The Life and Times of Dale Wayne Folks:A Memoir of 90 Years

By Jayne Folks Underwood and Kathy Clark

The Life and Times of Dale Wayne Folks spans a lifetime of over 90 years, beginning with Dale’s birth in 1925 to a poor Western Oklahoma farm family. In his memoirs, Dale recounts growing up on an Indian lease with his parents and six siblings, his teen years helping to work the family farm in the Depression Era of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, his World War II service in the U.S. Navy, marriage, family, leisure-time pursuits and professional success on his rise to comfortable upper-middle class status.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jan 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483461991

Book preview

The Life and Times of

DALE WAYNE FOLKS

A Memoir of 90 Years

As told to and written by Kathy Clark

and Jayne Folks Underwood

As written in Memoirs

Edited and Illustrated by Jayne Folks Underwood

Copyright © 2016 Jayne Folks Underwood

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6200-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6198-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6199-1 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 12/21/2016

Contents

I Prologue

II Growing Up

III Family, Mom and Dad

IV School & Early Memories

V The Navy

VI Discharge From The Navy Engagement & Marriage To Betty

VII Banking, Business And Good Advice

VIII Hunting

IX Farming

X Oil Business

XI Family Time

XII Our Colorado Home

XIII The Oil Boom and Our Move to Edmond

XIV The Childress Ranch

XV Health History and Surgeries

XVI Planning for the Inevitable

XVII Dale’s Words of Wisdom and Casual Observations

XVIII An Analogy

XIX Acknowledgements

XX About the Authors

Prologue

My name is Dale Wayne Folks. I was born October 15, 1925. When I began to assemble recollections of my life, I was 86 years old. At this writing, it is January 9, 2015 and I am now 89. The chapters are continuing to be written.

There may be a few mistakes with the dates in my stories, but they will be close. I can tell you it has been a wonderful life; one filled with accomplishments beyond my original goals. It has been a life filled with friendships and family that has made my life richer, greater, and more fulfilling than I could have imagined.

You could say that I have lived the American Dream. Of course, it was not a conscious goal of mine for things to work out this way. It just became a way of life. It was a way of life for my dad and his dad before him. There was a natural determination to make life easier, happier and healthier for themselves and their children.

I don’t believe my ancestors had a driven goal of improving their circumstances. It wasn’t a vision or visualization, as it is known today, but it was part of their character. It was a behavior that became a habit and then a manner of living. The term American Dream was coined during a time that required a man to be strong in both body and mind. It was an era that required individuals to live righteously and to be good.

I remember looking for trouble as a youth, and I couldn’t find it. There were rules to go by and you had better follow them or you would suffer the consequences. You knew what those consequences were going to be and they were pretty strong.

I was living this American Dream during a time period that was very interesting. It was a time of commitment, exploring, discovery and achievement. It was an era when automobiles, electricity and telephones were beginning to make their way into the American home.

The 1930s was also the decade of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. It was a time when you were entitled to nothing other than opportunity. If you were willing to work and opportunity showed itself, it was your duty to take it. Everything else was earned by hard work. The 1940s were war years. In the 1950s, life was good and my life got even better with marriage and family. The next three decades found me busier than ever, as I worked to provide a better financial existence for my family. We saw an oil boom of historic proportions, followed by a collapse of equal intensity. In the 1990s, I made a huge leap with a significant geographic move to be nearer my now-grown family, but also began to slow down and enjoy the fruits of labor with summers spent in the Rocky Mountains. Now, we are in a new century, and it is almost incomprehensible what changes have happened in every facet of industry, politics, and culture in the span of one lifetime.

Why do I even attempt to put something down on paper that perhaps no one will even be interested in reading? Maybe it is the need to share or the desire for my children and my grandchildren to know a part of me that they will never experience without me telling them.

I know the children of the first generation do not necessarily want to hear about it. It is degrading to me, but I was the same way with my parents.

Now that my parents have been dead for over 30 years, I wish I had known them better. I am no longer challenged by their authority or what they might have thought about me. Maybe my grandchildren will thus know me better through my written words.

My dad wrote his life story on a single piece of paper. I am not going to let my readers off that easily!

Take a trip with me to western Oklahoma. Leave your cell phones behind and think about those days before everyone had electricity or running water in their homes. Picture a windmill being used as the way of getting water up from the well; and bath time is outdoors in the same water tank used to drink by the cattle. There was no refrigerator to store food. A cellar was used to store the homemade, canned (jars) of vegetables and meats were either cured or freshly killed for dinner.

I remember my childhood as a quiet time, a peaceful time. However, it was a busy time for everyone, even the children. We were a family united together trying to survive by running a farm and dependent upon the heavens for rain to provide a bountiful harvest.

Yes, it was a time of hard work with big families and few possessions. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t need much. Food, shelter, clothing and each other was all we needed. It was also all we had.

Growing Up

Dale Wayne Folks baby photo 2, 1925.jpg

Dale Wayne Folks

Age 1

On October 10th, 1925, a check was written to Dr. J.J. Heinke for $25.00 for the birth of One Boy. I was that boy. My parents were Homer Caesar (H.C.) Folks and May Theo Payne Folks.

Of course, I have no firsthand details of my birth, but have been told it was on a Saturday night, in Caddo County, Oklahoma. (My fact-checker verifies that October 10, 1925 did fall on a Saturday.) My birth happened out in the country, about six miles south of Hydro, Oklahoma.

3.jpgFolks family, DWF birth certificate, 1925.jpg

I was born in a two-room shack which also had a kitchen. The building was unpainted. The land and house belonged to an Indian that lived somewhere down around Anadarko, Oklahoma. Back then, you had to rent property through the Indian Agency but the Indian also must sign the lease. I remember when I was a little boy, the Indian showed up at our little shack one night wanting some money and my parents said something about him being drunk.

Folks family, Dale Folks birth home, 1924.jpg

The two-room shack where Dale Wayne Folks was born on October 10, 1925

Section 4-11N-13W

Left is Nancy Kiker Payne, my grandmother. Seated is May Payne Folks, my mother and Rachel Folks Amen, my oldest sister

Photo 1923

There was no house number or street address for our little shack. There was only a mail box on a wooden post along the dirt road to identify it. The mail carrier knew where everybody lived. The legal description was Section 4-11N-13W. Today