University of Central Oklahoma Oral History Project Archives and Special Collections 100 North University Drive Edmond, OK 73034

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1 University of Central Oklahoma Oral History Project Archives and Special Collections 100 North University Drive Edmond, OK Interviewee: Alfred Alexander Jack Drummond Interviewer: Terry Hammons Date: April 1978 Location of Interview: Red Carpet Inn Transcribed by: AD: TH: Lindsey Johnston A.A. Drummond Terry Hammons AD: I was five years old when I moved to Hominy. My birthday is the second day of December. I went to When my sister and two brothers, I was the youngest of four children, and they were all going to Mother Tucker s one room school up there at the Indian agency right across from the Indian agency building. So I cried to go, my mother let me go up there, I was just three years old when I went up there and entered school in September I guess it was. When the teacher called my name she called, I was enrolled as Alfred Drummond, and they always called me Jack. Why they called me Jack I don t know. But anyway, when they called out Drummond I didn t answer my name so she I was known as Jack Drummond. Of course, I was just three years old. She gave me a paddling and she didn t let me stay in school, she sent me home. Well that was in September but I still worried my mother so that after Christmas, then I was four years old in the second day of December, I returned to school there and that time in January I was a able to stay. I went there one year, it would be a year and a half. TH: Yeah, because you moved in the spring right? The spring of 1903? AD: I went there We didn t move to Hominy until school was out and I was five, so I was four that year and then all the next year I d be five. Then I d be five on second of December. Anyway we moved to Madill in 19 TH: Three, I think. AD: Three?

2 TH: Yeah. Your father bought the store, I think, in 1903 probably in November, December of 1903 and then he worked there it seems like for a season and then came and got the family from what I can pick up. AD: Well must have gone in 19 TH: Would have been spring of AD: In the spring of 19 No, in the summer, yeah after school was out. TH: May or June sometime. AD: In Yeah and then I would be, I was born in [18]96. TH: Almost [18]97 so you would have been a little over six. AD: I was four years old in 1900, 1903 I would have been seven years old wouldn t I? TH: Just past six, yeah just barely seven. You went to school nine months of the year then? AD: No, eight. TH: Eight months of the year. And you went there through what, the ninth grade basically? AD: That s it. Ninth grade and then you ve got my grade card. Then I went to Stillwater in the sub-freshman year and I went to Stillwater in 19 TH: Ten. AD: Ten. Then the eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen No, I graduated [19]15 TH: [19]11, [19]12, [19]13, and [19]14, and [19]15 would have been your freshman, sophomore, junior year and 1910 was your sub year as I can figure it, 1910, AD: 1910, [19]11, [19]12, [19]13, [19]14, [19]15. Well, I was there five years see? One year as a sub-freshman and then the four years, so would that put me there in 1910? TH: Yeah, I believe so. Towards the end of 1910, the fall of 1910 you would have gone. AD: In the fall of TH: Yeah because I found the little article in the Hominy paper saying that you were all three going over to school together, AD: We all three went together in 1910? Then Gentner and Cecil went in 1909, they were there a year ahead of me. 2

3 TH: What was a sub-freshman year like? What did you do then? Was it just getting you caught up? AD: It s like high school. We had algebra and English and I think we had maybe some freshman college credits but it was mostly, sub-freshman was just like preparatory for college. TH: When you went away to Indiana, or not Indian, Illinois AD: Illinois. TH: From the letters I found, it seems you had trouble getting admitted there, that they had to have some transcripts from high school and could not give you graduate student status. How come that was? AD: Yes I did. Well, it was because I didn t graduate from any high school. TH: Of course not, yeah. AD: I left Hominy and entered the sub-freshman year at Oklahoma A&M and they didn t give me a graduate status. I took all special subjects, but I didn t have graduate school, although my work was graduate work. And I was always considered, I don t know what my classification was. TH: A letter to your brother Fred you said it was a special student classification. AD: Special student, I guess that s it. TH: And you took a heavy load, I know, there, sixteen hours a semester from what I can see. AD: Well I didn t have enough college credits for graduate status, but I had a degree. But maybe they didn t recognize the degree from Oklahoma A&M. Later it became called Oklahoma State University and of course when but they had done away with the sub-freshman course before that time, before they got this university status. TH: Letters are from that time to a Fred. In them you talk about wanting to go to either Tennessee or Cornell to do some more graduate work. What happened with that? AD: I did. Well, before I entered Illinois I visited several other universities. I went to the university at Wisconsin and I went to Iowa, Iowa State University was highly regarded as an agricultural college, and I visited Cornell. And it seems to me, I don t believe I went to California, but I was always moving around. I was trying to find the best graduate school for agriculture and I finally selected Illinois for beef cattle. The dean of the agriculture school named Mumford, M-u-m-f-o-r-d, Dean Mumford, he was really an outstanding beef man like Blizzard. Now Blizzard, when I was in Oklahoma A&M, he was just a graduate assistant. He later became the most outstanding beef cattleman in the United States. He would judge at the international Chicago, he would judge all the big shows, Dean Blizzard would. But he was just a student, a student assistant, but he was a good beef cattleman. Well Mumford he was regarded as the dean in the beef cattle and that s why I finally selected the University of Illinois. But I 3

