TELEPHONE PARTY LINE

I've writtten one every year since the one about my tooth.   TELEPHONE PARTY LINE by Mrs. Jerry (Connie) LaGrow Rt. #1 Box 61 Cherokee, Oklahoma 73728  2007 I don’t know how many people today recall the old telephone party line but this is an experience that my husband and family had with the party line back in the mid ‘60's when our two children were small and in grade school at Jet-Nash. We did not yet have individual telephone systems but we did have the beginning of a dial system.  It no longer was the old rectangle wooden cabinet telephone when the ONE telephone hung on the wall and the telephone had an crank on the right side of the wooden box that you would twist around and around to call the operator or someone else on your line and the mouth piece that you spoke into or sometimes yelled into, was usually black and stuck out in front from the wooden case with a small wooden slanted tray on the front to take notes if need be.  On the opposite side of the crank was a black pear shaped apparatus that you put to your ear to hear the voice on the other end of the line.  The reason the little tray was attached to the front of the telephone was because the cord that attached to the receiver was only about 18 inches long.  I recall when I was a child at home that our telephone identification ring was one long ring and a short ring.  Our nearest neighbors ring was two long rings. And if the telephone rang and rang and rang, it was called a general ring and everyone on the party line listened for there was either an announcement or something happening in the community or else an emergency like a fire or an accident in the area and someone needed help RIGHT NOW! There were usually four different families on one line but the night I’m going to tell about, there were six on our one line, three being close neighbors and three in the Lambert area about eight miles away.  In other words we heard our identifying ring and one other person’s ring but if we lifted the phone to use it there might be one of five other family residents that might be talking on the telephone line.   The proper and courtesy thing was to hang up the receiver and go back a little later to see if they were still talking or not, but sometimes one would just listen to their conversation and catch the latest news or gossip as some called it.  That was called eave-dropping!  Well, that particular winter night this is what happened on a telephone party line.   We lived in a very sparsely populated farm area and Southwestern Bell wanted to get the most for their money so they added these other residents on our line.  I hoped I’ve explained this plain enough but here goes. Our children, Penny and Jeffery were in grade school at Jet-Nash, and we didn’t go to the highschool basketball games very often and NEVER to an away game.  But this particular night, the F.F.A. instructor and his wife, Nolan and Bobbie Arthur, called us on the phone and wanted to know if we wouldn’t like to go with them to the game at Aline.  Their phone was out of Jet, which was an independently owned telephone system that was owned by the residents of the community that owned stock in the telephone company.  It was even more primitive than ours in that there was one of three local operators who sat at a switch board twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and placed the local calls from one party line to another or to someone in town.  Even a long distance phone call would have to go through the operator and Mrs. Alexander was the one on duty that night.  (There were three older (we would call them senior citizens today) women that manned the telephone board and were on duty even at night.)   Our telephone was out of Cherokee even though we only lived six miles from Jet and were in the Jet Community and ten from Cherokee.  Our telephone service was provided by Southwestern Bell and was trying out the dial system but with still party lines.  Off-times the Jet telephone operator was known to listen in on conversations to pass the time at the switch board. Well, we consented to go with Nolan and Bobbie because Jerry and I both had relatives on both sides of the family that lived in the Aline area and it might give us a chance to see and visit with some of them.  