November 22, 1963
by Ken Neal


I was the newly minted State Editor at the Tulsa World the day Kennedy was assassinated. I had just turned 28 and was overwhelmed by the editor’s job, having had no desk experience.
 

So I showed up for work early to get a jump on the mountain of wire copy and news events of the day, preparatory to putting out the State edition of the paper, my responsibility.

Tulsa World, November 23, 1963

As I walked into the lobby of the World building at 315 S. Boulder Ave., Nita Connors, our newsroom receptionist, told me shots had been fired at the President.

I hurried to the third floor World newsroom. I am sure every newsroom in the country was beginning to come alive with the breaking news.

The wire room was dinging and chattering when I walked in. In those days, the wire services would ding several times before an important item. The more important the coming flash, the more dings.

United Press International was still a competitor to the Associated Press, owned by newspapers and of course the dominant news service.

Even I knew of the famous Merriman Smith, who stole the story of the Kennedy Assassination from Jack Bell of the AP. I later learned how Smith had the telephone in the press car, got off a flash and held onto the only telephone until the car arrived at Parkland hospital. 

I digress. My memory is that the first flash, from UPI, was “shots fired on Kennedy” or something similar.
 

We huddled around the teletype machines, which clacked out the story. By about 1 p.m., our time, we knew President Kennedy was dead.
 

We had no television in the newsroom so we had to see the famous Walter Cronkite announce the death later on our home televisions.

'JFK': Stone's Docufantasy Distorts History

The Tulsa World
Ken Neal
12/21/1991

JFK,” the movie, is rip-roaring entertainment. It is also an infuriating revision of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by a paranoid director trapped in his own Vietnam time warp.

Oliver Stone’s docufantasy presents his theory of the assassination, which is that nearly every part of U.S. officialdom participated in the murder of Kennedy. Those who didn’t help plan it helped cover it up. 

The cover-up continues to this day, through the writings of the U.S. media, presumably right through this column. 

We all somehow are either willing confederates or dupes of the ephemeral “they” who killed JFK. 

And further, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy are parts of the same gigantic plot. 

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who benefited from the JFK assassination, seems to have been a willing partner in the plot.

JFK, Stone’s movie says, planned to pull the U.S. out of Vietnam. “They” wanted this war to make millions out of munitions so “they” killed him.

But “they” also wanted him dead because JFK planned to make peace with communism. And restore relations with Fidel Castro.

The theory is at best bizarre. If JFK planned - as some of his political friends later claimed - to get out of Vietnam, he failed to bring his secretary of state and secretary of defense in on the secret.

Johnson fought the entire Vietnam war with the active advice and urging of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, both Kennedy appointees.

LBJ lost his presidency because he couldn’t extricate the United States from the war. It is not an exaggeration to say that his anguish over the war shortened his life by years.

Celebrating Life: An Aunt's Funeral

By Ken Neal

Tulsa World

May 4, 2003

              

      I dreaded going to my aunt’s funeral recently, but I shouldn’t have.

  It was a marvelous experience. Not to say that I was happy. It was bittersweet. I had known her since she married into my family more than 60 years ago.

      The funeral at Sapulpa’s First Assembly of God was a classic. It was a down-home, heart-tugging gathering of an extended family. I am tempted to label it Oklahoma, but I suspect it is repeated all over the nation every day.

     The patriarch of the family, my uncle, shared the attention with my aunt, but there were brothers and

sisters, her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, cousins, second cousins, in-laws and probably a few

outlaws gathered to say farewell to the woman who had cooked countless meals, worked side by side with

her husband, changed diapers and wiped the noses of the whole brood even as she served as the family

comforter.

     Her favorite pastor, the Rev. Bill Weaver, presided. And preside he did. At 74, “Brother Bill” has

preached his share of funerals. He’s looked out at countless audiences such as this one whose deep emotions

showed in their faces, and into the bereft face of a mate who knows he’s not long for this life himself.

    Quite honestly, I don’t know how he did it, but by the time Brother Bill was through, the congregation

had joined him and a quickly assembled quartet in singing familiar old gospel songs of hope for glory. Even the morticians, who have buried several generations of this family, were moved and, quite frankly,

quickly lost control of the events.

Our 1948 Odyssey

By Ken Neal

             I can’t remember when Dad bought our 1948 Chevrolet, but I remember that it had about 9,000 miles on it when we took a 5,400-mile junket in June of 1948.

            We had taken at least two trips to the West in our old 1939 Chevy and Dad was eager to take his new car on a trip. He got only two weeks’ vacation in those days, having hired in at American Airlines a scant 3 years before.

