Since Dale and I still used Wagnon as our last name, it seems rational to explain how all this came about and why.
Mother had attended the Normal School in McAlester, OK and received her teaching certificate and began teaching in Shawnee, OK. At that time, married teachers were not allowed, so her being single was no problem. The problem arose when the Applebys moved into Shawnee as well. Grandfather Appleby was Wilson Otho Appleby, who had married Louisa Galbreath and they had a son named Russell Gilmore Appleby. Not sure how the Mother and Russell met or decided to get married, but they did marry, but in secret in 1929.
(still need to exhibit the marriage license and here).
Secrecy was required so that Mother could continue teaching. However as is the practice of married people, Mother became pregnant and had to resign when the pregnancy became obvious. Russell Dale was born on May 21, 1930 in Shawnee, OK. Now this is still in the beginning of the Depression and the infamous Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. Jobs were not very plentiful and several of the extended family had already headed for California. This migration is well documented in the
book “Grapes of Wrath”.
(How did we get to CA?)
My Mother and Father were able to make ends meet by establishing a grocery store and gas station, 
generally described as a general store. I always thought that the photo of Dale by Shell Gas Pump was in front of the store that the family ran. But, I could be wrong about that.
Mother told me later on that they were doing okay and that my Father always had enough money for cigarettes and food for
the family. That worked out fine, until a friend of my Father’s came out to California, and was offered a job in the general store. After that, the store started losing money. Mother was convinced that the friend was embezzling from the cash register. And then to make matters worse, my Father always had money for cigarettes, but not enough to put food on the table. I am not clear about this, but I believe Mama and Dad were also helping out in the store.
Due to this lack of food on the table, my Father made a trip to Los Angeles to look for work. During this time, some contact was made with my Uncle Hugh, who was working for the Associated Press in Oklahoma City. While my Father was in Los Angeles, Hugh made an offer to the family to return to Oklahoma City. He, at age 29 and single,committed to making sure the family had a roof over their heads and food on the table. Very shortly, the family made a train trip back to Oklahoma City, where we were set up in a house on Park Ave.
Hugh also made another stipulation to that offer. Mother must divorce her husband. While never stated, it seems obvious to me that due to the smoking conflict with putting food on the table, the stipulation was readily agreed, and so a divorce was initiated and finalized on (need to have found the divorce papers and put this information in here).
This move back to Oklahoma City came around Dale’s two year anniversary, as I was born on December 16, 1931, and was six months old when the family became ‘reverse Okies’ and returned to Oklahoma City. The initial house was located on Park Ave, very close to downtown. Other than the picture of Dad on the front porch of the Park Ave house, I have no recollection of that place.
This is a photo of Dale and I, with Dad sitting behind us on the porch.
When my Father returned from Los Angeles, without a job, he found that he was also without a family, and only had a note telling him where they had gone. Not sure what he did on receiving that information, but it was about 3 years later when he showed up in Oklahoma City to try and renew the relationship, but his attempt was not very satisfactory, as Mother later related to me. Russell had visited and wanted to give Mother some money to help out, but only with the stipulation that she would go with him to his hotel room and pretend they were still married. While five dollars was a lot of money at that time, Mother was a bit incensed at the offer and turned him down.
I assume that I saw my Father at that time, but still was too small to remember, and I never remember ever meeting my father. I only have a picture of my Mother and Father when they were married. (Insert Picture.)
I mentioned my Mother’s third marriage in the first chapter, so I think I should expound a little bit on that subject. First though it is necessary to talk about her second marriage.
I believe my brother had something to do with Mother getting married again, as I remember it, he thought he was being deprived by not having a father and was vocal to our Mother about this. I believe the second marriage was when I was in the 3rd, or 4th grade. His name was Layton Meredith, and my memory is very fuzzy on this. I remember, even though my brother says it isn’t so, that I went to school and changed my name to Meredith, and then one week later having to go back to school and changing my name back to Wagnon, as the marriage did not last more than a week. (In
thinking back on this, I probably focused on that possible name changing event so much that it has become a fact in my mind, but probably did not happen.) Never did hear any reason for the short relationship. (Mother did tell me at one time that she never slept with a man unless she was married to him, so maybe Meredith
married her only to be able to sleep with her, and as Mother was a very pretty woman I could not fault him for that.)
Dale, my brother had this to say: I am pretty sure it was in 1939 when Mother married Leighton Meredith, also the same year as the auto wreck and Leighton was driving a new Chevy which he had gotten as a demo from the dealer. In those days, some dealers would let you use a car for a trip if you were known to them and were a good possibility for a sale. I don’t think he ever moved in with us. If you remember, he and Mother took us to El Reno for an afternoon drive, and left us in the car while they went to someone and were secretly married. I believe the marriage was annulled right after the accident. All this occurred in the summertime, so the marriage was very short lived.
The third marriage lasted a little longer, as I was in the fifth grade when that marriage took place. We moved to 1400 Park Place in Oklahoma City, which did not change the schools we attended, just made the walk to school a little longer (five blocks instead of three). We did change our name to Kile, as Eugene Kile, our stepfather, felt that it would be politically wise to do so. However, the following year we moved to Dallas as he had taken a job teaching chemistry at the exclusive Hockaday School. That is when we started calling her Mother as Eugene Kile was very astute politically, and it would have reflected badly to his employer had we been on a first name basis, though I can never recall calling him Father even though we may have been required to do so.
