The Old Home Place

Northwest of Chandler on the north side of the new lake a.k.a. Bell Cow Lake. Archie Pounds speaking, 1990.

Baptism on Bellcow, c. 1936

That's the home place--we just drove by it. See that sharp bend in the creek? Used to be a big hole of water there, and we had a divin board in there about where that washout is. We called it Kate's hole. Reason we called it that was the Mitchells lived over there where Glenn and Gladys rebuilt their house. Her name was Kate Mitchell. She was the school teacher. Bunch of us boys come down there one night to go swimming, and she was in there naked, taking a bath, so we all had to get back and let her dress and go home.

When we moved here this was a low water bridge. Wasn't no bridge here when we first moved into this country. Went right down the bank and we had a concrete slab in there.  

I've spent hours and hours right there. That's where we dug old Wallace Sprague out we was talkin about. He dived off that divin board and the creek had filled in with sand.   

We used to go up and down that creek right there--that's the gate that went into one of the fields. We got possum grapes, we squirrel hunted, we fished them little ol' bullheads. This was a lovely field. Daddy kept most of it in alfalfa. That's about all we raised here was alfalfa and corn.  Many a hard day's work right there, boy.  

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Right here's where the old home place set. It's growed up till you can't even see the driveway.  That sunken area here is the old driveway. Circled right around there and put your car in the barn--had a big barn.  

My Daddy was the last guy who lived here who ever farmed it. Then they rented it out but nobody lived here. I played here on a big flat rock. I can't find it. It's where we used to sit and play the guitar and sing of a night.

To the north on the other side of the creek was Grandpa Stidham's. That's Bell Cow right there in that heavy timber. Grandpa had a better place to live, up there on the main road, but we had a better farm than he had and a lot more of it.

After we moved from the old place, we moved up here. Our family and Grandpa Stidham were on adjoinin farms. And the Gobles were east of here. South across the road were the Mitchells, and to the west were the Suggs, the Hutchinsons, then colored people over toward Sweet Home.

This was the old silo. It was just like this when we lived here, except it was in much better shape. It was really some farm. Picture in your mind all that cleaned and cleared. There's that ditch I was tellin you about. It started half a mile north over yonder and followed that bottom clear around and dumped into Bell Cow. I been down there bailin hay many and many a day. We had that hay. Just picture in your mind though the land we had to farm when it was real land, clean. We had a 160 here and then had the 160 on the west--clear to the corner. Then we had 60 acres across the road south. We had about 350-60 acres in here.  

We didn't farm it here where you're lookin at. This was our calf pasture. We kept calves in here, and it had a hogwire fence all the way around it.  

Daddy had his farm sale right here when he moved to town about 1940. They rented this to a guy had a tractor. They never did cut the weeds out of the fence rows. They just come through on the tractor and made a swing around, leaving the weeds growin in the fence corners.  

We used to sit right there on this rock and play the guitar and sing, us kids would at night. By the hours. That rock. If I was movin to town and buildin a new house I'd git that rock.  I'd get a truck out here with a line on it. It'd come right out.

Lots of fun up and down here on this road. I used to ride ol' Muggins, my pony, gallop up and down this road.  Ride him over once and a while and see my girlfriend Sweet Fern.

A colored family lived over to the south--Sam Buford. He helped us in the fields a lot.  Never would come in the house and eat. Mama'd always fix his dinner, and he'd sit out there on that little porch by himself and eat. He would not come in the house and eat. He just wouldn’t do it. He had a family, nice family. Their house sat over there in the woods. They owned it, drove a good car, worked hard.   

It was a different world when I lived here. You'd see one car a day, or maybe two or three cars a week go by, except Saturday or Sunday goin to town. Somebody like me an ol' Gilbert Myers would stop out here and tie our ponies up and sit down there in the middle of the road and talk two or three hours. You didn't have to move. Nothin ever came by.  

Archie, Chandler OK, 1995

from North of Deep Fork: An Oklahoma Farm Family in Hard Times. Advance Graphics, 1996; Create Space, 2011.