Books: Oklahoma Boyhood

THE CHEROKEE STRIP—Marquis James —Viking ($3).

It was the biggest horse race ever run. At the starting line, farther than the eye could see, a hundred thousand people lined up, on saddle horses, light rigs, buck-boards, spring wagons, sulkies. The prize, bigger than the State of Massachusetts, was Oklahoma’s Cherokee Strip.

The winner was a wiry, cocky little cowhand named Walter Cook, who loped his cayuse over the 18 miles from the Hennessey line to Enid in less than 55 minutes, swept past the land office and staked his claim to the best quarter-section in the whole Strip—the 160 acres north of the town square. Walter Cook was hornswoggled out of his claim, of course, and ended up being the town hero every Sept. 16 (anniversary of The Run) and the town bootlegger and jailbird the other 364 days. But that was how things went in The Run of 1893; and the glory of having been in The Run cut a lot more ice in Enid than coming over in the Mayflower.

Enid, Okla. is the heroine of Biographer Marquis James’s colorful, populous book of recollections, The Cherokee Strip.

The hero is Markey James himself, a sensitive frontier boy with an ear for legend and an eye for character. He wanted to be a journeyman printer and instead became a two-time Pulitzer Prize biographer.*

Enid grew up fast—from the sod-house age to the Chamber of Commerce era within a boy’s memory. Through the boy’s eyes, Prizewinner James has expertly chronicled that turbulent growth.

Outlaws & “Civilization.” Markey’s earliest idol was a weather-beaten Indian expert named Mr. Howell, whose unplowed sod-house claim adjoined that of the Jameses. Papa Houstin James sometimes said: “If old man Howell’d done all he says he’s done, he’d be a hundred and ten years old.” Markey used to practice telling Mr. Howell’s stories to his dog, Prince—especially the ones about Indian fighting and the Railroad War.

During the Railroad War, Enid was known as South Town because the Rock Island Railroad used to whistle its trains right through to stop at company-owned North Town, three and a half miles away. “Red lanterns and dynamite caps on the track failed to stop them. Bullets failed to stop them: conductors would draw the window blinds and tell passengers to scrooch down away from the glass. One night someone sawed the pilings of the trestle and a freight train went into the south branch of Boggy [Creek]. That was the first train to stop in South Town.”

Markey’s second hero was Dick Yeager, self-styled “bigges’ outlaw Oklahoma ever had,” who eluded a 1,000-man posse for 125 days of hot, bloody pursuit. Proudest moment of Markey’s hero-worshiping young life was when he marched into jail to shake the mortally wounded outlaw’s hand. Dick Yeager was his father’s client, and at that time the most interesting thing about Papa was his clientele. When Lawyer James was not home, they used to hide out in the East Draw to wait for him. Papa called it his “front office.”

Markey’s mother had once forded a stream with Jesse James and “had spent half her life in parts of the country where more men carried firearms than carried timepieces.” But still she had ideas about being “civilized” that seemed strange and irksome to a six-year-old Indian fighter. She was always after him to practice his reading and tirelessly corrected his pronunciation of such rich Oklahoma English as “An’ thar was the ol’ she-b’ar with two yearlin’ cubs acomin’ thu the bresh by the crick.” Mama cried, too, when Markey got Ad Poak, the hired man, to take the horse clippers to his shoulder-length hair.

Spittoons & Specials. Life became more exciting when Papa had to sell the claim he staked in The Run and moved his family into Enid. From the second-floor porch of the midtown office building where they lived, Markey was edified by a clear view into the high-fenced enclosures provided by Enid’s saloons for patrons to sleep it off. “Gillespie Brothers was the best for sights. At Sunday-school time on Sunday morning you might see the forms of men who had been there all night, still as stiff as cordwood.” Markey met the heavy financial demands of urban life, first by cleaning spittoons and later by delivering special delivery letters on his bicycle. Most lucrative customer was glamorous Miss Josephine Barnabee, whose big, yellow fancy-house on Two Street was the most refined establishment of its kind in town. Miss Josephine got more specials than anyone else and always tipped a dime.

Markey James developed an early interest in history and read Froissart’s Chronicles in Enid’s one-room public library. He also studied up on the lives of U.S. Presidents. “My favorites were George Washington (though he seemed too good to be true), Andrew Jackson (for his refusal to clean the British officer’s boots), Abraham Lincoln (he was such a good wrestler), and Andrew Johnson (the runaway apprentice).” But the profession that enthralled him longest—more even than stagecoach driver or railroadman or lawyer—was that of printer.

In a free & easy community, printers were the freest and most independent people of all. They would swing into town on a fast freight, work as long as the spirit moved them, and then put down their “sticks”—sometimes in the middle of a rush job—and roll on along to the next place. They were “the aristocrats of the road,” full of talk that sounded wonderful to a boy.

Before he was 20, Author James had worked as reporter for several of Enid’s papers, but it was a long time before he got over his embarrassment at being a “front office” man instead of a printer.

For the readers of Grapes of Wrath who picture Oklahoma as a dusty breeding ground of hungry-eyed migrants, and for playgoers to whom Oklahoma! is a Hammerstein-Rodgers funfair of blond ballerinas and pink-cheeked cowboys, The Cherokee Strip will be an entertaining antidote.

*In 1930 for The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston; again in 1938 for Andrew Jackson. . .