The foresight of our early city officials and the interest and cooperative efforts of the local people in bringing the railroads to Tulsa provided easy access to our town and resulted in rapid growth. Until the introduction of natural gas, our primary source of lighting was the coal oil, or kerosene lamp. A gas well was drilled on Dad's property on North Frisco, but the city passed an ordinance prohibiting oil or gas wells within the city limits and Dad had to have it plugged. I remember the plugging of the well. I must have been somewhere between four and six years old. The workman hired to plug the well had shoveled out a large bowl-like place about four or five feet deep.

After the plug was placed in the well and dirt was packed tightly around it, the men climbed out of the hole and were preparing to shovel in the rest of the dirt. A man living with us at the time, we called him Uncle Deem. said, "Let me make sure that it is tightly plugged." He jumped down into the hole, examined the plug, and then lit a match. Gas flared up immediately from the accumulation in the bowl-like area surrounding the well. There was no serious damage, but Uncle Deem sported singed eyebrows for a week or two.

Uncle Deem lived with our family on and off for more than twenty years. In Arkansas, as the story goes, he had killed two people, his wife and a man with her. He then fled to Indian Territory and took up residence with our family. This happened before I was born. At times he would return to a veterans' hospital for treatment. He received a pension for having been in the Civil War and he gave my mother money at times to pay for his keep. Occasionally he would get drunk in his room thinking about his wife and the man.

I can remember sitting on his lap and having him ask me to give him a kiss. I soon tired of this and told him to 'go kiss Momma'. During the times that Uncle Deem was away for treatment at the hospital, a Mr. Kerr boarded with our family. He helped Dad in the shop figuring out designs Dad used in his buildings. Mr. Kerr would tell me I needed to clean the moldings when I dusted the rooms. Both he and Uncle Deem would tell me I had to keep my shoes clean. My sister named one of her daughters Rutha Deem Tracy for Uncle Deem. We thought a lot of him I guess because he was a part of our family for so many years.

I do not remember when section lines were laid out nor do I remember when we did not have them. All of the streets and roads were dirt. The first paved streets, actually brick streets, that I remember were First and Main Street. When we lived at 302 North Frisco, we had apricot and various other fruit trees. Mother said that some of the notorious outlaws who had hideouts in Indian Territory, such as Henry Starr and the Dalton brothers, would stop and buy fruit from our family and, if I happened to be playing in the yard, they would sometimes pick me up thus frightening her.

Mother and Dad had a piano when I was born. One day, when I was very young, Mother and I were out in the yard. She was visiting with a neighbor when sounds from the piano were heard. This frightened us and Mother asked a man if he would go in and see who was in the house. As it turned out, it was only the cat walking up and down the keyboard.

In the early 1900's, Dad decided to fence this property. He was digging holes for the fence posts while my friend Joe Moran and I were playing in the yard. We were several yards behind where Dad was digging and Joe said, "Opal, plant me." He got into one of the fence post holes about waist deep and I pushed the dirt into the hole and stamped it down. When he decided he wanted to get out, we could not budge him and we had to get Dad to dig him out.

The fence had wide board rails and was painted white. We used to watch the circus go by to their tent grounds somewhere west of where we lived. They went west on Cameron. After watching the parade of animals and equipment parading to their destination, Uncle Deem took us to see the circus. The next day, Joe and I were playing under a quince tree near the fence and were talking about all of the things we had seen at the circus. The trapeze acts were, of course, high on the list. Joe said he could do all of those tricks so I asked him to show me over on the fence. He tried to turn a flip over the fence but promptly broke his nose.

"In those days, Owen Park, located near the old Roosevelt Junior High School, was a favorite place for Fourth of July celebrations and Bird Creek Falls, upstream of