Regarding Uncle Claude Argata Enkey
(May 22, 1902 — September 27, 1981)
by
Wally Lee Parker
(all rights reserved by the Enkey-Parker Family History Newsletter)
In early March, 2000, Jack Willis, eldest grandson of Claude and Olive
Enkey, sent the Enkey-Parker Family History
Newsletter a cassette recording containing some of his memories of his
grandfather — one of my uncles on my mother's side. Below is my
highly revised transcription of that cassette. After
reviewing the text for accuracy, Jack Willis approved this distillation of
his words.
———
Reprinted from the Enkey-Parker Family History
Newsletter
May/June, 2000 A.D.
———
… Some Stories about My Grandfather …
… as recalled by Jack Willis …
For
several years, while attending school at Northeastern State College, I lived
with my grandparents, Claude Enkey and Olive Freeman-Enkey, on the farm
granddad Enkey called ‘the Prairie’.
Grandpa
originally had two places. The other was
on ‘Fourteen Mile Creek’. Bill Enkey,
that’s grandpa’s second son, lives there today.
Claude
Enkey couldn’t read or write. His wife
Olive had a college education. My
grandfather was very physical, very boisterous, very much a showman. My grandmother was quiet, a little bit of a
conniver, and very, very bright. Life
together must have been an interesting challenge for both of them.
Grandpa
Enkey’s home was tiny, with only three rooms.
Over the years, instead of adding on to the building to increase its
size, Grandpa would find some old building, then, using wagons and his tractor,
he’d pull that building up next to the existing house. He wouldn’t exactly attach it. There’d be a gap, six inch to a foot between
the two buildings. But that was his idea
of adding on.
We
use to sit around the cast iron stove in the farm house living room, sometimes till
two or three in the morning, roasting home grown peanuts and listening to
grandpa’s stories — stories ‘bout coon hunting or this event or
that happening, but always some unique adventure or the other. In the telling he would absolutely slaughter
the English language. When he’d tell
stories about the family, he’d keep asking grandmother, “Ollie, is that
right”? He’d go on till every one of us
had given up, gone out to one of the adjoining bedrooms — adjoining
buildings — and gone to bed.
None
of the adjoining buildings was ever heated, so I hated going to bed. I’d crawl into an ice cold bed, cover up with
four or five denim quilts patched out of bit of worn out Levi’s, and freeze
until the bed heated up.
But
being there was always worth it.
The
typical meal was unique. Sometimes —
though it was considered a trash fish by most — we’d have Alligator
Gar. The fish might have been fifty or
sixty pounds. It didn’t have the usual
backbone. The backbone was cartilage. It’d be cooked as steaks — an inch to
an inch and a half of thick white meat, and maybe six inches wide. I didn’t like the possum — too
greasy. Sometimes there’d be raccoon. And I loved the squirrels and rabbits grandpa
Claude would apprehend through his own special methodology.
There
was always fried okra, and, on occasion, fried green tomatoes. Grandpa Enkey loved turnips. And so did my grandmother.
Grandmother
Olive would make a wonderful dish that I called Texas sheet cake —
chocolate brownie like cake that was only an inch to an inch and a half thick,
with chocolate icing all over the top.
And she made the best black berry cobbler. I’ve tried ever since to get her recipe for
that cobbler.
Most
always there was cornbread. I really
think grandpa’s favorite meal was nothing more than spooning up chunks of days
old cornbread that he’d softened by stuffing torn off chunks down into a glass of
raw milk.
And
every time we left the farm, we always left with something. Maybe a jar or two of this or a bunch or two
of that. There seemed a lesson in
that. They’d lived through the
depression, the dust bowl — some really bad times. But there was always food in their
cellar. So no matter how bad things
might seem, there was always something to give.
The
physical characteristic of grandpa I remember best were these giant hands —
rough hands. Physical strength was a big
part of his life. Grandpa also had a
temper, and was not accustomed to backing down.
