Chapter 1: The Oklahoma Romeo - 1932

In those days in Oklahoma everybody had a saying that summed up their own personal outlooks on life and just things in general. Hell, after the Great Stock Market Crash in 1929, between farmers not being able to sell what they grew and people not able to buy it, "sayings" was about all some people had. Those sayings ranged from, "Hit's God's will." to just plain old, "Aw hell, just to hell with it."

What started as a "dry spell," became a drought, after a couple of years. The rains went someplace and left Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas as dry as a popcorn fart.

Then came the winds and the twisters. Dust clouds hung in the air in black, billowing clouds. Farmers fought the elements when they tried to get the seeds into the soil. They prayed that the crops would come up and they could raise enough to make ends meet.

Then the markets dried up, just like the Oklahoma soil. Few could buy what was offered for sale because nobody had any money to buy with. There were those who persevered ... Then there were those who didn't...

Leroy Jones had his own personal saying, "Hit's just th' way things is."

For instance, when he ended up in jail after taking a knife to a man in a roadhouse brawl, the judge asked him why he cut the man, kicked him in the jaw and chased the man's friend down the road threatening to, "dismember his body parts into little pieces."

Leroy, then twenty, replied, "Hit's just th' way things is, Judge. Iffen you don't make men respect you, they'll piss all over you. That's just th' way things is." He grinned and took his thirty days on an Oklahoma chain gang and came back off of it still grinning and cocky as ever.

He left behind a guard they expected to be hospitalized for at least another six weeks. Leroy was the chief suspect as the one who stabbed the guard. He perforated the man's intestine. Herman Roper had had it in for Leroy from the first day he looked up at the glowering guard's face and grinned. Roper knocked the new prisoner to the ground with his fist, but the grin remained.

"Sho Boss, my little sister hits harder than that, iffen I had a little sister. The manacled Leroy Jones was clubbed into unconsciousness with a rifle butt. When he regained consciousness, the bloody man still had his cocky grin and a mean glint in his eyes.

"Hits just th' way things is," he said through thin and bloody lips and added, "But I just might change things a little." In the middle of the night, a shadowy figure slipped up behind the sleeping bull and stabbed him with a shard of glass from a window that had been broken just so that piece of glass could be obtained.

However, nobody could figure how he could go through a locked door, stab the guard with a sharpened shard of glass and skip back through the locked door and be sound asleep when they did a bunk check. Nobody thought to examine the window. After all, it was too small for a normal man to crawl through. For naked, skinny as a rail Leroy, it was a tight fit. As it was, he did leave a little hide behind. But then, Leroy felt the loss of that small amount of skin was a small price to pay to maintain his honor. To Leroy, honor and respect were everything.

Leroy Jones was not a stupid man It was more like he was ignorant in the classic sense of the word, as in lacking information. Another of his sayings was, "If you ain't learned it you don't know it." He considered that to be a real pontifical "deep thought." He had so few "deep thoughts" he cherished every one he could get.

Born so low toward the bottom of the social structure that he looked up to white trash hillbilly rednecks as "high society." He resented the way most people looked down on but had no idea how to change the situation. So he figured that was the way of the world. To him, "Hit's just the way things is" said it all.

He had known only poverty and insecurity all his life. He didn't see his straits as bad or threatening. "Hit's just the way things is." was his grinning evaluation of life in general. He figured, "Hell, if y'all can't fight it, go along with it. Then make changes when you can."

Finally, he was expelled from grade school because he took a knife to a fellow student who was two years older. Leroy walked out of the schoolhouse and on down the road. The sixteen year old boy who was bullying Leroy said, "Your mamma's a hoor."

"Hell, I know that," the fourteen year old Leroy said.

The older boy punched Leroy in the mouth and Leroy pulled out his Barlow knife and cut the bigger boy up. The sixteen tear old was the son of the mayor. Leroy was the son of trash.

He didn't even consider it necessary to go back home when the principal, Mister Orsborne told him to never come back to school again. He didn't feel there was anything at home for him.

