Peregrinations: How the Davises Overran America

By Tom Davis

"PEREGRINATIONS is an autobiography of one of the Davis boys, believed to be descendants from a long line of pig thieves exiled from Wales as indentured servants to Virginia in the New World. This story begins with the Grandparents of the author and the Oklahoma Land rush followed by the exodus from the poverty of the Great Depression. It continues into and through World War II and up to the present with Tom just into his ninth decade of life, alive and angry at the disaster elected officials and liberals have foisted off on unsuspecting citizens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 30, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469109138

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Copyright © 2006 by Tom Davis.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION TO

IN THE BEGINNING . . .

BECOMING AN OKIE . . .

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

ONWARD AND UPWARD . . .

MOVING ON . . .

BECOMING CITIFIED . . .

GETTING EDUCATED . . .

FROM DEPRESSION TO

WORLD WAR II . . .

EXPANDING HORIZONS . . .

ON MY OWN . . .

NEW DIRECTION

AND AN ENCOUNTER WITH A VIP

ARMY LIFE BEGINS

I BECOME PART OF THE

ARMY’S NAVY . . .

LIFE OVERSEAS BEGINS

. . . AND THE JOB BEGINS

A VOYAGE THROUGH THE SUNDERBANS—1944

HERE COMES THE REAL ARMY . . .

THE COURTSHIP OF CARMELA

INTO RETIREMENT

AND THE GOOD LIFE

NOW WHAT . . .

AND THEN . . .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ADDENDUM

INTRODUCTION TO

PEREGRINATIONS-or

How The Davises Overran America

About ten years ago, in 1996, I decided to write my life’s story. At first, I began writing it in biographical form, i.e. in the third person, because using the first person singular seems too damned egotistical. At some point, I became disenchanted with the whole idea because my grandchildren seemed to have no interest in what we, as grandparents, had done before we had created the family. Then I began having problems with my vision which has never been particularly good anyway. I was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration, had two cataract removals with lens replacements and just recently began to seriously take up the task again. This required going back to my previous efforts and converting everything to ‘first’ person.

I found portions that were not too clear or were incomplete and began to edit and make additions. In rereading what I had previously written, I realized I was not writing a book, but a series of vignettes which is precisely the way I was telling my grandchildren the life story of their grandparents. I have decided, therefore, to continue in this vein. I hope that this feeble effort will give them and their children some interesting insights into whom and what we have become.

So, what or who are we? We are Carmela (Connie) Vaticano: Proud immigrant American, Noni, Mom, gourmet cook and much more; then there is me: Dad, Granddad, Great Granddad, Doc, and Colonel Tom. We are survivors of the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf conflicts, several recessions, a lot of hard work, some bad luck and much good fortune.

I have been stimulated by the genealogical efforts of my two brothers, Ervin and Ray, both of whom expended a tremendous amount of time and effort to learn, record and pass on information about our forebears.

I should also mention an incident in December of 1954 which spurred me into learning about the paternal side of the family. I had just returned from Japan and Korea following my participation in that conflict, and was assigned to the Army Language School in Monterey, California. Uncle Coral Davis was a realtor in Riverside, California, and was going to drive to Arkansas to visit his older brother, Earl, and his wife, Inez, my parents. Uncle Coral picked us up in Monterey and we headed for Harrison, Arkansas.

During the trip, Uncle Coral related some hitherto unknown (to me) history about the Davises. He stated that sometime in the early 17th Century, three brothers Davies had been convicted in Wales of stealing pigs. The penalty was Death by Hanging OR banishment, as indentured servants to the New World. Whites could not, by law, be placed into slavery, so indentured servitude was substituted and had a finite length of time attached to the writ. Purportedly, the brothers landed in Jamestown, Virginia; at least one brother survived, acquired or otherwise assumed the surname Davis and began our tribe of Davises. When we arrived in Harrison, I asked Dad his version of our branch of the family, but he was unable to shed any further light on the matter. None of us has been able to verify this story, but since it is possible, even plausible, I am going to run with it. So there you have it, we apparently came from a line of pig thieves who changed their ways and begat the respectable family we have become.

Thomas E. Davis, D.M.D.; Colonel, United States Army, retired

326 F Nantucket Lane

Monroe Township, NJ 08831

CAVEAT: There are some errors which I failed to catch and correct prior to production; however, in my opinion, they are of little consequence so I have decided to not go to the trouble of making corrections. If you are upset or offended by these errors, please forgive me; my descendants have already done so. Thank you and God Bless you all.

IN THE BEGINNING . . .