            I am embarrassed to admit how many new cars I have had, so I can only imagine how thrilled dad was to have his first new car. Even today, I drive new cars. So do my three children. Must be something in the DNA.

            Dad seemed old to me when I was 12, but now, at the age of 78, I realize that he was but a very young man of 33.

            A lot of planning went into that trip. Continental Oil Co. provided travel planning and Dad had a forerunner of the credit card. We were, as he often said, “in business!”

Actually, there was no credit card involved. Credit was established and the customer could sign for fuel and other supplies at Continental filling stations. I think there was a reciprocal agreement with Shell Oil Co.

            I presume the originals were mailed to company headquarters and statements were sent out to the customer.

            Dad was the chief planner but I was a consultant. Poor mom probably sat back and let her boys dream and plan.

            The travel packet arrived. I remember it to this day. It was a bound legal size packet, complete with maps of every stage of the trip. Accompanying the maps (on which the route was marked in purple) were bits of history and monuments and other landmarks.

We set out at about 4 a.m., bound for Denver, the first stop on our tour.

            Dad was Chevy Chase of the Stone Age. His plan was to see as much country as possible, even if from a Chevy whizzing along at 75 miles an hour.

            We made Denver in one day. Interstates were thing of the future, so as I remember, it was 750 miles from Tulsa to Denver. Most highways were two lanes, so it was a constant battle to avoid getting stuck behind slow-moving trucks.

            From Denver, we headed for Yellowstone National Park, where we all had heard of Old Faithful.

            We marveled at the desolation of Wyoming. I recall that our map showed a couple of routes across Wyoming, but I forget which one we chose. We stayed at Jackson Hole the second night. I remember we stayed in a brand new log cabin, heated by an oil-burning stove. We needed it. It was cold.

            On our earlier trips, Dad had insisted on holding the ’39 Chevy to 50 miles an hour. I know now that the old Chevy had probably 80,000 miles on it and Dad was bit worried about a breakdown. A confession: We really didn’t know exactly how many miles it had on it because during the war, everybody, including my dad, ran the speedometers back.

            But now we had a new Chevy that ran like a sewing machine. So we drove 75 where we could on two-lane roads. There were no seat belts, no padded dash, no breakaway steering column and brakes that were greatly inferior to today’s autos.

            Highways were much more dangerous then than now, but of course there were far fewer cars on the road.

            An observation on road safety: About 10 years later when I was a reporter for the Tulsa World, we did a nightly story and wrap up on traffic deaths. If I remember correctly, traffic deaths on Oklahoma roads topped 600 annually.

            We breezed through Yellowstone, watching Old Faithful erupt and marveling at the boiling water and mud. In a recent visit to Yellowstone with my son, I realized I had seen but a small part of Yellowstone on my 1948 visit. It was uppermost in my dad’s mind to “make time” on the road.

            We headed west from Yellowstone through Montana. I remember Butte, Montana was a barren mining town. From there we crossed the upper part of Idaho and reached Spokane, Washington. I don’t remember where we stayed. We were in Lewis and Clark country, but we didn’t know it.

            I remember a lot of wheat around Spokane. It surprised me that it resembled Enid, Oklahoma.

The Hot Head

By Ken Neal

Dad and I were very proud of our new 1948 Chevy. It was a Fleetline, Two-Door, Torpedo Sedan.

      It was black with grey mohair interior. Grey was a change from 1947, a time when Chevrolet model changes consisted of things like changing the color of the mohair.

      Of course it had a set of custom-made, red seat covers. After-market seat covers were a must in those days. The original mohair seats were hot and sticky, particular in the summer months.

      The ’48 Chevy was “our” first new car. There were no new cars from 1942 until 1946 so there was a pent-up demand for cars. When the first new cars were available in 1946, the dealers were getting premium prices. By 1948, production was catching up with demand, but Dad still paid a premium for the new car. Having rejected a $900 offer for his ’39 Chevy during the war, he now about $250 when he traded.

      There was little change in style from 1942 through 1948, and there was virtually no mechanical difference. An oddity plays into this episode of our 1948 Chevy.

      Until 1941, the Chevrolet engines had 14-millimeter spark plugs. In 1941, for some reason known only to the Detroit Auto Gods, Chevrolet engineers decided to change to 10-millimeter plugs.

      Pop never liked the smaller plugs, contending they ran hotter and didn’t last as long as the larger plugs.