4 didn t just go hit and miss in the school. I went to get the best education that I knew how in beef cattle. But you know Terry, after I finished school and got into business, I never used a thing. TH: I was going to ask you that. AD: Never. I never used a course or in anyway. You know really the secret of the success in the cattle business is finance. You have to know how to always pay those cattle holders. Like when I financed all this land, I kept my land in the clear. When I had that 17,000 acres I didn t owe a dollar on it and whenever I made my mortgage to the stock yard loan company it was 5,000 because I lost it to and until I got into the Federal Land Bank you cannot pay for land on short time notes. The Federal Land Bank gives you thirty three years to pay a note and you only pay 3 percent on the principle. Say you borrow a $100,000, you only have to pay 3 percent a year on that $100,000 and you pay a half of that each six months so you only have to pay $1,500 on the principle on a $100,000. But you pay all of the interest on the unpaid balance each six months. So when you start out you re paying mostly interest and very little principle, but you ve got a long time and you don t have to worry about renewing the note. Back there when the land bank started, all the insurance companies took the land because they was making five year loans and a five year loan you couldn t get started paying it back so they just foreclose and they had these land brokers who would get this loan for you and the farmer, he didn t know how to get a loan just like you say you don t know how to get a real estate loan, they didn t know how to get a loan. They d go to one of these brokers and he d charge them a big commission and take a second mortgage on the farm. So in the Depression, the insurance companies took all the land. In fact, I bought land at Madill for as little as a hundred dollars down payment on that land. When I got in the Federal Land Bank and learned the theory of the Federal Land Bank system, then I got Federal Land Bank loans on part of the Osage lands, I just completed the loan for $276, 000 and on it seems to me 1,200 acres of land. TH: When you say a completed, do you mean paid it off? Or just took it out? AD: Just made it. TH: Just made it. AD: Just made a new loan. I had to borrow $70,000 on that ranch when I lost this $132,000 on the sale barn in Durant, I didn t have any $132,000. TH: When did that happen with the sale barn in Durant? AD: You ask me these years and at least these files will reveal it. TH: I haven t found papers on it yet, but then I haven t gone past the [19]40s. AD: Oh, it was about seven or eight years ago. Because he had, he was kiting checks Morgan Wilson was and he d buy cattle and offer to sell one get a check and then he d take them, sell them in his barn. And I was on his bond and I had to I was on his bond and I had to pay fifty Well I wrote checks, I went to Fort Worth National Bank and borrowed $60 or $70,000 for ninety days until we get this Federal Land Bank loan. I made a Federal Land Bank loan 4

5 $70,000 and that s thirty three years and I m still paying on them. I ve got it down to about 42,000 now, but of course the trust, the Osage ranch trust has to pay it out. But that was this Morgan Wilson s loss. And when I die I ll be still paying on that man s loss and he had two Cadillacs and a bunch of, I don t know how many women, but he was just flying high and drinking. And I didn t know, he kept two set of books, one for me and one for what the facts were. But anyway that s when I got this oil lease on the ranch at Madill and I got this man that was my friend to lease all the rights. First they paid me $15,000 for the shooting privilege, that s the, to seismograph it. And that gave them the right to exercise a lease after they got the results of the shooting. They didn t want to shoot this out and then not be able to get the lease, so they were going to shoot three lines, that s seismograph. You know what a seismograph is don t you? TH: Mm-hm. AD: They were going to seismograph three lines of the ranch. And then it was so interesting, they were trying to connect the Pure Field and the Ellsworth Field and so it s so cross fallen that then they shot every ten acres. And ended up they paid me $15,000 for the right to take a lease on this land after they shot it and instead of three weeks they were about six months shooting those cross faults and then they took a lease on the whole ranch and they spaced it so that I didn t have to take it all in one year for tax purposes. And lo and behold, there was, one of the geologists wanted to drill there at Ellsworth, but they didn t do it, they never drilled the well. It was Allied Chemical, they re a big firm but they have an oil branch. Didn t know anything about it they would just take for tax purposes. That s where they get in the production now, these big wells that they re bringing in on this gas. And now they had just, the Union Oil that owned the Pure Oil Field, there at Cumberland they call it the Cumberland Oil Field, had opened a gas structure and their leasing all these expired leases that doesn t have production. It looks like they re going to have a gas field both at the Ellsworth structure and the Cumberland structure. But my ranch is on both of them but they was leasing in between, but in between is what they call a I started to say or something, but anyway it s all structure and they have a structure is like a, they have a fault and that was some millions of years ago and then they have a cross fall and that makes a trap. You get a fault and then a cross fault, that s hard rock, and then the sand gets in this crack in this crevice and it can t get out and the oil, you have to have these cross faults and you have to have oil sand then you have to have saturation because the oil is a wiggle worm, it just flows down underneath there anywhere from it lays in the stratus like a layer of a cake. You ll have say the bromide, well, the bromide they say is at 5,000 feet and the at 6,000 feet and the oil creek would be 7,000 feet, I m just saying, they vary in width but sometimes then you find oil in this, in these pockets or sometimes it s like a river and sometimes it s like a little pond. But if you re going to hunt deer you got to get in deer country. If you re hunting going to get oil, you got to get in oil country. Well in Marshall County is oil country and now their leasing in the whole, around the whole county. But that s kind of like out in Terrell County, Texas where I saved that ranch for this old boy purely out of the goodness of my heart. So when I went away to World War II, I deeded it to him and he gave me, he couldn t pay me back, I had about $40,000 that I had to put into savings to pay the taxes and pay some judgment he had and pay losses in sheep and cattle that we had. So he gave me a fourth of the minerals in order to be compensation for this $40,000 and since then we just lease the four sections for ,000. Well anyway, I never pinched dime down on I don t know how many years I went to Mother Tucker s school; it seemed to be two years. 5

