My Memoirs

by
Lanie Arthur McCullar
In order to give a background to these memories, I think it's in order, to go back a little bit farther than I can remember and use the facts that were handed down to me through my folks - and it's not fiction - but rather incidents that really happened to a few people in a date and time that is far past this date of 1985. If you were born after 1940 then this is some happenings that might be quite interesting to you.

Dad, George Wily McCullar, was born at Mt. Ida, Arkansas, September 27. 1871. of a large :family, when he was a young lad, he told me about traveling from Mt. Ida to Hot Springs once a year to trade at the General Store at Hot Springs and get their corn and wheat ground into corn meal and flour at the water powered mill. It was a two month round trip by ox team. Of course they camped at the springs and waited their turn at the mill. What amazed Dad was that he could set in one place. Take a gourd and dip a cold drink of water on his left side and hold an egg in the spring on his right hand side, and cook the egg. There were no buildings at the springs - just a camp ground. He said how they cut a large tree - sawed off a cut of it. Then hitched the oxen to the butt cut, and turned it around alongside of the top and build their camp fire between the logs for an extended stay.

Now Mt. Ida is probably an hour's ride by automobile from Hot Springs and Hot Springs is a resort town now. I am writing this to show you how fast we have modernized from l885 to 1985.

The only things they bought at the store was a sack of green coffee beans that they roasted then beat or ground them, don't know what size sack, also salt and a bolt of cloth and a barrel of whatever kind of liquor they had in stock, brandy or whatever they had. I am persuaded it was a 16 gallon, because Dad had one of them in my early life. The brandy or whiskey was used mostly as a drug and a disinfectant or a tranquilizer, also to make homemade remedies for various things. Whiskey and honey made a cough syrup, blue vitriol and whiskey could be made into eye wash. A lot, if not all was handed down from the Indians. They dug Ginseng root, from this I believe they made oil of anise, also butterfly root. I am not sure what they made out of it. Also they used a weed called horse mint to coo1 a fever, you can use the stems or leaves or root. I have used it and it really works. Keep in mind there were no drug stores to go to.

The McCullar's had migrated from Ireland to the states at an earlier date in the 17 hundreds as near as I can trace back. Dad had one Uncle that fought in the Civil War on the side of the South. They were Scotch-Irish. So if a man was on the run from the law this is where he would head for - and if the law didn't get him before he reached the mountains, he simply disappeared and was never found.

One such man used to be our neighbor. Dee Kite by name, he deserted the U.S. Army at the beginning of World War I. If they could have captured him they would have stood him in front of a firing squad. They had federal officers looking for him from time to time, but he hid out for 3 years and 6 months, until the war was over, then he came in and gave himself up. Then the federal law turned him loose without doing anything to him. His sister, Bessie Kite, was a good friend of my sis, Unia, for a life time.

Dad didn’t look for him, because he had no warrant for his arrest, and because this was federal law not state or county. I have often wondered if Dad didn't know where he was most of the time. Because Dad never talked of those things.

Even up into the last of the nineteen thirties there would be convicts breaking out of the state penitentiary to head for those hills. But by that time, we had cars for transportation and they were usually caught before they got that far.

I remember one incident where they caught up with 5 convicts and killed all five of them after they had reached the mountains and had took shelter in an old cabin. This was about 1934. First of all Dad was a hunter and according to the amount of game he brought in, he must have been the best. Mom related to me that when they were first married in 1900 that he brought in so much wild game that it made her sick, and when she saw him coming in from a hunting trip she 'Would start heaving. When he went to a shooting match he had no competition - after he won his share they would bar him from shooting so that the rest of the men could compete with one another.

One of his brothers, at least one, was a good shot, that, was Jule. But not living around him, I don't know how good, I know, also another brother was a good deer hunter who was Uncle Howard.

His other brother, Uncle Ben, only hunted with hounds.

When Dad went to a turkey shoot the common method was to put a turkey in an orange crate and step back a hundred steps and shoot at its head with a rifle (offhand) that is to say no rest could be taken with the rifle. This was right down Dad's alley, because he hunted wild gobblers with a rifle and would call them in range and shoot either the head or neck. Scopes were not in use for hunters at that time so Dad shot with both eyes open. He told me he looked over the top of the barrel with one eye and along the side of it with the other, in all my years with him. I only saw him miss one shot and I was dumbfounded. He was shooting at a wild gobbler about forty yards or steps away that was walking across in front of us; he had called him in with a turkey call he had made out of hollow turkey wing bone fitted into a hallowed out popcorn cob. I don't know who was most surprised, the turkey, Dad or me. So naturally since I admired Dad it was only natural that I loved to hunt and learned to shoot at about a teenager and I have hunted ever since then. Not a trophy hunter, but as a meat hunter but never was as good with a rifle as he was. I have killed so many deer that I lost track of how many, probably, 20 years ago but I am a not about elk bunting. In 38 years I haven’t missed a season of hunting elk and have killed 18 and have helped to get quite a few out of the woods that my folks or friends have killed. This is not a record but probably better than average for people who hunt elk in Oregon. Five of these were legal cows and the rest bulls. The largest buck was a 4 point western count.