He
had two work horses — huge horses. Polly, white with black spots, was reasonably
well behaved. The brown and white horse,
Mae, was quite temperamental. Grandpa,
whenever his John Deere tractor was broken down, would use the horses to work
the fields.
On
one occasion, Mae made the serious mistake of kicking my grandfather. Within an instant, in a fit of anger, I saw
him pick up the hind legs of that horse and throw it on its side.
When
I told my father, Marvin Willis, what I’d seen, he said, “That’s nothing. I saw him reach under a horse’s belly, picked
the horse up, all four legs off the ground, and throw it.”
I
think Claude Enkey delighted in intimidating his son-in-laws. He would take them hunting — all
night long. If they didn’t learn their lesson
the first or second time — if they agreed to go with him a third time —
I’m sure at some point they all learned that he was a far stronger and
physically capable individual then any of them.
He
was very proud of his physical presents, of his strength, and of his ability,
even at an older age, to do acrobatic stunts.
He was still, in his sixties, doing hand springs, cartwheels, and flips. When my sister Carol would take a boyfriend
to visit the grandparents, Claude would be out there, showing the boyfriend
that he could do anything the boy could do — and probably do it
better. I did see him pick up the front
of a car once, just to show some of my friends from Tulsa how strong he
was.
There
was the right way, the wrong way, and my grandfather Claude’s way. This was especially apparent when grandpa
treated himself rather than going to see a doctor. He had a concoction, a mixture. Coal oil, gunpowder, and something else — I
can’t recall what — was one such remedy.
I
remember him having a large hole in the top of his thigh where a tick had bit
him. You could literally stick your
thumb inside this hole. It had become
infected. So he poured his coal oil and
gunpowder mixture into the hole. I know
it hurt. I watched his eyes roll back as
he let out a moan. A week later the sore
was healed.
If
he got bit by a copperhead he wouldn’t go to the doctor, he’d pour this stuff
or some other on and cure himself.
Anyway,
I always enjoyed visiting with grandpa, his stories were so colorful. Stories of him hand catching eels in the
creek. Coon hunting. Running hounds. And how he would stick his hands into — not
just squirrel nest — but into holes in trees, stick his hands in not
knowing what kind of animal was inside.
It was very common for him to pull his hand out of a tree trunk
clutching a possum or some other critter — and you ought to know a
clutched possum is something just meaner than hell.
But
grandpa was up to that. When he was
younger they had a big celebration in Tahlequah — a
fair, rodeo, or something. Grandfather
said they had an event called the ‘greased pig contest’. They would grease a pig up, let it loose, and
all the men would try to catch it.
Whoever could hold onto the pig won some sort of a prize. Grandpa and a black man grabbed ‘hold of the
pig at the same time. My grandfather
reached over, grabbed the black man by the leg, and bit him. The man let loose. Grandpa won the contest.
As
I said, grandpa had a temper, and was not accustomed to losing. And he could deliver on just about anything
that he said. He was a very intimidating
individual. Although I loved him dearly,
it was well known that he could back anybody, or any group, into a corner. And believe me, people listened.
One
of the best stories about his temper is told by my mother, Opal Beatrice
Enkey-Willis. Remember this — I
have never known my mother to lie.
That’s not something she does. So
this story just has to be true.
One
time, when she was young, the family was traveling in a Model-A Ford when one
of the car’s tires went flat. Grandpa
got out and went about changing the tire.
I don’t know how many lug nuts held each wheel of those old cars on, but
a safe bet would be at least four.
Now
Grandpa — before he, in his later days, became religious — was quite
the ‘cusser.’
At
any rate, when he got ready to put the wheel back on, he went looking all
around the car. Then, thinking they’d
somehow lost the lug nuts to his wheels, got very upset with the kids. After a thoroughly good cussing to all of
them, he found the lug nuts, every one of them, right where he’d put them for
safe keeping — in his mouth.
One
time, when I stopped by to visit my Grandpa — he must have been in
his late fifties or sixties then — I couldn’t help but notice that the
skin on his right arm was literally shredded.