6 TH: That would be about right about two years before you left before you had moved. In Hominy when you went to school there were some Indian kids in school with you right? AD: The what? TH: There were some Indian kids in school with you AD: Indians? TH: Yeah. AD: Oh, many. It made no difference between the Indians was white they were our buddy buddies. What you see on that hunting picture that was a mixed brother. His wife he was a white man who worked in our store, clerk in our store, who married this Indian woman Mary Waury. They had these four children but yes, they went right along to school just like everybody else, we never made it any different. But they had an Indian school at Pawhuska that they could go to this Indian school but they preferred to go to the public school. Now at Pawhuska we had to pay a private fee to the school teacher and she was the major donor but at Hominy, they voted, I guess, school taxes and they paid the school teachers because we built a stone... Before we moved there, the first building in Hominy was the school. My father, he was the leader, he was always great for education. And you know I told you that he made me promise when I wanted to quit school and help him in the store he said that he had to pay for that cart load of flour from, Sweetheart Flour, came from Arkansas City. And I said to dad I said, Pop let me quit school and help you in the store. And he said, No, don t. I want you to promise me that you ll never quit school and you get your degree. And I told you I think how the only time I ever saw a tear in my papa s eye was when they rolled down his cheek when Cecil was kicked out of school, Kansas Aggies, for hitting that colored boy for pushing him at the stock building contest, so they expelled him. And my dad told him when he came in, that twelve o clock train came in he came from the North, papa said, What are you doing home Cecil? He said, I was expelled. Father looked at him in such a helpless way you know and tears rolled down his cheek. Then he said, Well son, if you re not going to get your education in college like you should you can just get it the hard way. That was the words he said, The hard way. So that s when he put him out there on this creek on a 160 acres with a two room house, he and Kate got married and they went out there to Well you can read about my history there. TH: Yeah. Then when you were in school, when you were a boy, there was no perceptible difference between the Indian kids AD: Is what? TH: That there was no difference then with the Indian kids and the white kids. You all played together. AD: Oh, yes. Yeah. We were the best of friends. In fact, when my father s funeral was held, my dad never owned an automobile. Had I told you that? TH: No, you didn t. 6

7 AD: Well, he never owned an automobile. He always said that in those days there with the looked like a buggy and he said, When I m going somewhere I ve got to get there. So he always had a good team and buggy. And he would drive and he d go, every three months, how he kept his store going was the Indian payments. See, he could speak the Osage tongue and my brother Gentner learned to speak the Osage tongue also because he was going to be in the store. But these Indians were our best friends and the reason we got so far so fast in the ranching business was because we could lease the Indians land but nobody else could ever get a lease from the Indians in competition with us. If we wanted the lease, we got it. Solkashinka that was the sons of Solka, that was my father s Indian name. TH: Oh, is that Solka? AD: Solka, yeah. TH: S-o-l-k-a or something like that? AD: Well, Solka, not like s-o-a-k-i-u-s-s-o, sohe. It would be like S-o-a-s-a-h, sohe. S-o-o-h-ah, is the way to spell it the way it s pronounced, soohah. And shinka, s-h-i-n-k-a, that s the son, Solkashinka. And they d call Gentner that, or Cecil that, or me that, the son of Fred Drummond, the son of my father. We began to, as we expanded, we d get in there and we d get these Indian leases and the Indian land was then ten times what If you were a mixed blood you could sell your land and as the Indians sold the land, the mixed bloods sold the land got the money and hooped it all. But the full bloods couldn t, you had to get your restrictions removed and it was very hard to get your restrictions removed unless you could show it to a smart Indian. So no, when my father s funeral, there was no cars, there wasn t an automobile, it was all Indian buggies and surreys and wagons. They reached from the cemetery clear to the bridge, a whole mile long. And I ll say that nine tenths of the people that attended my father s funeral were Indians and they came from all over the county. Indians are great to visit they ll go and they have the Indian camps and the Indians never lived alone, they lived in little groups. They lived in Indian camps and there was a Hominy Indian camp and then some like John Abbott had an Indian camp at his home right east of Hominy. And then the Penn Indian camp was right north of that at Hominy there were those two Indian camps. Others would build houses around them and their great to fraternize, these Indians were. So my father knew all the Indians in the county, especially the full bloods. The full bloods were one group and the mixed bloods were another. The mixed bloods were Pawhuska and they were like Mathews. Joe Mathews was a mixed blood of course his father was a white man and I guess his mother was a half breed, I don t know her degree of Indian blood. I guess he said he was sixty fourth Indian. TH: I don t recall what he said, no. AD: By the way he never did send you that school house did he? TH: No, no he didn t. AD: Never will. When we go up there we ll have to go up to the Indian museum and get it. 7

