Bowlan.com

Genealogy - A listing of ancestors

Growing up Okie - My mom's history in Oklahoma

Fireworks Page - Pictures of our hobby

Comments - Send us your thoughts

Family History - A brief history of the Bowlans.

Bowlan Family Association - Do we want to form one?

Ferry Boats - Information about the Ferries of Puget Sound

Cherokee Links - Links to the history and culture

Professional Pages - Resume and computer links

Growing up Okie
Part Two

My parents got married when my mother was nineteen and my father was twenty-three. They were married in May of 1915. And I was born in April of 1916. It was on a Sunday Morning, Easter Sunday. And my mother has told a story about a little peach tree that was growing outside her door. She could tell how much I was growing by watching that peach tree.

I must have been a very, very, very bad baby. I cried all the time. My mother sat and held me all of the day while my dad was out plowing and when he came in for lunch, he held me while she cooked lunch.

My father was a farmer, but on the side he had a well drilling outfit. So when somebody needed a water well he and his partner went over and drilled it for them to make some extra money. His partner's name was Rowe Thomas. After my father died of flu in October of 1918 my mother sold the well drilling outfit to Row and I don't know what happened to the farm. Perhaps she sold that to Rowe as well because later he lived there and he took down the old log cabin where I was born and built a nice modern house.

Before my father had died he and my mother had bought 60 acres of land up in another community. There was nothing on it, no buildings but before my father died his brother built a house on there, and lived there for a year or two. They had drilled a well up there and they got gyp water. That is the hardest water that you can imagine. You cannot make soap suds in it. It doesn't taste good, and that house was left there until I was out of high school.

In March of 1918 my little brother was born. His name was Raymond Edward and he only lived three days. But my mother always said that though she only had him three days, she never ceased to miss him. And when my father died in October of 1918 mother moved back home with her family.

In those days a woman did not live alone. That was just terrible. She took what little bit of money she had and went to Ada to school. It was called a 'Normal' school, later a teachers college. She went down on the train on Sunday afternoon, then BC took her in a horse and buggy over to Maud. She went to Ada to school and I stayed in Maud with my Aunt Annie, my father's sister. I always loved my Aunt Annie. And I said, "I want to be fat like Aunt Annie", and I have had a lifetime trying to keep from being that way. And I loved her husband, Uncle Jim. They had a restaurant and I guess that is where my love of hamburgers came from. I associate them with Aunt Annie and Uncle Jim.

Then my mother finished at the normal school. She went two years and that was sufficient. She taught at a school district called Moore, south of where we lived by a few miles. The district Aunt Mary lived in. Aunt Mary was my father's sister. So my mother and I stayed with Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack and mother taught that school.

In those days, not many people went to high school, especially if they lived in the country. There were no buses, no way to get there. A lot of times they would go back to school in the winter when the crops were layed by. There was nothing to do and those big kids would come back to school. Mother had some kids coming back to school that were seventeen or eighteen years old and this was a school that only went up to the eighth grade. The older kids would sometimes help with the classes for the younger ones.

In those days, it was allowable to whip kids. They would use a switch when they were disciplined. And these boys were much larger than my mother. These kids had run off the last two teachers that had been there. The teachers could not handle these kids. But my mother was able to do it. She was a little woman and one of her pupils said "she sure is little, but she sure can whip hard". She stayed and she was successful at it.

She was little blonde, with beautiful blonde curls. After that she married James E. Presley. You'll see that James E. go all through my life. They were married in, I think it was Shawnee where we went that day. They took me with them when they got married. I always spoke of that as, even though I was only five, as our wedding day. He was very good to me over the years, I felt about him just like he had been my father.

Back - Back to Okies - Next

Updated by bill bowlan on 09/10/2001