Duchess & Sadie's Domain

Well! College football has arrived. Oklahoma State (OSU) beat Georgia 24-10 at home in the new Pickens OSU Stadium, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. BYU beat Oklahoma University (OU) 14-13 this last Saturday, September 5, 2009, when Sam Bradford, OU's Heisman Trophy quarterback, suffered joint strain to his shoulder when Bradford got pounded into the ground. Let us hope that the time out will be short for Bradford and OU football.

This NW Okie's Pug Underdogs came in 3rd out of 5 in her Yahoo! Fantasy College Football Group with Moshers taking 1st out of 5. If it had not been for OU and Bradford being pounded into the ground by BYU, Moshers would have picked a perfect score in the Fantasy Football league. BUT ... IF's don't count, do they? Do you belong to a Fantasy Football College league?

Dale in Stillwater, OK says, "We have lots of hummers at Yost Lake near Stillwater, OK. I have six feeders around my cabin. FUN ... FUN ... FUN!"

As to the Alva WWII POW Camp, Leonard says, "We were very close to the airfield. There was a huge concrete water tower which I suspect was to supply water for the camp not far from where the converted barracks were located. I don't know if it's still there or not. My brother and I climbed to the top via an inside ladder that went up to a hole in platform that must have supported the water tank. Never did tell our parents about that insanity!

Leonard continues, "The paintings we saw were in the two remaining buildings which I think were used for truck maintenance, as there still old truck parts scattered inside one of the buildings and two abandoned military trucks just outside this one structure. There were several paintings in at least one of these shop/barracks and as there were no other buildings left except for the ones we were living in I would venture a guess that they are the ones in the Waynoka Museum."

It is also Labor Day weekend! Hope if you are out driving on the highways and byways that you are watching out for other drivers and being courteous. Labor Day weekend in SW Colorado, particularly Durango and Ignacio, means biker and their hogs gather from all over. NW Okie did not get into Durango to check and see the gathering of motorcycles lining the Main Street this year.

Before we head out of here, we would like to wish J. T. Colon a Happy Birthday today, September 7, 2009.

HAPPY LABOR DAY to ALL! If you don't have a job to labor yet, we wish and send you hope that you will find one soon!
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Insight Into Grandma & John C. McClure

This week's 1905 letter from John C. McClure to Miss Constance Warwick takes us to October. I could not make out the exact date in October 1905, because part of the postmark was destroyed when Constance tore open the end of the envelope.

There was only one letter in October, 1905 and it is beginning to sound as though thing might be cooling down between the two of them to some extinct. We also find out that the person, Lowe, that John talks about in his past letters has just bought an interest in a pool hall in Alva, Oklahoma Territory.

John was still living and working at the First National Bank in Alva, Oklahoma Territory. Constance Warwick was teaching in rural schools in northwest Oklahoma Territory, in October, 1905 was getting her mail by rural delivery, Alva, Oklahoma Territory.

October 1905 letter -- A short, one-page letter begins, "Alva, O.T., Tuesday Eve, Dear Connie, I may be out Thursday Eve. I worked till 12 last night and will work tonight. Lowe has bought half interest in the pool hall.

"I reckon I did act mad Sunday Eve. You hurt my feelings a little on the road out there. I would not have cared had I known that I was doing something that I had not ought to do. But that calling down hurt me awful. Jno McClure."
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Okie Tourist Website

Regina says, "Hi! I’ve been a reader of your site for many years. I love family and Oklahoma history and I have a lot of people from Northwest Oklahoma, Cherokee, Alva, Lambert, Carmen, Woodward, Mooreland, Quinlan and Cedardale (to name a few). I wanted to let your readers know about my NEW site, okietourist.com. I’m going to different areas in the state and reviewing them. Plus we have giveaways going on all the time. Right now it’s four free tickets to Frontier City in OKC! Hope you get a chance to come by and see it!"
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A Kinney Connection

I do not have an email for Sharon Arrington, who signed our OkieLegacy guestbook, but Sharon says, "My grandfather was born in Alva, in 1898. His last name was Kinney. Would like to hear from any that might be related."
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Operation Blue Book & Area 51

Roy says, "This is proof that there was an 'Operation Blue Book', an "Area '51", and sightings of (so called) flying saucers. My squadron scrambled two jets to intercept a UFO 'hovering' over the 'project' (the top secret Savannah River plant where "H-bombs" were created) but the pilots saw nothing as the object 'took off' vertically at speeds 3-times faster than anything we were aware of. We were written up in 'Operation Blue Book" and later in an article in Reader's Digest."
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What Big Ears She Has ...