8 TH: Marguerite Treadway, she wrote to you several times. AD: Marguerite Treadway, she was a that was my first girlfriend. Her father was partner with my father, worked at the store. He had two daughters, Marguerite and Frances. Marguerite was my age and I went up to I was going to court his daughter and I went up and he was milking his cow and I was bashful and I wouldn t go in the house so I went out there when he was milking the cow and talked to him. Finally he said, Well let s go in the house. I remember I used to date Marguerite and take her to some of these parties, these box suppers and things like that, but she was just a kind of a flash of the pan. Where did you see some? TH: Oh there were a letter or two; well maybe there were four or five from her in the fall of AD: Huh? TH: You were off at Stillwater and she wrote you letters there. AD: Marguerite did? TH: Yeah. And there were four or five of them that I ve found so far. AD: Would she make love to me in them? TH: Oh they were kind of love notes, yeah. But then again I figure she was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. AD: Yeah, that s right. TH: She mentioned a girl named Whitehorn a couple of times, was she a special friend? AD: Not mine. I knew Whitehorn, yes. TH: A Magella Whitehorn. AD: Magella Whitehorn, yeah. I never had a date with an Indian girl in my life. My father always told us to be friends with the Indians, but not to get involved with one of them. So I never had a date with an Indian girl. Not that we thought we we lived with them, but we didn t no love affairs going on. I never screwed one in my life. That don t hear me say that does it? TH: Well, yeah, but I won t go any further than that. Won t go any further than that. Well that s interesting because I always had the idea that there was a strict separation between the Indians and other people. AD: No. There never was. Then the Osage, the Osages were high and mighty. They were aristocrats and they were smart too. Bacon Rind was a chief of the Osages, well the Osage that conceived the idea of maintaining these mineral rights, he wanted something in common and the 8

9 only thing that he could think of that the Indians all wanted the land because they wanted to hunt and fish on and live on. But somehow this old Indian got the idea of keeping the mineral rights under all the land for the tribe and there was 2,219 enrolled and so it s like having 2,219 shares in a corporation. Then of course the guy I liked, John Abbott, had about ten shares and he one time when those payments got up to 6,000 he drew for 10 his payment each six months, every three months was $60,000. I bought a half a right, bought a fourth of a right, I got the purchase of it from I said it cost me $5,000 and I gave it to a trust for Jim Roman to pay his insurance. You see that s my trust that I set up here is quite interesting because these attorneys, Bill Paul up here and Jim Hall who are supposed to be the best estate planners in the State of Oklahoma for ranchers, said they learned a lot from my trust. But they were set up in a practical way and since then, there have been several loop holes like I sold this ranch and carried it without interest, but now you can t if you sell land to heirs you ve got to charge interest and the government collects on the interest. But I sold this land to this trust interest free. So then here the other day in order to get some money for this daycare center, see the daycare center is going to cost us $400,000, and we just had $206,000 so we re short $200,000. So I sold my I paid this Osage ranch land note that I sold to my six grandchildren, all of it heirs. Then they were paying me $20,000 a year and still owed me $388,000. So what I did, I sold this $388,000 note on the land for $193,000. So at my death instead of having a note for $388,000 I would have had $193,000. But I m giving this to the daycare center so there goes my $388,000, just wipe that out with one lick. In other words, the trust has to pay the they made a mortgage on a part of this land, say 1,200 acres for $270,000. Now they have thirty three years to pay that off. But they gave me $193,000 for my $388,000 note. Do you understand? TH: Mm-hm. AD: And that way, then I turned around and I ve got $193,000 to pay for the daycare center but we have to pay for this daycare center in cash, can t have any mortgage, no delayed payments, no installments, no nothing. It s got to be all cash. So now we re providing this money with the lease on four sections of land out there in Terrell County and $206,000 and then by my Osage land note of $200,000 with interest on it because I ve got it in the CD and then I ll get enough interest off of it in order to make 200,000. So we ve got our 400,000 to pay for the daycare center in the clear. But I think that that daycare center will provide the care of the children for a hundred for these working mothers out in Madill. And that would be perpetual because they re going to have to raise around $50,000 to buy the equipment one thing or another for it, but we re giving them the building. They got the acreage, one and three tenths acres from the Marshall County Hospital Foundation. That s where the hospital is and where the clinic is and we re all directors in that and Brillheart family gave this seven acres to the hospital, gave it to Marshall County for a hospital foundation but they provided they can use this like this daycare center and they leased it to the daycare center for fifty years for a dollar a year. But any building that s put on there must be paid for; they can t mortgage any of that property. If they mortgage the property it reverse the Brillheart family. So this $400,000 daycare center that we re going to give to them has got to be paid for in full. Well then financially responsible, I didn t want to borrow the money so I had to raise the money and the only way we could raise the money was this oil lease and this Osage Ranch note. But the trust up there in the Osage got a 5,000 acres in the clear and out here in this Terrell County we have nine more sections still not leased and we think we might we were offered $100 an acre for part. I was offered $60 an acre for all of it, that s for an oil lease. So of course they got that then I can still use my, what I don t take out of 9

