Friday, November 16, 2007 | by nathan

Centennial, Part 3

Today, November 16, 2007, marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the state of Oklahoma. To that end, I’m writing a series of short essays about my home state, the place I love. Also, today, notice that Oklahoma is the featured article on the Wikipedia home page. I’m at *least* a fifth-generation Oklahoman, but probably more. This essay is snippets of a bit of where my family’s history has intersected the larger history of my state.

Part 3: Oklahoma Passage

I.

My great-great-great grandmother lived near Eufaula, Oklahoma, and in 1889, when the outlaw Belle Starr (pictured) was killed, none of the women in her town would prepare Belle’s body for burial. Belle had, after all, been tried and convicted of horse theft. She had been married three or four times (accounts differ), and her murder was unsolved. The women in Eufaula didn’t want anything to do with preparing her body to be buried. My great-great-great grandmother was the only one who would.

II.

We *think* I’m one-eighth Choctaw. I know this because my dad’s father was half Choctaw, and he looked like it in person, though not so much in this picture, which is one of only a very few I have of him. That photo is the only one I have of him and my grandma, Clara, whom I never met. My dad’s dad, Joe Nathan, is who I am named after. He died in 1986, at the age of 79. He was born in Kiowa, one year before Oklahoma became a state.

Dad wanted us to know more about what it meant, this heritage, where we came from, and so when we were kids we went to the Historical Society to find our ancestors on the tribal rolls. Turns out they’d never bothered to sign up, so there’s no official record of our tribal heritage.

III.

My great-grandfather, Dale George, is my other namesake. I’m not sure how old he and my great-grandmother, Leona, are in this photo, but I suspect that it was taken some time not long after I was born. Dale, who we all called Pa, died in 1990; Leona, who we called Momo, died in 2001. I never knew them well. Pa was the first person I ever saw chewing tobacco. When he and Momo would arrive at my grandmother’s house, Momo would get him a small butter dish, one of those little Parkay or Country Crock things but that only held maybe two cups of butter. She’s line it carefully with a napkin and Pa would spit into that. Because of that, I have never in my life tried chewing tobacco, and I never will, because every time I looked in that cup I felt like I was going to throw up.

Dale was the county clerk for Okmulgee County in the 1950’s and 1960’s, if memory serves. After Pa died Momo was very sad, and as she grew older she relied entirely on my grandmother and great-aunt to care for her. She always had Boston Terriers, and to this day I don’t really like those dogs because hers were always horribly misbehaved.

An interesting note: Brian and I have the same middle name: Dale.

IV.

This is a late 1970’s photo of the house in Weatherford, Oklahoma, where I first called home. My bedroom was the last window on the right in this picture. Behind the house you can see my dad’s garden, which took up the entire back 1/3 of the lot, which was an acre. Mom and dad built that house when they decided to start a family. At the time, and for my entire childhood, it was just outside the city limits. There was a field behind it where my dad used to pull me around in a red Radio Flyer. Later, that field became a prospecting site during the Oil Boom, and later home to some very nice thoroughbred racehorses.

It was only a mile’s walk to Dead Woman’s Crossing, and after my father had a heart attack when I was 3 days old, his doctor ordered him to walk every day. He’d put me on his shoulders and we’d walk down there, and then back around. Not far to the north of the house was the University’s observatory, featuring one of the nicer telescopes in Oklahoma. Dad was always going along with students when they went, and I always got to go along, too.

When I was writing about this house, I googled "Dead Woman’s Crossing" and came up with the link above. I’d always heard that the bridge there was haunted, but had never known the story. Now, I think I may need to go down there at midnight, just to see what I can see. A little bit of history quite literally in my own backyard that whole time I was growing up, and I never knew. Imagine!

Okay, I’m officially turning this into a participatory post: in my comments, or on your own site, all you Okies leave me cool little notes about Oklahoma history, including but not limited to places where your own or your family’s history touches the larger history of the state.

Non-Okies (Nokies), don’t worry, I didn’t forgetcha. In my comments, either tell me some way in which you or your family have been a part of the history of the state you are from, OR tell me something about your experiences in Oklahoma, your impressions of it, etc.

Centennial Project, Oklahoma