Dad was also a bee man, that is, he loved to work with honey bees. His method of trailing honey bees and finding the wild bee trees was simple. He would make his bait up by putting honey comb in a pail then take a bottle of oil of anise open the top and set it in the pail. The bees can smell it farther than they can the honey. When they (struck the bait) found the bait he would watch them leave. At first after they fill up on honey they will circle round and round and you lose sight of them, but after they make a few trips to their hive and back they take a straight course to their hive, then Dad would move his bait bucket ahead about 1/4 mile and wait for them to strike the bait again, if there was an obstacle like a big tree in the course they will go around it until they get high enough in the air to fly over everything. So when Dad moved his pail ahead while the bees were finding the bait again he would walk ahead on course to see if he could find the bee tree. He seldom trailed them past the tree before he found it. but if he did pass the tree before he found it the next time; he set his bait up and the bees would start flying back the way that they had come from; so he knew then that the tree was between where he had his bait now and where he had it set up the time before this, so he would look until he could find it. Then he would mark the tree with his pocket knife so someone else could not claim it as their property, then when he had the time, he would make a homemade hive, take it with him to go cut the tree, get the honey and put the bees into the new hive and bring it home.

The way he made the bee hive was to take some 1 x 12 boards and make a square box 12" by 12" about 3 foot high with two 1 x 1 inch pieces of lumber made into a cross, fitted about half way up from the bottom inside, then nail a top on it lightly so the top could be removed the next summer so he could remove the honey. I have never seen a swarm of bees that whipped him out, he would roll up his sleeves, take a rag and twist and double it once, then tie a string around it and light it with a match on the loose end. When he got it to smoke real good, he would walk into the bees and start to work. He got stung most of the time but after a few stings they seemed to get used to him and settle down and quit stinging him. Most of the time when he got stung he would mash the one that stung him because they leave the stinger in the flesh and it kills the bee anyway. So his theory was that then one bee got mad enough to sting it made some others mad also. The stings didn't swell his flesh like they do me when I get stung on the face it usually swelled at least one of my eyes closed from just one sting, but with him it only made a little white lump. Later he would have someone take the tweezers and pull them out. I have seen him, when I looked through the window, bring a new hive of bees home in a gunny sack, get his new hive ready then dump them all on the ground, take his bare hands and start raking through them until he found the queen bee. She is much larger than the working bees and put her in the hive; lots of times she would come out 2 or 3 times, but when she finally stayed inside the rest of the bees will pour into the hive and then his job was finished.

Dad used to keep a small wooden barrel. I think it held 16 gallons of strained honey he would tie a white muslin cloth over the top, lay the honey comb on it and crush the comb and it would slowly strain through the cloth until he filled the barrel. It had a spigot at the bottom so we could draw out as much at one time as we wanted to use, so in those days we bought very little, if any sugar. We used sorghum molasses and honey these were about all the sweet we had. That's well over 40 years ago now and I still don't, care much for honey, but I still like my molasses cookies.

The story about Dad's Uncle Ben isn’t finished. He told about him and an enemy sniper. Of course they didn't, know who was who. They could have been brothers. friends or neighbors before the war broke out so at this time they were not anxious to kill each other, so Uncle Ben was laying in the corner of a rail fence' so he would place a chip of wood up high in the crack of a fence and when the other man got his muzzle loaded gun loaded again he would knock the chip out of the fence.

My Mom was born in Sherman, Mississippi, September 5, 1880, her Mom, my grandma, lived in the time of that war, through the blockade and all. In those years there were robbers posing as soldiers, but were no soldiers, they didn't fight on either side but banded together in small bands and went through the country taking anything they saw that they wanted. Most of the able bodied men were away fighting in the war so the women and kids fell easy victims to the roaming bands they were called BUSHWHACKERS. At one time, they came to Granny's house, caught her only mule and led him away but they stopped and was robbing the next house and Granny got mad and got her courage up and walked over, untied the mule and brought him back home. She got by with it, but if it had been a man or boy they would have killed him.

The way Granny hid her cured meat from these Bush Whackers was to turn the dining table upside down and lay the meat in it then nail boards that, then set the table upright again. They never found it. The robbers used the excuse that they were taking everything they could get for the war effort so the regular soldiers could have food and something to fight with, but it never reached the regular soldiers. The fighting men ate more parched corn than anything else.

In Dad's time and in my young days, people made their lye by building what they called an ash hopper, there was no standard way that it had to be built, they took boards and nailed them upright like a big manger about 2 or 3 feet apart and let them come together at the bottom. This they filled with wood ashes; then when it rained or they threw water on the ashes and they caught the drip from the ashes and it is the lye, then they rendered pork lard and mixed lye with it to make what they call "lye soap" it's a very effective laundry soap. They made their own candles with a candle mold, a piece of string and wax. I don't know where they first got the wax, but I do know Dad made what he called bees wax by melting honey comb until it ran together. Dad would use this, a ball of it, to run a string through it to make the string or heavy thread slick, so he could sew leather with it, with the help of a sewing awl that held a large needle, he mended the harness, saddles, and shoes with this and forked copper brads or rivets. Since Dad was born in 1871, he was 37 years old the same year that Chief Geronimo passed away, in 1909. He was too young to remember the Indian wars. but he was old enough to have made the run for a land grab when they opened the Cherokee Strip to be staked out for farms, but he would not go, he said anyone was taking their lives in their own hands to get in that rush and mad scramble.

There was one story about a man who was way ahead of all the rest that had already staked his 160 acres, his horse was standing by in a lather, but didn't seem to be tired or winded - so someone rubbed their hand on the lather and smelled of it and it turned out to be soap which meant he had slipped in ahead of the rush and staked his claim, so he was kicked off and someone else got the claim. There were quite. few people who did or tried to do it and were called sooners, and that name has been handed down until this present day, that's why they call their football team the Oklahoma Sooners.