So off we went in their car to a highschool basketball game, Jet-Nash versus Aline.  Well in the meantime Eunice, Jerry’s mother tried to call us.  We had neglected to tell her that the telephone company had added three other homes to our line and that someone else heard our telephone ring on the party-line.  Well, the other person opposite us would pickup her telephone receiver to see who was calling us and it would stop the ringing.  (This was called eavesdropping on your neighbors.)  Eunice would hear the ringing stop and she would call all our names and no one would answer.  This really bothered her and she would hang up and try again!  The same thing would happen!  After doing this several times her imagination began to run wild!  Especially when the other person on the party line got tired of listening and finally just let it ring numerous times without anyone lifting a receiver.   So Eunice’s next step was to call my parents on the Jet line to see if they knew where we were that evening.  My mother said, “No!” that she hadn’t talked to me that day and had no idea where we had gone.  So Eunice calls our number again!  Still no answer from us.  So she calls our closest neighbors, the Reinharts’, to see if they knew anything about where we might be.  Cecil Reinhart said he would go over to our house and check and make sure we were okay.  Before Cecil got to our house Eunice had contacted the sheriff and told him about the telephone ringing and then stopping when a receiver would be lifted.  So he said he would send a Highway Patrolman in the area to check things out at our house.  (Eunice had visions of someone holding us hostage and not allowing us to talk to her.)   Well, the Highway Patrolman and the neighbor arrived at our farm home about the same time.  Mind you it is very dark at night!  And our white wood-framed house is surrounded with Chinese Elm trees and faces the east with a long porch along the entire front.   The highway patrolman had parked his car in the road and was approaching the house cautiously running from one tree to the next for protection.  When our neighbor arrived he drove his pickup part way up the steep driveway and got out to check and see if our car was in the garage south of the house.  He left his pickup running and left it in neutral.  As he went to peer in the door of the garage to see if our car was there, his pickup started to roll back down the steep driveway.  At the same time the patrol was shining his flashlight in the windows of the house from the porch.  From the porch you could see in windows of the living, dining, kitchen, and bedrooms.  Well, when the pickup went to roll back down the drive both the patrol and the neighbor were really spooked, thinking someone had got in the pickup and was escaping. After the patrol and the neighbor, got over the scare of the rolling pickup they went together to check the rest of the out buildings to see what vehicles were missing and found none were gone.  So the patrol called the sheriff and the sheriff called Eunice back and told her they could find nothing that was suspicious except that no one was home and all our ways of transportation, car, pickup, and truck were all still at home.   So Eunice then calls my parents back at Jet and tells them the findings of the neighbor and the law and wonder where we could be.  That is when the operator, Mrs. Alexander, comes on the line and says, “Are you looking for Connie and Jerry?”  When both mothers of ours say together, “Yes!”  Mrs. Alexander answers, “Oh, I know where they are!  They went to the basketball game at Aline with Nolan and Bobbie Arthur!”   Well, the mystery was solved!   It was several days before either one of our mother’s got up enough nerve to tell us about all the excitement that occurred that night.  We then informed both of our mothers’ that we had another party or home that heard our telephone ring and she was a widow lady that lived alone near Lambert but we didn’t know her.  We also requested that Southwestern Bell not put anyone else on our line except our neighbors that we knew in OUR area. So that is how it was back in the good ole’ days when there was only ONE telephone in the house and you could listen in on your neighbors conversations.