His pa was usually drunk or out trapping in the swamps for meat to eat and fur to sell. His ma was usually drunk down at the Crossroads Cafe where two highways met. There she could usually mooch a passing traveler for a drink or two. Most paid for her drink so she would leave them alone. Leroy Jones decided to walk away from everything and start all over elsewhere. He caught a slow moving freight train as far as

Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Then he spent the next fifteen years of his life "fightin' an' drinkin' and just generally bein' a bad ass. He was skinny, wiry and filled with the nervous strength of a tightly coiled steel spring. Leroy knew no fear of any man. To the few people who gave him kindness he was a devoted friend. To the rest of the world he just said, "To hell with 'em."

Because he had the reputation of a hard and tireless worker, he usually found a paying job of one sort or another while others starved or looked desperately for anything that permitted them to see one more day's pay. His grinning, punctuated by a checkerboard smile of nicotine stained yellow and off white teeth, was a welcome sight on any road construction job where the bosses knew him.

"Hey, that old Leroy is the only white man I ever saw who worked from can to can't and still had enough git up and go to git up and go all night long. Then he'd work three Niggers and a big Mexican under the table the next day." was how one foreman characterized the irascible Leroy. Bosses all liked Leroy because he gave a good day's work for piss poor wages and always came back for more. Also, he never complained.

His constant downfall was simple, because Leroy liked the ladies. Be they young ladies, barely old enough to get served in the beer joints and roadhouses, he loved them. Be they not so young, he loved them anyway.

There had been a few times when a man protested Leroy's "lovin' nature" and came looking for him with a gun.

Those were the times Leroy either hid out or left town. He did this, not out of mortal fear but more like "expedience." There was one night in particular when the sheriff of Cherokee County caught Leroy on the sofa with his eldest daughter. His old work boots were of his feet and he looked mighty comfortable.

That was the night Leroy decided it best to move from here to there and do it quickly.

"You low down white trash, what are you doing in my house?" Leroy thought the question to be redundant. It was perfectly obvious what he was doing.

"Why I'm sparkin' Dessie Mae. What does it look like I'm doing? The infuriated sheriff reached for his gun.

Leroy rolled off the man's couch and away from his daughter. Leroy landed on the floor, grabbed his belongings as stood, ready to leave.

When the sheriff went for his gun, Leroy brought a knee up in the man's crotch, shoved the man down onto the floor and ran down the street until, out of breath he could run no more.

Then, in the relative safety after he put a mile or so between him and the enraged father, he felt it was safe to stop and get all the way dressed. Somehow he had lost one of his shoes in his flight, so he walked downtown, broke into a shoe store and stole the best pair of Justin boots they had that would fit him. (All the Tony Llamas were too narrow.)

Perhaps two hours after his confrontation with the sheriff, he slipped back to where his car was parked, just three houses down from the sheriff's residence. He got in and drove away. His only stop on his way out of town was at the disheveled one room apartment where he kept his few belongings. He retrieved them and decided he needed to learn more of the geography of Western Oklahoma.

He kept going for over a hundred miles and stopped only when he needed to steal more gas. Leroy ended his journey in Woodman. He figured in a new county and a new town and he would be safe again. Philosophically he left the two days pay he had coming from the drainage job he had been working on. He didn't think it would be wise to hang around long enough to collect.

After he got settled down in the town of Woodman, he quickly fell back into his standard mode of existence.

When he was out of work he hung around the pool hall, the Hot Spot Café or else he sat on one of the two benches in front of the Safe Way grocery store. Before it broke down at a dance outside of town one night he'd sat in his car, in the open door on the passenger side and talk stuff to the pretty young things that walked by. Some would stop and talk to this really old guy (why he's got to be almost thirty, at least.) and some would walk on by, pert little noses in the air.

In one of his poetic moments, Leroy boasted, "If they see my smile, they stop a while. That was pretty much the way it is.' Then he added, "I'm kinda like that Will Rogers guy, I never saw a lady I couldn't like." Then he'd laugh out loud at his own joke.

Jory Tubb, the owner of the pool hall usually shook his head in wonder at Leroy's continual success with all those pretty young females when he was pretty plain himself. Jory and all the hangers on at the pool hall were a little bit envious of Leroy's success.

They were also proud of him, that he, one they claimed as their own, got away with what they only dreamed of trying.

One morning he got out of bed and counted his money. There wasn't all that much left to count. Leroy saw he was down to his last three dollars and a handful of pocket change. That meant it was time to go hustle up some work. " Hey Jory," he greeted the owner of the pool hall as he came in the front door, "Ain't nobody been around lookin' for no help has they?" he called in lieu of a greeting.

