OUR POP
A Brief Exposition Concerning the
Grand and Glorious Events
in the Life and Times of the
Little Known and Early Years of
DAKE BEATTY TITUS
on the Occasion of the Eighty Fifth
Anniversary of his Birth, March 18, 1880
as recounted by his Son, Jack E. Titus.
Or:
It Pays to "Dicker with Dick"
by
John Elmore (Jack) Titus
Written March, 1965
Worth, Illinois
Transcribed, footnotes and images by Ned H. Benson, grand-nephew of Pearl Ethel Benson Titus
Listed in order of birth
Adaline (Lina)
Roy
Alice
Grace
Myrtis
Dake
Tom
Esbun
Adaline (Lina)
Roy
Alice
Grace
Myrtis
Dake
Tom
Esbun
Note: Aunt Myrtis and Dad are the only ones living today
In 1889 Dad's family (except Adaline who had married John Gier of Conrad) moved to the "Pin Creek Farm" near Guthrie, Oklahoma. Oklahoma was then a territory of the United States. This was a one hundred sixty acre farm, the principal crops being sorghum care and wild fruit trees, plums and peaches and lots of wild turkeys. They hauled the cane five miles north of Guthrie to the "Gould" farm on the Cimarron River which had a sorghum mill. Dad relates that on one of the trips he and Grandpa had to stay over night at the Gould farm because heavy rains had swollen the Cimarron and it was too deep to ford back across (no bridges in those days. Anyway, Dad says he remembers this so clearly because the Goulds had five girls and no extra bed for him and that he had to sleep with two of the girls. (sounds like a traveling salesman deal)The family lived on Pin Creek farm for five years. During this time it was rough going. There were no schools, no roads, no fences, no nothing; but a one room school was finally built in 1892 next to the Pin Creek farm on land Grandpa donated and Dad started to school at the age of twelve years.1
It was during this period that the U. S. Government opened up the Cherokee Strip. The line started south of Stillwater and was one hundred miles wide and four hundred miles long. This was land "free for the taking," but everyone had to start from the line by a signal from the authorities.
1 1892 Business and Resident Directory Embracing an Index of Residents in Guthrie, together with the names of all Homesteaders in Logan County, giving quarter section, township and range. For the Year Commencing September 1st, 1892. TITUS E Y, Co Supt of Public Ins, room 33 Com blk, r nw 1-4 sec 34-17-2 (He lived on the northwest quarter of Section 34, Township 17N, Range 2W, Lawrie Township)
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On April 27, 1893 the Strip
was opened, and Grandpa, Roy,
Tom Owens (who later married
Aunt Grace) and Dad made the
run. Their wagon broke down and
Dad had to stay with it while the
rest continued on by horseback.
They staked out a claim which
eventually they lost by a
technicality. It seems Grandpa had
been in the Strip the year
previously doing carpenter work
for the government but was told
that this would not prevent him
from participating in the land rush.
Anyway, another man, knowing of
this, filed claim on the same land,
and rather than contest it and go to
court, Grandpa gave it up. Similar
cases had gone to court and the
original claimer had always lost. In 1893 Alice married Jim Botts. (This was Marie Bevens' mother, of Ardmore, Oklahoma where we had the reunion in 1951.) This same year Grandpa
rented a farm from Jim Botts' father fourteen miles north of Guthrie on the Skeleton River2, and stayed there for three years. Dad attended school during this time.Grandpa didn't do so well on the Skeleton River farm so moved back to Guthrie and opened the West Guthrie Dairy3. There Dad attended the Banner Grade School4.
2 Skeleton Creek flows into the Cimarron River near where US Highway 77 crosses the Cimarron. See for pictures of bridges over Skeleton Creek.
3 City of Guthrie Directory, Logan County, O. T., 1896: Titus, E Y, dairyman, 1223 w Cleveland. (N. 11th and W. Cleveland, West Guthrie, near the present-day Noble Park)
4 Business & Resident Directory Guthrie and Logan County, 1898: Banner School building, corner Tenth and Mansur, West Guthrie. Grades from One to Seven, inclusive.
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The West Guthrie Dairy was in business for about four years. The cows were pastured out on the edge of town, and night and morning were milked by the girls in the open field (there was no barn). They sold and delivered the milk in town house to house for five cents a quart or six for twenty-five cents. Then disaster struck. The cows caught a disease called "the dry murr" and thus ended the dairy business.Grandpa then decided to go into the hotel and restaurant business. He rented the Banner Hotel of thirty-two rooms, which was directly across from the State Capitol5. Guthrie was then the territorial capitol of Oklahoma. Here they did a thriving business catering mostly to the state legislatures. Grandma cooked the meals. Grandpa ran the business and did the buying. Aunt Myrtis waited on tables and cleaned the rooms. Dad and Tom washed dishes and "did everything else that they couldn't get out of." Roy had a team of mules and did teaming in town. Grace at this time was married to Tom Owens, who ran a butcher shop where Grandpa bought his meat for the hotel. Alice who had married Jim Botts lived in Hobart, Oklahoma. Esbun was a baby then.
