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Oral History: John Martinez

Description:

John Martinez talks about growing up in Walnut Grove, his time as a mechanic in World War II, and more.

 

Transcript:

Interviewee: John Martinez 
Interviewer: Beatrice Meyer 
Interview Date: 8/20/2007 
Interview Location: Unknown 

Note: Mr. Martinez’s speech is hesitant at times and he frequently struggles to find his words.  Sometimes Ms. Meyer waits while he thinks, and sometimes she interrupts him.  

 

Beatrice Meyer: I’m Beatrice Meyer and I’m here going to be talking to a very good friend of mine. 

John Martinez: I’m John Martinez.  I was born here in Oklahoma City.  My parents were Rosa Martinez and (unintelligible).  They were both from (unintelligible), Mexico. 

BM: Were you born here? 

JM: I was born here, yes, here in Oklahoma City.  I grew up in a place called Walnut Grove.  That was a sort of a semi-rural place because it was more or less isolated from the main city.  We didn’t have any bus service or anything like that.  We had to walk into town.  We had to walk to school, had to walk to church.  We didn’t get any bus service until after the Second World War when they finally paved the streets.  They were all dirt streets. 

BM: Were you an only child? 

JM: No. I have one brother and two sisters.  My brother died. 

BM: When did you move to Oklahoma City? 

JM: When did I move? 

BM: Yeah. 

JM: I was born here.  My parents moved about 1919. 

BM: The little town that you were born in, how far was it from Oklahoma City? 

JM: It was part of Oklahoma City, only it was a section of Oklahoma City called Walnut Grove.  It was just semi-rural because it was more or less isolated from the main city.  We had a big flood here in 1923, and the dam at Overholser broke.  The water just came rushing through, and there was – the river at that time made sort of a 45-degree angle at Byers and 8th Street.  It went on out to Northeast Oklahoma City.  When we had this big flood, it cut a channel straight.  As a matter of fact, it took the house where I was born, only we were not living there at that time.  That kind of kept that part of the city isolated from the rest of the town because the river at one time went by there, but now it went the other way.  It just left that part of the city more or less isolated from the main city.  We used to walk to school and walk to church.  Anywhere we went, we had to walk. 

BM: A lot of walking.  What was your relationship with your parents like? 

JM: Oh, very good.  My mother died when I was ten years old, and by that time she had taught me how to read and write Spanish, so I’ve known how to read how to read and write Spanish since I was ten years old. 

BM: You’re bilingual.   

JM: Yes. 

BM: Good.  What can you tell us about growing up other than you had to walk everywhere? 

JM: I went to Little Flower School, which was about a mile or so from where I lived.  We used to walk that.  Winter, summer, all the time.  There was no other way of getting there.  Then I went to Saint Joseph High School.  I had to walk there too.  They never mentioned this anyplace, but Saint Joseph High School is where the Murrah Building was.  They built the Murrah Building right where Saint Joseph High School used to be, where I went to school. 

BM: You mentioned Little Flower.  Is that where Little Flower Church is now? 

JM: Yes, Little Flower Church.  I was baptized at Saint Joseph’s old cathedral by (unintelligible). 

BM: What did you do after high school? 

JM: After high school, at that time we had what they call NYA schools.  They were schools that were sponsored by the government.  They were trying to teach us a trade.  I went to school at Tonkawa, Oklahoma and took radio because we knew that there was going to be a war, so I figured I’d have to have some training when I went in. So I went to Tonkawa, Oklahoma, and while I was there, I enlisted in the Air Force.  I wanted to be a radio man, but it didn’t turn out that way. 

BM: What did you do during the war?  What did you end up doing?  

JM: I was a mechanic, an airplane mechanic.  I trained on B-24s, which were the big bombers at the time, at Biloxi, Mississippi.  Then when I was assigned to work on the planes, I was assigned to P-47s, which were fighters. 