"What's the matter with you, Leroy? I just opened up. It ain't even eight o'clock yet."

"Well hell, I thought maybe you saw someone on the way in. Hell I don't know nothin' if I don't ask questions."

"Even after you ask you don't know nothin' at all, Leroy," Jory answered in mock exasperation.

Of late, it had begun to bother Leroy more than ever to be called "ignorant" or "dumb." He had already gotten himself in a stand up knife fight with that big, strange truck driver over being called a stupid hick. "Strangers just don't have no right to come in here and make no dispersions at people," was Leroy's explanation as to why he chased the big man down the street with his long bladed Barlow knife. It did cause people to pause and think before they made fun of Leroy after that.

"Gimme one of them thimbles full of corn you got for a quarter," he told Jory. "Two bits is all I can afford right now for my drinkin' until I get work."

"Ain't this awful early to be drinkin' that shit, Leroy?"

Leroy bragged, "Hey, Jory, it's late for me. I been up dancin' and just plain old carousin' most of the night." This is just real late for me."

"Man oh man. I don't know how you keep drinking that stuff. It ought to make your tongue drop off. I'd hate to see what your insides look like."

Leroy grinned, "Well, Jory, I'd sure as hell hate you to be lookin' at my insides too. That'd mean some mean cotton picker had done punctured me." He laughed at his own humor. He tossed his quarter on the counter and Jory poured him a beer mug half full of poor quality watered down corn whiskey. It tasted like garbage, but it was cheap.

As he lifted it to his lips and took the first sip, a man's voice called from the doorway, "Leroy Jones, if you be needin' work, you better be sober and ready to git your butt in gear. Them two spicks didn't show up again today that th' bosses sent down from Enid. Th' lazy suckers walked off th' job yesterday afternoon when it got hot."

Leroy turned and saw the timekeeper for the new bridge job that was just starting up. Well damn, this could turn out to be two or three years work. That company had pull with that son of a bitchin' commie Roosevelt and had already been awarded four bridges to build, if the newspapers were correct. (Hell, if it's in print it must be true.)

"Just one second." Leroy said as he raised the mug to his mouth.

"You want to save me a sip of that rot gut?" the timekeeper asked.

"Hell no. I'm gonna need all this just to get my head clear."

He tossed another quarter on the counter, "Give my friend one of these." What the hell? If he was going to have three years steady work he could afford to be generous.

"Thanks Leroy," the time keeper said, "I appreciate this. I just better not be breathin' none of this at th' boss. He gets kind of pissy about drinkin' on th' job."

"Well, hell, you're not on th' job now, you're in town."

"Naw, I'm still on th' clock. He just sent me in to town special to get you. He says I was to find you and then get my butt right back so as to put you right to work. We need twenty holes dug for them piling's that have to be sunk by Friday or we all going to be gone down th' road." Leroy tilted his head back and poured the corn whiskey down his throat. He shuddered and wiped the tears out of his eyes. "C'mon, let's go." He headed toward the door.

"Just wait a minute, Leroy, I ain't got your cast iron gut." The timekeeper took (for him) a healthy slug and shuddered and set the mug down.

Leroy turned back around and said, "Better give me another one of them things, Jory. Looks like I got to wait on old panty waist here." He tossed another quarter on the counter. Jory handed him a mug filled all the way to the top.

"You goin' to drink all that?" the timekeeper asked incredulously. "Jeezuz. You goin' to be in no shape to work, you get all that down you."

"Hell I won't." Leroy bragged. "That's why the Good Lord invented hot days, to make a poor workin' man sweat this demon rum out of him." He took a healthy mouthful and swallowed. The timekeeper finished his off and as they went outside, he shuddered and led Leroy to where he had parked his beat up old Dodge coup. He unsteadily drove back to the construction site.

As soon as they arrived at the job site, Leroy didn't bother to ask any questions. He saw the locations of the stakes that had been driven into the ground to mark where the holes were to be dug. He grabbed a long handled spade; a longer handled spade called a "banjo" and a crash bar with a pointed end that had been made out of an old truck axel, pulled a pair of leather faced cotton gloves out of his hip pocket.