GRANDPA & GRANDMA’S WEDDING DAY

GRANDPA & GRANDMA’S WEDDING DAY

By Mrs. Jerry (Connie) LaGrow

Rt. #1 Box 61 

Cherokee, Oklahoma 73728

January 2005

Honorable Mention at State

Three more years and Grandpa and Grandma LaGrow will be celebrating our 50th

wedding anniversary on July 13, 2007.  So I want to tell you about our wedding day,

Saturday, July 13th, 1957.  Grandma had completed her first semester of college at OSU

studying Home Economics and Grandpa had completed two years at OSU studying

accounting.  Grandpa had given me my engagement ring the summer before and we

thought we were ready to get married.  Of course we wanted to be married in the church

we both had attended, the Jet Methodist Church, where we had sat together in church on

Sunday mornings and after youth group on Sunday evenings.  

The day started off as planned with me going to have my hair fixed at a beauty

shop and then to the church to finish up any details we hadn’t finished the day before in

preparing the church for our wedding with candles, and preparing the basement of the

church for our reception.  George Jordan, a friend and local baker was to make and set up

our five tiered white wedding cake.  He had decorated it with white and pink icing with

big white sugar wedding bells and pink roses with a miniature bride and groom at the top. 

 My three aunts were to serve at the reception along with two cousins of my mother’s. 

Well, I’m getting ahead of myself aren’t I?

This was a year that my Daddy was still not quite through with the wheat cutting. 

So he headed for the fields to cut some left over mud holes and to stay out of everyone’s

way.  I had asked my cousins that came and spent two weeks in the summer with us every

year to be in the wedding.  

We lived in their home while their Dad made a career of the Air Force.  They had

asked us to move into their home just west of the Timberlake church when I was to be a

Freshman in highschool.  Before this we lived in a little two-room house on the correction

line that didn’t have indoor plumbing or running water.  So when they called and asked if

we wanted to move into their two story home with gravity flow water from the

Timberlake springs, a bathroom, four bedrooms, huge living room, front-screened in 

porch, and a back porch that would serve as our laundry room/mud room, we all thought

we had died and gone to heaven.  So whenever they had vacation time from the military

service, usually Christmas and summer,  they came to stay in our home for two weeks. 

They had four kids all younger than I with the oldest being six years younger than me. 

The youngest were Ward and David and they were about five and six AND  very

unpredictable but were to serve as the ring bearer and the escort for the flower girl in our

wedding.  

Our flower girl was the same age as Ward.  She had a crush on your Grandpa. 

When we attended Sunday morning worship while dating she would come and sit with us

but she always sat between us because she didn’t want me sitting by Grandpa.  So we

thought it would be appropriate for her to be our flower girl at our wedding.  

The little boys evidently could feel the tension in the house so they went outside

to play that morning.  Being boys, they spotted a skunk, and being city-kids, they decided

to follow it between two close buildings on the farm.  WELL, the skunk lifted its tail and

there was no place for the boys to run since they were pinned between the buildings and

they were sprayed with that lovely odor from that animal they had followed, after they

threw a stick or pebbles at it.  

Needless to say no one wanted them in the house so their mother took them to the

stock tank with soap in hand to try and wash the odor off before the wedding that

evening.  IT DID NOT WORK!   Now that matters were now even more tense, the boy’s

mother decided to take the boys clothes and them and go to her sister’s home in Helena. 

She continued to try and get the obnoxious odor off the boys by washing them in tomato

juice.  David and Ward didn’t quite seem to see the seriousness of the matter, so they

were chasing one another down the stairs at this aunt’s and David caught his hand on

something on the railings of the stairs and cut his hand open.  That’s right!  Now they had

to find a doctor to take stitches in the cut of his hand before the wedding!

With their mother, the two little boys and their sister at their aunts at Helena,

things at our home on the farm calmed down a little bit.  My sister was to be my maid-of-

honor, and she was six years younger than I.  That would make her going into the seventh

grade!  I don’t recall this but she told me that I decided she was old enough to have her

legs shaved and I would do it since this was my wedding and I wanted her to look her

best.  She claims that I nicked her several times with the razor so we had to cover her legs

with Band-Aids.  I’m also sure, since that I always had to wash and roll her hair before a

date, that this wasn’t any different and that her hair was also my responsibility.  She got

out of a lot work by saying she had to “practice the piano” and never did learn to roll her

hair on curlers. 

 Grandpa chose young men to stand up with him that he had either grown up with,

played football together in highschool with, or friends he had met at OSU . . .   My

bridesmaids were Aunt Lana, my longtime classmate and OSU roommate, and a friend

that lived across the hall from on the second floor of Willard Dormitory. 

My grandmother helped me make my bridal dress from a picture I found in a

Brides magazine.  She and Grandpa had given me a featherweight portable sewing

machine for highschool graduation so we both sewed on it together at her home.  My veil,

I had borrowed from a cousin of my Daddy’s that lived in Enid. Not only had I made my

wedding dress but I also made my going-away suit in a Clothing/Textiles class at OSU.  It

was a blue two-piece suit with a straight skirt and 3/4 length sleeves on the jacket with a

large shawl collar.  I know that it is hard to believe but Grandma weighed 123 pounds

when I married your Grandpa.  

