Okey Lester King Senior was born on a farm on Big Spruce Run. He said that the farm was in both Mason and Jackson Counties. When I was about fifteen, on a hot summer day in August, I visited the place with Dad and my cousin Wayne Stone. I didn't see the house, so it may have no longer been standing. Other than the huge hornet's nest that we nearly stepped on when we crossed the fence, I remember a spring that was beside the dirt road that went up the creek. Dad said, "This spring is known for miles as having the best water in Mason County. There has always been a dipper hanging here for people to drink from." Sure enough, there was a dipper hanging in the shade by the spring. We also visited the old Spruce School that day. Dad had attended both this school and the Horse Cave School which was in a neighboring hollow on Horse Cave Run. Not far down Spruce Run was the Spruce cemetery. In fact, a number of the funerals for the folks buried there were held in Spruce School.
Life at home wasn't easy for Okey and his brothers. His oldest sister, Ladora Lakotah, was the oldest child. She had married Gilbert Thornton, and had moved to Little Mill Creek where they would raised a large family. Although my grandmother Ella Florence was a hard worker, I heard my mother say that my grandpa Willy was, "...the laziest man in Mason County." When I was a boy, I took this for face value, and saw no reason to doubt it. Now I can understand that he may have been a dreamer sort of like myself. Folks whose favorite recreation is work have a hard time understanding folks like Grandpa Willy and myself. I never really got to know Willy, so it would be unfair of me to parrot my mother's sentiments.
I have been told that, in 1910, when my father was eleven years old he left home to go to Ohio to work on the railroad. That seems almost unreal to us today, but those were the days before child labor laws had come to amount to much. The story continues bu saying that Dad contracted typhoid fever and rode the train back to Arbuckle where he walked the six miles back to the farm. Dad survived the sickness, but Harry, one of his younger brothers also caught typhoid and died.
I do not know exactly when, but, at some point, Dad left home again and lived with his sister "Dorie." I do know that he became a favorite with his nephews and nieces. Up until the time that Dorie and Gilbert moved to Ohio to live near one of their daughters, we would go to Aunt Dorie's quite often. Many times Dad and I would go by ourselves. Sometimes it was to help out with chores. Other times it was just to visit and to check on them. For a discription of these visits, see the "Mable Thornton Page" which is on the main genealogy page. I don't know much about those years he spent with Aunt Dorie. I do not think that he attended school. Wheather it is true or not, it is said that he only went to the third grade. But he could read well, and he could do fairly complicated math. He could always "spell me under the table." He was self educated.
Okey L. King Sr. in a popular pose of the day.
In 1919, when he was about twenty, Dad joined the Navy. After a three year hitch, he was discharged. Finding nothing to do, he joined up again for another three year term. Because the school was in San Diego, this time Dad signed up for baker's school. Dad served in the South Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Mississippi. He spent a time in Australia where, on one occasion, the magazine blew up on the ship killing many sailors. I have a picture somewhere of the caskets all lined up for the funeral service.
Dad was discharged in 1925 and he came back to Mason County. He bought his first car, a 1926 Star Roadster, and drove it home although he had never driven before. The salesman drove him around the block and showed him how things worked.
Okey King Sr. and an old Chevy?
Okey and Edna set up housekeeping in a little house on Fletcher Avenue just off of Smith Street (now 16th Street). It was here that my sister Betty Joy was born On October 14, 1928. Dad owned some lots at Point Pleasant and Uncle Walt owned some land on the hill above Roxalana just outside of Dunbar. They agreed to trade. The house on the hill at Dunbar was just a two-roomed shack without anything on the walls to keep out the cold. Mom pasted newspapers on the wall that first winter. You can read more about Edna and her early years on the hill in the "Edna Luverna Stone Page" which I have under construction.
The Edna Luverna Stone King Page
Although the rural areas of American, especially West Virginia, had already been suffering from depression for years, depression hit the urban areas in 1929. Dad lost his job at the Kelley Ax Factory at Charleston. With a brand new family to have to feed, dad hit the street looking for work along side of many others. It was about this time that a quirk in Dad's personal history occured. At the Fletcher Enamal Company at Dunbar, a secretary had wrangled a job for her brother and this brother was scheduled to start to work the very day that dad showed up at the gate looking for work. Now the only thing that the people, who were supposed to put this brother to work, knew was that he was tall. So, when Dad showed up, they yelled back to the floor, "That tall man is here," and Dad found himself put to work. When the right "tall man" showed up, they put them both to work. Dad was at Fletcher Enamel Company for more than thirty years. In 1959, Fletcher's shutdown and put everyone out on the street with any compensation at all.
Employees of Fletcher Enamel Company
Okey L King Sr. is on the far left, and John Labon Sayre is on the far Right of the photo
Those years on the hill at Dunbar, at least the ones that I remember, were mostly quiet and stable years. The early years were years of hard work. Land had to be cleared, the house had to be made warm and comfortable, and, most of all, there was a depressioon to be survived. The neighbors on the hill at Dunbar were good neighbors who helped one another establish homes.
