Many people have early childhood memories, and some can recollect events that are seared into their memories. My memory is not so good, in fact I can recall few events prior to my entry into kindergarten at the tender age of 4 and two thirds. While most people began kindergarten at age 5, in Oklahoma if you turned five before the end of the year, you could begin kindergarten in the fall. And as my birthday is December 16th, I qualified. Richard Franklin Jones, who lived two doors down from us, was born a week later, so we both entered kindergarten at the same time.
I remember that we were a happy Wagnon family. There was Dad, Mama, Ruth, Clyde, Dorothy, and Dale, my nearest sibling in age. We lived in a small bungalow, that had a front porch running the whole width of the house, and two large elm trees on the front parking strip. As I write this, I remember another large elm tree in the middle of the front yard, that for some reason very early on, was taken down.
The driveway was to the left of the house, and as we did not own an automobile, the driveway cracks were filled with moss roses, of all colors, but mostly of rose colored flowers. The driveway went to the back of the house into a detached two car garage. At the back of the garage was the chicken coop, where we collected eggs and occasionally wrung the neck of a rooster for use as food on the table.
At the edge of the chicken coop and on a line with the back of the garage began the garden, which extended for another 30-40 feet to a fence marking the back of our lot. Along this fence we grew dewberries. Not really sure what a dewberry is, but it seemed like it was a poor man’s blackberry. In any event, Mama made the best berry cobbler ever eaten, and we always enjoyed picking the berries, because we knew how they would be used.
Getting back to the house, the front door opened into the living room and crossing the living room entered into the dinning room which was separated from the living room by an archway. There were wall extensions on either side of the archway wall extending into the arch by about 3 feet and both of the walls had a cut out for a what-not shelf,which were open, forming more of a ledge than a shelf. From the right side of the dining room, one entered the kitchen via a swinging door. On the left of the dinning room was another doorway into the hall going to the two bedrooms and the only bathroom in the house between the two bedrooms. Just before going into the hallway, and still in the dining room, was the gas stove, more like a whole house furnace, which was its function. It was a big stove, standing about 4 feet high and about 2 feet square.
To the left off the living room, and on the driveway side of the house, was a french door going into a room that was surely a parlor, or smoking room in the original design of the house. In our case it was the third bedroom. Now Dad and Mama slept in the middle bedroom and the boys slept in the back bedroom, the entrance to both of these bedrooms was off of the small hallway as was the entrance to the bathroom. Then, the two girls, Ruth and Dorothy, shared the front bedroom, and they had to go into the living room, dining room and hallway to get to the bathroom. Or they could go through the bedroom and then into the hallway. This probably was the route most taken, especially when no one was asleep.
The kitchen was large enough for a four chair table to sit in the middle. Where the table sat in the middle against the back wall, was a pull down ironing board, which looked like a small cabinet set in the wall, but when the door was opened the ironing board came down. A small room off the kitchen was formerly an icebox room, but we were fortunate to have a GE refrigerator, one with the coils on top. Other than the refrigerator, the room was mainly used for storage. The back door opened onto a screened porch, where the wringer washer was kept, along with the two tubs for rinsing, and when all were set up, there was only enough room to walk through to the screen door opening on the right side of the house going to the back yard with about 4 feet before the neighboring driveway.
In the back of that screened in porch were some honeysuckle vines that went from the ground to the roof of the house. Between the vines and the house was one of our favorite hiding places when we played hide-and-seek, or kick the can. I can still remember the fragrance on the flower and sucking on the end to get the nectar from the flowers.
Just to the right of the honeysuckle vines was an entrance to the crawl space under the house. It was just the right size for children to enter and could not quite stand up once in the crawl space. We built a fortress under the house by digging about 2 feet of dirt in a big circle, which made it our castle. We fought many a war underneath the house. Our guns in those days were rubber band guns, and could be built out of scrap wood and discarded automobile tire inner tubes. We improvised and made several guns that had six rubber bands attached. Only problem with those six-shooters was that one had to remember which sequence to fire, since all the bands were stretched to fit over the end of the barrel. The trigger on these guns was a spring loaded clothes pin, with one side nailed to the wood stock. Because of the firing sequencing required, not many of these guns were made, but they definitely were a hit in a heated battle.
Now, the age at which I remember all of the above is indeterminate, as the memories are there, but when they were formed is another question. The elm tree in the front yard was certainly removed before I was able to use the lawnmower, obviously a push mower given the year, 1936, when I went into kindergarten. At that tender age, I only “helped” Dorothy mow the lawn. On one of those occasions, I happened to put my hands on the wheels of the mower to help stop it from moving forward. Only problem was that my right hand slipped from the wheel into the still rapidly moving blades. Flesh met steel and the steel won. Mama saved the day by mounding up salt on the wound and then rushed past the three neighboring houses to the corner, where there was a taxi stand and then onto the doctors office.
Dr. Kernodle fixed me up, but not after my kicking up a storm fighting the application of the ether mask to put me to sleep. After the 54 stitches required to sew up the wound, Dr. Kernodle thought that I would have the index finger stiff and unusable. There were 36 external stitches that I could count, and the index finger was hanging by a thread of bone. That summer, I could not go swimming in the local park pool, but had to content myself with wading as it took about 2 months for the wound to fully heal. God was on my side, as I never lost the full function of my right hand, and in a way the accident was helpful, as I became adept at using my left hand. This is good for a normally right handed person, and later was able to shoot a basketball with my left hand with ease.