BM: Wow.  Did you like that better than what you had in mind? 

JM: Well, yes because it was just one engine that I could take care of.  The other ones were four engines. 

BM: A very important job.  Do you remember the Depression? 

JM: Yes.  The Depression – money was very scarce.  Jobs were very scarce.  We were lucky that my dad had a job all through the Depression.  He worked for the railroad track, Santa Fe Railroad.  What people used to do, the ones that could afford it, would buy a sack of beans one payday.  There on Reno where the Myriad building is – I forgot what they call it now –  

BM: The Cox Communications Center. 

JM: Where that building is now, there used to be a store named Freeman-Langston.  There’s still the Langston part of it, but it’s just a clothing store now.  At that time, it was a department store.  Most of the Mexican people would come there to buy their staples.  One payday they would buy a sack of beans and another payday they’d buy a sack of flour to last them through the month.  The people that could not afford it, they had soup lines.  There was one across from what used to be the public market.  Then there was another one there on Robinson Street across from Wiley Post Park. 

BM: That’s where the soup kitchens were? 

JM: Yeah.  Every evening, people would go over with their little pail to get some soup.  It was the only hot meal, and a lot of them, that was all they had.   

BM: Do you think the Depression here in Oklahoma was different than other states? 

JM: I don’t know because I didn’t know how it was in other states.  Also, my grandmother used to work for Saint Anthony’s Hospital.  The meat that was left over from the kitchen, they would grind that and made a spread and make sandwiches out of it.  There was a line of usually men every evening that would come there to get their sandwich to have something to eat for the day. 

BM: To have their meal. 

JM: The Mexican people had an advantage over some of the other people, because as you know, we like to eat nopales, cactus.  We eat calites, lamb’s quarters.  Types of edible plants.  We stretch out our food supply that way. 

BM: Were there a lot of Mexicans back then? 

JM: Not too many, not as many as there are now.  That’s another thing.  There was a group in packing town, another group around Little Flower, and then Lone Grove.  That was the Mexican people.  (Note: “packing town” refers to the area of Oklahoma City near the stockyards, generally on Agnew just south of the Oklahoma River.) 

BM: So it was a small community? 

JM: A small community. 

BM: Of mostly Mexicans? 

JM: We didn’t have as many other Hispanic people here.  They were mainly Mexicans that had come over from Mexico fleeing the revolution. 

BM: How did it feel going from a Depression to World War II? 

JM: At that time, I was working at – well, like I say, I joined the Air Force.  I volunteered because by that time, the government also had the Works Progress Administration, the WPA.  It would make jobs to give the people something to spend to get some money in circulation.  That’s what it was.  When the war started, that was the one that really pulled us out of the Depression. 

BM: When did you go to actual war?  Did you just maintain the planes? 

JM: I didn’t go overseas.  I was in the Second Air Force, which was a training Air Force.  I was either going to school or training.  I wasn’t training the pilots, but I was working on the planes where they trained.  I maintained the planes.  They called it the training Air Force. 

BM: So you never left the States? 

JM: No, I never left the States.  I was all over.  At one time I went to two universities when I was in the service, and two tech schools.  I went to school at Biloxi, Mississippi for training on the P-24s, and then I went to Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Ford had a plant where they were building P-24s, so I went over there to finish my training on the P-24s. 

BM: So you did get to travel quite a bit. 

JM: Yes.  I started at Fort Sill.  Part of my basic training was in Enid, Oklahoma at Vance Air Force Base there.  Then Dalhart, Texas, and then I went to Stillwater.  I went to A&M school for awhile.  (Note: Oklahoma State University was formerly known as Oklahoma A&M.)  Then from there, I went to Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, Maryland.  From there, I came back to Greensboro, North Carolina for re-assignment.  Then I was sent to Biloxi, Mississippi to train for a mechanic. 

BM: That’s good.  That’s very good.  You traveled quite a bit.  Did the war change you in any way even though you were stateside? 