 Our photographer, was a friend of Grandpa’s who took a lot of pictures.  (That is

my only regret that I didn’t have a professional photographer because our pictures are

starting to fade and our heads are cut off in some of the pictures.)

Well, on with the day!  A classmate of Grandpa’s had gotten married a few days

before us and you couldn’t hear the vows because the church had just installed a new air

conditioner and it was really noisy!  So my mother decided that the air conditioner would

be turned off for our vows so the congregation could hear, on July 13th, (one of the

hottest days of the year) 1957!  It was ooooooooooooooooo so hot!  When we knelt for

the singing of the Lord’s Prayer, Grandpa was perspiring so badly that droplets dripped

on my hand.  Grandpa told me later that he was afraid I would think that he was crying! 

After the ceremony the wedding party went directly to the basement for the reception, and

when Grandpa and I and the best man and Aunt Lana, got down the stairs of the church

Grandpa took off his suit coat and his and the best man’s shirts looked like they had been

dipped in a tub of water.  (It was awhile before I told him it was his new mother-in-law’s

idea to turn off the air-conditioner.)  

Grandpa worked in the fields for a local farmer in the summer and put in a lot of

hay by bucking bales and did not wear a hat or shirt so to say the least he was really dark. 

Friends told him before we got married he needed to wear a sign around his neck saying

he was ‘white’!

After the reception, we went out to get in Grandpa’s 1954 red and white Chevrolet

car and found it covered over with the usual stuff of “Just Married!”, tin cans trailing,

shaving lotion on the windows, rocks in the hub caps, and what we didn’t know until we

went to wash the car was two young kids had taken red fingernail polish and written on

the white top of the car and it wouldn’t come off.   (We later had to have the car

repainted!)  The two little rascals that put the red finger nail polish on the car were the

banker’s and the doctor’s son.   Grandpa’s friends got in front of the car and behind the

car and escorted us with horns blaring and made us travel seven miles to Nash at only five

or 10 miles per hour before they would let us go any faster and make our way to

Oklahoma City to begin our honeymoon to southern Oklahoma.

Well, Grandma and Grandpa have had our ups and downs in our marriage but we

have never considered divorce and the blessings of our two children and five grandsons

have been worth every one of the 47 years together.  

LOSS OF FIRST BABY TOOTH

LOSS OF FIRST BABY TOOTH

By Mrs. Jerry (Connie) LaGrow

Rt. #1 Box 61

Cherokee, Oklahoma 73728

First Place at State 2003

Isn’t it odd about some of the things that we remember as a child growing up?  Is

it because of the drama of it or because we tell it over and over and it becomes ingrained

in our minds?  Well, one story that I have not only shared with our five grandsons and

their parents but also with the eight preschool classes that I taught in my home.  It is

about the loss of my first tooth.

I was the oldest of three children, of Don and Lucile Shaklee, it seems that I was

always experiencing some aspect of growing up first and then, I tried to help my younger

brother and sister through those difficult times.  My parents and we three kids lived on

160 acres of sandy and rocky land that my Dad rented on the correction line south and

west of Jet, Oklahoma.  It was on a windy hill just ½ mile south of the Timberlake

Cemetery and on a clear day we could see Jet, Helena, Cherokee, and Goltry,

We were on the very south edge of the Jet school district and my parents had to

pay tuition two years to avoid me having to attend a one room school house 2 ½ miles

from our home.  My parents would have had to take and pick me up each day and I would

have probably been the only first grade student at the school.  The country school was

only in operation three more years after I started to school.  But instead my parents chose

to drive me 1 mile to the Timberlake rural church  to catch the school bus to attend school

in Jet believing that I would get a better education and be with more children my own

age.

I was in first grade and my teacher was Mrs. Sylvia VanOsdol.  Usually mother

was home when I got home from school and would pick me up, at the corner, we called it. 