      Now for a coincidence. Our new Chevy idled roughly. Dad tuned the Carburetor, gapped ignition points, and adjusted ignition timing to no avail.

      There was a rough idle and a half-miss on a hard pull. Ordinarily, this would have been a dead giveaway to burned valves in the engine. Such allowed compression to drop at low revs. At higher speeds, the miss would disappear.

      But there were those damned little spark plugs.

      At this time, the foreman of the machine shop at Standard Parts in Tulsa was dad’s friend.  His name was Ernie.

      Dad conferred with Ernie. Ernie said his shop routinely bored out the spark plug holes to 14 millimeters. Dad wasn’t the only mechanic who detested the smaller plugs.

      Ernie asked when he could bring the “head” in for the boring. Ernie said the machine work would take a couple of hours and he could do it anytime.

      Dad and I had been overhauling Chevrolets regularly. So, we pulled the head right there in the Standard parking lot.

      I guess we carried our tools with us. I always worked the manifold side of the engine while Pop pulled the right side panel, the rocker arm assembly and the head itself.

      With the head off, Pop discovered the real reason for our “miss.” There was a burned exhaust valve on one cylinder. Pop speculated it was warped, causing it to seal improperly.

In about 45 minutes, we were carrying the head into Ernie’s shop. He grabbed the head, jerked back quickly.

      “Damn, that’s hot.”

Pop's Chicken Ranch

By Ken Neal
           
            My father liked to raise things. He was thrilled to see a plant peeping through the soil. He had plants everywhere and often removed a shrub only to replace it with another variety that had caught his attention.

            Most of all, he liked to see plants and animals grow.

            We nearly always had a “crop” of chickens.

            I noticed an article in the Tulsa paper recently wherein a reporter breathlessly told of a couple in Tulsa who were raising chickens in their backyard.

            I realize that is a novelty these days and the reporter went on to explain that many people are raising chickens for eggs and meat. People are under the delusion that “free range” eggs are better than those laid by caged hens.

            Rebellion against additives of all kinds probably is the motivating factor, although I hope there are people out there like Pop who just like to see things like chickens grow and thrive.

            Even when we lived in a two-room shack in Sand Springs during World War II, pop managed a lean-to chicken pen. It was temporary, because the chicks he would raise would be grown and slaughtered at nine weeks.

            I even remember having a hen or two that roamed free. One old gal made her nest under a neighbor’s house and we had great fun watching her hatch her brood. She enough, at the right time she presented herself and about a dozen fuzzy chicks.

            I can’t say dad raised chickens every year. Sometimes our living quarters just wouldn’t allow it, but when pop bought a house in Sand Springs, he quickly built a fence, added a free standing garage and a small chicken coop next to the garage. As he would say, he was in business!

            He liked exotics. I remember him raising Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks, Leghorns, even a pure black chicken once. One year he raised guinea chicks; another pheasants.

            The guineas were tasty, but they had dark meat.

            One year, when our pheasants were just big enough to fly a bit, we came home to see several of them on the ridge of the house.

            We set out to corral them and after a lot of huffing and puffing, had all but one in captivity. Some of the bigger specimens could fly just enough to stay ahead of us.

            We found ourselves chasing that last guy down Roosevelt Street in Sand Springs. When we got close, he would fly about 10 yards. This was repeated for about three city blocks. Pop said, “Do you care if this sonofabitch gets away?”

V-J Day: It Was `Times Square' in Tulsa

TULSA WORLD

 08/13/1995

By Ken Neal

"The War" was over. The news hit Sand Springs, Okla., in the late afternoon. Within minutes, sirens were wailing, auto horns were blaring, flags were waving. People poured out of their homes into the streets to celebrate.

            My dad was home from his job at Douglas Aircraft just in time to lash flags all over our 1939 Chevrolet. We drove "downtown" to join hundreds of others; later, the celebration moved to Downtown Tulsa where thousands had the same idea.

There, the celebration carried on through the night. It was, as the newspaper later described it, Times Square in Tulsa.

            There are famous Times Square pictures of celebration; they were repeated many times in Tulsa the night of Aug. 14, 1945. The events above happened in every hamlet and city of the United States. It was the end of the biggest human conflict in history; a victory for the democracies over some of the biggest tyrants in history. Yes, paper and confetti covered the street; yes, all of Tulsa was there in person; yes, men in uniform celebrated by kissing women; there were fireworks; there probably was even a bit of the bubbly and other spirits in legally dry Tulsa.