SBW of Weaselskin Creek, in SW Colorado says, "My, what big ears she has ... for a bird. No wonder this feeder always looks as if it's been licked clean. This doe had twin fawns, with their spots still showing, waiting on the side of the hill south of the garage." View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

1914 Political Events

A World War begins in Europe July 28 one month after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne in Bosnia. Riding in a 1912 Graf und Stift motorcar at Sarajevo, the 52 year old Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed by tubercular high school student Gavrilo Prinzip who had been hired by Servian terrorists to kill the nephew of the emperor Franz Josef.

Austrian militarists had been spoiling to enter the wars that had embroiled the Balkans since 1912, and Vienna used the incident at Sarajevo in June as an excuse to declare war on Serbia.

August 1, 1914, the war quickly widened as Germany declared war on Russia. August 3, 1914 Germany declared war on France. Neutral Belgium was invaded by German troops August 4, 1914 and Britain declared war on Germany around that same time.

Montenegro declared war on Austria August 5, 1914. Serbia declared war on Germany August 6, 1914. Montenegro declared war on Germany August 8, 1914. Britain and France declared war on Austria August 12, 1914.
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1914 Human Rights & Social Justice

The Ludlow massacre April 20, 1914 climaxed a struggle by Colorado coal miners struggling for recognition of their United Mine Workers union. a battle with state militia near Trinidad ended with 21 dead including two women and 11 children caught in tents that had been set ablaze, angry strikers took possession of the Colorado coalfields, and they did not yield until federal troops moved in June 1, 1914.

The Amalgamated clothing Workers of America was formed by a dissident majority within the manufacturer-oriented United Garment Workers Union. Suffragettes marched on the capitol at Washington June 28, 1914 to demand voting rights for U.S. women. The march was staged within hours of the assassination of Sarajevo.

Mohandas Gandhi returned to India at age 45 after 21 years of practicing law in South Africa where he organized a campaign of "passive resistance" to protest his mistreatment by whites for his defense of Asian immigrants. Gandhi had read Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" and he attracted wide attention in India by conducting a fast -- the first of 14 such fasts that he would stage as political demonstrations and that would inaugurate the idea of the political fast.
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1914 Economics, Finance & Retailing

Remember when the minimum wage was $5-PER-DAY? We have come along way since those days of 1914, huh?

The $5-a-day wage idea was largely the brainchild of James Couzens, 42, who met Ford in 1903, borrowed heavily in order to invest $2,500 in the new Ford Motor Company, and had become Ford's second in command.

Threats of labor troubles in early January, 1914 had led Henry Ford to offer workers a minimum wage of $5 per day. That was more than twice the average U.S. wage and more than the average English worker earned in a week.

A Federal Trade Commission was established by congress September 26, 1914 to police US industry and was designed only to prevent unfair competition. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act voted by congress October 15, 1914 toughened the federal government's power against combinations in restraint of trade as outlawed by the Sherman Act of 1890. The law contained provisions to protect labor.
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1914 Transportation

Rembember the Stutz Bearcat, Pierce-Arrow and the Dodge Brothers of Michigan? They were all before my time, but those times backt then had some great names for Cars, huh?

The Stutz Bearcat was introduced with a design patterned on the White Squadron racing cars that won victories in 1913. Stutz also produced family cars while the Bearcat provided lively competition for the Mercer made at Trenton, New Jersey.

1914 Stutz Bearcat was priced new at $2000. The top speed was 45+ mph. I used a huge 4-cylinder, T-head engine made by Waukashaw. Each cylinder has over 100 cubic inches. Designed by Harry Stutz and known as the first sporstcar in the scant-body and scant-comfort idiom. Stutz designed the Bearcat to be a masculine machine from the drawing board and a rumor that he designed clutch springs so stiff that supposedly a woman could not operate it. It had a three-speed manual gearbox and two-wheel mechanical brakes.



The Pierce-Arrow's Herbert B. Dawley patented the fender-inset headlamps used in the 1913-14 Pierce-Arrow Model 48 B-2. They would hereafter be a distinctive mark of the luxury car that rivaled Packard in the high-priced motorcar market.

The U.S. auto production reached 543,679 with Model T Fords accounting for more than 300,000 of the total. The country had fewer 100,000 trucks, most of them delivery vans.