And the word Oklahoma means in the Indian word "Red People". I am not sure but I think it's a Choctaw Indian word and the common OK we use all the time came from a Choctaw word that was spelled Hokeah with the accent on the "K" and it means all is well. The white man thought he, the Indian, was trying to say OK in English.

I was born November 24. 1913, my memory is very poor in most cases. But I do remember one incident that happened when I was still a nursing baby. I was born near a little town, Hartshorne, Oklahoma, by name - out in the country with a mid-wife attending, so I am told.

I can also remember one incident when I was later informed that I was four years old at the time. I had pneumonia and when the Dr. came I was afraid of him so I went to the backside of the bed. In 1911 the Dr's that we had, had a poor way to treat pneumonia. I had it again several years later and it was treated by putting lard on the chest first then beat up mustard seeds in a rag next then turpentine and kerosene - then wrap a hot stove lid and lay it on top - in about two minutes you could taste the kerosene and turpentine. But it would loosen a lot of the phlegm so you could cough it up and breathe better. And most of the time it would blister my skin in spite of the lard.

I also remember seeing a train load of our boys leaving for France - to fight in World War I - that had to be no later than November 11. 1918 - and I wouldn't have been 5 yrs. old until November 24th. But outside of a few incidents I can hardly remember what happened yesterday these days. I do remember a few things that happened in 1919. I had an older brother that died of nose-bleed that year also lots of people died of influenza in those days - our neighbor. Bill Tidwell lost two boys that were our playmates.

During World War I and for some years later we lived in what was called the Choctaw Indian Nation of Oklahoma. There were Five Civilized Tribes that had a nation each - since the Indians owned the land and could not sell it according to the law, we farmed and rented land from them. Most of them were too poor to farm and some, if not most, didn't know how to farm - or if so, they couldn't get a loan to farm with - about all they had for collateral was land and they couldn't mortgage that - it was the law - one hardship we had when flour was rationed in the war days - we couldn't buy enough flour for our needs - since there were six of us kids, so we had to eat some of the wheat chaff - they call it shorts, and it was used to feed the livestock. It had a bitter taste - and I have never liked the taste of brown bread to this day. In those years we might have lived 10 to 20 miles from town and you didn't ride a horse to town to get a loaf of bread. About twice a year, Dad would take the wagon to town in between we had to take horses and ride to town.

During these times we rented land from governor Dukes he was governor of the Choctaw Indian Tribe and that covers most of Southeast Oklahoma. They have their own council house (courthouse to you) the first one was made out of wood, it burned down before my time. I have an old square nail that, was supposed to have come out of it, later they built another one, and then later than that they rebuilt a modern brick one that still stands near the little town of Tuskahoma. it's a beautiful building that sets out in the country with nice landscaped grounds.

Incidentally, I am told the word Tuskahoma means "Red Warrior". I went to governor Dukes funeral, and a short time later to his wife's funeral, he died from throat cancer - his hearse was pulled with horses - I think 6 black beautiful horses and outstanding beautiful harness - his wife with white horses, the Indians were noted for having fine horses.

After the war ended in 1918, the U.S. or at least the part I knew of went into a recession. The soldier boys were being brought home and released from service without any more pay or pension. The bottom dropped out of prices for farm products the factories had been busy making war material. Now they shut down or were slow getting started towards making peace time goods so the soldiers got home without employment. Some came back to the farm but with no money, stock, or tools to farm with. We lived on what we could produce on the farm and sometimes it was far from enough. But we had to make out on whatever we had. But Dad was a good farmer. With the horse power we had which was a small team of mules and it was more important for all of us kids to work to produce something to eat than it was to get some education. We started after planting time to school and after the harvest to school again so all of us are low on book work.

During World War I we had a neighbor in the service, Dee Kite by name that came home on furlough - he never reported back for service but went A. W.O. L. (Absent~ Without Leave) - and if they had caught him they would have stood him in front of a firing squad. He scooted and stayed out of sight of the law for 3 years and 6 months until the war was over. Then came in and gave himself up and they turned him loose, without doing anything to him. He told us of some of the narrow escapes he had without having to shoot anyone.

This gives you an idea of how thin the population was in that part of the country. I have often wondered if Dad didn't know where he was a lot of the time, because they were good friends and Dad never talked about some things. Dad believed in the law in most things but if it went against what he wanted he ignored it, such as hunting out of season.

There was no such thing as legal whiskey or beer in those days and no taverns or liquor stores. So when Dad or anyone else had something to drink, they made their own. This was in the Choctaw Indian Nation. So they made what they called Choctaw beer later to be called Choc. Some summers Dad would make a barrel of it, and invite in all the neighbors to help drink it, they would all get plastered for about one or two days then no more for a year or two. In the years of 1920 to 1922 and 23 Dad was appointed and served as under Sheriff of 3 counties, Le Flore, Pushmataha and Latimer. Dad still farmed and the town had their own law and a deputy that didn't affect Dad, but it seemed that the Sheriff was just a political figure that stayed in town but when a crime was committed in the county - Dad would wait for them to send the warrant which usually came by horseback then he would go get his man and he never failed to get him the first time out. He would saddle a horse tie a slicker (raincoat) behind the saddle, buckle on his gun, stick the 30-30 Winchester in the saddle boot and his good-bye was "look for me back when you see me coming". If it was a bench warrant be was allowed to take his man dead or alive but he never had to kill a man in those years.