 The hot summer afternoon of Aug. 14 and that night of celebration are my most vivid memories of World War II, probably because I was older (9), than when other war events occurred. There was the death of Franklin Roosevelt (we had a thunderstorm that spring day in 1945); there was the death of Adolf Hitler; there was V-E (Victory in Europe) and The Bombs.

            But before that, there was the Downtown display of weapons and war machines, a promotion to sell war bonds. There was a massive rally at Skelly Stadium, the purpose of which was to build morale and sell war bonds. We all were given a kitchen match as we entered the stadium, and at the proper time, the field lights were turned off. We lighted the whole stadium when we lit our matches, a demonstration of what we could do if we worked together.

On the field that night, brave American soldiers     invaded a Japanese-held island. There were palm trees, tanks and cannon. You'll be relieved to know that the Japs were dispatched very quickly.

           

The 'Ghost' Town

War and The Aircraft of Douglas Forever a Part of Tulsa

By Ken Neal

Tulsa World

12/12/1993

            To those of us marked by World War II, the nearly mile-long building at the Tulsa airport was "the bomber plant," and the company that ran it was Douglas.

            Years after its heyday during the war, Douglas merged with McDonnell Aircraft to become McDonnell Douglas.

              Sandy McDonnell once testily corrected me when I referred to the plant as Douglas. But then he couldn't know how deeply intertwined the plant and Douglas were in the minds of my generation.

              Or what it was like to stand on a hill in Sand Springs and watch streams of big airplanes fly off to war. Or to hear almost every evening of the work adventures of thousands of men and women who ultimately built 5,929 warplanes and modified thousands more in a few short years.

              Or to know in detail the model numbers and designations of every fighter and bomber; to imagine that every time a B-24, a B-17 or an A-26 showed up in the movie news that it probably came from Tulsa and that maybe my dad had worked on it.

              My father, while holding down a full time job, attended Spartan Aviation School eight hours a day for eight weeks for the chance to go work for Douglas, which received 10,000 applications before the plant was opened in mid-1942. Ultimately 24,000 people, most of them from Tulsa and Northeastern Oklahoma, were busy putting together a variety of airplanes.

              To a 7-year-old boy, airplanes were a wondrous thing. The war was something bad, of course, but it provided the framework for the contest between the airplanes on both sides.

              At the start of the war, local officials arranged a big ceremony at the airport to give a sendoff to a lone 4-engined bomber and six P-40 fighters. The bomber probably was a B-24, although it might have been a B-17.

              The event drew a big crowd and after a proper amount of ceremony and oratory, the pilots ran to their planes and took off. The crowd watched the ships out of sight. The bomber was huge and after that I knew exactly what my dad was talking about when he was shifted to work on B-17s being modified at four hangars called the Modification Center.

              It was these four hangars that attracted American Airlines here in 1946. My dad joined American in 1947 and worked there until his retirement in 1976.

              There were almost daily stories of work, fun and tragedy at the bomber plant. I heard in detail how this or that project was coming along.

The Big Race

 

The Big Race

By Ken Neal

May 2013

        After Pearl Harbor, American automakers quit making cars and turned to airplanes, tanks and other war machines. A few 1942 model autos were built after the fall introduction in 1941, but mostly the American civil population had to make do with the vehicles they had at the outbreak of war.

When production resumed following the end of the war in August 1945, the 1946 models were basically 1942 designs with cosmetic changes, things like grills, bumpers, etc.

      Our 1939 Chevy had served us well during the war but of course dad was dying to have another car. He went to work for American Airlines in January 1946 and so had a steady job. He set his sights on a new Chevy. 

These were the days of the Big Three in Detroit, about the only place where autos were produced, given the war devastation in Japan and Europe. Detroit had a virtual monopoly on auto making. The 1948 Chevrolets were hardly changed from the 1942 models. The same was true for other General Motors products, as well as Ford and Chrysler offerings.

       The big competition was between Ford and Chevy. Ford continued to rely on its famous flathead V-8 engine, developed in 1932 by Henry Ford himself. Chevrolet’s engine was the Stove Bolt Six, an overhead valve engine first introduced in 1929. The Ford V-8 survived until 1955. Chevy’s Stove Bolt lasted until 1963.

      The hot argument between auto enthusiasts was the Ford/Chevy comparison.

Typically, Ford contended the Ford was faster, which they usually were. Chevrolet fans usually would fall back on the claim that the famous Fisher body of Chevrolet was sturdier and more stylish. Chevy fans claimed the Ford’s single leaf springing was old-fashioned and rough riding.

My father, an auto mechanic in his early years, liked Chevrolets because the engine was easy to maintain and major overhauls were much easier on the Chevies.