A large Dodge Brothers factory went up at Hamtramck, Michigan, where Horace and John Dodge pioneered in making all-steel bodied motorcars and achieved immediate success. Both brothers would die in 1920.

The Panama Canal opened to traffic August 3, 1914 just as Germany declared war on FRance. Built essentially on French plans at a total cost of $30,000 lives and some $367 million in US money (on top of the $287 million lost by the French in the 1889s). The canal used a system of locks to carry ships 50.7 miles between deep water in the atlantic and deep water in the Pacific.

The Houston Ship Canal opened to give Houston an outlet to Galveston Bay on the Gulf. The 50-mile canal would make the Texas city a deep-water port and a major shipping point for US grain.

The Cape Cod Ship Canal opened to link Buzzards Bay with Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts. The 17.4-mile canal enabled coastal shipping to avoid the voyage round the Cape.

The White Star Line passenger vessel S.S. Britannic launched February 26, 1914 was a sister ship of of the S.S. Titanic that went down in 1912.

Greyhound Lines, Inc., had its beginnings in the Mesabi Transportation Co. founded at Hibbing, Minnesota, by Swedish-American diamond-drill operator Carl Eric Wickman, 30, who had opened a Hupmobile and Goodyear Tire agency but was unable to sell the Hupmobile. He ran the car on a regular schedule across the range to nearby Alice charging iron miners 15 cents one way, 25 cents roundtrip. Wickman took in a partner and soon built his own bodies and mounting them on a truck chassis. By 1918 he would have 18 buses operating in northern Minnesota with annual earnings of $40,000.

Gulf Oil Company distributed the first U.S. automobile maps. The 10,000 maps showed roads and highways in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Other oil companies soon followed Gulf's lead. Road maps distributed free by service stations would encourage automobile travel and gasoline consumption.
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1914 Communications & Media

The teletype machine introduced by German-American inventor Edward E. Kleinschmidt, 38, speeded communications. Kleinschmidt would merge with his only competitor in 1928 to create the Morkun-Kleinschmidt company that would become the Teletype Corporation that American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) would buy for $30 million in 1930.
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1914 Everyday Life

It was about 95 years ago that the elastic brassiere would supplant the corset that was in common use. The elastic brassiere was patented in November 1914 by Mary Phelps Jacob who was a New York debutante, who devised the prototype bra with her French maid before a dance, using two pocket handkerchiefs, some pink ribbon, and thread.

Mary Phelps Jacob was a descendant of steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton. Jacob was asked by friends to make bras for them. A stranger asked for a sample and enclosed a dollar.

Jacob had been encouraged to engage a designer to make drawings, and she would make a few hundred samples of her Backless Brassiere with the help of her maid, but would find them hard to sell, and she would sell her patent to the Bridgeport, Conn., corset firm Warner Brothers Company which would acquire for $15,000 a patent that would later be estimated to have a value of $15 million.

Doublemint chewing gum was introduced by William Wrigley, Jr.

What was happening in your ancestors everyday life back in 1914? My dad, Gene M. McGill was born December 27, 1914!
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1914 Agriculture

95 years ago the U.S. ranchers herded their cattle with Model T. Fords.

AND ... U.S. farmhands begin annual migrations north from Texas, traveling in Model T. Fords and harvesting crops as they ripen up to the Canadian border.

George Washington Carver revealed the results of experiments that showed the value of peanuts and sweet potatoes in replenishing soil fertility. Southern planters had in many instances been ruined by the boll weevil and began turning to peanut and sweet potato culture, especially when Carver showed the many peanut by-products he had produced in his laboratory -- Not only flour, molasses, and vinegar but also cheese, milk, and coffee substitutes, synthetic rubber, plastics, insulating board, linoleum, soap, ink, dyes, wood stains, metal polish, and shaving cream.
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1914 Sports

Chicago's Wrigley Field was completed at a cost of $250,000 for the Chicago Cubs by local restaurateur Harry Weeghman who would sell the ballpark to chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr., in 1919.

Wrigley would expand the park's seating capacity several times to seat 46,000 and ran it until his death in 1932. By the mid-1970s the centerfield bleacher area would have been roped off, wider seats and wider aisles would have been installed, and the seating capacity would have been reduced to 37,741.

The Boston braves win the World Series by defeating Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics 4 games to 0.

The Yale Bowl was completed at New Haven, Conn., at a cost of $650,000. The 61,000 seat football stadium would be enlarged to seat 74,786 as college football becomes a major sporting attraction.
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