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Tom & Vida K. Davis

At high noon on April 22, 1889, thousands upon thousands of men, women, children and assorted animals departed staging areas in Arkansas and Texas. In a mad dash into Indian Territory (Oklahoma), these Boomer-Sooners rushed headlong into the Wild West in    order to establish a legitimate claim to a parcel of land upon which they might begin a new and better life. Crooked federal agents and Rangers preceded the Sooners and illegally staked out many of the most desirable parcels for themselves. As remarkable as it may seem, The City of Guthrie, Oklahoma, was laid out, a government established and 10,000 citizens spent the night in what was to become the First Territorial Capital. That’s right, unlike Rome; Guthrie was built in one day, actually in one-half day, between Noon and 6 PM. Guthrie is of more than passing interest to me as I will point out later. Try this link for the whole fascinating story of that day over a Century ago. http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/landrush.htm

A few years after this mad scramble to find and occupy a precious piece of land; a young Quaker-Methodist couple with their infant son, Earl, decided to, somewhat belatedly, join the trek westward to seek their fortune. Tom Davis, a water well driller par excellence, had been to South America working as a timber man, and was, in every sense, an entrepreneur. His wife, Vida K. was a lady in every sense of the word and cut out to be a mother and Grandmother; years later, I would describe her as ‘regal’, particularly in her later years with her beautiful white hair and her natural habit of crossing only her ankles and folding her hands in her lap.

Their parents had arrived in Pendleton, Indiana, many years before. Tom’s father, Noble Washington Davis was the son of one Thomas ‘Tom’ Davis, who had been born in western Pennsylvania on 08 April 1796, married a Quaker lady named Rachel Stanbrough, born in Center MM, (MM stands for Monthly Meeting, a Quaker Community) Clinton County, Ohio, on 13 September 1802, fathered 3 daughters, and headed west to Indiana, where Tom petitioned the local MM to become a Quaker; this was granted.

The following notation was taken from The History of Madison County, Indiana

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Washington Davis

In 1867, Thomas Davis, near Pendleton, was found dead in his woods. He was an old citizen, aged near seventy years. Official date of death is 17 Nov 1867. Rest in Peace most revered and oldest known progenitor. Thomas, Rachel and several offspring are buried in The Old Cemetery at the Friends Meeting House in Fall Creek, Pendleton, Indiana. Thomas owned the land.

Noble Washington, (better known as ‘Wash’) was born on 26 July 1833 in Spiceland, Henry County, Indiana. Wash inherited Tom’s property, located primarily in Fall Creek Township, Madison County, Indiana, married a nice Quaker lady, Mary Elizabeth Garretson, born in York County, Pennsylvania on 08 November 1841 and continued the Davis line, now firmly in the Quaker Religion, with the birth of another Tom Davis. Vida K’s predecessors were Methodists. Moses Elliott Kerr was born right at the turn of the 19th Century (c. 1801) in Greenville, Tennessee, into a family of circuit riders and preachers. By about 1830, he was a local government functionary in Monroe County, West Virginia, and she a rabble-rousing, extremely vocal anti-slavery activist, Mary Elizabeth ‘Polly’ Vawter, born 01 September 1809 in Monroe County, West Virginia. How and where they met and married is unknown to me. They left West Virginia in the early 1840s, floated down the Ohio River to Indiana and took root in Madison County, Indiana. They had five children; among them was Vida’s father, James Vauter Kerr, born on 19 June 1843 in Princeton, Virginia, prior to the trip down the Ohio River.

James became a fairly well-to-do farmer and one of the organizers of the group that built and managed the first Indiana Turnpike. Vida’s Mother was Rosa Belle Powell, born on 26 April 1852 in Fayette County, Indiana. James and Rosa married on 31 December 1876 in Alpine, Indiana.

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Thomas Davis & Vida Kerr Davis

Tom and Vida arrived ultimately in Indian Territory (IT) as Oklahoma was then known. Tom was an authoritarian, crack shot with a pistol, and, above all, businessman. Vida K. was a well-educated lady who learned to speak the languages of the Five Civilized Tribes; the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Comanche, the Chickasaw and the Seminole who were the dominant tribes in IT. They were called the civilized tribes because they were willing to accept the white man’s laws and to live in peace. There were other Tribes, The Kiowa, The Osage and the Quapah not as willing to abide by Laws of the Great White Father in Washington. Vida then organized a school to teach the Indian children to read and write English. Tom was busy forming and operating, with the help of young Earl, a drayage (hauling by horse and wagon) business, which came under attack frequently by renegade Indians. Tom also set up a general store, a newspaper and other enterprises. Needless to say, he was very successful. Over time, the family lived in several very small communities (Hector, Beggs, Sapulpa, Mounds, Muscogee and others) within the IT. Another son, Coral Benjamin (CB) was born in Sapulpa, IT, in 1902 and Vida gave birth to two more children, who lived for only a very short time.

In 1917, in contravention of Quaker doctrine, Earl joined the US Navy to serve during World War I.

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Earl Davis, Newport NTS, RI, 1917

He was discharged in New Orleans in 1918 and went back to Oklahoma which had become a state on 07 November, 1907. He worked at many laboring jobs in the oilfields around Tulsa, particularly in Kiefer, and with harvesting crews in Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. Earl worked for a short time on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad before attending Ray’s Automobile School in Kansas City

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Earl Davis c. 1923

In about 1922-23, Earl landed in Milliken, Weld County, Colorado, and with a partner, opened an automobile shop. An entrepreneur like his father, Earl owned and operated a dance hall and a movie theater. According to him and others, Earl also transported illegal whiskey in a special car he built.

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Inez Hupp c.1918

Sometime during his peregrinations, Earl met the local postmistress, one Inez Ethel Hupp, fell in love and on May 6, 1924, they were married. Inez quickly became pregnant with me. Sometime in 1924, Tom was diagnosed with Tuberculosis and he and Vida K. moved to Kerrville, Texas, where Tom entered one of the many TB sanitaria in the area. The prognosis was extremely dim for Tom.

Earl and the pregnant Inez decided to go to Kerrville to help Vida K. as much as possible. Earl’s kid brother, Coral Benjamin, better known as CB, also went to Kerrville. Earl made frequent trips to San Antonio to sell tire patching materials and then bought a truckload of fruits and vegetables which he then sold when he returned to Kerrville. He and CB bid on and were awarded a contract for installing curbing and sidewalks in Kerrville. Many of their completed works were still in place as of 1980 when I last visited Kerrville.

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Vida K & Tommy-1925                                 Inez and Tommy, 1925

Tom breathed his last in December of 1924. Inez was too far along to travel and she and Earl decided to stay until she had given birth. Vida K opted to return, with Tom’s body, to her home in Mounds, Oklahoma, and wait until Earl, Inez and the soon-to-be newborn could join her. On January 20, 1925 Inez, with Doctor McDonald in attendance in the boarding house in which Earl and Inez were living, gave birth to a gorgeous, healthy son who was given the name, Thomas Earl Davis, hereinafter referred to as Tommy or Tom. Sometime in May 1925, the Davis family left Kerrville and landed in Mounds, Oklahoma, to stay a while with Vida K. The Davises were headed for a dirt farm owned by Vida K. located just outside the small town of Jenks, which is just south across the Arkansas River from Tulsa.

BECOMING AN OKIE . . .

The farm was under lease and Earl and family didn’t get there until January 1926. According to a letter written by Inez to her brother Ervin Hupp on October 21, 1925, young Tom started talking at age 9 months with words such as Mama, Dada, nite and ouch. According to most people who know him, he hasn’t shut up since.

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Tommy Age App 4 mos.

Anyone who has lived on a small dirt farm knows that it is work from sunup ‘til sundown. In 1926, Earl and Inez and two young sons, Coral Ervin (Bud) was born May 3, 1926, were not living in the lap of luxury.

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Ervin & Tommy

Earl was working the farm with two big red Missouri mules.

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Kate, Ervin, Tommy

He had no tractor, no powered farm equipment of any kind and no electricity. Sometime around 1929, we got a Delco Generator and with that, the marvel of the age, electricity.

There were no fancy modern conveniences; there was a two-hole ‘Chick Sales Special’ (that’s an outhouse) that had to be moved periodically. The toilet paper, when there was any, consisted of an out-of-date Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalog. In the absence of paper, everyone used corncobs. Use a dark colored one first; use a light-colored-one second to see if a third was needed. In those days when Mama said, Remember boys, yellow in front, brown in the rear, it was for real, not just a joke told by city folks.

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Davis Kids on the farm, Jenks, OK

In the kitchen was a tin sink on the left side of which was a hand-pump for water; that was the extent of indoor plumbing. Baths were taken in the kitchen in a round galvanized washtub using water heated on the wood-fired kitchen stove. The water was hard, making it difficult to get a lather but easy to leave a scum. Inez filled the tub about one-third full of cold water from the pump and then heated enough more water to provide a decently hot bath for Earl. Lucky me, I had the good fortune to be second in that now tepid and scummy water. To this day I take only showers, NO BATHS! Next, Inez repeated the water-heating procedure, took her bath and then bathed any little ones left over. As the years passed, two more younguns came along, Telpha LaVonne on July 23, 1927, and Raymond Merritt on December 18, 1928. Two miscarriages followed, one in each in each of the next two years.

