https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/ccae8df7e83c41e18f20ba60bb215f42.pdf 49eececa3a801be5f99cc51caf28202e PDF Text Text 'l I'"") ' 'l "") 'l } ' ) J ) ) ' J ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) _) _) j ..J J J j J ..J J ...) ...) J J J ...J ....) EMMIT EVANS Emmit Bud Evans and his twin sister were born August 7, 1896, at Old McGee in the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma Indian Territory near present day Stratford in East Central Oklahoma, Their parents, Isaac and Mary Ann had a total of 12 children. After living at Old McGee for several years, the family moved to Maud, a small settlement in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, When Isaac was a young man, he worked for the Butler-Stewart Cattle Co, driving herds from East Texas across the Indian Territory to join the Chisholm Trail at Enid. Since there were no railroads into Texas in the 1870's and early 1880's, the only way the great herds of Texas could reach the markets in the East was by means of the classic cattle drives 600-800 miles north to the railheads in Kansas. On one of these drives Isaac met Mary Ann. They were married in 1883. Isaac had wintered one herd of cows in Barber County, Kansas and was so impressed with the quality of the buffalo grass that he decided to move his family further north into either Kansas or Oklahoma. Everyone who traveled in Oklahoma in frontier times sooner or later had a tale to tell about crossing one of its rivers. During most of the year, except after heavy rains, the rivers of central and Western Oklahoma run mostly underground. The South Canadian is typical. Though the river bed may be a mile wide, only a few channels run water. The remainder of the bed is sand or the dreaded quicksand. People wanting to cross with wagons would hitch four or more mules and make a run for it, whooping and hollering to spur the critters on. Most people made it, of course, but every year a few wagons and animals and occasionally some people were lost in the quivering sands. The Evans made it to Maud, acquired a farm and built a log house, Emmit recalls, "Dad was strictly a cattle man and so all of us boys had to learn to ride, rope, bulldog and brand, I can still hold any steer in the country. Just give me his tail and throw him and I'll hold him down," "Dad built our log house out of Cottonwood, That's good building material, but you better drive your nails before it dries or you may not get them in. Even the rafters were cottonwood 2' by 6's. Once they dry they'll hold up anything. We raised enough food in our garden to feed the whole family all year. Mother kept our canned food and potatoes, carrots and cabbages in the cellar. We got all the wild fruit we wanted. There were the little sour red sand plums for jelly and a large sweet plum for eating fresh . Then there were paw-paws and the persimmons and Black Haws which got us fat for the winter. That country is full of Black Walnut Trees and Native pecans. Every fall each of us kids would gather all the pecans we could sell at 4 cents per pound, and then we put away 100 pounds for ourselves, which we stashed under the stairs. No one bothered anyone else's sack. On cold winter evenings we would crack and eat all the pecans we wanted. Sometimes we'd play hully-gully. One of us would hold 2 or more pecans between our palms and shake them till they rattled. By the sound the other person would guess how many there were. If he guessed right, he got the pecans. If he guessed wrong he had to give the other person an equal number of pecans from his supply." 51 �"Since there was no school at Maud, I didn't start at 6 years of age. When Emma and I were 10, Dad took us to the Meckusuki Mission School, a boarding school over on the Seminole Reseivation. We didn't like it a bit. We got there at 1:00 in the afternoon. By 10:00 at night we had walked all the way home. We expected Dad to be mad, but he decided that if we were that unhappy, we wouldn't have to go. Though I didn't realize it at the time, I had met an exceptional person at the Mission School. Jim Thorpe, all American athlete and Olympic star, was enrolled in the Meckusuki School the same day I was. He ran away, too. His father brought him on horseback. Jim didn't wait as long as we did to run away. In fact he out-distanced his father's horse and was home before his father, evidence of the great runner he would become." Not long afterwards, a school was built at Maud. It was a rough building with homemade benches and boards for writing, but we had a good teacher. Alva Christian was from Tennessee and he took no nonsense from the kids. The children at Maud school were normal, healthy, husky, rascally frontier kids full of mischief. Mr. Christian was a match for them. He kept 15-20 dogwood switches of various thicknesses behind the map case and he used them. Emmit says, "He had eyes in the back of his head. If we were inattentive or naughty or dull, he went for a switch. He'd throw it to us, order us to bring it to him and then proceed to wear it out on us. Such methods seem harsh today, but he was a good teacher. He made us learn. He taught us vocal and instrumental music and public speaking. Every Friday night he required us to participate in a "literary''. A crowd from the surrounding territory came to these affairs to witness the students in debate, extemporaneous speaking, recitations and music. It was one of