South of us lay the Kiamichi River running east to west and just south of the river was the Kiamichi range of mountains which this river drained into. They ran east of us to Arkansas and west as far as Clayton, a small town. There were no roads into them except by going into Clayton you could go around the end of the range. Clayton was some 30 miles west of us. Arkansas was around 50 miles east, by going west through Clayton you could go around the highest part of the range and through a series of old wagon tracks and trails, you go east into these hills and there were a few old settlers or nesters that lived in here, shut off from the rest of the world. They had no use for progress or the rest of the world and sometimes they would harbor one of the outlaws and let him farm for them for his board and room.

Another thing Dad did when we went fishing down on the creek in early spring, he would take his 22 rifle with him. at this time of year the old Bob White quails were calling trying to find the hen quails, so Dad would start whistling and answer like a hen quail.

The Bob White male would start flying in a little ways at a time and answering the call when he flew in and lit in a nearby tree. Dad would take his head off so we usually had fish and quail both. There were lots of quail, rabbit and squirrel. They're a welcome change from chicken and just as good, there are two types of them, the gray and the fox that we hunted, also there's a flying squirrel that we didn't hunt because we didn't eat them. When a dog trees one. the squirrel will always stay on the opposite side of the tree or branch from you so I would throw something to the far side of the tree to make a noise, then Mr. bushy tail slides to your side of the tree so you get a shot at him. I was taught at an early age not to shoot one in the body. I had to hit his head or let him go. Dad learned to shoot with an old cap and ball muzzle loader rifle, when he took aim at, say a running deer he would take aim, pull the trigger, the cap would pop and spew a bit before the gun would fire so he had to hold his bead on the deer until the gun fired and he sure didn’t waste any ammo. When I was a teenager, I would ask him for his 30-30 carbine and shells to go deer hunting with, he would hand me the gun empty and then go someplace where he had the shells hidden and give me two shells. When I put up a howl for more shells, his answer was, ‘how many deer do you expect to kill anyhow.' At that time, I thought he was just tight with shells, but now I know he was just teaching me to shoot true and not waste ammo. He made his own front sight for his rifles from a boar's tusk which to you might be a hogs tooth. when he got through with it he could hit the head of a nail as far as he could see the nail head. This doesn't mean that the boars tooth was more accurate than other sights, but rather the way Dad had of doing things and remember he never used any kind of a gun rest but shot off- hand always. I never heard Dad brag on his ability to shoot true, in fact hardly any man would brag of his own abilities in those days, it just wasn't polite.

My sis, Unia, tells me about one of Dad's turkey hunts, it happened or rather came to a close in the spring of 1913 before I was born the following November. This particular gobbler was too smart to be called, when Dad called he would go the other way and not gobble again until he was well in the distance, he was roosting on a ridge back of the house that had cedar trees on it so they named the hill Cedar Ridge and Dad had been after that turkey so long that he had named him "Cedar Dad". When Dad finally got him sis says he was the largest turkey she had ever seen. They didn't weigh him, but Dad was 5' 7 1/2" tall and when he pulled the gobblers head over his shoulder to carry him his wings dragged on the ground. The turkey’s beard measured 12" long and was very large around. Since Dad was in the woods doing lots of hunting trips so it was only natural that he killed lots of rattle snakes. The largest one of these, I didn't see the snake, but I saw the rattles lots of times, there were 18 rattles and a button. He left the snake on the road and didn't think much about it but it so happened the mailman came by on horseback and the horse got scared of the dead snake; threw him and scattered the mail allover. So he put out the word he would have the man arrested that had left the snake on the road so Dad never did let the story out.

About 1918, Dad and his brother Jule had lots of hounds (running dogs) that they chased fox and coyotes with, they didn't want to catch them but they liked the music the hounds made in chase. The breed of the hounds were Walker and Blue Ticks they rode after the dogs horseback, so Dad had a pony I remember called Sleepy. Everyone was amazed that Dad could keep up with the chase when they could not on their good horse; afterwards when they quit chasing hounds, Dad let the secret out. When they rode up to a 3 barbed wire fence the rest of the gang went to the gate to get through. not· so with Dad after they had gone he made old Sleepy lay down then he dragged the pony’s front part under the fence then grabbed the tail and dragged his back end under then he got the horse on his feet and was in the race again. He was a small horse and I rode him sometimes when Dad plowed him. I would hold to the hames of the harness and ride him as he pulled the plow, he was our pet. Another thing I remember was when Dad had so many hounds; we also had an old yellow pet yard dog named Old Bruen. I have seen him set in the yard and listen to the hounds chase a coyote. He would set and sometimes tilt his head and would wait until the coyote had time to get a little tired, then he would take off and head off the coyote, catch it and kill it, that would make Dad mad so next time he would tie Old Bruen to keep him home until the race was over, but sometimes even after that when the hounds were out of hearing, some of the family including me might feel sorry for old Bruen and go release him and he would kill the next coyote. Also he couldn't ran fast enough to be in the race not only that but he didn't bark at one. But if he caught one it was "Katie bar the door" for Mr. Coyote. One moon lit night Dad heard a noise, jumped out of bed and saw 2 coyotes chasing Bruen home, one was so close to the dog Dad couldn't shoot it but he shot the back one and when he did Old Bruen wheeled around, caught the closer one and killed it, in other words he knew he couldn't handle two coyotes but he sure could handle one.