During most of these Depression years, dad never owned a car. When he got off of work in the evenings, he would go around to the grocery stores to beg scraps to feed the hogs that he kept. There was also a cow named "Bettsy," and a young collie that answered to "Babe." Old Babe, as I knew her, lived well into the 1940's and was an old dog who died when I was about seven or eight at a tremdous age. Babe would go get Bettsy, and mom would milk her.
Dad also tried his hand as a "Stark Fruit Tree Saledsman." I don't know if he sold many trees, but he developed a large orchard of his own. We had just about any apple that you want. And, our red and yellow delicious apples were much better than any Washington State apple. By the time I had come around, the old cow was gone, but we still had hogs. Also, dad raised a garden that was plowed by an old man with a team of horses.
Onn the heels of the Depression, World War II came. Actually, the war was the only thing that ended the Depression. Although jobs were back, these were still hard times. With the men gone, the women went to work in the factories. Over Aunt Ina's objectiosn, Walt went to War with his sons. Dad thought about it, but mom "changed his mind." Aunt Ina worked all during the war at Flletchers, and even mom worked awhile in the packing department. With the demand for goods to go to the war effort, many things were hard to come by. Rations were needed for many things:sugar, tea, gasoline, coffee...if you could get it. I still remember the woman next door coming over and begging coupons. I also remember setting on the front porch as mom read the cesnored letters we got from Uncle Walt who was on the The U.S.S. Missouri which undergoing the kamikazi attacks.
For Okey King Sr., life was routine. His favorite recreation was work. He would get up every moring at four, make himself oatmeal, and then he would lie back down until it was time to go to work. Once he got to work, he would set down on the stool infront of the press and never get up until it was time to go Home at Three in the afternoon. He never took a coffee break or a lunch break. He was paid for each piece of work that he produced. Therefore, he would try to produce as much as possible. It seems that the only times in which I heard him brag was when he produced an especially large quota of pot handles. I do not remember that he ever took a vacation. The closest thing to a vacation that he ever had was two days that we begged him into taking that we might be able to go on a fishing trip in Calhoun County on the Little Kanawha with some of our neighbors. When he got home from work, he would lie down for a half-hour, eat supper, and the work outside around the place. It was said that he, "could make a mowing sythe talk." he would swing that syth for hours at a time.
The only thing he ever bought on time was a car, and he usually paid that off quickly. We begged and conjoled before he bought a TV in 1952. I wanted a TV in a most terrible sort of way, but he said that television wouldn't last. We got our first TV in time to watch the Political Conventions. Those were the years when TV didn't come on until well up into the late morning and at noon on Sundays. Also, TV was fairly decent then. Now, I find myself longing for the years before TV. I remember one variety show in which, every so often, a pretty blond-haired girl in a cowboy hat and short skirt would repeat her only lines, "I love the Wide-open Spaces!"
In January 1959, at the age of nearly sixty, Okey L. King Sr. found himself out on the street again. It was even harder because I was a senior in high school and there were certain expenses that I had to but the traditional things that came with graduation. I washed my high school principle Geoge Spiecher's windows to pay for my graduation announcements. Dad managed to land a job as Caretaker for the Girl Scout's Camp Ann Bailey at Caldwell, and, in July, we moved to Greenbrier County.
These photos of Okey L. King Sr. were taken at Camp Ann Bailey.
Dad's salary at the girl scout camp was a princly $100 per month with $10 extral for fuel. The work was tremendously hard. I enjoyed the mountains, but I couldn't find work. Feeling that I was a burden, I joined the Army and soon I was in Germany. When I returned in December 1962, Dad didn't seem to be very healthy. He just didn't have the strength and the stamina that he had, despite his thiness, always displayed. But, there was "just no getting" him to go to the doctor. Finally in the fall, while I was away at West Virginia State College, he did go to the doctor who said that he thought Dad had a locked bowel. Sometime before he had gone to the doctor, Dad had finished cutting the firewood. The old saw had quit, and he had, with an ax. cut all of the wood for the house for the winter and all of the wood that the camp would need the next summer. He then threw down his ax and went to bed. Even though he was terribly ill, he was a tough and determined man. One morning, he got up, got dressed, and drove himself to the hospital. The verdict was that his adominal region was entirely invaded by cancer. Frightened, he insisted on an operation. In the old Ronceverte hospital during surgery, Dad died but was revived. However, he did not last the night. Okey L. king Sr. left this world on a cold night in December, 1963. He is buried at Tyler Mountain Memorial Gardens. One of the sad things is that Dad had been looking for property on which to retire on in the Spring. Quiet, unassuming, steady, and faithful, Okey Lester King Senior was the sort of person who makes up the backbone of this great nation.