the few entertainments available to frontier people." After 7th grade students had to pay tuition of $2.00 in order to attend high school. Emmit didn't have the money so the businessmen in Maud paid the tuition so he could play football. "We had a great team, but no coach," Emmit remembers. "A couple of our teachers, Mr. Greggs and Mr. Geisinger knew a little bit about the game, but we were on our own. Even so we beat Shawnee, Seminole, Ada and all the other big towns around there. I joined the National Guard in high school with no idea it would involve me in the first real adventure of my life. When Pancho Villa started raiding across the border, our unit was called up and sent to Brownsville, Texas, with General John Pershing, who later became famous in World War I. Since I could speak Spanish passably because of a course or two I had taken, I was assigned as Pershing's interpreter. We raided across the border and tramped around. Except for a few shots fired at banditos we didn't accomplish anything. Back home I finished high school and got a football scholarship to attend Phillips University at Enid, Oklahoma, a college sponsored by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We had a great year. Our coach was Johnny Maulbautch, AllAmerican halfback from Michigan. We beat Oklahoma University, Texas University and everybody else we played. My studies there were interrupted by World War I. After some training at Houston, we boarded a cattle boat at Galveston for France. The stench on that trip was memorable. The ships traveled in convoy to get some protection from the German U-Boats. We landed in England and then on to Bordeaux. I was assigned to the Headquarter Co. of F215 Field Signal Battalion in the Belmont Woods. The war was 52 �I"") .. . .-, ') } ' ' } ' ) nearly over except for the time several of us got paid and went AWOL to Paris. The tripback was on another darned cattle boat, 19 days to Boston . " By the time Emmit got back from the war, Phillips University had dropped its football program, so he got a scholarship to attend Southwestern University at Winfield, Kansas. He was involved in football and track. Back in high school Jim Thorpe had told Emmit if he wanted to be an Olympic winner he could never smoke and needed to train all the time. Emmit did this and was chosen for the American Olympic team which went to Stockholm, Sweden in 1920. "I came in second in the 100 meter dash. At least I was beaten by an American." ) ] } ) ' ) ) ) ) ) ) ) J ) ) J _) .J ._) ..J ,.J ...) ._) J ..J J J ..J J J .,_) J In 1921 Emmit married Gladys Ely. She died in 1929 of pernicious anemia. There were no children. During the years Gladys was alive Emmit was coaching football at San Antonio Military Academy. They stayed there for 6 years until Gladys became quite sick, then moved back to Winfield, Kansas. Emmit was hired as superintendent of schools at Sharon, Kansas, then at Medicine Lodge, Kansas. In 1933 Emmit married Madge Aubley. They lived in Medicine Lodge until 1945, when Emmit semi-retired and moved to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. "I liked to hunt and fish," Emmit says, "and Pagosa was right in the middle of the best I could find." In succeeding years Emmit taught school in Durango, then Cortez, then as superintendent at Dove Creek and at Kit Carson, Colorado, until 1959 when Madge died. Madge and Emmit had three children. Virginia Springmeyer now lives in Canon City; Mary Jane Nelson how lived in Hawaii and Emmit Bud Jr. lives in the Piedra Valley north of Navajo Lake. The girls were already gone from home when Madge died. Emmit moved to Fort Collins so that Emmit Jr. would have the advantage of better schools. Though officially retired, Emmit took a job as Larimer County Librarian till 1964. About this time Emmit and Jr. built the Indian Head Lodge on Williams Creek Lake. They sold groceries, gas etc. and enjoyed the wilderness. After Junior finished college, he received a $25,000 fellowship to work towards his Ph. D at the University of California at Berkeley. After acquiring his degree, Emmit Jr. worked at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography near San Diego, until last year when he came to stay in the Piedra Valley for a while. Three of Emmit's eleven brothers and sisters are still living. One brother lives in Phoenix. One sister is in Oklahoma City and his twin sister, Emma still lives in Wichita, Kansas. Mr. Evans stays in the Piedra Valley in the summer. In winter he takes off for Mexico or other points far away. Right now he is enroute to Maud, Oklahoma, to participate in his high school's 60th class reunion . "As far as I know one other lady and I are the only ones in our class left. I'm looking forward to seeing her if she is still alive." How much fun and rascality and adventure can be packed into one life? That depends, of course upon who we're talking about. If it's Emmit Evans, the answer is a lot. Shelby Smith, June 1977 53 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emmit Evans Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1977-06 Subject The topic of the resource Evans, Emmit; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Emmit Evans based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the June, 1977 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Evans, Emmit Extent The size or duration of the resource. 3 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby