Uncle Les

 

When my dad was a teenager, he spent his summers in Fay, and did farm work with his uncles and cousins. He worked with his uncles: Gene, Alphonse, Les and Check. Check was six years older than him but as Don got older they were able to go places and do things together. I got to meet Uncle Check because I spent a week with his family one summer during high school. It was his son Grant or “Bud” who went through the engineering school at OU, and then decided to be a teacher so he could work closer to home.

 

                                              Don and Check, about 1922

 

Don worked with his Uncle Gene most often. Early on, before farm machinery was available, Gene worked with mules. Don told me that mules were stronger than a horse but they were mean and hard to work with. They would bite you or lean against you in their stall. Don claimed that Gene used to hit them with a board every morning just to show them who was boss.  

One summer Gene took his family on a vacation to Colorado, and he hired Don to take care of his farm while he was gone. Since Don didn’t have any sisters, he spent a lot of time in the kitchen with his mother growing up, and he was a good cook. I used to love his fried chicken. He always skinned them first. When I asked him why, he said to me, “If you knew how nasty chickens are you wouldn’t want to eat their skin either. Anyway, while Uncle Gene was gone, Don fried a chicken for himself every day.  

Wheat is one of the main crops around Fay, and Don told me a funny story once about working with his uncles harvesting wheat. He said that while they were taking a break,  someone, I think it was Uncle Les, started frantically trying to get out of his overalls. When they asked him what was wrong, he yelled out that a centipede was crawling up his leg. It was a struggle getting his overalls off over his boots, but when he managed it he discovered that the “centipede” was actually a head of wheat that had gotten stuck next to his leg. 

If Don had a favorite uncle, it would have been his uncle Les, Lester Morse, who was married to Grandmother’s sister Imogene, or “Imo.” As a boy, Don admired prize fighters. His heroes were boxers like Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, and he especially idolized the professional wrestler they used to call “Strangler” Lewis. Don’s fascination with Uncle Les probably arose from the fact that Les had been a carnival strong man during his youth. When the carnival came to a town, Les would take on all comers. For a dollar you could get in the ring with him, and if you stayed there for three minutes you could win five dollars. 

Uncle Les really was strong. Don said that he could load a 500 pound bale of cotton onto a truck single handedly. He’d put a hook under one of the metal bands around the bale, then hoist it onto his back and up on the truck.

Les didn’t farm. He owned the ice house and the filling station in town, and for a while I think he was the postmaster. In spite of Uncle Les’ experience as a fighter, Don said he never saw him actually fight anyone. The closest he came was one day when a guy who was hanging around the filling station started throwing his weight around. Les told him to settle down, and so the guy challenged Les to a fight. Les ignored the challenge, but the man wouldn’t leave him alone, so finally Les just twisted his arm up behind his back, dragged him over to the water hydrant, and hosed him down.  

Uncle Les taught Don how to box too, and Don became his protégé. Every weekend when the farmers and their families came into town for supplies, Les would host boxing matches out behind his filling station. This time it was Don who took on all comers. He fought all the tough farm boys in the county. Don got so good that Les tried to talk him into becoming a professional boxer.  

Probably the most exciting adventure that Don had with his uncle Les was one day when they went together to deliver ice. Don was just a small boy at the time, and he felt pretty special getting to go out with his uncle on his deliveries. Just a few miles north of town there was a pretty big hill, and since the truck was fully loaded, its gears were straining by the time they got to the top. The truck picked up speed on the way down the other side of the hill, so Les started pulling on the brake, a lever that extended up through the floor, but the truck didn’t slow down. Something was wrong. Les pulled harder and harder, but the brake was stuck. He had to slow the truck down, because going straight wasn’t an option. At the bottom of the hill was the Canadian River, and there was no bridge. Les knew that the weight of the ice could easily turn the truck over. As the truck went faster and faster Les pulled on the brake with both hands. Finally, unable withstand Les= great strength, the brake lever just came off in his hands. Don said the truck leaned over to one side as they turned the corner, but they didn=t go into the river.

 

(Sorry, I don't have a picture of Uncle Les)

 

 

 

Fay Memories

(This is my dad’s contribution to Fay’s Centennial book of 1994.)

Some of my fondest memories are of the times spent in Fay, Oklahoma, during the summers and holidays. I am Donald Gunning, and I was born in Fay, February 25, 1915, to my parents, R. B. Gunning and Jessie Boyd Gunning. My father was a barber in Fay for four or five years, then we moved to Enid. 

My mother was the oldest daughter of Grant Boyd and Laura Cavey Boyd. She had four sisters: Eva Boyd Tower, Imogene Boyd Morse, Alta Boyd Wilson and Ruth Boyd Litsch; and two brothers: Gene Boyd, Check and twins who died at birth. 

My grandparents lived in a two story brick house one half mile west of Fay. My grandfather and a neighbor Katey Jones made the bricks and built this house about 1904. Grant Boyd’s parents made the Oklahoma Run with four sons and one daughter, and they all staked claims in Dewey County close to Fay. For a few years Grant and Laura Boyd also ran a boarding house located west of the Daddy Gillespie Livery Barn. In those days passenger trains and freight trains came through Fay daily and railroad men and salesmen stayed overnight.  

Charley Parks had the first car, a Model-T in town and everyone wanted to see it and ride in it. He would take people to Watonga and back for 25 cents. They couldn’t drive to Thomas because there was no river bridge.  

                           Beulah, Lloyd and Luvern Widney

                              fording South Canadian River

 

 

Note: Watonga was 12 miles away. Thomas was also about 12 miles but it was on the other side of the Canadian River and the nearest bridges across the river were at Taloga and Bridgeport, each about 30 miles away, so the trip to Thomas was 60 miles by road. People would ford the river when it was low. A Mr. Delaney operated a fording service and would pull your buggy across the river for $1.00. If you tried to ford the river on your own and got stuck, the price went up to $5.00. When the Sam Hawks Bridge was finally built in 1934 to connect Fay and Thomas - This was Don’s first year in college – the opening ceremony attracted 10,000 people. Will Rogers was among the speakers.  

Here is a picture of Justin Boyd and some of the other workers during the construction of the bridge.

 

 

Justin Boyd with Mule Team

 

 

After the Fay bank was robbed, the merchants all decided to each buy a high-powered rifle for protection. The salesman told them the gun was so powerful it could shoot through a railroad rail. Tom McAlister and some of his friends decided this claim should be tested so they took one of the rifles down to the tracks and tried it out. The bullet didn’t go through the rail, but it did ricochet and hit Tom in the forearm. The arm healed, and Tom never bothered to have the bullet removed.  

My parents were married in Fay in a double-wedding ceremony with Newell and Eula Boyd. Newell and Eula had four boys: Keith, Wayne, Wilbur and Edward. My parents had four boys: Boyd, Don, Everett and J. E.. Boyd graduated from O.U with a law degree and served 37 months in the Pacific Theater of World War II as a captain in the artillery. He returned to O.U. and worked for the University for 40 years. Don graduated from O.U. with a degree in accounting and worked for Boeing six years and for the Standard Oil Company of Ohio for 37 years. Everett joined the Navy after high school and was on the battleship Oklahoma when it was sunk in Pearl Harbor. How he survived is memorialized in a book entitled "Trapped at Pearl Harbor" by Stephen Young. Everett survived the war and worked for Southwestern Bell Telephone for 30 years. J.E. graduated from O.U. with a degree in accounting. He served in the Navy during World War II, then returned to Enid and managed Gray’s clothing store. He later managed several other clothing stores and is currently working for Dillards.  

Submitted by Donald Gunning  

The most surprising thing to me about my dad’s contribution to Fay’s Centennial book is that the story he related is new to me. I thought I had heard all his stories. The bank robbery he refers to is described elsewhere in the book. Two of his uncles, Check Boyd and Les Morse, were at the bank when it was robbed. Don would have been 14 at the time.

               Chester Boyd (L) and D. P. Karns at Fay State Bank.

                On left is vault into which they were forced along with

              Mrs. Karns and Lester Morse during the robbery of 1929. 

 

The owners of the bank were Mr. and Mrs. D. P. Karns. Working there was Chester Boyd. One day in the year 1929 this bank was robbed. A robber came in when the bank was at a full days work. The robber had a gun in his hand and told Mr. and Mrs. Karns and Chester to hand over the $1200 that was in the bank. About that time Lester Morse walked in. the robber told him to hold up his hands and get over with the others. Then the robber told them to get in the vault and wait for 20 minutes. Because Mrs. Karns could open the vault they just waited for ten minutes. The robber drove off in a black roadster. Mr. and Mrs. Karns, Chester and Lester got in their car and went after him, but didn’t catch him.  

Later Mr. and Mrs. Karns, Chester and Lester went to Tulsa to identify some robbers and one was the robber of Fay State Bank.  

Jay Minton (nephew of Chester Boyd and Lester Morse)