10 my $200,000 for spending money. But in the meantime because I sold a $388,000 note for $193,000, that s a big loss to me so there s no tax. So I get this $193,000 to give to the daycare center without having to pay a great big inheritance tax on it, I mean income tax on it. No, the Indians, the Osages have been highly respected and in fact they re the only tribe that I know of Of course the Navajos have been climbing into that with the coal and TH: Uranium I believe. AD: Uranium, yeah. But the Osage has had oil and they ve been the rich ones. TH: They were damn smart. The rest of the Indians just gave it all away and the Osage seemed to have the brains to hang on to it. AD: No, they got it in quarterly payments. That s just like when I made trust, this Osage Ranch, these kids can t get a penny, none of my six grandchildren. And the youngest kid, that s Mary Madeline, the girl, has got to be thirty five before they can use it or sell it. They can t hypothecate it, they can t borrow money on it, and then Michael the oldest one will be forty five and when the girl is thirty five well I figured that this ranch up there in the Osage, the Kyger Ranch, would sell for, my part would easily sell for $2.5 million. There was 4,000 acres just sold on the Ranch for $1 million 750,000, 4,000 acres for $1,750,000. So we ve got 8,000 acres and so two times 1 million 750,000, 350,000, 3,500,000. So that s a pretty good gift to six grandchildren isn t it? TH: You bet you. AD: Well I had a hell of a battle to save that. You see Cecil Drummond got 10,000 acres and he s not going to live this year out and you could see when you were there and you met him that he s just about on the last leg. And he s faded since I was up there to Jack Drummond s funeral. By the way did you change that history thing you sent in? TH: Yes. Yes. Yeah, got that straightened out, sent it in that afternoon. I haven t heard back from them. AD: Well you see, Jack Drummond is the legal name of my nephew and it s only my nick name. But he s really Jack Drummond and of course I m Alfred Alexander Drummond after my two uncles in Scotland. But that thing going in about Jack Drummond, they d figure Jack Drummond of Pawhuska and would be legally. TH: Yeah, I straightened that out. I don t know how I could have made a stupid error like that but I did. AD: No, the Indians, the Osage Indians are highly respected. Now the full blood men, they wouldn t work for long they re getting to work now. That s when those payments got little at one time but they re getting back big again. I asked Joe Mathews what his payments was he said he didn t know. He just gets them and sends them to the bank. Well, I gave Jim Drummond s trust, insurance trust, my half of head right and I think that my half of head right is paying about, if it s $800 a quarter, that would be four times a quarter, $4,200 a year. 10

11 TH: That would be about 6,500 a year. AD: No. No. It would be TH: Well for a full head right it would be about 6,500 a year. AD: Oh yeah, yeah, for full head right. But you see Jim Drummond s got 150,000 insurance but I have in funded so the income, I ve got $30,000 in the Liberty National Bank. By the way that s changed to the Bank of Mid America hadn t it? TH: Yes it has in the last year I think. AD: So old Jim can t get it, but I figure that if he d die he d have to have that for taxes. I m always trying to figure how to pay taxes and save taxes. But he s got this half head right, that bank gets a check and no way Jim can get it. Now his heirs will get it, but I want him to make a new will and leave his property to the Drummond Family Foundation. I d like to see him get married and have two or three kids. TH: In time. AD: But the Osages and especially with our family, our family has been very closely linked to the full blood Osages because the half breeds, they were the big ickeys, they were the smart aleckeys. They went through their money, most of them did, but those that didn t were good businessman. But the full bloods, I never knew a full blood Osage, one of these old timers, to work. They d go out and like this old man Blackbird would kill buffalo on our pasture, on our pasture there at Hominy. Just think that, that I knew this old Indian and I was just in my boyhood and my teenage years who d kill buffalo on that land, on that ranch. Then he would go out there and he ll heifer, they ll never buy a steer, they want a heifer, they never want a cow, they want a young heifer about two year old heifer and they want to shoot him and they d stick him in the throat and take him down to this creek there at the Penn camp where they dressed the buffalo and skin them and quarter them. Then they d take and they make jerky out of it, they cut them in strips and hang them out in the sun, of course they didn t have ice boxes, that s the way they cured their meat. TH: Now you were in the store when the oil boom hit up there right? And they were getting those fabulous, fabulous checks? AD: We have always been in the store, we still have the store, didn t you know that? TH: What I meant to say was that you were actually in the store AD: The year I was in, I had the men s furnishing and the shoe department. I was the manager of the shoe department and the men s furnishing department. My responsibility was to buy and sell this merchandise, all the clothing, and shoes, and stuff, and that s when I got on to these big silk shirts that these Indians the 53 and 54, the 50s. Everything had to be all for big sizes and they could get, the Indians came from all over the county to trade at our store. They never 11

