I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 28, 1938 at approximately 8:17
in the morning.
It was the same day that Queen Victoria ascended to the British throne. It was earlier that same month, on the
17th, that Japan attacked China and on the 1st of the month, Superman first appears in DC Comics' Action Comics
Series issue #1.
1938 was also the year that an American oil company struck oil in Saudia Arabia, when King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud
was in power. Up until that time, his land was impoverished, isolated and backward. Thus began a strange, one-sided
relationship between the House of Saud and US presidents that continued through every successive administration
from Roosevelt through to George Bush. It is a symbiotic relationship -- the US needs Saudi oil, and the Saudis
need US money. But there is no love lost between either side. (Paraphrased
from: The Devil You Know - Commentary on the News - Friday, May 13, 2005 - Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor)
I don't know if that extra availability of oil had anything to do with it, but June was an excellent month for
workers - they were guaranteed 40 cents an hour by the Federal Government, up from the previous 33 cents an hour
they had been receiving. That 40 cents had the same buying power then as $5.49 does today in 2005. In 1996, the
Federal minimum wage was raised to a whopping $4.25 an hour, approximately 10 times what it was in 1938. This is
a good illustration that things really were cheaper in the "old days" and that a person could buy more
groceries on a dollar back then than now. For instance, the Consumer price Index in 1938 was at approximately 4.1.
As of March this year, it stood at 193.3
Pop was a nickel apiece or 6 for a quarter in the l940's. Cigarettes were 17 cents a pack. You'd pay 20 cents,
but there would be three pennies refund underneath the cellophane wrapper. When mother's boyfriend (his name is
no longer in my memory) would send me after a pack of cigarettes for him, I would hit the gold mine; because he'd
give me those 3 cents. That would buy me a lot of Double Bubble chewing gum or tootsie rolls (they were both two
for a penny).
The actual place of my birth was on my great-grandfather's country estate at 1445 North Harvard in Tulsa, Oklahoma
(the main house sat at the southeast corner of Pine & Harvard), a place that is now way within the city limits
and not very affluent as it was back in those days (Grandpa had a lot of money). It was so far out in the country,
that when a person took the bus to the end of the line, it was still a mile's walk to grandpa's place.
That's what I always called him ... "grandpa" ... even though he was my great-grandfather. His children
called him "papa"; and his wife, Vera, called him "Mr. Harris". That always seemed odd to
me, but they were really OLD and went by the old ways. Everybody else called him "Doc" due to his great
diagnostic talent and the medicines he sold that WORKED!
During the war, he'd get $175 a bottle for that medicine. Can you believe it !!! But, like I said, it WORKED;
so people were willing to pay whatever the price was. Then the Feds decided to shut him down and wouldn't let
him buy the most active ingredients any more. The medicine didn't work very well after that. The recipe went
to Vera, his widow, when he died. When she died, it probably went to one of their boys (Jimmy, Tommy, or Bobby).
They're probably dead now, too. So no telling WHO has that miraculous recipe now.
The downgrade of the neighborhood started when Grandpa sold off a bunch of the property to a developer of new GI
homes right after the war. Then the properties facing the main streets went commercial as the City of Tulsa was
expanding rapidly. Consequently, Vera (my step-great-grandmother) had her beautiful home moved to a better neighborhood
in the 60's, I think; but I don't remember where.
I was not born in the main house. I was born in the "goat house".
It was a former boat house made into a goat house and then converted
into a place where my mother and her husband, James McCoin, could live. My mother told me I was born premature,
because she and James McCoin had an argument. She ran out of the yard and hit her belly on the gate. That's what
she said, but I never believed it. She was already pregnant by George Carson when she married James McCoin; but
she always denied that, too.
One of the funniest events in my life that does not even transcribe to the written page was one day when I mentioned
the goat house I'd been born in to G-Aunt Irene. She SCREAMED ...
Goat house? Goat house?
BOAT house! BOAT house!
I laughed so hard. But you'd have to know Aunt Irene. She was a LADY in the truest sense of the word. Appearances meant a lot to her, even the difference between a goat house and a boat house. So silly. Being born in a boat house is just as degrading as being born in a goat house. It was still nothing but a shack with a single room consisting of 4 rundown walls and a roof. I can still remember it, because I used to play close to it when we'd go to grandpa's. I was cautioned to stay away from the ponds, because they had alligators in them. I believed them. ha ha
