance at the year's end when we saw ourselves and our friends together for the first time.  There were the class photographs such as our 1957 7-1, 7-2 and 7-3 groups, and then there were identifiable birds of a feather that flocked together, such as band, basketball, football, and all of the different opportunities that were open to us.  Seventh and Eighth grades had the numbered divisions of 1 for choir, 2 for band, and 3 for anything else that didn't fit the first two classifications.  I don't know if that continues today.Once we were freshmen, we had broader choices and if we were in band, it was the entire band, made up of all classes freshmen and above. 

Over the years, I have taken time to look at my collection of Wah-She-She books and those annoying moments of posing together then now take on new light and new life.  Those moments were silly and we acted silly, performing immaturely to prove how mature we were.  If we had behaved better, the photographs might be better.  But we were kids and behaved as kids and perhaps that is some of the greater charm today; that the photographs captured some of that giddy, laughing, teasing charm.  There would be time for maturity later.  It would come in the forms of the death of a president, a war that could not be won and would cost so many lives; maturity would mean marriages, births, divorces and even deaths. 

So those days, we were supposed to be just what we were.  I look at the photographs and I see gaps where a boy stands in the photograph.  The inimitable Henry Jones, a Pawhuska original, looks back at me and I laugh at him, just as I did at the flesh and blood Henry Jones.  I see him, yet I know he is gone, preserved only in photographs and in our memories.  The photograph is black and white, now taking on a bit of a yellow tone.  The picture in my memory is full color, with the blue tones of Levi jeans that most boys wore, the black and white plaid shirts, abundant then, the Lavender Blue of Doug Givens old chevrolet, once he finally finished his masterpiece.  I know that memory is not perfect and that in some way, those pictures I carry are just as faded as are those on the pages I see.  But what has faded seems to be the hard edges, the grudges we kept, the comparison to prove who was faster, tougher, better.  I remember only the laughter now, the smiles and a few stupid human tricks that we did, such as putting Bobby Lovelace's little blue car between two parking meters near the Dairy Queen. 

Left to our own devices, instead of being forced to pose together for school photographs, some of the kids would never have appeared in photographs.  Some were camera shy, some were poor and could not afford a camera and film.  Some were just too busy.  We did not have one person who carried a camera and constantly snapped photographs.  Some took photographs, which were dutifully left in the hands of their mother when they went off to college, military service, their own lives. Once in a while, some of these surface.  I found the simplest of all photographs of Jess Tomey and me.  We were in Long Beach, California and in an amusement park, we stepped into one of the old photo booths and for about $.50, we took four or five photographs. A quick glance at it and Jess comes to life again, as he is laughing in it.  Triggered by that photograph, taken in about 1963, I have a flood of memories, mostly in Pawhuska though some are of California.  We went to so many bad movies at the Friday night previews, mostly horror movies, and they were horrible indeed.  We didn't care.  We weren't movie critics; we were kids, and having the time of our lives in our way. 

I'm grateful for the gathering steps and now for the photographs we were forced to make, for they were often the only record of someone we knew, weren't best friends with, but knew, and now, the great gap of time since then makes them friends.  We have all lost so many friends and any connection to them keeps them alive, so now we clutch at stories to help us remember.  The boy that I barely knew who was standing five places away from me in the photograph has been moved closer to me by the gaps created.  He and I are now best friends as we tell stories about the boys we knew who stood between us in the photograph. 

One of my friends said, and I do not remember which friend, "There will be another gathering, later, in a better place, and we shall all get together then, to remember and tell stories as we once did.  Only this time, it will last an eternity."  Perhaps it too will be on The Gathering Steps.

First Motor Scooter

This photograph is of an Allstate Jetsweep, a motor scooter sold by Sears and Roebuck Company

This model is a 1958 version and that was my first motor scooter. The Cushman Corporation of Lincoln, Nebraska built the motor scooter and marketed it through their dealer network as the Pacemaker. This photograh is used with permission, courtesy of Howard33, http://www.flickr.com/photos/howard33/3412246477/

The model that I had was the Allstate Jetsweep, sold by Sears and Roebuck company. For a generation that gets information via television and the Internet, it may be difficult to grasp the idea of a large catalog that was mailed to your home each and every year and either took the place of a large store or complemented it with additional information. The stores from which we received catalogs were Sears and Roebuck (Sears), Montgomery Ward, and Speigel. There were others that were seasonal, or sold fruits, nuts, and gift baskets, but Sears and Montgomery Ward were the most interesting to a boy of twelve or so. The Sears' and Ward's catalogs had motor scooters in their pages. Sears always had one model of everything labeled as "Our Best," which meant it was the most expensive. I was desperately searching for the motor scooter I wanted combined with what I thought my mother would let me get. There was a Cushman dealer in Bartlesville and I wanted a Cushman Eagle but certain realities led to my getting the Jetsweep. My mother drove my friend Terry Rainwater and me (we always had to have a friend along) to Tulsa, to the newly opened Sears' store on 21st Street and Yale, and I picked out the Jetsweep. It was delivered on Wednesday of the following week and the wait from that Saturday until Wednesday was one of the longest in my life, not counting the four years to the end of my navy service.