The year following we moved to California as Eugene Kile accepted a principal’s job in a small lumber town called Tennant. As part of the agreement Mother once again became a teacher. She had two years training in a Teacher’s College and was a teacher when she married our father Russell Gilmore Appleby. There were only two teachers in the High School and two teachers in the Grade School. I attended the two room school which had in one room grades 1 to 4, and the other room had grades 5 to 8.
I had always been in a half grade due to when I started school and since I had not finished the 7th grade in Dallas, I had to go to summer school, so I could enter the 8th grade in California. In reflection, this probably was not the wisest move for my maturity was always a bit behind others in my class.
After the eighth grade, we moved to Tulelake, CA where Eugene Kile had accepted the principalship of the high school. This was a much larger school, big enough to have a football team. And they had four levels of basketball teams. All of the ninth grade boys, who played basketball were on the Class D team, and I was on that team. We did not play many games, but enough to qualify for the County Championship, which we lost to a team from Weed, CA.
I do not remember how well the football team did, but do remember than we had a good basketball team, and one member went on to have a good college career at one of theOregon Universities, either OU, or OSU. His name was Herby Kirby. My brother Dale played on the Class C team.
When we moved to Tulelake, there was an apartment complex that was being built and supposed to be ready for us to occupy that fall. However, as with many construction projects, the timing was not correct, so we had to move into a 2 room apartment (I hesitate to call it an apartment, as it had no heat and no kitchen), and while we were there, we got up early and went to the school, where we had breakfast in the Home Economics classroom before school began. Fortunately, that only lasted a couple of months, but I still recall it being quite cold at night. I used to tell people that I sprained my ankle turning over in bed as the weight of the quilts was so heavy. Not sure what caused the argument between Dale and Eugene, but in that ‘apartment’ the two got into a fist fight, which may have led to the demise of the marriage.
Mother taught English and typing in the school, and I was fortunate to be able to have her for both those classes. The Math teacher was also the Football Coach, and he and I got into an argument over a long division problem, whose answer in the back of the textbook was wrong, but he could not agree to that, and finally told me to shut up and sit down. I checked with Mother on the answer and she agreed the textbook answer was wrong.
Mother returned to Oklahoma City to have a hysterectomy over the Christmas vacation. However, she decided to not return to California, and filed for a divorce. So, Dale and I became the chief cook, bottle washer and house cleaner until the Easter break, when we also returned to Oklahoma City.
At Roosevelt Junior High School in Oklahoma City, the same textbook that we used for Math at Tulelake, was also used at Roosevelt. However, at Tulelake, we only had progressed through the first third of the book, and at Roosevelt, they were studying the last third of the book, so I missed what was in the middle third. Fortunately, Dale was a pretty good instructor and taught me how to find the least common denominator.
Not sure what led up to this confrontation, nor what the argument was about, but about 20 kids on each side met to decide the confrontation by physical means. I do remember that some one had brass knuckles to use in the fight, which fortunately was not consummated, and after about 30 minutes of arguments, the two sides dispersed.
We had a group of kids, called the 15th Street Water Boys, that played football and softball against neighboring teams. Don’t remember how many games we played or, what the results were, but we enjoyed being the ‘Water Boys’. Of course in those days, we did not use football equipment, but I do not remember anyone suffering from lack of equipment.
The following fall, I enrolled in Classen High School, which was only about 5 blocks away, but still closer than the 9 block walk to Roosevelt. During this time, we acquired a half-breed beagle, who I chose to call Buster. One day, while walking to school, I turned around and saw Buster following me. It was just after I had crossed 16th Street, which was a pretty busy street, and when Buster realized I saw him, he stopped. Unfortunately, that was the wrong thing to do. Had he continued on, the car would not have hit him. As a result, he had a fractured Pelvis, so I had to carry him home and was late getting to school that day. Not sure who the vet was that treated Buster, but after a while he was back to his normal self.
At this time, 1947, it was post WWII, and I believe that Mother visited her brother Hugh, who at the time was living in Swarthmore, PA. During that visit, Hugh, his wife Delos and Mother were invited to dinner at one of Hugh’s friends – Garandbacks(sp?). In order to balance the table, the friends had invited Ted Brooks to dinner. Ted was in his forties and had never been married, so it was a natural invitation from friends. Mother was in her late 30s, and very pretty, so it seemed that the match making was working. Anyway, sometime after that, Ted visited Oklahoma City, and during that visit proposed marriage to Mother. She accepted and they were married in the Wayne Methodist Church. Ted was an Episcopalian, prior to being married and became a stalwart in the Wayne Methodist Church. I stayed in Oklahoma City to finish out my Junior year in High School. Dale was a senior and had been accepted to MIT on a partial scholarship, so during the summer following, we moved to Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Dale stayed only a short time before moving on to MIT. I stayed and tried out for the football team at Radnor High School. The school was only one block away from Ted’s home, so was very convenient for me.
During the next year, Buster, who had made the trip to Wayne with me, became Ted’s dog. He would accompany him on all his jobs, and ride in the back of the pickup, apparently enjoying the rides.
Ted was a general contractor, and had lived all of his life in either St. Davids or Wayne, two adjoining towns in the suburbs of Philadelphia’s Main Line. As a result, he knew most of his customers and had long term relations with them. Many of which by now had been widowed, or widowerhood. Ted was a perfectionist over his work, and as a result was never without work to be done.
This marriage, ceremony performed in the Wayne Methodist Church, just two blocks away from Ted’s home, lasted for 41 years until Ted’s death at age 85.