I remember one time we had all been gone from home the night before and there was a rail fence just back of the kitchen door where the cotton field was. I saw where the cotton was wallowed down in a space about 30' square. I called Unia and had her take a look, she said she knew what it was, so on closer inspection she found the dead coyote, this same dog saved Unia and Alice from being charged by some long horn cattle. Old Bruen died about 1919 when the flu epidemic was on, Dad said he also died from flu but it could have been old age.

One time when Dad was under Sheriff, one of our neighbor boys, which was about 20 years old at that Lime, shot and killed another man in a heated argument and got on his horse and disappeared. I knew that when Dan got the warrant, he would go get the young man and if he resisted arrest Dad would kill him. I was afraid for this young man, we all knew him, so I watched close to see what would happen. When Dad got the warrant, he rode horseback to this boys folks told them to get word to the boy to come in and give himself up and it would go easier for him. Dad said if he went after him he would bring him back dead or alive, so a few days later he rode in. Dad took him all the way to the town of Antlers which must have been 40 miles by horseback and helped him make bond and turned him loose to await his trial.

In the 1920 and 30’s Dad made sorghum molasses from the cane grown in the fields. We had to strip the blades off the stock, it grows like corn but no ear, but a head full of seed at the top. We had to strip the blades off the stock, top it, cut the stalk off near the ground, lay it in piles then haul it to the sorghum mills. The mill was this way - two steel rollers that turned toward each other, the cane was fed between the rolls that squeezed the green juice out and it was caught in a barrel, it was powered by horse power, there was a wood beam fitted on top of the rollers over the man’s head that fed the cane into the mill. After it passed over his head it bent down almost to the ground where the horses were hitched to the beam a lead rope was attached to their bridles so they had to pull in a circle then the juice was transferred to the pan on the opposite end of the smoke stack, underneath was a space for a furnace wood fire. The pan was made of copper with fences about 4" high and about 6" apart. The pan was about 5' wide and 10 to 12' long. These fences ran cross wise to the pan. The first one started at the north end of the pan and reached to about 6" of the south side of the pan this left agate that you could close at will to stop the flow of juice so it could stand and cook as long as was necessary. As the juice moved toward the smoke stack it had to be skimmed to get the green skim off as it started to boil. It took an expert to know how long to cook it otherwise if it was not cooked long enough it would be too thin, if overcooked it would turn to sugar when it got cold. Dad was an expert because the farmers wanted him to make their sorghum.

About these same years, Dad had bought hogs until he owned a horse corral full of them, he had told me and warned me to stay away from them but when the boss was away it was Lime to play, so I sat on the corral fence and tried to throw a noose over the head of anyone of them that would come close. You see there were no toys to play with so why not play with the rope. So one time I roped one quite by accident as he started to pull back and squeal. I got excited with all the noise the rest of the pigs made. So I tied this pig to the fence post and ran because this noise by now was an uproar. I ran straight into Dad corning with the razor strap so you can guess how that story ended. Nonetheless I still played with the rope when Dad wasn't around so by the time I was a teenager I was good with the rope, the pig incident happened when I was about 9 years old. About those years, 1923-24, Will Rogers was still a young cowboy not famous for much except his skill with a lariat rope he was the best and I doubt if any man could ever do all the things with a rope that he did before or after. So most people were inspired with what he did with a rope like I was so there was some good ropers in Oklahoma. I saw him perform with a rope at a rodeo in Hartshorne Oklahoma one time in the mid 1920's; He could stand on a platform and get his loop spinning and have 4 horsemen canter by and could catch on four horses with one cast or bring the loop from the ground up and catch all the horses legs then turn the rope loose so he didn't trip the horses.

About 1923, Dad got a concussion; he didn't know that had really happened at first. What really happened was that he was riding one horse and leading another, and one horse went past a tree on one side and the other horse went past, the tree on the other side and jerked Dad's head against the tree. Dad laid in bed about a year with a terrible headache, then it was about another year before he was able to work, us kids, didn't know how to farm. so our resources gradually dwindled away so finally in desperation, Dad had mortgaged what we had left for $150.00 at the bank, hoping it would last until he could work again but his health got worse, so finally Mom got him in a hospital and while he was there the bank foreclosed and took all we had left, the team of mules, the saddle horse, the harness, the wagon and two milk cows and all the plow tools, all they left was one little pig and two calves that were not on mortgage. A few days later we butchered the pig and we ate him in one day, by now the two older girls were married off and there were only four of us left at home. Mom and the baby, which was Vivian, Marvin, Roy and myself. Before the bank took the wagon and team Roy and I would cut wood and haul it to town and peddled it out for $2.00 per rick, which it took about a week with an old dull saw and ax to cut a rick of wood which was 4' high and 8' long and stick length that was all we had to live on about $2.00 per week, after they took the mules and wagon we didn't have that and no credit, no such thing as relief in those days, so we survived but I don't know how. Any food we could get, we had to share with one another to the last bite. A short time later Dad was ready to come home from the hospital about 100 miles away, so Marvin sold the two calves and hired a man with a car to go get him. He came home much improved, but still not able to work and it was fall of the year. So he sent word to a farmer neighbor to come over and he hired me out to plow for him all winter at one dollar per day. I was 12 years old at that time. The farmers name was Miran Stueart. I worked with his oldest boy, I wasn't tall enough to put the harness on top of the mules back but after Tom set the harness on I could fasten them on. It was a large mile to where I worked and I walked it twice a day after I plowed all day, it didn't seem so far to hurry home but, the second fall and winter was worse and on into the spring, Mr. Stueart decided that I should board with him and he would pay me the same wage only thing was I didn't have the walk but I had to sleep with Lynn, a school boy and he had the itch and we scratched all winter.