12 questioned the price, price meant nothing. It was just like me buying that suit of clothes, that price didn t mean anything to me because I couldn t get one that was fitted and I wanted on that was light, I wanted a summer suit and that s the only way I could get it. If that s the price I had to pay it. The full bloods came all over the county to our store and they still do. TH: That would have been 1920 right? You were fresh from the army, just back from the army, you had just gotten married. AD: Mm-hm. I ll tell you I had the baby, Madeline, she was born in [19]21. TH: You were married in June of AD: I was married on June 2, TH: You came home from the army May of AD: I came home from the army in 1919, that s right. TH: And you went to work for Gentner when you got home? AD: Well, no I went out to Cecil see. I stayed at home with my mother and I had to build a house I had to have a home and I built this house right across the street from my mother and borrowed the money from an Indian estate to build that house. But I was working out with Cecil on the ranch. The times were hard and the ranch would not supply enough income above our operations to support him and me. So in order to support my wife and by that time Madeline was born on May 31, We married June the 2 nd and she was born three days lacking a year. So then I had to go to work in the store and that must have been in 19 Let s see, Gentner gave me a baby buggy, I was working in the store Christmas time when he gave me that bonus. It must have been Christmas time of [19]21. Let s see, Madeline was born May 31 st, [19]21, we were married on June 2, 1920 and I had to go to work at the store on, I think in January. January of, I mean Christmas of [19]51, I didn t get the $600 bonus and 1922 I went into business, that s when I went to San Antonio to the San Antonio Cattle and Oil Company and ended up getting 7,700 head of cattle that s when we got Ms. Lamotte s pasture. I made arrangements with Mr. Hurley, president of the Citizens National Bank who later committed suicide, to pay the freight on those cattle and I got Ms. Lamotte s Kihekah pasture. I told about Mr. Browne when I went down there and that s the only help, Mr. Russell never helped me with money a penny s worth, but he gave me this recommendation to Mr. Browne who his son was the president of a San Antonio Cattle and Oil Company and he was the man behind it. He was the one that set it up, Mr. Browne, for his own operations. He was a big steer man. I went into San Antonio Cattle and Oil Company and asked for N.H. Browne, I didn t ask for his son and he was the one, I told him I had the Lamotte pasture for 2,000 cattle and I can pay the freight on them and carry the freight and the pasture bill until the cattle were sold on the markets at Kansas City and St. Louis. That I would have the commission come here selling the cattle, deduct the pasture bill send it to Ms. Lamotte, the freight bill and send it to the Citizen National Bank, then I d have his payment for the steers and the interest go to him and the rest would come to me for my trouble, for my work. That s when he slapped, he hit the desk like that, and said, Young man, that s a trade. How many more can you take? I can t take any Mr. Browne, that s all the grass I got. Well, 12

13 he said, There s my telephone, see what you can do. So I called Ms. Lamotte and she told me that I could have her Kihekah pasture which would run about 1,000 to 1,200 cattle, that was on Kihekah where there was stock pens right in her pasture when you just turn them out of the stock yard right into her pasture. Then I called Ed Candy and he had a pasture and those pastures and the neighboring pastures could accommodate the 7,700. TH: Now you paid pasturing fees of what, fifty cents a head for a season? AD: What I did, they would pay me when I didn t own the cattle. I didn t buy any interest in the cattle. They would pay me a pasture bill on these cattle but when they d sell them to me on a credit, they would carry the cattle. But no matter what the mortgage on the cattle was, when you, like you subordinate that means let the pasture bill. Now in Kansas, the law is that the pasture comes ahead of the mortgage but that s not so in Oklahoma. The holder of the mortgage must subordinate their mortgage to the grass bill. Let the grass bill come first and the freight comes second when I was carrying the freight. But if you buy the cattle, now like in many instances I would buy cattle and have the Stockyard Loan Company or the San Antonio Cattle and Oil Company would carry the cattle and I d own them on the mortgage and the interest. But after they got their mortgage paid, they d sell em to be reasonable. I bought cattle $25, $35 a head. Then you get your profit. But no matter, there was no profit, first the pasture bill had to be paid because I didn t own this land. There was a fee charged to graze the cattle and it had to come first, $7 a head, we ll just say the grass bill was $7 a head, had to go to the owner of the land. Then the freight bill, they paid the freight, the railroad company that wanted the freight bill, say that was $3 a head. That would go to the bank for the freight bill. Then say that the old $30 a head on the steers and the interest was say 8 percent and that would be three eights is twenty four, that would only be $2 and forty cents because $30 a head then 8 percent, $2 and forty cents interest is very small. Then the commission company, they divide this money and they send the but when you have a mortgage on it, they send all the money above the grass bill and above the freight bill to the holder of the mortgage, but then when that mortgage is paid off then the remainder would come to me. But still, the grass bill always comes first because I m not involved in that, I just, like you rent a house, paying rent on a house. You just rent that pasture for that summer but you pay on the arrangement of $7 a head per animal and say you sell 100 animals to Kansas City or St. Louis, the commission company will deduct $700 from the proceeds and send it to Ms. Lamotte. And then it s $3 for the freight, they ll deduct $3 for the freight and send that $300 to credit on your note at the Citizens State Bank I believe it was. And then they send the remainder to the commission company until they re paid in full and then the rest is yours. That summer, when the smoke all cleared away, the pasture bills was paid and the freight bills was paid and the San Antonio Cattle and Oil Company was paid, I think I had $86,000. I made that from January when I went down there, see I didn t have a car in those days, my car had worn out and seem to me I borrowed $100 from momma, got me a second hand Ford and went down there with that second hand Ford and $50. But I guess I must have got some money either from Mr. Browne, or maybe advanced payments. Sometimes they pay you a dollar down on a pasture bill. But I always tried to pasture two animals in later years and the next year I went up there and maybe had 17,000. Then I tried to pasture two animals where I got the fee then I lease a pasture for say $5 and I would get 8, I would make a three dollar spread there. TH: I don t understand that. 13

