Part 7: The pioneer days are gone
Thomas Catlege sums up his experiences as a pioneer and talks about how the world has changed in the 50 years since he settled in Oklahoma.
My wife and I are particularly proud of our family; we have taught them to work, to be self-reliant and honest and to make their own way in the world. We have long realized that the most valuable thing we could do for our children was to develop in them a strong and sturdy character. Besides our six children we now have 39 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren. Our fondest hope is that they will all be strong, resolute men and women and be a blessing to all who know them. We always keep and open house and it is our proudest moment when some of them come to visit us.
I have always helped my children so long as they were trying to help themselves. Long ago, when our children first began to marry off, I made it a rule to give each of the sons a team of mules when he became twenty-one and to each of the girls I gave a milk cow and two or three other cattle. We have raised three sons and three daughter, all grown and married, and I have fulfilled this promise to each and every one of them.
With the passing of the years has come better times. I early gave up the raising of so much cotton and at one time marketed several hundred bushel of apple a season. Later we stressed the raising of livestock. For some years we milked from ten to 30 head of cows and for seventeen years without missing a week, I shipped cream to one creamery in Shawnee. Of late years, since help has been so hard to obtain, I have raised beef cattle. I now have a herd of 36 white faced.
One thing I am particularly thankful for is the excellent health my wife and I have enjoyed. I never had a doctor with myself until about three years ago. That is, I think, quite a record for a man 87 years old. I attribute my long life and good health to the fact that I have always worked hard and enjoyed it. I have tried to be content with what I had, and not let problems I could not solve get the best of me. My wife and I have tried to keep abreast of the times and enjoy the conveniences we could afford. I early bought a car and still can drive one anywhere I care to. We have electric lights and butane gas in our farm home. While we have nothing elaborate, it is a far cry from the simpler, primitive life of those bygone years of half a century ago.
While I am proud that we have progressed in a way I feel, too, that many good things have passed with the old days, The old days and ways are but a memory, yet sometimes I look back to them with a wistful tenderness not untinged with regret. It was a good life despite it’s hardships and disappointments that came to every settler struggling for the upbuilding of a new country. But these served only to strengthen the fibre of a people and to make the generation who grew up under such conditions one of strong, resolute men and women who were prepared to give to the community and to the nation services in ever-increasing measure.
The pioneer days are gone and with them the old pioneers. As I look around I find that my wife and I are the only couple living in this section who made the run fifty-three years ago. Most of the others are dead, others have moved away. I still remember those noble old characters we lived among, and I seldom pass the sites of their old homes without thinking of them. What a surprise would greet them if they could step back into life and view the changes that have taken place. The trail over which the covered wagons of the pioneer settlers rolled into the country has broadened into a paved highway over which we can now travel as far in an hour as the old pioneers could go in two days. The former village is a modern little city; consolidated schools in the rural districts, city high schools, colleges and beautiful churches have grown up to add to the cultural resources of a prosperous people. New homes have been built which are in sharp contrast to the little log cabin on the claim. Oil has been discovered, and tall derricks pierce the sky-line where giant trees once stood, and where the coyote howled and the whippoorwill once called the air is rent day and night with the sound of heavy machinery drawing liquid gold from the ground. It is my rare privilege to say, “All of which I saw, and part of which I was.”
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