JM: I was more mature when I came out because I was just a young kid when I went in. 

BM: When you were in the military, what is the biggest or strongest memory you have? 

JM: It was with (unintelligible).  

BM: What did you do there? 

JM: At that time, Mexico was not in the war, but then the Germans sunk two of their oil tankers, the Portrero de Llano and the Faja de Oro.  Then Mexico declared war on what we called the Axis, which was Japan, Germany, and Italy.  They sent (unintelligible) over here for training, so I joined them in Pocatello, Idaho.  I was working at Andover, Utah.  They came and I heard somebody was looking for me, so I was working on a plane.  I was fixing a pedal, and I asked, “Are you looking for me, Sergeant?”  He said yes and they want to see you at the orderly room.  He said, “Do you speak Spanish?”  I said yes.  He said they need you over at orderly room.  When I went to orderly room, they told me to get my gear ready because I was shipping out in the morning.  I said, “Who’s going with me?” and they said I was going by myself.  Anyway, it was payday and my pay was not what it was supposed to have been, so we had to look for my pay until it caught up with me. 

BM: Oh goodness. 

JM: The next day, they took me to the train station and I took the train on to Pocatello, Idaho.  When I got over there, I reported to the commanding officer, and I asked what I was supposed to do there.  He said, “We can’t tell you.  It’s a very special mission.”  I was there in the barracks by myself because I was the first one to get there.  Pretty soon, these other fellows start coming in. We didn’t know what the score was because they wouldn’t tell us.  Finally, when all the instructors were there, they told us Mexico was sending a squadron over there for training. 

BM: You were going to be training them to fight? 

JM: No. I did a lot of things while in there.  My specialty, my MOS with the service, was 707, which is a mechanic.  With them, I worked my first assignment.  My first assignment was to work in the photo lab translating for them.  When I finished that, I taught English for a while.  Then I taught the mechanics on the line, teaching them how to maintain the airplane.  After that, we were in Pocatella, Idaho, and it was around November when it started snowing over there.  At first, the boys from Mexico, it was very exciting to them to see the snow, but they had to work in it and got really cold and didn’t like it anymore.  Finally, they decided to transfer the squadron to Greenville, Texas. 

Both: Where it was warmer. 

JM: There they finished their training. 

BM: You didn’t go with them? 

JM: No.  I was going to go with them but then they cancelled my orders and I went to the Philippines.  While I was there, I was working with them on the line, and then my first sergeant came to me and said, “How would you like to work in the engineering office?”  I said, “No, I’ll stay here.”  He said, “Well the captain said you did such a good job at the photo lab that he would like you to take over the engineering office.”  I said, “Sergeant, I don’t know anything about that engineering office.”  He said, “Well, the captain wants you to take care of it.”  I told him, “Listen.  You have a sergeant there.  I’m just a PFC.  He outranks me.”  He said, “Don’t worry about that.  You’ll be in charge.  It’s okay.”   

BM: So you did it. 

JM: He said, “You call Sergeant Coronado and he’ll come help you set up the books and what you need to know about the engineering office.”  I called him and we set about getting things ready so I could handle the job.  After that, I took care of it.  That’s what I was doing when they finally finished the training. 

BM: Just recently, you got a nice award from Mexico. 

JM: Yes.  It’s called the Audley Award and it is given to a person who has done service to the community, the Spanish or Mexican community here, in different ways.  What I’ve done, I’ve done different things.  For one thing, I was Chairman of the Governor’s Advisory Committee for Governor Nigh and for Governor Walters.  We had a very nice conference at – what’s it called?  Cameron University in Lawton.  Then we had another conference here at OSU, at the extension part of campus.  Also, what I did was for the community was at one time, I got a call from this lady named Mara Hernandez.  She said, “John, somebody gave me your name, that you would go with me to talk to Cox Cable to give us better hours.  There’s another gentleman who will go with us.  His name is Pat Elina.  He’s lawyer.”  I said, “Yeah, I’ll go with you.”  The three of us went to talk to Cox management, the manager.  The hours that they were give us were like two or three o’clock in the morning. 

