Hey Mom...What's to eat?

The question asked many times over. Hey mom, what's to eat? Growing up in a time before fast food was on every corner and heat and eat dinners for microwaves were something you seen on the Jetsons. There was a time when mom cooked meals for the family. It was a time when buying fresh vegetables from a local farmer or going out to the chicken yard  to pick out the evenings meat entree was something normal to hear about or do. My family was like that. Though we lived in town, my parents had roots back to farming life, where living off what you could grow or raise, was, what was on the menu. Since my dad's parents lived within 10 miles of us we would make Sunday trips to my grandparents farm over at Evergreen where we could get about anything we needed to make up a meal or two. It was always fresh, I guess that's why later on, some of the things I would eat never seemed as good as the stuff we would get off the farm. My grandparents farm was a living supermarket just waiting for someone to come along and pick from its vines. My grandpa Patrick was a generous, hard working and to the point person. The farm was his life when he wasn't managing a work crew on the railroad. I was always amazed at everything that he could grow and the animals that he would care for. Picking up your food off the farm wasn't like going to the grocery store to pick out items from the shelves. My grandpa always had the necessary picking items available for you when you showed up. It was always a choice of either a bucket, burlap or paper sack, with or without a potato fork or spade. He ( my grandpa) always told me, go get what you want, as long as you pick it. He would then proceed to grab up one of his lawn chairs and sit in the shade under a tree and watch as we would go after what we wanted. It was the same each time we would go into the garden to pick vegetables. My grandpa's garden had many things. Here is what I remember about what he grew. Pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupes, grapes, strawberries, pears, peaches, apples, plums, cherries and blackberries. He always grew enough fruit to have grandma bake him a pie or cobbler and to have jelly made out of what he had when he didn't sell it to people that were always coming by. He also grew tomatoes, potatoes, corn, green beans, cucumbers, squash, okra and peppers. It was like walking the dirt aisles of an outdoor vegetable and fruit store. On the other side of the farm is where the animals were. Cattle, pigs, turkeys, ducks, chickens and down over the hill was a pond that you could get fish from if you wanted to try for them. Milk, eggs, homemade butter, it was all there for you. We would fill the back of the ole 62' Chevy station wagon with fresh food to bring home. As my grandpa got older, the garden got smaller and the animals were slowly disappearing from the farm but he always would share what he had. As a kid, I got to know the meaning of fresh food and what it took to grow it and bring it in to the house to prepare. These days many of the younger generation think that fresh is something you pick off the vegetable shelf or out of the meat section at the local grocery store or stopping by the frozen food section to get dinners that are packaged up and ready to heat up is the thing to do. That all may be fine for them but they have never tasted anything like what my grandma Patrick could cook up from the fresh items she could use everyday from the farm. There have been many times that I have come in from picking vegetables in grandpas garden and he would would follow me into the house and ask grandma one thing. "Hey mom, what's to eat?

State Highway 11

Wolverine Drayage Barn

North of Wolco near  highway 11 sets a piece of history that has been seen by thousands of people and probably not known to those that drive by it that it's the last of it's kind in the area. Many would know it as the Shell barn but in it's beginning it was known as the Wolverine drayage barn. As an energy related property, it was registered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998 for it's significant contribution to the early days of oil exploration in Oklahoma.

