Bellis | Susan Spess Shay

Image via Wikipedia

I’m really enjoying Zola’s book. It’s easy to tell she was a teacher. She does a great job of teaching me. 🙂

I really didn’t know how Tulsa got its name until this book.

Once Charity got all wound up on how Tulsa Town was named. Bill had heard it called many names. Some spoke of it as ‘cow town’ by the river. But she had gone back to De Soto’s 1540 age quoting the Spanish explorer as saying the settlement was named ‘Talisa’, a fair city located in the northern Creek country, east of the Mississippi River, with buildings and cultiated fields. The Tul or Tal syllable means town and “ahassee”, meant old, thus Old Home Town. Other Creeks spelled the word Tallasi, Tulsa or Tulsii.

Who knew Tulsa what a Creek word? (Hands?)

And she tells several reasons men wore bandannas.

“He said a blue or red bandanna was as essential to the cowboy, miner, frontiersman or homesteader as his large sombrero.

“The bandanna is used to protect the back of his neck from the sun. Tied across the face below the nose it becomes a dust mask, or an oujtlaw’s protection from identity. It becomes a bandage in case of accident, a sling for broken arm; a blind for skittery horses, a strainer for drinking muddy water, and a towel. It can be used for signaling, a dish drier, for tying calf legs while branding; even for hanging horse thieves. He spoke jovial-like.”

I love the way Zola writes. She talks about the evening after Thanksgiving and is so descriptive, it’s almost like being there. And since my dad lives close to where the Bellis’s homestead was, it’s easy for me to imagine.

Twilight came to the dense wooded area. Evening shadows spread over the bottoms. The velvet canopy of sky was studded with stars. The couple distinguished the bold evening star, the Seven Little Sisters, the Dipper, the North Star and the heavy sprinkled Milky Way extending from horizon to horizon.

Eventually, the harvest moon shed its golden glow for the happy family’s return.

The figures, sitting in the spring seat, formed a silhouette in loving embrace. God knew what He was about when He made a woman to walk beside her husband and be a helpmate. The two Bellis brothers could honestly vouch for this!

The Cherokee Strip and other areas of Oklahoma owe much to the Pioneer Woman. Rightfully, a statue has been erected in behalf of their enduring hardships.

Note: The Ponca City Pioneer Woman statue was donated by EW Marland, Ponca City oilman who later became governor. He commissioned the statue at an estimated cost of $250,000.00.

The cost included $10,000.00 paid to each of 12 sculptors, who submitted models in competition for the final selection. The winning entry by Bryant Baker of New York was dedicated on April 22, 1930, the 41st anniversary of the opening of Oklahoma settlement.

A crowd of 40,000 came to Ponca City for the dedication broadcast nationwide on radio. President Herbert Hoover opened the ceremony with a speech from Washington, DC. Will Rogers, Oklahoma native son, spoke at the dedication site.

My man and I lived in Punkin Center during the first years we were married. We bought our first home there. One of the first things I did when we got there was visit the Pioneer Woman museum. (Not to be confused with The Pioneer Woman blogger. LOL)

The statue is in a beautiful park, but I can’t imagine 40,000 people crowding into it. Of course, back in 1930 they might not have had the streets, highways and businesses that arae there now.

I can’t ask my dad about it. He wasn’t born until September of that year.

An Old Ford Tale (smalltownworld.wordpress.com)

I love to get my dad and uncle talking about “the day”. When they tell stories about the Ford, the original one that is no more, I find my own memories of a town (gone for years and years) waking up. I don’t remember houses so much as the road and trees that lined it.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m reading “Cherokee Strip Fever” by Zola Sample, which is written about the Ford area before the opening of the Cherokee Strip (at least so far in the book).

Zola was born a Bellis. The story tells of her mother, Charity, coming out to Oklahoma territory alone with three children, before Zola was born. When she arrives, she goes to the town of Sinnett (the book says, “Just down the road from C-Town.” Cool, huh?)

So I wondered, just where was the town of Sinnett? I’d love to go there to explore and see if I can find any remains of buildings. Maybe the post office.

Turns out, it’s very near the place I live right now. First day off I have, I’m heading that way. I want to explore the old cemetery and see if there are names I recognize from the book. Look around and see . . . what I can see. I’ll take a few pictures and share them here. Next time I have a free day, that is. 🙂

Dad tells me he knew Charity. Remembered her well, in fact, and much of their family.

He said Zola and her husband lived next door to his aunt and uncle, Lena and Cecil Shoemaker, when their daughter, Judy, was just a little girl.

“Where did they live?” I asked.

“You know where Nola lived?”

“Past us on the highway?” That’s the only house I remembered for the Fishers.

Dad laughed. “The house before that. Next door to the grocery store, the house with the big lot.”

I remembered that house because I used to trick-or-treat the Vaughts there.

“I used to mow that big lot for fifty cents!” He chuckled at the memory. “Lena and Cecil lived on past them on the other side of the street.”

Memories surfaced from the fog in my brain. “Did someone else I know live down that street?”

“Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Lambertson lived down there, and the Wards–Uncle Joe’s in laws.”

A memory of my mom getting her hand smashed in a car door at the Ward’s house popped in. Dad didn’t remember it, but I remember Mom lying on the bed in their house with ice on her hand. Funny what we remember.

“Was the Christian Church on down that street?”

“Yes, it was.” I used to walk home from church with my cousin Kathy on that street when I was little.

Finally, he got to tell me the story. “One day, Cecil decided to put up a clothes line for Lena.” (Early day clothes dryer as well as a kid’s “tent” superstructure.)

“While he dug the first hole, Lena and Judy, who was a cute, tiny little girl, left to run some errands. They were gone a little while, and when they got back, Judy ran into the back yard to see how her daddy was getting along. Cecil had just finished digging the second hole.

“Judy saw that hole and was just amazed. She ran back to her mom. ‘Mama, did Daddy carry that big hole all the way over there by himself or did Dex help him?'”

The only problem with the story is that when Dad told it, he called Dex Deb. According to Zola’s obituary, Deb was Zola’s brother name, not her her husband, Dexter’s.

I need a little help from the Shoemaker girls to find out which one lived next door.