BM: You’re talking about television shows? 

JM: Televisions shows, yes.  What we argued was that people couldn’t stay up that late and watch a movie.  They said, “They can always record them.”  I said, “Not everybody has recorders.”  They said, “Well, that’s the best we can do for you.”  We waited awhile and then we went back, and they would give us the same excuse, that there was no channel and there’s not enough market.  I said, “Listen.  You’re doing just like they used to do in the past.  They used to serve Mexicans but they would serve through the back doors.  You’re giving us service just like they did – through the back door.”  They said, “I’m sorry but that’s all we can do.”  At that time, I also was in charge of the parade because I had founded the Hispanic Heritage Organization of Oklahoma.  We were in charge of the parade.  Instead of having the parade in Capitol Hill, we came Downtown.  We had a program at the Myriad Gardens, and people came from all over.  There was a big crowd of Hispanic people, and Nancy (unintelligible) was broadcasting it over her radio.  Awhile later, maybe a month or two later, she called me and she said, “John – “ actually she used to call me “Joan” because she was Puerto Rican or Cuban.  I forgot which. She said, “Cox Cable wants us to come and talk to them, but they just want you, Pat, and I.  They don’t want no one else.”  I said okay, and we went to talk.  I don’t remember the year, but they said after the 6th of January, you’ll be having Spanish programs 24 hours a day.  Then they gave us a party there at what is La Luna now on Reno Street, and then they called the people, you know, like (unintelligible) from El National, Father Lewis from Little Flower, and other leaders from the community.  Then they called us up and introduced us to a few people and said, “These are the people responsible that you have 24 hours a day Spanish programming.” 

BM: What was that first 24 hours?  What channel was that?  Univision? 

JM: Univision. 

BM: How do you like it that now we have two 24-hour channels? 

JM: Yes, well, I like it.  I just interviewed with Univision the other day. 

BM: Oh, cool.  Who interviewed you? 

JM: A fellow by the name of Greg Herrera. 

BM: You’re doing good.  How long ago was this that you got the 24-hour TV station? 

JM: Like I said, I don’t remember the year but it’s been like ten years now. 

BM: We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? 

JM: Yes. 

BM: Cool.  So that’s why the Mexican government gave you that award? 

JM: That’s one reason, and for the service that I gave to the squadron. 

BM: Wonderful.  What is the American GI Forum?  I know you’re involved in that. 

JM: The American GI Forum is what we call a family-veteran organization because we include the men, women, and children.  We have a chapter of men, a chapter of women, and a chapter of youth.  The principle is to – well, one of the main things is education.  We want to promote education among Hispanics, especially among everybody else in general.  The reason that the American GI Forum was formed is that 1948, a young man by the name of Felix Longoria was killed in action, and his body was sent back to Three Rivers, Texas where he was from.  The funeral home there refused to bury him because he was of Mexican origin.  Dr. Hector Garcia was a good friend of Lyndon Johnson.  I think he was a Senator at that time, so he called Lyndon Johnson, and through him, Felix Longoria was buried at Arlington Cemetery with full military honors.  Another time, they refused service to the naval station there in Corpus Christi to another group of Hispanics, Mexicans, because of the same reason, because they were of Mexican origin.  Then, Dr. Garcia called a group and they decided to unite and form a group so that they could go and get the services we were entitled to when we came back from World War II.  Since there was a lot of discrimination at that time, the GI Forum grew real fast through most of the states, especially the Southwest.  Through the GI Forum, they would start getting better treatment because we were fighting for our rights for veterans. 

BM: This is not just exclusive to Hispanics, right? 

JM: No. It’s not exclusive.  No. We had some other people come 

BM: So just as long as you’re a veteran, you can join? 