It looked like somebody had taken one of those cheese shredders to
it. I asked what had happened. Grandpa smiled. A gleam appeared in his eye. And when I saw that gleam, I knew I was in
for a great story.
Seems
that the day before he’d been out fishing — but not in the
typical fashion. Seems he’d been
‘noodling’.
‘Noodling’
is something of a southern art. I don’t
know if it’s unique to Oklahoma, or to Okie’s, but it’s something that my
grandfather was apparently really good at.
Anyway,
to ‘noodle’, grandpa would step into a creek or river, walk around in the
shallow water near the bank till he found a partial rock outcropping or some
other overbanking ledge under where a fish might be hiding. Then he’d get down and feel around, reaching
underneath into the shelter. The gentleman practicing this art,
when he felt a fish, would find the mouth with his fingers. At some point the fish, in this particular case
a catfish, would need to open its mouth to force water through its gills. When it did, grandpa would stick his hand in
the fish’s mouth, and either grab it by the gills from the inside, or force his
hand down unto its gut. And then he’d
pull the fish out and throw it up on the bank.
Catfish
have very raspy mouths, as rough as sandpaper.
And I saw the particular fish of this story. I know one number was four and one number was
five — and my memory tells me that that catfish weighed fifty four pounds,
but surely not less than forty five. And
that’s what shredded the skin on his right arm.
Gramps
never had any money. When we’d go
fishing he’d always take one of his old trucks, and, to save on gas, when we’d
come over the top of a hill, he’d shut the key off and coast down. Because he’d leave the gears engaged so he
wouldn’t have to ride the brake down the hill, raw gas would build up in the
exhaust pipe. Near the bottom of the
hill he’d turn the key back on, and most every time the backfire would blow the
muffler off. Still, he thought he was
saving money.
Perhaps
my grandfather was best known in the Hulbert area for his sorghum
molasses. He grew the sorghum, then,
with a crusher powered either by one of his horses walking circles around it or
by the power-take-off from his John Deere Tractor, would process the stems —
would squeeze the watery juice out of the stems.
He
kept his ‘boiling vat’ in a hut. The hut
was just a wood frame with canvas thrown over it. The vat was a rectangular metal trough, about
eighteen inches deep and maybe eight feet long.
Under that he’d build a hickory wood fire. The
watery juice from the crusher was poured into the vat and boiled down to syrup.
Some
of my fondest memories of my grandfather are from the times we spent sitting in
this hut, boiling the excess water out of the sorghum. The juice — it had a slight
yellow tint — would boil down as clear as honey. Granddad gauged the cooking process by taste
and texture. He’d ladle out a sip; get a
gleam in his eye, and say, “Smooth. Real
smooth.”
He
was always taking some farm implement that had worn itself out and redesigning
it. It was nothing for him to have a
tractor seat on a thrashing machine, or a model T Ford front end on his
tractor. His place looked like a junk
yard. But he had a plan for everything
that was there.
I
remember him on his John Deere tractor, with that light front end bouncing, and
those big rear wheels turning, doing wheelies over the banks of his ponds. He was scooping out dirt, deepening the
ponds, to make a fishing place for the grand kids. He would stack the crushed sorghum cane
against the sides of the ponds. I guess
there was something in the stems that would feed the fish. We’d catch hundreds of perch and
catfish. And it was nothing to catch a
perch that was a foot long.
Early
one morning, sometime in 1967 I think, we got a call that grandpa’s ‘prairie’
house was on fire. We rushed to the farm
to find nothing but smoking embers.
Grandfather had failed to keep the chimney clean, and it had caught on
fire. With tears in his eyes Grandpa
Claude said, “You work your whole life, and everything that you’ve ever worked
for is gone in an instant.”
I
know they had some beautiful old family pictures and a lot of other family
relics in the house — all gone now.
At
that time granddad was batching it.
Several years earlier Grandma Olive had moved out to California to live
with one of my aunts. After the fire,
the home gone, grandfather was forced to move away from the Oklahoma Ozarks too
— out to California to be with Olive.
…
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