Wolverine Drayage Barn
photo by: Steve Overacker

BACKGROUND

Built in 1923, the barn is the only extant intact building at the site of the Wolverine Oil Company's natural gasoline plant at Wolco. It is also the only remaining oil company-owned drayage facility in southeastern Osage County. Its existence illustrates the method used to transport heavy oil field equipment over the rugged terrain of Osage County during the 1910s and 1920s. At the turn of the century, before the oil boom, this was an agricultural region belonging to the Osage Nation. Cotton farming and cattle-raising were the significant subsistence activities. The town of Barnsdall was then known as Bigheart, and the towns of Avant and Wolco did not yet exist. Even after the oil boom, agriculture continued to be a major economic factor in this region. Energy development in Oklahoma began in the years around the turn of the century. The first significant petroleum discovery came in the Red Fork-Tulsa area in 1901. Following shortly thereafter was the discovery of oil in the Osage County area, in 1901-1904. In southeastern Osage County, in the Bigheart-Avant-Wolco area, development of the Avant Pool began in 1904-1905. Stretching from Avant northeastward to Ochelata, the Avant Pool was a southern extension of the Bartlesville Field. Associated pools nearby at Bigheart, Ramona, and Ochelata also contributed to the area's economic growth. As in other Oklahoma oil fields, a number of small and large companies participated in the exploration and development of the Avant-Bigheart-Ochelata fields. The "majors" Prairie Oil and Gas, the Texas Company, and Standard
Oil were all represented, as were such smaller companies as the Barnsdall Petroleum Company, of Bartlesville, and the Wolverine Oil Company, a Tulsa based subsidiary of Union Oil of California. Barnsdall was the primary developer of the field; because the company brought prosperity to Bigheart, the town renamed itself "Barnsdall" in 1921. The Wolverine Oil Company was also significant in the Avant Field; in fact, Wolverine concentrated most of its Oklahoma activities in this field. The towns of Bigheart-Barnsdall, Avant, and Wolco grew and prospered as a result of the economic boost given the region by the growth of the energy industry from 1904 through the 1920s. Barnsdall was the locus of several refinery/gasoline plant installations, including the processing facilities of Barnsdall Oil Company. Avant, founded in 1910, was a locus of oil field supply, construction, and drayage services. By 1914 there were more than five hundred
wells producing within a five- to six-mile radius of Avant. Wolverine Oil Company initiated its Osage County exploration and drilling efforts soon after the opening of the Avant Field. By 1910, the company had
established itself as one of the most important producers in the area, with operations extending across southeastern Osage County and into Washington County. By 1911, Wolverine had built a 100,000-barrel pumping station in the vicinity of the camp. At first the company sold its production to Prairie or to the Texas Company pipe lines, but later the oil was transported in the company's town lines to Wolverine for processing. The Wolverine casinghead gasoline plant was constructed over a period of years between 1919 and 1922.  In 1921, Wolverine Oil Company was Oklahoma's ninth largest producer of petroleum. The Wolverine oil camp began in 1910 and was expanded several times over the next decade. Bythe early 1920s, the community boasted a number of homes, as well as a company clubhouse and swimming pool; in 1922 the population numbered between three and four hundred. Those who lived in Wolverine worked at the company's gasoline plant, or as teamsters, or as "hands" on Wolverine leases. Ten private businesses operated across the road from the camp; these included a general store/post office (after 1922), a barber shop, and a service station; the community also had a school. Wolverine changed its name to Wolco in 1922 when it was given a U.S. Post Office. In 1922, Wolverine Oil Company, a subsidiary of Union Oil, was acguired by Royal Dutch Shell, a foreign-owned company chartered in the United States.Wolverine then changed its name to Wolverine Petroleum Corporation and became closely associated with Roxana Petroleum of Oklahoma, also a Shell subsidiary; both Wolverine and Roxana shared corporate headquarters in St. Louis. After 1938, when Shell absorbed Wolverine's assets, the Wolverine Oil Company Drayage
Barn became known simply as "the Shell barn."


TRANSPORTATION  SIGNIFICANCE

Oil field transportation was difficult at best in the early years of Oklahoma energy development; in Osage County, transportation was greatly impeded by the region's topography and vegetation. In the eastern part of the county, the land is characterized by steep limestone and sandstone escarpments with long western slopes and deep gullies cut by intermittent streams, and by scrub oak and thick underbrush. The land was too rough for use as anything other than pasture, although some farming was done in the lowland areas. Due to the sparsity of settlement, there were few roads in existence when the oil boom began. Even as late as 1911, there were no permanently improved roads. Through this rugged environment moved hundreds of tons of oil field equipment, dragged slowly behind straining teams of horses or mules. Such heavy equipment as boilers, engines, rig timbers, wood and steel staves for tankage, and refinery stills were hauled in mass quantity over the extremely rough terrain. The process entailed harnessing from two to six pairs of horses or mules (the number depending upon the weight of the equipment) to iron- or steel-wheeled wagons. These units were capable of transporting over hard pan, over stone outcrops, and often through axle-deep mud. The efficiency of this method of haulage, limited at best, was further lessened by the tendency of teamsters to overwork and overheat the teams; watering and stable facilities were generally inadequate. From the very beginning, teams, teamsters, and wagons were at a premium in the Avant Field. The problem was particularly acute during the years immediately prior to, during, and after World War I. While the smaller oil operators depended on
private drayage companies based in Avant, Barnsdall, and other towns, the larger companies, such as Standard Oil and Wolverine Petroleum Corporation, could afford to maintain their own drayage, with teams, teamsters, and barns at various locations. Thus in 1923, Wolverine built the stone barn at Wolco, in order to provide reliable, efficient haulage to support company operations. After World War I, mechanized transportation became more and more commonplace in the oil fields. America's factories turned out a profusion of heavy-duty trucks, tractors, and trailers. In the Osage area, the common vehicle which generally replaced the horse was the Jeffry "Quad" truck, a rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle. In the late 1920s or early
1930s, the Wolverine Corporation turned the stone barn into truck and parts storage. Immediately prior to World War II, Shell anticipated a shortage of trucks and parts, and the company purchased a number of brand-new vehicles and hoarded them in the old barn. When Shell sold the property in 1965, the barn
continued in use as storage for farm equipment.