JM: Yes, or if you’re related to a veteran. 

BM: Sounds like we needed something, didn’t we?  When you came back from the war and everything, you started working? 

JM: Yes.  I went to work for First National Bank.  They had a program there where they would train us to work for the bank.  I was in the bookkeeping department.  The bank had an agreement with the government.  It started with a certain amount of money, and then the government would match it.  As the bank gave us a raise, the government would cut down, so at the end the bank was giving us our full salary. 

BM: That was part of being in the service, in the military? 

JM: Yes. 

BM: Did you like that better than being a mechanic? 

JM: Oh yes.  I liked mechanics, but I had gone to business school before I went into the service and I knew something about accounting.  I worked at the bank for about two years, and then I used to work weekends with a Mexican restaurant.  I knew the owner very well, and he made the proposition one time that that if I would like to go in with another fellow and run a restaurant for him in Wichita, Kansas.  I took the opportunity, and I went to Wichita, Kansas.  After a while, I realized that was not what I wanted to do the rest of my life, so I decided to go to the university there, Wichita University, and I got a degree there in economics and business administration.  I came back to the bank and I stayed with it for about 31 years.  The last I did was I was an operations officer in the real estate department when I left the bank.  The thing was the bank went broke.  I retired May 31, 1986, and the bank went broke the following July.  They paid me a lump sum, so I have to make that money last the rest of my life. 

BM: After traveling all over the place, what made you decide to make Oklahoma your home? 

JM: I was born here and raised here and my family was here. 

BM: When did you meet your wife? 

JM: Oh, I knew her when we were little kids.  I knew of her, but I didn’t know her that well until we grew up.  We used to go to Little Flower.  I knew of her, but I didn’t meet her until she was working the telephone company and I was working for the bank, and we started going together. 

BM: You started dating her after the war, then? 

JM: Yes.  I had promised myself that I would not get married in the war because I could see that it was a hard life for those that were married.  One day, especially like I was, one day I was here and the next they’d ship me somewhere else.  I was all over the country. 

BM: Quite a decision.  How many kids do you have? 

JM: Eight. 

BM: You have eight kids? 

JM: Yes.  I have seven boys and one girl.  All of them graduated from university. 

BM: Wonderful.  What are their professions? 

JM: John is the oldest and he has his degree in computer science.  Raquel, she’s my daughter.  She’s the next in line.  She graduated from OSU, and then she went to Albuquerque to work on her Master’s degree in American Studies.  She fell in love with the city and told us she wasn’t coming back.  That was going to her place.  She’s there.  She started to work for the university on a study program.  You know, she worked so many hours during the week, and from there on she kept working for the university, and now she’s on the cabinet.  She teaches Spanish and she handles the budget. 

BM: Are all your children bilingual? 

JM: No. Most of them are, but about half of them aren’t.  My other son, he’s got a degree in environmental science, but he works for Tinker.  He doesn’t use his degree.  Daniel just graduated from Parker University Chiropractic School.  He went to Mexico to finish his studies there, and while he was there, they offered him a job to run the school, so he just got back the other day and then he’s going back over there.  He plans to do that for some time.  Eventually, he will be setting up his clinic in Dallas. 

BM: Where in Mexico is he going to be? 

JM: (unintelligible).  It’s not in Mexico City, but like from here to Norman.  Something like that.  He improved his Spanish. 

BM: Well, yeah.  You have to if you live down there. 

JM: Michael is another doctor, a chiropractor.  He was the first one to graduate from – [pause] 

BM: Chiropractic school? 

JM: The chiropractic school in Saint Louis.  I can’t remember.  Oh, Logan.  Logan Chiropractic School.  Phillip, my youngest, is also a chiropractor.  He graduated from Logan also.  Thomas also is a chiropractor.  He graduated from – I can’t remember the name of the school in Kansas City.  Before that, he had a master's degree in psychology.  He was working at that but then he decided to change careers. 