Ford, for example, until 1949 had distributors low in the front of the engine. The crankshaft turned the distributor. The design required removal of the entire distributor and calibration by Ford agencies.

        Chevrolet, other the other hand, had a conventional distributor. Distributor points and condensers, which wore quickly, could be changed easily. According to my father and other car buffs, Ford had a superior carburetor, a two-barrel Holly. Chevrolet, until 1949, had a Carter carburetor that was notoriously “cold-natured” and difficult to keep in tune.

These carburetor and distributor facts are important to my main topic, the Great Race at American Airlines. I can’t remember the exact date. It could have been in 1948, since the new Chevies came out in the fall. I remember our vacation of 1949 vividly, though. We heard the heavyweight championship fight between Joe Louis and Joe Walcott on the '48 Chevy radio.

The Ford-Chevy debates were a constant at the AA overhaul base. By this time, Dad had established a reputation as a Chevrolet mechanic and in his spare time was doing semi-major overhauls on the Stove Bolt Sixes. I will write a separate account of Neal’s garage activities in Sand Springs. 

      The “boys” at American cooked up a race. When AA moved to Tulsa from New York in 1946, many mechanics and supervisors transferred to Tulsa. Most of them were natives of the New York area, including my dad’s foreman at the time, one Joe Hadka. Joe had a nearly new 1947 Ford. He bragged about how fast it was, even bringing in a photograph showing the Ford speedometer at 100.

I am not sure of what led up to the race, but Dad found himself challenged. He was no novice to racing. He had started racing autos (on the streets and highways) years before. He “souped up” a Model T by installing a Frontenac head that converted the T to overhead valves. He used the old T to outrun a new Model A from Tulsa to Keystone in the early 1930s. That’s another story.

      Pop was convinced that Ford speedometers were purposely calibrated to show the car going faster than it was actually. Still, the photo of the Ford speedometer was a bit disconcerting. It was a fact that a Ford properly tuned would probably outrun most Chevrolets because Chevies usually were held back by infrequent distributor tuning and those loggy old Carters. Chevrolet starting making their own carburetors in 1949, by the way, replacing the Carters. 

       Once the race was agreed to, the “boys” staged a production. The arguments and smart cracks occupied the bulletin board and the individual arguments abounded, always with a little “horsing around.”

A day was set. It seems to me it was in the summer, but it could have just been a warm fall or spring day. A race route was determined. The cars would start from the Traffic Circle at Admiral Place, run north on Mingo Road for two or three miles to finish near the AA facility on Mingo.

Men were designated to stop traffic at the intersecting streets for safety reasons.

I suspect a bit of gambling went on, although I must say Dad was not so confident that he bet any money on the race. 

I was 13 or so and of course a Chevrolet man just like my dad. I knew a bit about those old Chevies from helping him, and I was very proud of our Chevy torpedo sedan. It was a black beauty that Dad and I kept gleaming. It had a set of red custom seat covers that were de rigueur of the day. Similarly, it had a Fulton sunshade over the front window. Now, there were other sunshades, but Fultons were the most stylish and popular.

      Dad “tuned” the Chevy, setting the engine timing a bit fast and making sure the Carter carburetor was properly adjusted, new points and condenser and new spark plugs. He put 40 pounds of air in the tires that usually carried about 28 pounds per square inch. There was one thing more. We took the Fulton sunshade off to eliminate as much wind drag as possible.

       There was a mile stretch of concrete pavement west of Sand Springs on what we called the Wekiwa Road. It was not heavily traveled and so became kind of a testing strip for us. I went with Pop to “preflight” the Chevy. It made 85 miles an hour in that mile. The engine was running great.

Pop was on an afternoon shift that I think started at 2 p.m. I am not sure what time the race was to start but before the afternoon shift, of course. I badly wanted to go, but would not have had a way home afterward, so I had to stay home.

      Dad won, and as he had promised, he called me to tell me so.

Later, I heard all about it.

The “boys” had set the rules. The race started from a dead stop, continuing the approximately 2 miles on Mingo. The Chevrolet had a vacuum advance on the shifter of the three-speed transmission. Most people had a little trouble because the vacuum booster could be a little slow if one didn’t know how to use it. But pop knew how to use it and use it fast.

“I got him in low, increased the lead when we went to second and pulled ahead by the time we were in high,” he said. There is an underpass at a railroad track on Mingo. I guess it was about midway of the race. 

