Memories

I would like to start this week by fixing a mistake on my last article. The wages for Bob were $40.00 per month while he was working for General Sweeney, not $4.00 per month. Forty is small enough!

Bob wrote that a highlight of that year was when Mr. Sweeney asked him to ride along on a wild-horse roundup along with other area ranchers and cowboys. “Real excitement for a Honyocker who had been raised on an Oklahoma farm,” he stated.

September ended his time working for Mr. Sweeney. He then returned to his homestead. But what about his homestead house?

Bob’s brother Edwin had cut, trimmed, and drug logs from Devil’s Canyon in the Long Pines where he piled them. They made trips there, loading the logs and hauling them to the site Bob had chosen for his 16’x24’ house. Some of the logs were long (ridge logs) that made for hard work on the twenty-mile round trip. More necessary material Bob bought and hauled from the Rickard Lumber Sawmill east of Ekalaka in the Pine Hills, a forty mile round trip.

Where and how did he live while the house was being built? Well, Edwin and Anita had a large tent which they moved to Bob’s homestead.

To construct a log house around 1910, a lot of primitive tools were used. Bob prepared the logs for hewing on two opposite sides with an axe, making two flat sides. Bob described his other tools besides the axe as a “saw, hammer, nails, and a wooden square made of wood.” They used a flat pan of water for a level and a strong cord weighted with a heavy nut from a bolt as a plumb line.

Carpenters nowadays enjoy their two and four foot level and their 18 and 20 volt tools. Again, life now and the way buildings are constructed is a far cry from those early days.

Bob continued writing about his house construction: “The roof was made of ‘Winnie Edge boards’ with other boards covering the cracks, and thick sod on top for the roof. We daubed the cracks with mud, and moved in on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1910. It seamed like a castle after living in a noisy, flapping tent that leaked and had a dirt floor.”

As I first read this, my thoughts turned to the several TV series on today where couples go look at houses to buy. The price range runs from $200,000 to $400,00, and sometimes even more. “It’s a little over our budget and we will also need to do some remodeling,” the couples often say. What different lifestyles.

As usual in Carter County, the drought continued during the year and there was no income for the homesteaders. Many of the homesteaders were bachelors like Bob, but a few families with children had settled nearby and they needed a school.

Then, as now, cooperation and “helping-one-another” was set in motion. All in the area took their teams and wagons to the Pine Hills south of Ekalaka and hauled logs to a selected site for a school house.

“Men with children furnished money to buy lumber, windows, and a low oblong wood-burning stove. All work was donated and the school was finished in January of 191,” Bob wrote. It was named Central School, because of its location to four other schools.

In 1920 a frame building replaced the little log school house. Around 1972 the school was moved to the Carter County Fairgrounds and later to Carter County Museum. To make sure all of this information was correct, I traveled to the museum grounds. It can be seen there. The sign reads, “Central School 1920-1947.” There is also a log house displayed there.

In Shifting Scenes Volume I, page 515, I found pictures of the Original Central School of 1911 with teacher Aneita Ackley and students. Below that picture was a group picture of Central School with students Morris Renshaw and Morine Renshaw. Morine Renshaw married Walter Anderson on June 17, 1937 in the home of Bob and Gracie Renshaw.

Please take my advice and go visit these two buildings sometime. The house is about the same size as the one Bob Renshaw built on his homestead near Rammy Creek.

On another note, Gwen Schultz at the museum confirmed with me that the sign for the school should read 1920-1963.

More next time.