BM: And become a chiropractor like his brothers. 

JM: Yes.  He still has his license as a –  

BM: Psychologist? 

JM: Yes.  He tries to do both careers.   

BM: Well, yeah.  That would be great.  How many grandchildren do you have? 

JM: Oh gosh.  About ten, I think 

BM: I figured you had more since you have eight children.  Since you retired, what have you been up to? 

JM: I’ve been doing mainly volunteer work of different kinds. 

BM: Anything that stands out? 

JM: No, not that I can think of. 

BM: You mentioned earlier you interviewed for Univision.  What is that about? 

JM: Oh, that’s about what I’ve done here in the city to – [trails off]. 

BM: The award? 

JM: The recognition I got from Mexico. 

BM: That’s great.  It sounds like you have a lot of things to do and now that you’ve got the time, lots of volunteering.  Anything that you remember in particular about Oklahoma, how it’s changed over the years? 

JM: It’s grown a lot.  When we were kids, we used to pick cotton.  We used to pick cotton where Midwest City and Del City is now.  There was all cotton fields there.  This man used to come and pick us up in his Model T and take us over there to pick cotton.  I was just a little kid, about eight years old, so I didn’t pick too much.  I had a little sack I used to pick cotton in. On payday, my mother used to give me a quarter or something like that.  I’d buy me a nickel’s worth of salted peanuts and a tin soldier. 

BM: So, you probably remember what Downtown Oklahoma City was originally like. 

JM: Oh yes.  I wish that they had never torn it down like they have now. 

BM: They’re trying to make it nice and pretty.  What do you think? 

JM: It will never be like it was. 

BM: What was it like to come down to Oklahoma City? 

JM: We used to have Main Street all the way, not torn up like it is now.  We had Main Street.  We had the big stores Downtown.  We had John A. Brown.  Kerr’s.  Halliburton.  All the big stores.  Then we had another – it was called Petty’s.  It was sort of a general store.  They had tools and things.  Then they had Cressey’s.  On the corner of Robinson and Main, there was a drugstore called Katz.  [watch beeping] It was real nice.  I used to like to come.  I remember especially during Christmastime.  What I remember is it would be snowing and people would be doing their shopping.  Brown’s always had a real nice –  

BM: Display? 

JM: Display.  I always remember the little bells for the Salvation Army, people doing their shopping. 

BM: You remember Downtown.  What did you think of the times when all of a sudden people started to get away from Downtown and started going to the malls? 

JM: That’s when – they tore our – they called it Pipeline or something like that.  They decided to tear down all the old buildings and build what we have now.  We had some really pretty buildings, and they were sturdy.  One of them, it took a long time to knock down because it was really built to last. 

BM: Do you remember which was the first mall here in Oklahoma?  Was it Shepherd Mall? 

JM: [slowly] The first mall?  [normally] Yeah, I think it was Shepherd Mall.  At one time, there was a lake there.  When I was Boy Scout, we used to go swimming there. 

BM: And then it became a mall. 

JM: We used to call it Shepherd’s Lake.  I think the name Shepherd is from the ladies that used to own the property. 

BM: Well, now it’s no longer a mall.  It’s offices and things.  The Capitol Hill area – you do a lot of work around there.  What do you think about how that has changed? 

JM: It used to be like a little town because they had the stores.  Brown’s was there and Penney’s was there.  You could go down there and do your shopping there.  Now all the stores are gone.  They used to have a Crest there too. 

BM: I hear that some people looked forward to shopping in Capitol Hill because it was somewhere to go and something to do. 

JM: If you didn’t want to go Downtown, you could just go to Capitol Hill. 

BM: Was it fun growing up here in Oklahoma? 

JM: Oh yes.  I enjoyed it.  We didn’t have much at that time.  Most people were poor during the Depression.  At Christmas, we didn’t have many toys, but we made our own toys.  We made our little wagons and we made rubber guns and bows and arrows. 

