I will go back a little bit here and say that Papa worked at various jobs.  He was with the telephone company for a while and then he went to work for an ice plant in the south side of town near the Rock Island depot.  I can't remember the name of it.  During this time period the Eskimo Pie was invented.  I saw them made at that plant.  He then went to work at the Arctic Ice Plant.  He sold ice at the dock & worked in the cold storage.  Because of this, during vacations, I also was employed at the Arctic Ice Company.  I believe it was in 1915.  I started as a watchman at one or two of their pump stations north of the ice plant.  Then, I started pulling ice on 12 Hr shifts from 6 PM to 6 AM.  I did that for 3 summers.  Also served some as an oiler and temperature taker for the extensive cold storage area.    This pulling ice job in the summer time was a real hard job handling 300# cakes of ice.  I had quite a few experiences with that.  After trying it for about 3 weeks I told the manager that I just couldn't take it, I just couldn't last.  He talked me out of it saying that was the worst part and just wait another week or so and I would become able to handle it, which I did. While at the ice plant, I witnessed a total eclipse of the sun.  

 

I believe Virgie spent that summer in Wyoming.  I think this was in 1915.  I got acquainted with Virgie sometime between 1912 and 1915.  She and I taught Sunday School in an old school house on the east side of north 5th St. south of Chestnut.  In 1915, I took violin lessons from Virgie and piano lessons from Orma, Virgie's sister.  I must have bought the violin in 1915.  I played the violin in Enid Highschool orchestra.  We also had a neighborhood group and  we would get together and play and sing.  Back in those days I joined the boy scouts and went on hikes and participated in other activities.

 

In October, 1918, the date of the deed, we moved to 710 East Chestnut, bought a house and I paid the $100 down payment on it.   I paid $25 for a mighty fine looking rug for the living room.  I remember that the real estate agent and my parents came out to the high school and got me out of class to sign the contract.  That was September 10, 1918.

 

Down on the farm, we of course did our own churning and made our own butter.  I remember I liked to clean out the churn and lick off the churn dasher and sure did enjoy the buttermilk.  Of course on the farm and later in town, we had old fashion out houses.  There were no sewers.  By the way, the farm in Logan County was called the Dye place because a family named Dye had lived there before we did.  We had a cave to keep our canned fruit, vegetables and meat.  One time there must have been a bad rain because the cave caved in and buried our canned stuff and it had to be dug out.  As far as I know we got the jars all out and cleaned them off and ate the food. I have mentioned that I had taken piano lessons from Orma, Virgie's sister and could play a few pieces fairly good.  I remember one piece I played was marching through Georgia.  About 1916, I got a job for one or two Saturdays.  I was playing for a movie theatre.  They had a sort of a calliope, although I don't think it was run by steam, that produced a loud volume and played with a key board and mounted on a truck.  A driver drove it around through the Enid business district, and some of the residence districts while I played.  That was advertising movies.

 

In the early days there weren't too many streets paved in Enid.  I think Main, Broadway, Randolph, Grand, Independence and Wabash from Independence to the High School.  Before I graduated from high school, the pavement was extended from town from what is now US 81 north 1 mile & south 3 miles.  Also what is now US 64 was paved 3 miles west of Enid & 6 miles east of Enid.

 

Now I spoke about buying a paper route, that best paper route I had on west Broadway, Randolph & James street.  I paid $35 and sold it for $45.  Back in the depression days we paid $4 a month rent for our brick house on north 6th street.  Sam Schrader, who worked for OG&E, lived in one of the nicest 2 story houses on east Broadway on a paved street at no cost just for taking care of it.

 

Some time during the early days I drove a wagon on Saturday hauling straw to the west side of Enid in a field south of Buchanan where they had sort of an early day tractor exhibition.  Tractors were a novelty in those days and they used straw to alleviate the muddy ground.  I remember that one of the main tractors they had was a skeleton tractor, just the bare essentials, and they called it the Army Mule.