14 AD: I d lease it from they couldn t lease it to anybody but they d lease it to me and I d always I know I leased a Mullendore s pasture up there where this boy was shot, I leased from his father for $6 and sold it for $8 and I made $2 on him and I think I put 2,000 head up there, I made $4,000 on that trade. Boy, he never did get over it that I made $4,000 on him and he was just starting out. TH: And you went from poor to rich quickly then after the First World War then. You went from working at a store to having $86,000 dollars in your pocket in a year s time. AD: You ll see by my property statements, it will interest you, you can see my first one. See when I come home I didn t have anything, I had a little interest in the store and I could pay our grocery bill but what I would do, Terry, if a piece of land came up and I could buy that land for $5,000 then I would usually buy 2 or 300 steer, steer units, and no matter what the cost bill said they cost me $20 a head and I bought say 500 that would be $10,000. And I d put 5,000 more on it, I d buy, bought $15,000 on those steers. But my land would be in the clear. If you ll look on those property statements, you ll always see my land in the clear, no mortgage. That strengthens you see I was good at finance. I was always good at finance. That strengthens your credit because boy when you got land that s permanent you see. Then when I could sell those steers for $15,000 I d sell them. Well that paid the then I somehow managed with my pasture bill, I d managed to feed my cattle and pasture them and then I d sell them and get that note and the land was paid for and I kept each year I d buy more land. In fact I bought more than well I bought all that land and paid for it. Down in Madill I did the same thing except I had the Federal Land Bank and I went a little faster. But the land cost me more too down at Madill but I got the minerals down there. That is a good many of them, I have about 6,000 acres of minerals at Madill. TH: The Federal Land Bank didn t exist until the [19]30 s did it? AD: Well, now the Federal Land Bank had a policy. They would not loan on land if it didn t have the minerals. So in the Osage, the Indians had the minerals so they did not loan on land in the Osage. At the time that I was buying land up to World War I they didn t loan. Somewhere I don t know because after when World War II came, I went to Madill and my period of life from World War II on has been at Madill and there I bought the land with minerals and sometimes you buy all the minerals and sometimes you get land and half the minerals. Sometimes you get land and a quarter of the minerals or a portion. In the Osage, now then about that time they got a bill passed through congress that somehow or other our Federal Land Bank changed their policy which permitted them to loan on land without the minerals and that made land in the Osage eligible for Federal Land Bank loans. And this loan that I just got for this 200 and some odd thousand dollars on 1,200 acres is fantastic. They loaned $250 an acre I guess, something like that. I bought that very land maybe for 30 or 40. Great deal of my land, see I had 20,000 acres, has been appreciation in land. Now you take the land at Madill, that s all in Jim Drummond s name but not the minerals. He has some minerals and I bought land with the minerals for him but I got his rights and majority when he was fifteen years old. He s thirty now. So I ve been doing business in his name for him and making the deposits and he gives me a signed check book and I just fill it in for whatever the purpose is and buy his cattle, sell his oil leases, do his business for him. He don t know he never made a dollar, don t know anything 14

15 about it, not even interested to learn. See I come down here to visit with you and he s so damn busy I can t even get to talk to him about anything about even his own business. TH: That court case sure has eaten up a lot of time on him. AD: Well, let me tell you, if something happened to me, some little two bit thing like that Iranian deal can cost that boy a fortune because let me tell you no business runs itself. An automobile don t run itself and a business don t run itself. And Jim Drummond is going to have to get with it sooner or later or lose it or sell it. You can t neglect anything. If you got a dog you got to feed it you know, you can t neglect a dog. You sure can t neglect a ranch. I call that ranch, I ve got phones around everyplace, I call two or three, four places every night or every morning and give them orders. Course I built it from a hundred acres. I bought the first hundred acres down there in 1924, this is [19]78, fifty four years ago. Still got that hundred acres. I don t have it, Jim Drummond has it or Frank Drummond has a trustee for Jim. TH: You loved your dad an awful lot when you were a little boy it seems like, I get a feeling from the letters and from the way you talk. AD: I was sure busy wasn t I? TH: Yeah. TH: I really, now as I look back, Terry, I don t see how in the world I accomplished all I did. But it s just like this suit of clothes. I had to have a suit of clothes because I wanted to be able to be presentable if I go to some function or another invited up here to present the Drummond Saber and on May the 4 th at Oklahoma State University. And you see when I graduated in 1915, then that summer they had the first officer s training camp at the San Francisco Presidio and I went out there and attended it and you know I told you that Major Harbord was the commander of the camp. He was the regular army was holding this camp for civilian college students as future second lieutenants in the army. Before this time they had to be West Point graduates to be a second lieutenant. You had to graduate from West Point or come up through the ranks which was very difficult. But you had to be a college graduate to get into one of these camps. Well I got my degree at Oklahoma State, Oklahoma A&M then, so I went out there and two years later, Harbord was the lieutenant general in command of the army and supply of American expeditionary forces in France in World War I. My captain in command of my company training about 200 of us student officers, talented officers, was Paul B. Malone. Two years later he was a major general in command of the second division in France. My first lieutenant was Kenny Wainwright, Jonathan Wainwright, he was the first lieutenant cavalry. Later, two years later, he was a brigadier general and in World War II he was McArthur s second in command at Corregidor. But now that s the type of officers that they had in charge of this first officer s training camp and when I saw the difference between the way that we were trained for the army by regular army officers of that caliber and the way it was out back in Stillwater where we would just like drilling recruits, which caused me to inaugurate this Drummond Saber Award. Evidently it was just one saber until the military department, later when they got the Air Force, I had to give them two sabers. But on the fiftieth year of the saber, I gave the fist award in 1916 because I d seen in 1915 how much they needed those cadet officers to strive to win this war. The saber award, I figured that would elevate the whole student officer personnel and it did. But 15