But this particular day I had to walk home, the one mile.  There was a boy, four years

older than I, lived down the road from our house to the north 1/4 of a mile, and so, we

walked home together.  

When I got home, I was hungry and found an apple to eat.  I don’t recall even

noticing my tooth was loose but it must have been because when I bit down on the apple

to take a bite my tooth in front came out.  My mother was a real disciplinarian; so seeing

that I was now shy a tooth in front and didn’t know that they were only baby teeth and

that more teeth would grow back in their place, I figured I was in BIG TROUBLE!  

So I figured the best bet would be to bury the evidence and keep my mouth shut

the rest of my life.  So I took the tooth out the front door and down the two steps and dug

a hole in the ground in the corner by the steps and buried my first lost tooth.

Mother came home soon and started to try to get a conversation out of me as to

how school had gone that day but I wouldn’t answer her and would only shake my head

up or down.  Well, this was not satisfactory because my mother wanted to know what I

had in my mouth that I wouldn’t talk to her.   She took my face in her hands and

demanded that I open my MOUTH!   Well, I was crying by now big time because I knew

I was in trouble for losing my tooth by eating an apple.  But all Mother said was, “Why,

Connie you have lost your first baby tooth!”   She wasn’t mad at all!  She was almost

laughing!  Then she said, “What did you do with the tooth?  We will have to put it under

your pillow tonight when you go to bed and then the tooth fairy will bring you a nickel or

a dime.”  (Times were hard then for my folks.)  

Then I really did CRY!  Mother told me it was okay and to go and get my tooth

but I said, “But Momma, I buried my tooth!”   “But where?” asked Momma.  “Outside in

the dirt,” was my answer!  

Well, by this time it was beginning to get dark so Momma and I took a flashlight

outside and we dug and dug in the spot where I buried my tooth but we couldn’t find it. 

But Momma assured me that the tooth fairy would understand and would probably still

stop by our house that night.  You know she was right!   The tooth fairy did stop and left a

quarter under my pillow.  She must have felt really sorry for me that I didn’t know that if

I kept my tooth she would exchange it during the night for a nickel or dime.

Well, the loss of the first tooth has been quite dramatic for even my kids, because

Penny, our daughter,  had a plastic hanger in her mouth and when she took it out of her

mouth the hanger hook caught on it and yanked it out and Jeffery, our son,  let two older

boys put a string around his first tooth and shut the door before he knew what happened

and out it came.   But neither Penny or Jeff buried their lost first tooth in the dirt! 

THE FAMILY OF JERRY LAGROW

THE FAMILY OF JERRY LAGROW

Jerry Edgar LaGrow....March 11, 1937

Connie Joan Shaklee LaGrow.....August 24, 1938

Married.....July 13, 1957

Jerry and Connie LaGrow, began their life together when they started dating in

highschool at Jet when Jerry was a Junior and Connie a Sophomore.   Both of them graduated

from Jet Highschool a year a apart, 1955 and 1956 and began their higher education at Oklahoma

A & M College in Stillwater.  After their marriage July 13, 1957,  they continued their education

at OSU.  Jerry graduated with a BS degree in accounting in 1959 on a Sunday and became a

father to Penny Denise on the following Tuesday, May 27, 1959.  Jerry and Connie made their

first home in a 35 foot used trailer house that they pulled back and forth from the farm in the

summertime to Stillwater in the fall.  By the time that Jerry had graduated they had moved into

the home that his grandparents, Frank and Stella LaGrow had built 6 miles west of Jet on the side

of a hill.  