Memories of kindergarten are few, though my strongest memory is walking the 3 blocks to the school. There were 8 or 9 children who made that walk every morning, so we enjoyed the walk, even when it rained or snowed (which wasn’t very often). While it was three blocks long, only one street had to be crossed to get to our school. That was on our side of the street. On the other side of the street there was another side street that made a ‘T’ intersection with our street, still ours was an unusual street stretching for blocks without having to cross a street. The houses were numbered from 1300s through 1500s, and we lived at 1510 NW 15th Street. (In the 
photo, the left of the front porch is obscured by the shrubs.)
My best friend was Richard Franklin Jones, whose birthday was exactly one week after mine. He was a towhead like me and one time we were sitting on the front porch doing something that Dad thought was wrong and he snatched Richard’s hair and shook him, thinking it was me. A very natural mistake. Richard’s dad was a retired US Army officer, so he always had a nickel to buy some candy, but he was kind hearted and usually shared with his poorer neighbor. Across the street was a driveway that had about a 3 foot drop from the garage to the street. It was great for running our trikes down into the street. One day we were a bit
too noisy and the owner got very angry with us, and in a very loud voice called us bastards. (The lady probably thought Richard and I were brothers.) When Ruth came home from work that evening and Mama told her the story, she got furious. Grabbing some papers she marched over to the lady and showed her my birth certificate. It was only then that I realized that Ruth was my Mother and not my Sister. However, it was not until after her third marriage that my brother and I called her Mother, and that was done for political expediency, which I will explain later.
So, even though I had learned that Ruth was my Mother, we still called her Ruth. And we still still called my Grandmother Mama, and my grandfather Dad, just like the rest of the family. And our last name still was listed as Wagnon.
In the second grade, our teacher was a Miss Winans who lived across the street from us with a great climbing tree in her front yard. She was really a music teacher, but a job is a job and so she taught second grade. Apparently, she was not such a good teacher as she had to flunk Richard, and so our paths began to diverge. In fact, the following year, he and his family moved to Waggoner, OK. When I was nine, I visited him for two weeks in the summer, and did not see him again until I was a sophomore in college. It was a great two weeks as his father taught both of us to play chess, and we went swimming in 14-mile creek almost every day.
When I was a sophomore in college, I was fortunate to have one of our graduates working for a car-leasing company, and he asked me to be one of his drivers. I made several trips for him, but the most memorable was one where I was to take two cars to Phoenix, and then dispose of the old cars wherever I could sell them. On the way out from Pennsylvania to Arizona, I had stopped in Waggoner to see Richard. He asked me to stop again on my way back home, which at that point I was unsure as to my mode of transportation.
Well, after delivering the cars to the lessees, I sold one of the old cars to a dealer in Phoenix, and decided to sell the other one in Oklahoma. So, I drove the second car back to Waggoner to see Richard. He convinced me to find a job and stay longer, which is what I did. I got a job working for a oil drilling company, and sold the car to a local dealer.
The work for the company was to be on call whenever they needed someone in the field. I found a room rental place and settle in for what I thought would be the rest of the summer. The room that I rented had a phone number specifically for that room, and the first night I was called, I did not hear the phone ring. I must have been very tired as the phone was right next to the bed. Needless to say, I was fired the next day, for not showing up when needed.
So, my sojourn with Richard did not last very long. So back to Pennsylvania by bus. A friend of my Stepfather, found me a job working in the construction of the Savannah River Project in South Carolina. I arrived and was able to put in almost 2 months of work before having to return to college.
My memories of 3rd and 4th grades are non-existent, that is I may have some memories, but cannot place them in the proper grade. I do remember my 5th grade
teacher, but not her name, as she was the one who instilled in me a love for geography. Most of the kids did not like her, because she was a strict disciplinarian, but I guess that is what I needed as I really took to her teaching.
I do remember one incident, which was probably in the 3rd or 4th grade. I think it must have been in the 3rd grade as it involved Richard and I. For some reason we decided to skip school. Cannot, for the life of me, remember what we did all day, but I certainly remember the classmate coming home from school and asking me what I had done all day. She then informed me that the teacher had asked her to query Mama as to why I was not in school. No amount of begging would dissuade her from asking, so it came to light that I had skipped school that day. Mama sent me outside to the spirea bush to get a switch, this always made the punishment worse. This time it was really bad.
Usually she would hold my hand and use the switch in her other had, holding me so I could not get away. Well this time she really laid into me, and before long I could not stand it and broke away from her. She chased me into the bedroom and whacking me all the time until I finally got away by crawling under the double bed.
I feel quite sure that in today’s environment the marks on my legs would have put my grandmother into jail for child abuse. Be that as it may, I learned my lesson and never skipped school again. Corporal punishment does work.
Those days were a far cry from today. In the summer time, we would be out of the house, only coming in when lunch was ready and then disappearing, to emerge again for dinner time. As there were many children in our block, there was always someone to play with. There were the Petillo brothers, the younger one was Kenneth, who was my age and his older brother Don. They were two house away from us, and then the Davises, who lived next door the other direction. James was my age and the older brother was several years older. They later moved across the street. James Schultz lived 2 blocks down 15th Street, Don Haase lived over on 14th Streeet.
And of course, there was McKinley Park, which was between 14th and Park Place (actually should have been called 11th Street, as there was not an 11th Street). Many children used the park, so one was never alone, unless you wished to be. Next door, in the duplex lived two young girls. The older one was Dale’s age and the younger was about 3 years younger than I was. I remember that the older girl was a pitcher for the high school’s softball team.
As we spent many hours at the Park, I am going to devote a full chapter to that location
and what activities transpired there.