I remember when Dad fished for a fish they called a Buffalo in the Kiamichi River near where we lived. These were heavy bodied like a salmon and had a rolled mouth like a 5ucker or carp hut there were not so many bones. Actually a good fish to eat, he caught lots of them; they weighed about 6 to 8 lbs. each. He fished with 4 large hooks then lead poured around them to make a grab hook out of them and with a dough ball wrapped around the top of the hook for bait. He made the dough out of slightly cooked corn meal and then worked lint cotton into the dough to hold it together. One day I remember he was fishing and hollered for the gun, he had hooked a turtle that weighed 48 lbs., and had to shoot it before he could land it; he also shot a bald eagle at the same place. They were not protected at the time.

About 1920, there were about 3 counties with open range, some of it still is, which meant anyone could raise their cattle on the open range. At that time they had a fever tick epidemic and passed a law that everyone had to run their cattle through a county dipping vat once a week. there were thousands of cattle, Dad only had about 20 to 30 head and our neighbor had about the same amount, we would throw the two bunches together and drive them to the dipping vat. We only had two saddle horses and two saddles so Dad rode one of them and my oldest brother, Marvin, rode the other so that left one mule for me to ride. I would grab a blind bridle and a rope for reins and take after them, that mule and I were both stubborn, he wanted to follow the saddle horses and not the cattle, so when a cow cut back I had to pull hard on one rein and whip him on the opposite side of the head with a switch to run in the right direction then when I got the strays turned back, he thought he could follow the horses again, so it was a contest all the time as each cow came out of the vat they marked it with a dab of paint on the hip to show it had been dipped, and if the range rider found one that wasn't marked, he would have the owner go back and dip it and as the cattle came out of the vat they stood in the dripping pen for about 5 minutes for the dip to run off them and back into the vat and even so they had to recharge the vat with more water and creosote from time to time. The water had to be hauled in barrels, the vat was located out on the prairie, no buildings near these cattle going into the vat on a slide board at the end of a chute and when a steer is forced onto the slide board, he goes down the board so fast that he goes under head and all then he swims to the other end and slides out into the drain pen. One time there were two bulls that had been bellowing at each other and trying to get together to fight. Finally they got together in the drain pen; of all the noise you ever heard and one of them got the other down and was killing it when the men beat him off and beat him out of the pen to get them separated. I am sure the cowboys left them together just for the excitement. One time, I saw a steer go into the dip backwards there was no way for him to climb the slide board to get back out so they took a pole with a big iron hook and flopped him end-over-end so he could swim to the drain pen.

When we were kids we didn't have toys so I made one of my own. I used a gallon syrup can with a lid like a paint can, put some water in it and drove the lid down tight, laid it on its side and made a small hole in the top. I built a fire under it and made a little flutter wheel, but my older brother came over and wanted to improve on it so he drove a pee in the hole until he could make more steam. He was down in front of it blowing the fire when the lid blew off in his face, he suffered severe burns on his face, head, and neck.

As the best of my memory, on or about February 26, 1926, I was 11 years old; my younger brother Roy would have been 7. My older brother would have been 15, his name was Marvin. Dad had bought a patch of cotton the fall before on the stalk, but. it had rained so much all winter that we couldn't pick it so now it was time to start the spring plowing at home so Dad gave the orders that a.m. to harness the mules and put the side boards on the wagon and go across the Kiamichi River and pick cotton till noon then load the cotton into the wagon and then come home and that would be all for that patch of cotton.

He told us to go across the river at the double crossing because the river was probably still high from the rains. The double crossing as it was called had an island in the center of the river and it would be no trouble to cross the river on each side of it but he said we couldn't come back that way because the little mules couldn't pull the load of cotton up the steep river bank, so we would have to go down river to what was called the Malten ford, no bridges for miles and as an afterthought he said if that river is too high don't pull into it.

We did as we were told until we got back to the Malten ford, there was a boy with us, Marvin's friend, about 15 years old, he and Marvin looked at the river and talked it over, we were new to that river, it looked high but we couldn't very well go back by way of the double crossing because of the steep river bank and this river was all that stood between us and food and shelter and by now it was high noon or maybe later, so Marvin dove into the water. we made it OK until we got near the other side where the main swift current caught us and washed us down stream then the wagon caught on some submerged boulders the mules had to get on their front feet to get out of the water, we were up on the cotton above the water, Marvin's first concern was to save the mules so he reached down and pulled the double tree pin and hollered at the mules, they surged ahead and the neck yoke slid off the end of the wagon tongue and they were free from the wagon.

Just below the wagon was a series of whirl pools, one mule washed over the back of the other one - this put one mules head under the neck yoke so the other one was ducking his head under water, they washed into a large whirlpool the neck yoke kept their heads pointed toward each other. They went through about three of these before they got their head pointed downstream and started swimming down at an angle toward shore and before they got, out of sight they waded out on dry land, we gave a little cheer, the mules were safe and they were our bread and butter.

They stopped for a while to wait for us, but finally walked out of our sights, now it was time to take stock of ourselves, we were in a tough spot, the only way we could go was downstream and we saw what it had done to the team so the boy with Marvin said we should holler for help, which we did. then he said we should all yell at the same time, which we did, but our yell did no more than reach to the shore over the roar of the river now we began to realize that the road behind us was dead end and people that knew this river would know they couldn't, cross here now so there wasn't much chance of anyone coming this way so the boy said we should pray and we did and after we did we prayed again.