Jerry took over the farming from his father and farmed land for him and Francis’ sister

Bernice Lookabaugh and husband, Jim Lookabaugh.  After the first crop was in the ground after

Jerry had graduated he began looking for an accounting job in Cherokee.  Tom Morford, an

attorney, in Cherokee at the time, hired Jerry to help with the figuring of income taxes for

farmers in the area and others.  Two years later when Tom decided to move his practice to Alva

and join in a partnership with Don Benson, he asked Jerry to make the move with him.  He

worked for the two lawyers for over 40 years a piece until Tom’s retirement and Don’s death in

2004.  Jerry would begin working the day after Christmas at the law firm and work until April

15th when he had all returns in the mail unless some one would request an extension.  

Jerry served on the ASCS board for nine years serving under Gene Kroll.  He was always

very active in his church serving as an adult Sunday school teacher, Chairman of the board, the

Farm Trust, and treasurer. He along with Jessie Mary Reinhart were instumental in making

several history videos of church activities during a year.  He was treasurer of the Lions’ Club

there in Jet for years and served during the development of the Memorial Park on the east side of

town.  

Jerry and Connie together grew wheat, alfalfa, and had a cow-calf operation.  Many years

they worked together in the fields during wheat harvest and the planting in the fall or the

gathering of alfalfa bales in the summer.  

On September 10th, 1961, a son, Jeffery Steven, was born to Jerry and Connie, which

completed their family.  Both of their children were active members of 4-H and FFA and

graduates of Jet-Nash Highschool and Oklahoma State University.  The children had a swine

production project during their years in 4-H and FFA providing them with spending money for

their college years. 

Connie was an active member of the Jet Industrious Oklahoma Home Community

Education Group from the beginning of their life together on the farm.  She even served the

OHCE organization as a State Chaplain, Awards and Reports Chairman, and the NW Dist.

OHCE Representative in 2002-2004. She served the county organization as President for 2

different periods of time.  Connie was always working on some kind of craft, ceramics, folk art

painting, sewing, embroidery, or what ever happen to be “the thing” at the time.  

She served her United Methodist Church as a children’s Sunday School Teacher and

Junior High Youth Group and Children’s Church.  She helped out the trustees when the church

basement flooded and the whole basement had to be renewed in 2000.  Connie also had a

preschool for four year old children in her home for 8 years and taught children from, Jet,

Helena, Carmen, Nash, and Goltry.  4-H was always special to Connie as a youth and as an adult

where she served as a leader of clothing, crafts, and meat science.  She taught folk art painting at

the NW area Votech at Alva, spring and fall semesters for several years also.  Jerry always cut

out the wooden projects the students painted in the classes.  

Jerry’s hobby consisted of restoring old cars, pickups, and tractors.  He has a 1950 red

Ford Pickup, 1950 Ford Crestliner Car (like the one he and Connie started dating in), 1965

Cadillac Convertible, a 1926 Ford Model T. and several old tractors, M&M, John Deere, and

Case.   One of their grandsons ask his grandmother, Connie, if she knew why Grandpa didn’t line

all of his tractors up in a line.  When she answered, “No”.  His response was, “So you can’t count

and see how many he owns!”

Jerry and Connie have 2 children and 5 grandsons: Penny and Ronnie Gregory: Married

August 28th, 1982.   Children: Tyler Paul Gregory, February 28th, 1987, Daniel Austin Gregory,

May 11, 1989.  Home in Houston, Texas.   Jeff and Alana (Faulkner) LaGrow: Married August

14th, 1982.  Children: Jeffery Blake LaGrow, September 4, 1984, Austin Layne and Collin Steven

LaGrow, January 20th, 1993.

THE FAMILY OF DON AND LUCILE SHAKLEE

I wrote this up the Alfalfa County History book a few years ago.