It seems the state legislature met only every two years, so after the final session one year Grandpa sold his interest in the business and bought the "Young" farm (one hundred sixty acres) five miles southeast of Guthrie near the "Vittum Community" and the Prairie Grove School.6
This was the school that Dad graduated from at the age of twenty-one and also where he met our mother Pearl Benson.
The year Dad graduated from grade school, 1900, Grandpa was appointed superintendent of schools of Logan County. Dad entered Central High School in Guthrie and attended for one year. The following summer he took a six week course at the Teachers Normal School (also in Guthrie) for which he received a third-grade teachers certificate. He then applied for a teaching job at the Bear Creek School located four miles east of their farm. He wanted to teach at this school so he could live at home and not have to room and board out. To Dad's dismay the job had already been filled. Dad finished out that summer working on the Styles farm picking and
5 City of Guthrie Business Directory 1894: Banner Restaurant, 321 w Oklahoma.
6 Vittum was located in the northeast Corner of the northwest quarter of Section 30, Twp 16N , Range 1W (Meridian Twp). See picture on page 5.
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drying peaches. There were no canneries
in those days, and all fresh fruits to be
preserved were dried and then sold to
market.Dad was at a stalemate at this point of his career, and it was then that his sister Adaline (Aunt Lina) in Conrad, Iowa asked him to come to Conrad and enter Ames State A & M School. Dad like the idea and went.
John Gier, Adaline's husband, was a contractor and owned a half interest in the "Gier Bela Lumber and Coal Co." He specialized in building churches. (I always remember the Gier home in Conrad when Eve, Don, and I used to go there during summer vacations when we lived in Urbandale.)
That fall Dad took the entrance exam at Ames but flunked it. They advised him to take more English and mathematics before trying again. So upon John Gier's and Aunt Lina's urging Dad entered the high school at Conrad for another year of study at prep school. Professor Grey of the high school, a very good friend of the Giers, belonging to the same church, the Methodist, tutored Dad at nights.
The following summer, 1902, Dad hired out as a farm hand on a farm south of Conrad for a dollar a day. He never left the place all summer, even watching the fireworks display at Marshalltown from the top of the windmill. He was taking no chances of spending any money that he would need that fall at college.
The fall of 1902 Dad again took the entrance examination at Ames and passed. He was thus enrolled for the 1901-1903 term taking up civil engineering. He finished the first full year successfully.
Dad went out for football and made the squad. His five-foot six-inch frame and one hundred ninety pounds served him well as a touch and up and coming guard making many a varsity player during scrimmage wish he had never left the farm! Dad recalls the last game of the season was for the championship between Ames and the University of Iowa at Iowa City. They traveled there on a chartered train of four coaches for students and players. The entire game was played in rain and mud, Ames losing 6-0 in the final two minutes of play. Coming back that night they had to travel on a regular train, transferring at Des Moines with a long layover, arriving back
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Two of the popular school yells during Dad's days were as follows:
I-O-W-A
Football we play, Rush lines we Brake
Touch downs we make
AMES, Ames, Ames
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A - M - E - S RA, RA, RA
A - M - E - S RA, RA, RA
HO RAY, HO RAY
State College I - O - WAY
At the end of Dad's freshman year he decided to quit school. He was broke, and although
the Giers offered to put him through the remaining three years, he felt they had done enough. He
had been away from home for two years and was home sick (and I suspect there was a girl
involved, too) so he journeyed home to Guthrie, Oklahoma.Football we play, Rush lines we Brake
Touch downs we make
AMES, Ames, Ames
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A - M - E - S RA, RA, RA
A - M - E - S RA, RA, RA
HO RAY, HO RAY
State College I - O - WAY
That summer Guthrie's streets were being paved with brick and Grandpa had a contract hauling sand from the Cimarron River. Dad went to work for him on this job making four, ten-mile round trips a day with one and one-quarter yards of sand each.
In 1903 Dad married our mother, Pearl Benson7, and moved to Oklahoma City where he took up the plumbing trade making nine dollars per week. Walter Johnson, a Prairie Grove schoolmate of Dad's, had learned the trade and asked Dad to come down and work for him. It took four apprenticeships to become a journeyman plumber. "If you flunked the plumbers exam, then you became a steam fitter," was the gag plumbers threw at the steam fitters.
Mother and Dad's first child, Irene, was born in 1904 and died in 1906 and is buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma8. Evelyn was born in 1907 (known for her beauty throughout her childhood) the year Oklahoma became a State and Dad became a journeyman plumber. (Hot dog!) "Journeyman" is a word we can appreciate as this story continues as meaning just that!