What did folks do in the evening? Not much. For light there were coal oil (kerosene) lamps by which the kids could look at or read the funny papers from the Sunday Edition of the Tulsa World. I learned to read at around age 3 by reading the comic strips in the Sunday edition of the Tulsa World. As noted previously, Inez was educated as a teacher and provided the necessary tutelage. The same lamps provided light for Inez to read a good book; she was a well-read lady who kept up with current events. She also took time to write to her sisters and Brother Ervin.

There was a battery-operated Philco radio, which utilized a single crystal to receive the signal from Radio Station KVOO, Tulsa, Oklahoma. AM and FM Radio had not yet come into everyday use. Yankee baseball games on Sunday and some earlier radio programs such as Amos and Andy provided the entertainment package. Television was still some twenty years away. Movies were silent pictures and not too good at that. My siblings and I didn’t see a movie until sometime in 1929 or ‘30 while visiting in Tulsa.

There were plenty of things to keep kids happy. Dad made stilts, crushed-in evaporated milk cans which would just fit a kids bare feet, and had plenty of axle grease around which was too inviting to pass up. Smear it on each other and then get a switching with a willow, which you had to go down by the creek and cut yourself. Talk about pain!!!

Dad had been raised by a very authoritarian father. Any indiscretion or failure to carry out an assigned chore as his dad directed resulted in a beating. Dad seemed to have adopted some of that behavior. On one memorable occasion, I found a wooden match and never having struck one, decided to do so, contrary to Dad’s very explicit, Don’t strike any matches. I struck the match and was caught in the act by Dad. He told me I was to be punished in a way that would make me remember the ‘rule’. He handed me a match and told me to strike it which I did and, although Mother objected strenuously, he made me hold the burning match until it burned to the end, right between my index finger and thumb. As a result, I had two blisters and no further desire to strike a match. This was another object lesson.

The usual punishment for any offense was to be handed Dad’s pocket knife, go down by the creek, cut a willow switch and hand it to Dad. He made a lengthy ritual out of the punishment process. As he was stripping off all the leaves and buds, he kept saying, This hurts me more than it does you. I realized much later that he believed he was trying to tell me that no father enjoys hurting his son but that it is sometimes necessary. He used the routine frequently and, to this day, I remember it hurt me more than it did Dad. There were times when Ervin (Bud) and I both got into trouble and on one such occasion, Dad took a slat from an apple box, cut it to the desired size and length, gouged a few holes in it with his trusty knife and told Bud and I to stand back-to-back. He then proceeded to wield that paddle very rapidly between two little bare butts until they were red and sore.

Other sources of fun and excitement were the three times the house caught fire, the trek through the fields to bring in the cows for milking and getting to stomp barefooted in the fresh, hot, still-steaming cow pies and catching big bullfrogs with a piece of red flannel on a fishhook. Frog legs are really a gourmet treat.

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Davis Kids

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Kids & cows by the pond

We usually had a dog for fun and games. Occasionally there would be a little extra, like Ervin falling into the water tank and Dad fishing him out dripping wet, feet going a mile a minute trying to run before being set down and then as the water came out of this mouth, an unearthly scream, Mother! Mother, of course, was Inez. She was most likely put on earth to be a mother. Mother was the kindest, gentlest, most understanding and most forgiving lady ever put on God’s green earth. Besides her routine duties, there were the times one or more kids were sick and the doctor was not just around the corner. All of us, I think, had Measles of both types, Mumps bilaterally, Strep Throat and its sequel Scarlet Fever and Whooping Cough (Pertussis). If Mother was uncertain of diagnosis or treatment, she would get on the ‘crank’ wall phone, give one crank and that would get the operator and the operator would connect the call to the doctor. Conversely when someone wanted the Davises, they would ring, ‘one long and two short rings’ and everybody would on that party line would pick up and listen. I had a problem that none of the others enjoyed; every time I had a high fever, I had nightmares in which Mother and I were in a large room in which gigantic balls were rolling around indiscriminately and I was always afraid Mother was going to be killed. Luckily vaccinations saved us from Diphtheria and good fortune saved us from serious illness.

On the farm were some several Jersey cows; they were milked by hand by Dad and Mother both Morning and night. The milk was run through a gasoline driven separator. The milk was put into milk cans and taken daily to the milk company in Tulsa. Mother churned butter by hand and some of the buttermilk was sold and some was kept because ‘Earl liked it’ and said the rest of the family should too. When I flat refused, at about five years of age, to drink it, here came the usual, Go cut a switch and we’ll see if you can learn to like it, followed by, This is gonna hurt me more than it is you. If Earl had been whipped by his dad like he said he had, it’s damned hard to see how he could tell a bald-faced lie like