THE FAMILY OF DON AND LUCILE SHAKLEE
Don Ivan Shaklee, August 11, 1915----April 13, 1981
Gwendolyn Lucile Richardson Shaklee, April 11, 1916—January 24, 1995
Married......January 2, 1937

The Don Shaklee family began with his parents moving from the Jefferson area to a farm
four miles south and one and a quarter miles west of Jet in 1928. Don was about a Freshman in
Jet Highschool when his parents, Fred and Edith Shaklee, moved into the Jet Community. There
he met Gwendolyn Lucile Richardson, the daughter of Austin Ward and Anna Mae Richardson.
They began by establishing a home east of the State school in Enid and Don worked for
an Uncle Oscar Maxey, a brother-in-law of his father. But after two years a farm was available
about two miles from his parents for rent so Don and Lucile moved with their new born baby
girl, Connie Joan born in August 1938, to establish a home one mile south of the Timberlake
church on the correction line about 1940. The land belonged to Henry C. Kliewer. They
remained at this location until 1952 and then moved into a much larger and modern home with
indoor plumbing and running water that belonged to Don’s brother and sister-in-law, Harold and
Cathrine Shaklee. It was known as the Keiffer home!
To this union of marriage two more children were born, Jerry Ray Shaklee in July 1940
and Lana Beth Shaklee Schiltz in February 1944.
Don was not only a farmer of wheat and raised cattle and hogs but he was known for his
carpenter work. He began doing construction and carpenter work by helping with the building of
the Great Salt Plains dam, the large grain elevator in Jet, the United Methodist Church in Jet in
1946-‘47 and then the east wing of the Jet Public School in 1956. Then he began carpenter work
with Jerald Wilson of Jet and then after Jerald’s death he worked with Bill Dunavant and his
brother Merwyn Shaklee. He helped build the first Dairy Boy on the south side of Cherokee, Pat
Kliewer’s brick home, Everett Hadwiger’s home in Cherokee, remodeled the Alfalfa County
Bank, Jet Community Building, and built other homes in the Jet, Goltry, Helena, and Nash area.
One of the last homes that he helped build was the home of his oldest daughter Connie, who is
married to Jerry LaGrow.
Farming was not easy for Don and Lucile as they had seven crops in a row that were
deemed as failures, five and seven bushels to the acre and had to divide it with a landlord. The
crop failures were contributed to green bugs, army worms, drought, rust, and the wind blew the
wheat out another year. The next year they had a bumper crop and Don bought the only new
tractor, a Case, he owned in his lifetime. But when Mr. Kliewer wanted to sell the land, they
decided to borrow money from an Uncle, a brother of Don’s father, and buy the quarter of land
that they were living on. It had a three room house, without running water, or indoor plumbing, a
windmill, a chicken house, a barn, and a wash house, and of course a cave that was used quite
frequently.
The second quarter of land that Don farmed belonged to Mr. Kliewer and is the land that
surrounds the Timberlake church area and the Timberlake cemetery. His son, Jerry Ray, still
farms the land that belongs to Mr. Kliewer’s granddaughter. Don also farmed land that belonged
to his brother Harold and sister-in-law, Cathrine, after Harold returned to make a career of the
Air Force.
When Don began suffering from asthma caused from breathing sawdust from all the
carpenter work he had done during the winter months, he and Lucile bought a fifth-wheel travel
trailer and began to make their home during the winter in Apache Junction, Arizona in a trailer
court called Cherokee Village. There he met his death when he was broad sided by a car in a
intersection while riding his motorcycle down a six lane highway. He left behind his three grown
children and their mates, and three granddaughters and three grandsons. The granddaughters are
Penny LaGrow Gregory, Tammy Sue Shaklee, Gwen Schiltz, and the grandsons, Jeffery LaGrow,
Eric Schiltz, and J.D. (James Don) Shaklee. Five of these grandchildren are graduates of
Oklahoma State University and J.D. from Central State University.
Don’s son Jerry Ray came back to farm at Don’s retirement and bought the Champlin Gas
Station in Jet from Shorty Page. His daughter, Connie Shaklee LaGrow and her husband farm
west of Jet and have lived in the same location most of their 47 years of marriage. Lana moved
back to the Jet area in 1983 and later became the music teacher in the Timberlake School system
until her retirement in 2004. All of Don’s grandchildren except for one, Gwen Schiltz,
graduated from Jet-Nash Highschool.