Retro Cool

Life hasn't changed much for the eagerly awaited summertime in Oklahoma. It gets hot, humid, sticky and uncomfortable. We anxiously wait for this season every year but when it gets here we whine and gripe about how hot it is. Many turn on the A/C and hibernate till October. But among all those that do go inside to relieve themselves from the heat there are those that go outside and enjoy it, armed with every item they can get to keep cool. I thought to myself... what did we use when I was a kid to keep cool in the summertime? I came up with a few things that were used around the house to keep the heat at bay.

Before A/C was in everyone's home there was this monster machine called an evaporative air cooler. Most everyone called them water coolers. They had a water pump that would transfer water though a series of tubes strung around the inside of a metal box. The tubes would allow water to drip down on three large evaporative pads. It had a huge cylindrical fan that would pull the air from outside through the pads and into the house, thus cooling the inside of your home. Ours wasn't as fancy as the one shown below. The one we had was rusted on the bottom which made it leak some. The pads were worn with holes in them and the bearings would squeak on the fan cylinder. It was also missing a few directional louvers  which dad fabricated some wood slats into where the missing louvers were. If you sat in front of it you would get drops of water flying at you if the reservoir overfilled and the fan picked up the excess. They also made a nice moldy aroma flow through the house and sometimes would make your wallpaper peel from the dampness inside the house. but still, it was better than nothing.

Evaporative Cooler

My mom got tired of buying those plastic pools that were too small and never would last through the summer. She came up with the idea of using a galvanized water trough after seeing a small one being used to water the animals at my grandparents farm. Before summer began, she went to Fred Shoecastings lumber yard and had him order a water trough that was 8 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. Fred asked my mom what was she going to do with it since we didn't own any farm animals. She replied...it's the kids new swimming pool. It was a great idea to keep us kids cool, but over time we would have to change the water since it would tend to turn green.

Two ideas from Wham-O that were great on television, weren't so great in the yard. The Slip-n-Slide and the Water Wiggle. Each water toy had it's drawbacks. If the Slip-n-Slide wasn't placed on a level shock absorbing surface such as a lush thick green grassy lawn, your slide down the slip was more of a ride down a bumpy and bruising path of torture. The other watery device was the Water Wiggle. This fun filled contraption attached to the end of your garden hose which flung itself around getting all the happy kids a dousing of water. Unfortunately, water pressure was what made this toy flip and flail around and our house didn't have enough water pressure to make it go. As I remember, when the water was turned on,  the wiggle was more like a fish out of water, flipping around on the ground until it gave a dying quiver. I think we ended up throwing the water Wiggle in the pool hoping it would drown. Surely the green water would kill it.

Another way to keep cool was to have a cool drink or popsicle. Kool Aid was the choiced beverage for the kids. Soda was expensive and a rare treat to have  when we did get it. But Kool Aid was served up in  pint sized Mason jars with huge ice cubes. The ice cubes were just that too. They were cubes, taken from a metal ice tray which had a handle on the divider to pop the cubes out of the tray.

Plastic ice trays came along later but they would tend to crack and break after a while. When it got to the point where the family was using a lot of ice and the demand was larger than the supply, mom started cleaning out the gallon milk cartons and filling them with water and freezing them. When we needed some extra ice we would use an ice pick and jab the side of the carton to break up the ice inside. But all good things come to an end and milk started to get delivered in plastic jugs. Then there was this great invention called the ice maker. most every refrigerator/freezer has them now, but in the days of yore, our Kelvinator was just an "ice box" and our ice maker was called mom.  Another way we kept cool in the summer heat was to eat popsicles. Ours popsicles were home made in the freezer using Kool Aid as the flavor to make them with. They were made along the same way as the ice cubes but with a different mold.

This was a great idea for the do it yourself popsicle maker. I tried experimenting with the flavors and molds coming up with multi-flavored popsicles. Ingenious, I had thoughts of selling them for a quarter to the neighborhood kids. All these things were only a small part of trying to keep cool during those hot summer months. As we got older our parents finally gave into the idea of spending 60 cents for the three of us kids to go swimming at the city pool. But that is another story.  So what has really changed since I was a kid?  Instead of an evaporative cooler, we use air conditioning. Instead of a galvanized watering trough, we use an actual pool (without the green water). Instead of a water wiggle or Slip-n-Slide , the grandkids use the water sprinkler. Instead of metal ice trays we have an ice maker in the freezer. And instead of making our own popsicles there's this product called Flav-o-ice the grandkids like. Will the kids of today think they had it as hard as we did? Probably not. I never thought we had it that bad when I was a kid...I just didn't know of anything better at the time and we always had fun no matter what we did to stay cool.