Transcribed For Online by Geraldine cookie@oakhurst.net
Records Contributed by Vicki Bell-Reynolds rreynolds@pdq.net

I have seen lot of farmers out in the field plowing with just one ox to the plow, that yoke would be different from the two yoke ox. This yoke was a two yoke cut into and holes drilled in the side of the yoke, you would put an eyebolt on each side of this yoke run your chains from the plow and hook each end of the chain to the eyebolt in the yoke. It is just unbelievable just how much of a load the you could move or haul with just one yoke of ox's. They were very slow gated but, you could certainly get something done with them.

You didn't have any lines to control them with, you didn't have any bridle or even bits in their mouth. You controlled them by talking to them, Gee was for right turn, Haw was for a left turn.

Ox's were easy to keep, it didn't take as near as much food for 2 ox's as it did for 2 Mules or even 2 horses but, they would drink more water over night than a mule or horse would.

In the Indian Territory, ground rattle snakes were pretty bad and plentiful and nearly every farm house has a dug storm cellar of which were all dirt, the walls, floors, ceillings and steps. These cellars were nice to store your canned fruit and vegetables, we had one on our place. My mother went down in our cellar one day to get some vegetables to fix for her noon meal when she got down to the bottom of the cellar and got what she went after she started back up the steps she saw a ground rattle snake coiled up on the floor of the cellar just under the bottom step. So she had to waite until my father came into dinner and got him a stick and kill the snake before she could get out of the cellar.

There were two men digging a dug well in the country and what I mean by a dug well, is a well dug three feet square and dig down until you find water so these men dug this, well to water, an one of them had to go to town after some material that they had to have to finish this well and one of them remained at the well making the curbing to drop into the well, he was hammering and driving nails and making quiet a bit of noise, so there was a gang of snakes that heard and come to this noise he tried to fight all the snakes off and kill them but, they were in such droves that they got to be to many for him to handle, so he climbed out on the wind-lass of the well. These snakes were so vicious that they climbed out to where the man was and so many of them bit him, he died before any help come around.

The wind-lass that I speak of is two posts fastened into the ground standing upright, and a cross member or log and end of this log laying on top of the two poles standing and one end of this log has a handle on it so you can turn the handle, tie one end of the rope on this log and a bucket on the other end of the rope to pull the dirt and mud out of the well you turn this handle and it will wind the rope around this log to raise the bucket up and down in the well. These buckets are made from planks, just make a square box, nail a rope around the box and tie the loose end of the well rope to the box.

The curbing to these wells was just a long wooden box without bottom or top, when you made it the length of the depth of the wells, put one end of the box of curbing in the well start it downward and let it drop to the bottom of the well then let the curbing case up about 3 or 4 feet from the ground put you up some two by fours about 6 ft high, put you a cross-member from one 2 x 4 to the other, then tie in to your pulley, in the member of the cross-member, run you a rope around this pulley, then you have a well to draw water and that is the only way that you had getting water for using purposes or drinking water.

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