“When we went under the railroad the speedometer was showing 92,” Pop said. Sure enough, the Ford was registering that 100. Joe Hadka wanted to rerun the race. He was sure he had just been outdriven, which he had.

“We ran two more times and I beat him both times,” Pop beamed.

Joe Hadka never held that race against pop, although he was dad’s superior. In fact, he was pleased to have Dad in his department. I must say that Dad quickly established himself as perhaps the best mechanic on the base. He hired in as a Junior Mechanic, quickly passed tests to become a Mechanic, Senior Mechanic and Inspector. As Inspector, he was one of the top quality control guys at AA the last 20 years of his career. 

The Great Race of course established his reputation as the “go to” guy on cars and we got all the old Chevies we wanted to overhaul. The day after the race this notice appeared on the bulletin board:

                                 FOR SALE:

                                ONE 1947 FORD

                                ONE FULTON SUN SHADE

2000 Memories

In 1953, it was good for a laugh
by Ken Neal

The Tulsa World
January 2, 2000

Early in 1953, I walked into the Tulsa World newsroom to stay, off and on, for 47 years, more or less. It was but an eye-blink ago.

There are many memories of the old newsroom of those days; that is fortunate because it exists today only in memory. Nothing, except the hard walls of the third floor of the World Building, remains of that newsroom.

And what a newsroom it was. For a high school newspaper editor of 17, the World was big time, never mind that the job I sought was the absolute bottom level of the newspaper hierarchy with a starting salary of $27.50 per week.

I was there because my high school journalism teacher and close friend, the late John R. Roberson, was a University of Missouri classmate of the late Ed Johnson, head of the department of journalism at the University of Tulsa and the man who routed TU students into part-time jobs at the World. They wanted to be sure I attended TU the following fall.

I was hired on the spot, not because of any special talent, but because the World was desperate for a copy boy and Ed Johnson had sent me.

I still lay claim to being the best copy boy in Tulsa World history, although there are those who dispute that and still others who would observe that that might have been the last job at which I was the very best. There are not as many of them as there once were, however.

This is not a story of my beginnings on the Tulsa World as such, but about a conversation on that night nearly 47 years ago that I have thought about many times as the end of the century drew near.

Lee Erhard was managing editor. Sid Steen was city editor. Both are gone now. In the cramped little newsroom, they sat at adjoining linoleum-topped desks, only a loud conversation apart in the midst of clacking typewriters, the chatter of teletypes and the cackle of the police radio.

Christmas 1945

by Kenneth Neal

It was Christmas 1945 and I had come through World War II unscathed.

That wasn’t hard for a boy of 10.
Yeah, I bought stamps for war bonds, saved scrap iron and aluminum foil and shared the lack of gasoline, tires, shoes, meat, sugar and all those things that were rationed. In that war, citizens were expected to sacrifice, as were the young men who fought it.
My most enduring memory of the war is not the lack of toys during the war, but the Christmas when the toy floodgate opened and real toys were available.
I shudder to think what my dad paid for my two most memorable Christmas toys that year.
Then I remember, that for all his own contributions to the war effort, he was barely 30 years old and a child of the Great Depression. He wanted a toy or two himself.
So he splurged.

The Caterpillar purchased by Fred Neal - Christmas 1945

I got a wind-up metal toy caterpillar, complete with rubber treads. I got a working model of a steam engine. I have played with them since and plan to unwrap them and play with them this Christmas.
Dad bought a giant-sized Tinkertoy construction set (for you young whippersnappers, Tinker toys were stone-age Erector sets). We built windmills and wheels, all powered by the steam engine. When full of water brought to a boil by an electric heating element, the miniature engine generated a tenth of a horsepower. At least that’s what the literature said.
We had spools and windmills connected with string running all over the front room. What a great thing my mother must have thought that was!
As the years went by, I quit playing with the Caterpillar and the steam engine. But dad kept them. And true to his skill as a mechanic, he kept them in working order. Several times through the years he disassembled the “Cat” to oil the wind-up mechanism. He polished the brass and chrome of the steam engine and preserved it with oil.
He kept them wrapped and boxed for more than 30 years and on more than one Christmas we hauled them out to play with them. We must have been a sight; grown men playing with toys and memories.
I will not have Dad this Christmas. But I still have the toys, oil and shined and read to go. And the memories of Christmases past.

"Pop" - Part 3

by Kenneth W. Neal

Fred, Fannie & Ken Neal with the 1939 Chevrolet - Sand Springs, OK (1946)

Automobiles

     

     Pop grew up with automobiles, unlike his own father who was a “mule man” and never comfortable with autos. Radford Neal was born in 1880 and so was 40 years old in 1920 when cars came along in earnest.
     I know how bad it sounds (there’s a phrase right out of my dad’s mouth) to brag, but, as he would say, let me tell you a little story or rather several stories about pop and autos. 