BM: So, you had to use your imagination. 

JM: Yes. 

BM: That must have been fun. 

JM: Yes.  The kids would make scooters, but you had to have paved streets to run on so we couldn’t use them in Walnut Grove, but the kids who lived in Little Flower and packing town could. They made their own scooters.  They used to have these round bearings and two-by-fours, and they’d make their own scooters.  I used to live near the river, so I spent a lot of time in the river. 

BM: Fishing? 

JM: Just playing around there.  We tried to catch fish with our hands.  One time, I don’t know what happened, but there was a lot of fish around.  We just got a club and clubbed them.   

BM: And then you took them home? 

JM: Yes. 

BM: That was fun.  Let me ask you something else that I was curious about.  You’ve seen a lot of technology.  You were talking about making your own toys and everything to now cell phones.  What do you think of all that? 

JM: I haven’t been able to keep up with it.  It’s just too much for me. 

BM: When you were a kid, did you have a TV? 

JM: No. TVs did not come up until after the Second World War.  We had radio and we had record players. 

BM: How were the record players? 

JM: At first you had to crank them.  Later on, they produced ones with electricity and better sound than the other ones.  I remember that there was a store in town here by the name of Jenkins.  It was a music store.  I went there and my dad bought some records.  He heard them there, and then he went home and heard them on the little phonograph, and they didn’t sound the same.  We didn’t have electricity at the time, so he decided to get electricity and he went and bought that record player so it would like the one he heard at Jenkins. 

BM: It must be interesting to go from not having a television and listening to a radio and now have everything. 

JM: We have seen a lot.  Since I’m quite a bit older, I’ve seen a lot of change.  We’ve seen the trains from the coal-burning locomotives to the diesel that we have now.  The airplanes changed from prop-driven airplanes to jets.  The cars went from a Model T to what we have now.  The Model T was a very simple car.  You could fix it.  My dad would fix ours.  He used to overhaul the Model T, take the engine out and put it back together.  I used to help him, so I had a little mechanics training before I went in the service. 

BM: Now you have cars that only computers can figure out what’s wrong with them. 

JM: That’s right.  Now I don’t even attempt to do anything to them.   

BM: Not even an oil change. 

JM: At one time I could fix my car, but now I can’t do nothing to it. 

BM: Same thing, I’m sure, in the home front.  You see all these phonographs and now you have the microwave.  What did you think of the microwave when it first came out? 

JM: I didn’t know too much about it, but then my wife used to babysit for this lady.  For Christmas she bought a microwave.  Ever since then –  

BM: They like that. 

JM: Also, now that you mention it, people used to wash their clothes on a washboard.  From then on, they came to the – [stutters, pauses] 

BM: Washer? 

JM: Electric washer.  They had the rollers to wring the clothes before they put them out to dry.  Now they have the dryers. 

BM: Yeah.  Oklahoma celebrates its hundred years.  How do you feel about that? 

JM: Actually, they haven’t done anything outstanding that I can see. 

BM: Not so far.  Maybe they’re waiting until later on. 

JM: Until the time when – no, they became a state in April. 

BM: Did they? 

JM: I think so.   

BM: I knew it was this year. 

JM: Twenty-second?  No, I think they became a state in 1907.  I think it was November.  I’m not sure. 

BM: Maybe they’re waiting for that.  Hmm.  It’s an awesome memory that you have of the Midwest City area being cotton and now it’s houses and Tinker and all that stuff.  John, it’s been fun.  Is there anything else that you’d like to share? 

JM: [pause] 

BM: Any advice that you have or anything that you’ve learned from life that is just –  

JM: My advice to young children is to get an education.  Education will open a lot of doors. 

BM: It will.  It certainly will.  Thank you, John, and thank you for sharing your memories.  It’s been interesting and very educational. 

 

End of interview. 

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