Fred R. Neal:  100th Birthday

February 17, 1914 - November 15, 1977

Fred R. Neal - Sand Springs, OK (Spring 1969)

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.

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.

It's the Little Things that Make the Difference - Part 1

by J. Howard Bray - 1968

FORWARD

     The writer does not attempt to say that the following words and thoughts in the next twenty-four chapters of this book are the perfect way to sell.

     His only thought is that there are basic fundamental rules or ways of doing anything, and once learned the personality of the individual added, plus some hard work and maybe perspiration and inspiration with some serious though and with the few reminders that follow they will help to make more sales and an increase in your income.

     The author has spent a life-time in all phases of selling. He has written many articles of the inspirational and motivation nature and is now Sales Representative for Bartlett-Collins Co., of Sapulpa, Oklahoma.

     In 1967 he was recipient of the Company's DSA award for sales performance.

CHAPTER I

SELLING - WHAT IS IT?

     Yes, what is it? What makes the world go round, in the world of commerce of exchange between peoples?

     Many times you have heard the expression:  "I can't sell or I would make a poor salesman, or maybe I just don't have the nerve to ask anyone to buy something from me."

"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.

"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.

Happy Birthday Ken Neal!!

September 26, 2012

Round the Clock

by Troy Gordon

The Tulsa World

September 27, 1975

My longtime friend and punching bag, Ken Neal, went over the hill Friday.

No, it wasn't an escape. He turned 40. And there were a considerable number of people in the newsroom who wanted to rub it in.

That's not a sign of dislike. The attitude of most newsrooms is loose and insulting. I suppose news people deal with so many different kinds of news - much of it sad - that we take it out on each other.

It's a matter of being too old to cry and too sad to laugh. So we get rid of our frustrations speaking frankly.

Fortunately, most of the people in the newsroom are reasonable, and it works well.

Herb Karner, Riley Wilson and I - three of the elder statesmen - searched the city for the worst looking rocking chair to present to the middle-aged whippersnapper.

We found it and sneaked back to the World. We took it up to the executive floor and hit it at the end of a corridor.

Later we decided we could sneak it into the women's room, on the theory that Ken probably wouldn't go in there.

By then I found the chair was in the office of our publisher, Byron V. Boone.  I offered to move the rocker and Boone said he'd rather leave it right there.

I must have registered disbelief, for he added:  "I'm having too much fun with it."

I gathered that people coming in to see him were intrigued by this eyesore in an otherwise beautiful office. So I agreed. Obviously nobody would find it.

Some years ago, employees were awarded their birthdays off. But Friday was payday too, and Ken had to come in for his check. And we were waiting for him.

In addition to the horrible rocker, there were a couple of verses.  Mine was short and to the point:

          Ken, Ken

          I Knew You When

Julie Blakely, another friend of the new elder citizen, had to leave early so she left this verse:

          Ode To Ken Neal on the occasion of his 40th, count 'em, 40th birthday.

          by Julie St. Blakely

          Happy Birthday OLD Ken Neal, 

          Oh, ancient one, minus sex appeal

          Where there's a way there may be a will

          But from now on it's all downhill.

          My mother has told me of times like this

          When you may have the urge but not the strength to kiss

          Your hair turns gray, your walk is feeble,

          Let's say you've had it, Evil Kennealvil.

          Your peers, with great effort and expense

          Brought you a gift as recompense

          For leading the way to the life beyond 40

          May you always be hale and sometimes hearty

          Now that you're revered as venerable

          Try and recall when your days were sinner able

          Sit and rock and call your youth --

          It's ancient history but tell the truth

          Next you'll be 50 and then 60 and then BINGO!

          You just have time to repent your sins before you go.

I must say it was successful, and - apparently - just in time.

Ken's over there sitting in the rocking chair with a happy look on his face.

I just hope it isn't the first symptom of senility.

In return for my use of the material created for his birthday, Ken insisted that I use his definition of a "Mature Biological Community."

"That," he says, "is when Julie Blakely stops by to visit with Troy."

Neal Family Archive Letters

To:  Kenneth W. Neal

From: Mary A. Beck (Ninth Grade English Teacher, Sand Springs High School)

Date: October 1, 1985

Dear Ken,

In the past three weeks I have written over two hundred thank you notes in long hand to express my appreciation of flowers, food, and memorial gifts. Now I can allow myself the luxury of a typewriter to express my thanks for the five or six letter that I will keep at hand and reread long after the flowers have wilted and the food is gone.

It has occurred to me a number of times in the past twenty years or so that I would like to let you know that I am proud of you; but I was afraid I would end by sounding a little bit presumptuous.