     The earliest were of course told me by Pop.
     He told me that when he was about 13, which would have been about 1927, that he jacked up a Model T and pulled the oil pan on the engine. Then he fired the T up, got back under it to look at the engine while it was running to see how the engine worked.
     He knew enough to do this for only a minute because the engine was running without oil.
     By this time he was the family chauffeur
     It was about this time that a relative came to visit. I can’t remember whether it was an aunt or a grandma, but his father, busy in the fields as usual, sent pop into town to pick the woman up at the train station.
    At first she refused to ride with pop because he was so little, but she relented.
    My Uncle Virgil remembers that he and pop were in a Model T and the rest of the family in another vehicle in one of those nomadic moves from one farm to another.
    They were fording a river, probably one of the Canadian rivers. Once started across, it would have been disastrous to have stopped, so pop was “flogging” the T. In the jouncing and bouncing, some mattress springs slid forward from the top of the load in the touring car.
    “It was my job to hold up the springs,” Virgil told me some 75 years later.

"Pop" - Part 2

by Kenneth W. Neal

Fred R. Neal in his garden - Sand Springs, OK 

The Ritual

My father hurried into the house with a sprightly, but reluctant gait, as if there was a bit of pain, which there often was. All the Neal men for several generations had the peculiar walk and the unusual physique that went with it. The upper body was a bit too large for the legs and the arms were carried as if they were slightly heavy.

Pop described the walk as "hunching along." It made the Neal men look - at a distance - a lot older than they were. Pop’s hunch was a little more pronounced. He'd been thrown by a horse at 15 and had suffered through two lower back operations.

The work day at American Airlines' big maintenance base at Tulsa had been routine. After a day of parts, paperwork and the smells of solvent, he was ready for the garden. It was 4 p.m. and there was still hours of June sun, time enough to get a lot done.

He thought of what he needed to do in the garden tonight. The tomatoes, his specialty, were up and thriving with blooms and small tomatoes showing. They needed a bit of spraying; blossoms needed a shot of blossom set and maybe it wouldn't hurt to work in a little fertilizer in the rows between them.

Neal Family Archive Home Movies

Movie Trailer:  California Trip 2011

Neal Family Archive Letters

California Trip 2011

To:  John P. Neal

From: Kenneth W. Neal

May 2, 2011

Dear John Patrick:

I write this after reading your father’s well-written account of the 5,900-mile western odyssey of grandfather, father and son. 

I can’t add much, if anything, to his account, but I will take this opportunity to tell you a bit about your father. 

But first, I ask a few favors of you: When you read this many years hence, perhaps when your dad is 75, please make snotty remarks about how older drivers should be kept off the road! 

Secondly, make fun of him because his hearing is failing. Finally, in general, treat him like your dullard child. In fact, he will be acting as if he is because in addition to his hearing, his health and memory will be in decline. 

And above all, watch his turn signal indicator like a hawk, and if he leaves it on an instant too long, jump his old skinny butt like a chicken on a June bug. 

For good measure, you might laugh anytime you get a chance at his skinny legs. As matter of fact, they are pretty skinny right now. 

And, you might laugh at his pot belly, his gray hair (if he has any) and his inability to walk very far. And you might show your boredom when he tells his stories. 

I am not sure what advances in electronics and other devices will be around when he is 75, but be sure and laugh at his efforts to operate same while simultaneously putting on his reading glasses with semi-crippled hands. 

Do these things for me and you will help me get even with your father. He deserves it. 

Neal Family Archive Letters
California Trip 2011

To:  John P. Neal
From: Patrick W. Neal

April 25, 2011

John:

Grandpa Ken and I just got back from taking you on an 11-day driving trip from Houston to California.  I thought I would write down some highlights of the trip before we all forget and since you will likely not remember most of what you experienced.  

Grandpa Ken drove down to Houston to pick us up in his 2010 Infiniti QX-56. This was the same car we had taken to Yellowstone National Park in August 2010 and you named this car T-Rex because it was so big. It had a drop- down DVD player for the back seat passenger and throughout this trip and our previous trip you really liked watching DVD's in the backseat. One drawback to this was that to start or change a DVD, the car had a safety feature which required that the car be in park and that the emergency brake be engaged. Therefore, anytime you wanted a DVD changed or re-started we would have to pull over and completely stop the car. 