16 there s never been a Drummond win it. Well anyway then on the fiftieth year, I created a trust fund, I always paid for these sabers, just sent them a check. I ordered them from McLillian Company in New York City and then I d put the responsibility on the military department but I provided the money by this trust fund. I ve put $2,500 in the trust fund and with the interest on that at 6 percent it s $150 and so that $150 will provide these two sabers. Then I d figure if anything happened it went to a student educational fund, if they ever did away with the military department. But I saw how important it was. Now they have invited me on the 4 th of May to come up there and make a personal presentation of those sabers. I went up there two years ago, I skipped last year, let s see, no, last year I was there. Last year I went up and made the personal presentation. They have quite a military ceremony they call the awards day. They present all the different awards to the students in the cadet core. But they ve invited me back the 4 th of May, but I haven t even accepted or rejected because I thought well, I see so poorly, I hear so poorly. It s like in that cafeteria that woman her husband was an elder in the Presbyterian Church with me and I know her quite well and she was the county clerk for years and years but I didn t recognize her face because I don t see over about this far. Boy when you get old and wear out it a hell of a In fact, Terry, it s remarkable that I have the memory that I have. TH: Yeah, and you haven t worn out. AD: Yeah, my mind is better than my ears and eyes. Like Louise Drummond wanted to know Moe s name and it came to me, Swinn. I said, Why that s Moe Swinn. I haven t heard that for, I guess Moe s been dead thirty years but I remember his name was Moses Swinn. TH: And you found him here in Oklahoma City on your way back home from the army. AD: Yeah, that s right found him here in Oklahoma City and he wanted to go with me and he wanted to so I took him home. I said, Well Moe, you can go with me and you ll have a home for life and he died there in the Moe s office in over at my office where we re going to get all these papers. TH: Tell me about your boyhood with Cecil and Fred. AD: Well, now Gentner Drummond was two years older than me and Cecil s four years older. And Gentner and I were always, we were much alike in ways. Cecil, he was always out in the country he d go to these square dances and he d go stay with Clifford Joel, he was an old farm boy out there, and they d go to these square dances and raise hell stay all night and drink corn whiskey. But Gentner never did that and I didn t either. So Cecil had appendicitis, had a ruptured appendix and he nearly died and his appendix drained for months and he couldn t ride a horse. They wouldn t let us ride a horse so we d go hunting in the buggy. We had a team and buggy. He could ride in a buggy but he couldn t ride a horse so I went with him and I d open the gates and I d have a hell of a time to do that. But we took a skillet and we d take canned beans and we d fish, kill squirrels or rabbits, we d cook our squirrel, catch our fish, we d clean our fish. We had, that was our three sources of game, squirrels, rabbits, or fish and sometimes we had blankets we d sleep on the blankets and camp out. Our parents never worried about us and they always figured we could take care of ourselves and we could and we did. Cecil and I were outdoors, we were always very close. We were partners together in the cattle business right after my father died we inherited a little money we put into cows I think. Well I got the, we must 16

17 have had two I got $3,000 for my education that I spent on going to finish at Stillwater and the University of Illinois. But Gentner, he was always in the store and he didn t have anything to do with the outside. Cecil and I were outside all the time and Gentner, her was always up there in that store. My father gave him seven shares. He gave him interest in the store and boy when my dad died he carved those seven shares out of the estate before there was any division among the equal, but among the rest of us. Of course mother inherited the buildings but she took a child s share maybe they had a $20,000 insurance policy and that divided among the kids and I got a fifth of $20,000 would be $4,000. Let s see Blanche, Gentner, Cecil, and I, and momma, that s five of us, we each took my mother took a child s share instead of taking the widow s half. TH: Was Lois alive then? AD: No. TH: Lois and Conrad are both already died by that time? AD: Let s see, Conrad died first. Now my father died in When did Lois die? You remember you got it on the back of that picture? TH: Yeah, was that 1910? No that couldn t be, yeah that could be possible. AD: No, I was in the army. TH: Well then it would have been 1918, AD: My father died in 1913 so my father was dead when Lois was dead. No, Lois didn t inherit anything nor neither did Conrad, they both had died. So the four of us that was left and mother took a child s share. Seems to me we got a little less than 4,000, maybe we got 4,000, I can t remember those exact TH: And he owned a 3,000 acre ranch right? Or something like a thousand acres at that time? AD: Huh? TH: That he died he owned around 3,000 acres east of town. Your father, didn t he own around 3,000 acres east of town at that time in 1913 when he died, the ranch? AD: Now I don t know just how now, now, my father owned, scouted land around Where did you get the idea of 3,000 acres? TH: It was in the biography in a Theobald book that John Roy gave me an early history of Oklahoma said that he owned 3,000 acres east of town. I know at one time he had property up around Ponca City I guess. AD: Yeah, yeah. He didn t own that, he leased that eastern land over there at Ponca City. But he owned scattered land. These Indians would in come the store and assign their lands don t you see? And he would buy it. In fact he was a land buyer, we are all the Drummonds, like land. 17