Kenneth W. Neal

"Memories of My Father"

1996

Some time in the fall of 1951, after my 16th birthday and a driver's license, I hungered for a car of my own. Nothing fancy, of course, because I knew that there was no money for anything more than a clunker.

But like all 16-year-olds, I wanted my own wheels.

I kept an eye out for prospects. On my daily walk from 809 Cleveland Street in Sand Springs to the high school, I spotted a 33 Chevrolet coupe with a For Sale sign on it.

I'd stop and look at it every day; finally an old person came out and priced it to me at $75.

After a lot of negotiating, I finally offered him $50. He asked if it would be cash. I told him I'd have to talk to my folks.

I had managed to save $25 from my job delivering groceries ($12.50 a week) and I knew I'd have to wheedle the other $25 out of Pop (Fred Neal).

When I broached the subject, mom was dead set against it. I can still remember her position. I could drive the family car, she said. But I told her how much I wanted my own car.

I knew my best bet was with Pop because he loved cars as much as I did; I knew he'd understand me wanting the old car. He did, of course. He gave me the $25 and so we went down the street and made the deal.

The old car, naturally, had a lot wrong with it.

The clutch grabbed so badly you could hardly drive it. Once you even thought about letting it in(out) it would leap forward. Our next door neighbor, Earl Guinn, who pop always said had only "half sense" kidded me about not being able to drive and that infuriated me.

Memorial Day and Roots
Finding family grave provides a connection to the past
by Ken Neal

Article originally appeared in the Tulsa World on May 27, 2007

     Monday is Memorial Day, so we get a three-day weekend. Sadly, that is about all the day means to most of us — a holiday.
    As American dead pile up in yet another war, perhaps it is time to restore Memorial Day to its original status, a day set aside to remember and honor those who, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “gave the last full measure of devotion.”
     Memorial Day was proclaimed in 1868 by Union Gen. John A. Logan and for more than 100 years was celebrated on May 30, regardless of the day of the week on which the date fell.
     Then Congress, trying to “fix” things, in 1971 set Memorial Day for the last Monday in May to guarantee a threeday weekend. We swapped a day of remembrance for a holiday. 

    Memorial Day grew out of the Civil War when women in many communities began to decorate fallen soldiers’ graves with flowers. The practice became so widespread that many Americans still refer to the holiday as “Decoration Day.”
    Through the years Decoration Day became more than a day to honor war dead. It was a day to remember all dead loved ones by visiting and decorating their graves.
      It always seemed a futile exercise to me; after all, dead people don’t give a hoot about flowers. But I’ve come to realize that the day of remembrance and decoration is not for the dead so much as it is for us, the living.
     A walk through most any graveyard can be a solemn experience; a connection with the great body of humankind.
    Here’s an old fellow who lived a long life and, judging from the inscriptions his family put on the tombstone, a happy and productive one.
      But here lies an infant swept away by a childhood disease long since conquered by modern medicine.    Nearby is a young man killed in an accident just as he was starting an adult life.
     In many cases, there are the graves of several wives near the patriarch’s grave. Early day America was hard on women. Through the early 20th century, women worked at their men’s side in the field, managed the household chores and bore children — many children — as well.
    The graves of relatives — even remote ones — trigger the connection with the past and the realization that
these people once suffered and triumphed much as we do today. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here.
That is hardly a profound thought but it came home to me and my son during a visit to a small country cemetery near Stidham, Okla.
    It was a few days before Memorial Day, but people had already started with decorations. The Lenna Cemetery, like thousands all over the country, is well kept. It is on a hill in a bucolic setting.
     It is a comparatively large cemetery, given the fact that Stidham at last count claims but 23 living souls.
    My son, Patrick, digging into the not-so-illustrious background of our Neal clan, found Grandpa John Henry Neal’s grave at Lenna. Through the miracle of the Internet, he located grandpa’s burial site. Patrick had learned that grandpa was a Union Civil War veteran and thus entitled to a standard issue tombstone
complete with his name and the unit in which he served, Company H of the
3rd Arkansas Cavalry. 

    Gale and Mary Treat of Wichita, Kan., had meticulously recorded the graves of people buried at Lenna and put them, complete with pictures, on a Web site. 

    Armed with that information, we walked straight to old John Henry’s grave. He was my great-grandfather. He died in 1912 near Stidham. My father had referred to his grandfather in telling me of his own father’s
early life. I knew great grandpa’s name was John Henry but I didn’t know he was a union soldier in the Civil War.