At the time of this trip the price of gasoline had recently appreciated to over $4.00 a gallon and T-Rex unfortunately required a lot of gas, only averaging about 15 miles per gallon. By the time Grandpa Ken returned home to Tulsa (after dropping us off in Houston) we had tallied approximately 5,900 miles. 

"Pop" - Part 1

by Kenneth W. Neal

       I write about my father to tell others, particularly my own children, of an unusual and interesting man, flawed, to be sure, but outstanding in his understanding of human nature. But his story is difficult to tell apart from his own father, and for that matter, apart from me.
      It has occurred to me only recently that his story includes his father’s story and that my own story encompasses them both.
      I feel a bit awkward making my father the central character in my own life and memories, because it seems I am neglecting my mother. But there will be time and space to talk about her. She played a leading role in his life and quite obviously, mine.

Fred R. Neal (approximately 1932) with unknown lady.

      Maybe I should start with my earliest memories, not so much because they are so unusual, but because they will help to understand my father, hereinafter referred to variously as “pop,” “dad” or sometimes “the old man.”
      I was born September 26, 1935, in the “east basin” near Mannford, Okla., on an oil lease pumped by my mother’s father, Ray Ingalls. My birth certificate, signed by a Dr. McDonald, lists the place of birth in Cimarron Township, Pawnee County.
      Keystone and Mannford were my dad’s early “stomping grounds,” and some of the stories about him are from before he married my mother July 11, 1934.
      My father was a great story teller, taking great pains, not to mention time, to tell me much about his early life and his own father, Radford Andrew Neal, who died in November 1937.
      I have no memory of Radford, or “Rad,” as most called him, but I know him. That’s because pop told me so much about him.
      It wasn’t that dad consciously decided that his only child should know the family history, it was that he remembered his own father with such fondness that he constantly recalled what he said and did. The good times and the bad times were never far from his mind. I believed and still believe my father told the truth as he understood and remembered it.
      Only recently, I ran into one of his old cronies at American Airlines, who volunteered to tell me that “Fred Neal was the most honest man I ever knew.”
      That impressed me, of course, but it also reassured me that the many stories and anecdotes my dad told me were not only funny or unusual, but true.
      I struggle with how to unfold this tale, so I return to my first memory: It involves the Rock Inn and a few hazy memories.
      Some time around 1936, dad found work “running” a filling station (as they were known then and for years afterward) next door to the Rock Inn, which was just outside the old town of Keystone, now deep under the waters of Keystone Lake.

     There were cabins on the rise behind the service station and the nearby roadside cafe. The cafe was something out of a scene in the “Grapes of Wrath,” yet to be written, of course.
     But it had a juke box and a long bar common to roadside diners. That’s all I remember. I am not too sure I remember that, even. Probably my folks told me about it and that has influenced my memory.
     But I do remember this: Pop had a Model A Ford. He would start the old Ford and park it beside the station to let it warm up, which took a considerable time.
     That’s where I came in. The Model A needed to be “choked” during the warmup period to keep it running.
     A Model A had a choke rod through the firewall to the carburetor (I later learned) and dad put me in the right seat to operate the choke. When the engine begin to sputter, I pulled the choke to keep it running. That I could detect this and keep the engine running “tickled my dad to death” as they say, and he must have done this a lot because I remember it.

The National Parks

Yellowstone National Park

August 10-11, 2010

Location:  NW Wyoming, portions of Montana and Idaho

Established:  March 1, 1872

Visited:  August 10-11, 2010 (Patrick Neal, John Neal & Ken Neal)

National Park Arrowhead Rating (5 out of 5):

  

They don't get better than this.  Ken had visited Yellowstone National Park as a teenager on a Fred Neal three week driving tour of the west back in the late 40's.  During August 2010, John and I were in Tulsa waiting to move into our new house in The Woodlands, TX.  Ken (who never met a drive he didn't like) suggested taking T-Rex (the name of his giant Infiniti QX-56) and driving to Yellowstone.  Due to a tight schedule we managed two fantastic days in the park.  Yellowstone lives up to the hype.  Scenery, wildlife, history and geothermal features that are from another planet.  My personal favorite parts include The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and the Old Faithful Inn.  Did I mention that nearly the entire park is contained in the Yellowstone Supervolcano (the largest supervolcano in North America)...amazing!  Yellowstone National Park easily gets a 5 arrowhead rating and a scheduled return visit in 2013.

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

 After the jump is an e-book on our trip to Yellowstone.