In 1908 Dad moved to Denver and worked at the trade making five dollars for an eight hour day. In 1905 Myrtis and Grace had gone to Pueblo, Colorado, and were working as professional laundresses. Grandpa and the rest of his family came later that year and bought the Denver Apartment Terras (ten apartments).
In 1909 Dad got his masters license and opened up the "Titus Brothers Plumbing and Heating Shop" at five points in Denver. (This is near the hospital that we took Florence to from the cabin that night of her illness.) Here Tom and Roy learned the plumbing trade. In 1910 I (Jack) was born (later to become LT's football hero of the thirties).
During the year of 1911, things got pretty slow in Denver. Dad heard that Omaha was booming, so the boys broke up shop and Dad headed for Omaha bringing his family there a few months later. He worked in the "Barney Grounnwals Shop" and became head plumber bossing
7 They were married in the Vittum Memorial Congregational Church.
8 Summit View cemetery, Guthrie OK: TITUS, INFANT - Sec. 1, Blk 2, Lot 30, Space SE, 1905 - 1906
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big construction jobs which often took him out of state.
In 1912 their fourth child was born. This was Donald (the run-away kid and pride of Fort Omaha). How well I remember going with Dad to the Balloon Fort to bring Don back after his one day tours.
1916 brought forth their fifth child, Dorothy later became the championship barn dancer of Oklahoma).
World War I came to the United States in 1917, throwing the country into turmoil and confusion and, you guessed it, Dad was on the move again; Des Moines, Iowa, was his destination. I guess Roy, who had married some time along the way, was in Des Moines. Also Tom had married and was living in Denver. Grace and her family still remained in Denver. Grandpa and Grandma wound up in Omaha and Esbun finished college and was working his Masters degree at the University of Wisconsin when the war struck.
Dad was working at Camp Dodge, north of Des Moines, and the family lived on Washington Street when their sixth child, Esbun Yokum, the chemical genius, was born. (Later known as the inter-continent and interstate commuter kid of UOP).
In 1918 Dad moved us all to the community of Urbandale where we remained for seven years and the rest of the children were born.
Volney Earl, the seventh child (later known as heaven's gift to women and the U. S. Post Office), was born in 1920.
In 1922, Pearl Ethel, the eighth child came along (this is it), who later aspired to the modeling and actress world and finally became known on the golf links as the "champ of Chicago."
In 1924 Dad journeyed to Chicago to work for John C. Noble & Co. and met Charlie Simms and Harry Phillips at a union meeting. They were living and working in LaGrange for John F. Reed. Dad decided he liked LaGrange better so he moved his family there in 1925 (all but Ted), and set up his own business in 1926 with the business slogan of "Dicker with Dick."
This takes us up to the time Mother died in 1929 and Dad moved back to Oklahoma City with the family around 1931. You are all more familiar with the family history from there on than I am as Don and I cam back to live in LaGrange in December of 1931, so I will bring this part of "Our Pop" to an end.
Before concluding, however, I will jump to the year 1960.
Dad, now retired and living in Oklahoma City with his second wife, Florence, received a
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phone call from a representative of the "Vittum Memorial Society" of Guthrie, Oklahoma. She had found Dad's name in their records and wondered if he knew where the old original "Membership & Meeting Book" could be located. Dad said he would try and locate it.
Mother's father, John L. Benson, had kept the books and took the minutes of the meetings of the Congregational Church in the Vittum Community when Dad lived there in 1895 on the Young farm. John L. Benson was a quiet man, while the rest of the Young people were more active and liked to sing. So he always kept the books, and everybody was happy. I think at these meetings is where Dad brought forth his musical and singing ability.
Anyway, Dad had contacted Aunt Ivy [Ivy Hurley Benson, wife of Earl Alanthus Benson, brother of Pearl Ethel Benson Titus] and she found the original meeting book in their attic where Uncle Earl had stored it.
The "Vittum Memorial Society" meets on the second Sunday in September in Guthrie. In 1961 on this meeting date, Dad walked into the meeting place and sat down. He didn't know a soul there. Finally a middle aged man came over and introduced himself and then went back to mingle with the rest of the people there. After a while two ladies came over and introduced themselves as the Murphy Girls, who had been in first grade of the Prairie Grove School at the time Dad had graduated. One by one every one came over and talked to Dad reviewing old acquaintances as son of daughter of his old friends of long ago. Then Dad produced the old Meeting and Membership Book with all the minutes and notes and that really broke up the place. They then held their meeting and made Dad their main speaker. Dad then made a speech on the old days of the Prairie Grove School and the old Vittum Congregational Church and all had quite a time. So every year since, until his accident, Dad has been going to Guthrie on the second Sunday in September to these meetings.
This concludes my observance and recollections of our "Pop". I know a lot of items, especially dates, may be subject to dispute, and that it is only a rough outline of Dad's early life, but I hope Dad and we children enjoy it.
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