I had been to church 2 or 3 times already and had heard the preacher pray to his God but never thought it would concern me and I didn't think the Lord could hear us over the roar of that river. Nevertheless it was an earnest prayer, we had no other way to turn the wagon it would give a little once in a while and we were staring death in the face after a long time two men appeared on the shore, they waved and hollered and we waved and hollered, but couldn't hear what they said.

They held a little conference with each other waved at us and walked away, we didn't know what they were going to do but, we wanted them to hurry because time was running out on us. Finally here they came up the river in a little boat about 8' long, a row boat, a motor boat for that river had never been invented. The man with the paddle let his partner out on shore from the way we had come, and then brought the boat upstream to take us out one at a time. He paddled real hard upstream and let the boat turn crosswise and lodge against the wagon on the back end, but the river was so swift that when the boat hit the wagon it capsized and stayed upside down against the wagon.

The man was washed under and down by his partner and he reached out with his paddle over to his partner on shore and he grabbed the oar and swung him into the shore and helped him out of the water, they held quite a long counsel, then turned and walked away the way we had come from. Now we were in more danger than ever because the boat across the back end of the wagon was giving more force to the current than it had before, after a long time, that was before wrist watches had been invented, they returned dragging a wild grape vine. It was about 3 or 4 inches in diameter at the big end. Then we got the idea, they threw it upstream and it floated down to us and we were dragged through the water to safety one by one, that water was cold. Roy was pulled out first because he was the youngest, they got us up on shore and built a fire and we were wringing out our clothes and drying by the fire when the wagon turned loose and washed down and sank and the side boards were full of cotton and the boat washed out of sight.

Well the years passed and I often wondered if the Lord answered our prayers or would the men have found the mules and come looking for us without the prayer. Many years later, I had gotten saved and was reading the bible and there it was in John 15:5 where Christ says “I am the vine and without me you can do nothing" he had heard our prayer and nothing could save us, except the vine. John 15:5 says "I am the vine ye are the branches, he that abideth in me and I in him the same branch brings forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing". Ever since I read that, it has been my favorite scripture verse.

To go back into time, this is what I came up with - to the best history I can piece together - my Grandpa McCullar signed his name, John T McCullough, but later on the census as, John J. McCullar, but I found later his real name was, John Jasper McCullar, so I believe the former T was meant to be a J.  He was called Jack and sometimes Big Jack, he was first married at age 20 to a girl near his age by the name of Mary Emerson. She must have left him for another man - because there were no children in this marriage. He next married Martha Elander and they had a large family - possibly 10 or 12 - one child got thrown off a coupling pole of a wagon and was killed - I think one burned to death - one was lost in the woods and never found - Martha passed January 3. 1810. That family was half brothers and sisters to my Dad and his brothers and sisters. I met some of Martha's and Grandpa's kids that is when they were real elderly – Perry, Bill, Dock, Ellen. After Martha died Grandpa went back to Mississippi and married her sister which was Harriet Elander, which was Dad's mother, which was my Grandmother and she was a full blood Cherokee. I guess she was a holy terror - Unia remembers when she tried to poison the family - guess she decided she didn't like white people. When she poisoned the food, my Granddad on Mom's side, Dave Gentry, got on to it and wouldn't let the family eat the food - so Dad gave him an argument that he thought the food was OK - so Dave told him to feed some of it to Dad's prize dog - he did and in a Little while the dog was dead.

Note: When Dad (Grandpa John Jack (Jasper) McCullar) went to get Harriet, he rode horseback from Arkansas to Mississippi and back.

Grandpa, Jack and Harriet raised 6 kids, my Dad George Wylie; Uncle Jule, John Jewell; Uncle Howard. Uncle Ben, Aunt Faye, Aunt Sara.

Dad and Mom was married at Wilburton Indian Territory in early 1900, it didn't become the State of Oklahoma until 1907. Unia and Alice were born in Indian Territory. Unia was born December 31, 1900. Alice was born four years later. Unia is still living this August 1988. Marvin was born February 22, 1909. My (Lanie) birth date is Nov. 24, 1913, Roy’s birthdate is October 26, 1917, and Vivian’s birthdate is March 19, 1926.

One time when we were kids, it seemed it always fell my lot to shuck and shell the corn to make our corn meal - which we had corn bread twice a day. After it was shelled, I had someone to boost the cloth bag up on a horse for me and most often without a saddle, I rode with the corn to the grist mill a few miles had the corn ground into corn meal and rode home with it. One such time, I was a shucking and shelling corn. Roy was a little guy, 4 years younger than I, he was playing around the barn and I couldn't get him to help me - every once in a while he would stick his head in the ben to see how I was doing. I thought next time I'll get him for that - so next time I was ready and I threw the corn cob at him - didn't really mean to hurt him bad, but the cob turned end over end and hit him with the end of the cob hit him on the nose, the blood just flew - I was real sorry it happened. Also afraid I was going to get a licking for it, which I should have but I hurried and cleaned him up a bit and buttered him up and he didn't tell Dad otherwise I would have got what I deserved. We had lots of nose bleeds those days. Our older __ ?__ Leslie just older than Marvin died of nose bleed when he was 13 years old in 1919. I remember it.