When Wednesday arrived, a large group of boys had gathered to see the new motor scooter and we waited as it was unloaded from the Sears delivery truck. There was a seemingly endless processing of papers as my mother read and signed and exchanged conversation with the senior delivery man, and then we started it and I took my first ride on it. I did not yet have a driver's license. I had turned fourteen in February and this was in April so I soon had a license and I was off on my rides. There was no passenger seat; just the back half of the cushion so a passenger and I shared that. I had the flat board to rest my feet on; the passenger had to fend for himself. The brake lever and headlight dimmer switch were the only controls on the floor as the throttle was a twist grip on the right handlebar. It was quite easy to ride. The Pacemaker and Jetsweep models did not require gear shifting as there was a single speed only. There was a simple centrifigal clutch with a throw out bearing that allowed the scooter to idle; as you increased engine speed the bearing moved out and engaged the clutch and the scooter moved under its own power. The problem was that, with its 4.8 brake horse power (BHP) engine and single speed transmission, the scooter was underpowered, so that it could climb only the hill at 18th Street in hilly Pawhuska, Oklahoma; or I could drive down Main Street, across town and take Tinker past the cemetery and over the gentle rises of the numbered streets from 15th to 18th. It was embarrassing sometimes to start up a hill, like Ki-He-Kah, with a flurry of noise and smoke, and end up pushing the scooter to the top, with the engine running and struggling to help while friends went by hanging out of their parents' car shouting "Get a horse!" I wanted to sometimes. Still, I was filled with pride that I had a scooter of any kind and this model had unique beauty. I suspect few of them survive and maybe that is fair. The scooter had many problems and eventually my mother helped me replace this with a 1959 Cushman Eagle with the 8 horsepower engine and two speed transmission. Everything was going well with that until I was hit by a car and nearly killed; but that's another story.

I Used to Live Here...

Prudom Avenue and 6th Street

I used to live here, not in the church van or the parking lot, of course, but once upon a time, long, long ago....Hold on! It wasn't that long ago. I'm only sixty-five myself. But once, a great, white house stood where this parking lot is today. The lot appears so much smaller with the old house gone, yet I know it must be the same size. The house occupied only half though, for there was an empty lot just south, between the house and the alley.

The east facing front of the house sat back about twenty-five feet to the west from the curb. That front was what we called the front door, but there really was no back door. We called one door the back door but it was actually on the north side (i.e. a side door) of the house, opening onto 6th Street, the trail that led downtown if I went west, and I heard "Go west young man." I did not know which way west was but four years in the navy and thirty years in the oil industry eventually taught me to think in terms of directions. But I knew which way to turn when I exited the side door and I could find my way to the end of the block.

There was a porch in front and two wooden steps that led up to it and about five adult strides led you to the door. There were often lawn chairs on the porch for two or three people to sit, but sometimes it was empty of chairs. Sometimes, we might just sit on the porch by the steps. The porch was made of wooden planks, probably one by four inches, that ran north and south and the porch and the columns on each end were painted gray; there were two columns on each side of the steps. The front room, as we called it, was ample but not overly large. The air conditioner, once we got our first one, was suspended from a window on the south side and the television antenna lead came in there, forever condemning the television to a place in the southwest corner of the room. There was always a couch against the east wall and a large chair, which my grandmother claimed, against the northwest half wall. I say half wall because the wall extended only a few feet since there was a large doorway that led into the next room which was the dining room. There were only the living and dining rooms, the kitchen, and a small back porch downstairs. It was a two story house with bed rooms and bathroom upstairs. Many people assumed it was a large house from its outward appearance but the house was divided in two and the west half was a single story, second apartment with a living room, bath, kitchen and two bedrooms. It was always rented to another family. Had it been the original house without the division, it would have been large. We moved there in about 1950 and I lived there with my mother and grandmother until March 9, 1961 when I enlisted in the United States Navy. My grandmother, Louisa Victoria Lessert, was outgoing and generous and the house was often filled with Revard and Hardy family members; for dinners, card games, drop by visits and for a drink. People rarely called to say that they were coming and just stopped by. My friends were often there to share games and play with toys. We raided the icebox and cupboards for anything to snack on and ice cold pop was kept in quantity. When I stop for a few minutes and let my mind wonder, I don't see a parking lot. I see a house filled with people, sharing wild stories and laughter, kids I knew, often Bobby Hughes and Donna Poulton, and my mother and grandmother. I see my dogs, George, Mitzi and Patsy, all terriers that were my best friends. I see the old Cocker Spaniel, Skippy who chose to live with us but would only come inside for visits, and one dog, Patrick, who followed me home and stayed for years. There was a cat who blessed us with kittens and entertained the kids of my fourth grade class as we counted the days until their eyes would be open. Those who are new to Pawhuska, those who have forgotten; they will see a parking lot, but I will always see and remember the old white house where I grew up.