I also had to take a dozen eggs and a 1 gallon kerosene can and go to the store, horseback, sell the eggs for one dime and buy a gallon of kerosene for a dime. The store keeper would stick a potato on the spout to keep it from spilling out, I had to hold the can away from me and the horse, for if it spilled on the horse it would take the hair off him - you don't know how tired your arm can get unless you try it.

I didn't mind if I could get 15 cents for the eggs, because I could get a barber pole stick of candy for 5 cents which was about 10" long and 1" in diameter, peppermint, but that didn't happen very often.

The kerosene was for our lighting system we didn't have electricity.

Unia, Mom and Alice gave me this story and so I know it really happened. In 1910, Dad, Mom and the kids that they had at that time lived in western Oklahoma near a town named Pontitock - Dad bought a hunting license and went to eastern Oklahoma to hunt deer. Oklahoma had been a state only 3 years - but they had begun to sell a license - probably the first ones, I still have the old license, he was gone about a week, while he was away, some men would gather down back of Mom's little garden and get into a big hassle each late afternoon - and one evening they had a big fight, S0 Horn grabbed the kids and went to her brother’s house and stayed all night - next day they came home and went down and had a look. The men had dug down under a tree stump and took a pot out. The impression of the pot was still in the ground. They never found out what was in it or who took it.

Unia and Alice would plow the corn with a single mule and plow each - several times these mules would get scared and run away, they were somewhat wild, so the girls would loop the lines around their waist and when the mules ran - the girls would throw up both arms and bend forward the lines would slide over their head, so the mules didn't take them also; Because you can't hold one if he decides to bolt.

One story that should have been wrote at the first, but it just now comes to mind. Dad told me, because he thought it was funny. He was in school and in those days a boy 14 years was considered a man. One a.m. a neighbor woman burst into the school room and hollered - George, you boys, the Sheriff is coming to deputize you boys to go after the Dalton gang. They raided a ranch near here last night, Dad didn't wait for any more, he jumped through the window and the other boys after him and they stayed hid out until the Sheriff had come and gone. I thought at first Dad was afraid and it surprised me because I had never seen him show fear at anything and I have seen him in some tight places. But after I thought it out it was this way. Dad fought his own battles without any help and the Sheriff was afraid to go after them without a lot of help and Dad and those other boys didn't owe him any favors. Dad thought it was funny that the Sheriff was afraid of the Daltons.

This story wouldn't be complete unless I related about Dad and his mules. He had one young mule named Henry - he tad broke him to work and he was a good work animal. I saw him after he had plowed hard all morning, come in at lunch all sweaty and tired looking, you would take his bridle off and hang it on his harness frame - he would walk off a little ways and start bucking and pitching until he threw the bridle off his frame and then walk over to the feed trough and start to eat like nothing had ever happened. The other mule, Old Eleck, was lazy and would out smart you if he could. But he was also afraid of Dad.

When you drove the mules and wagon up a steep hill with a load on the wagon, Old Eleck would stay behind the other mule and let it pull all the load - he would hump up and look like he was pulling all the load. But you could look down and his traces were hanging slack then Dad would take the chock lines and jump out on Old Eleck's side of the wagon and yell at him and he would take the wagon and another mule up the hill faster than the other mule could go - you would laugh your head off at Dad and that mule.

The average mule is a lot smarter than an average work horse, if n horse gets to enough grain he will keep eating until he will flounder and die from eating not so with any mule - you can put a herd of mules in a corral and fill the trough with grain enough so they can eat all night if they want to and there won't be one mule in the bunch that eats too much.

Dad's old Henry mule walked a little too fast to plow in the garden - so he would take Old Eleck and when he did I would hide close by to see and hear the show. A horse or mule well broke will go to the right when you Gee and to the left when you say Haw, Old Eleck would keep going to the right until you said Baw and he would mistake Haw for Whoa every time and would stop and prop his hind foot to take a rest, then Dad would yell at him and he would take off in a hurry and Dad would plow more garden than he wanted to. You would have to know Dad and that mule also to get the laugh out of it that I did. In Dad's later years, he was about 60 years old, he was skidding logs in the Jack Fork hills down real steep hills to a loading dock where the trucks loaded them and hauled them to the saw mill - other men were doing the same trying to use horses, they had killed one horse or more. Dad was using 2 mules pulling a single log with each mule.

The pine logs in the spring of the year when the sap is up - isn't skidded very far until all the back peels off the bottom of the log then it shoots down a steep lace goes between the horses hind legs and trips him up and he sits down on the log gets all tangled up with the harness and log and soon dies from it. Not so with a mule - any mule! Dad didn't use any lines, he led the mules uphill to the logs about 1/4 mile or more. Then tied them to a log with a log chain then led them until he got them to the skid trail going down and turned them loose, from there on down they were on their own. Right back of the single tree there is a chain swivel, the long can roll either way and never twist the trace chains on the mule. I watched them 'Work and bring the logs down without a driver. If they hung the front of a log behind a rock 01 stump they knew exactly what to do. They would swing up the hill and pull the long front from behind the stump or rock, it was hung behind then jump back down into the skid trail ahead of the log and staY8d ahead of the log with traces slack, no matter how fast the log came until it hung up again or if they wanted to rest a little bit, 2 or 3 minutes, at the most they would wheel out of the trail up hill to the log and his tail to the front end of the log brace his hind legs lean ahead and brace himself and stop the log. Then he would stand and blow a bit before he jumped in front of the Jog and took off again - they didn't need a driver.

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