Growing up in Centrahoma for my first 8 years was quite an experience. Centrahoma was small and working on getting more so. Our school didn’t have a gym, so our varsity teams played on a dirt court. Yes, that worked OK if it didn’t rain or something. And true, we had no running water there in town or in the school. But we did have Mr. Linker. Our school custodian would climb a ladder to be up high enough to draw up and pour water (from the school’s well) into a metal tank which fed a downward spout hooked up to a much longer pipe with little spigots. That’s where we lined up to get our strange tasting drink.

Centrahoma didn’t have a lunchroom, so you brought your own lunch or did like me, walked home for a snack. The two toilets were likewise crude but served their purpose. In the boy’s toilet the urinals were homemade troughs made out of wood and sloped downward. If you were small, you just kept walking downstream until the height of the trough fitted your height. In general, if you were a little girl you had to go elsewhere. No homes had running water except for two or tree. I think Jack and Pearl Downard’s home was so blessed. Another asset Jack and Pearl Downard possessed was Mary Vivian, their daughter, the prettiest girl in Centrahoma.

I sure did like her and so it was one day Mary V. asked me to go to Coalgate with her on the DENCO Bus. Our first choice, the railroad’s Trolley (aka the Dinky) had suffered a derailment. Mary V was about three years older than me. We went and soon she had informed me that in Coalgate, each house had running water, electricity and flush toilets. I wondered what next? I was astounded. It was a tour, and she was the tour director. We walked up to the splendid Court House and walked right in. After touring everything that wasn’t locked up, we went upstairs and eventually climbed up into the clock tower. This was important to me as you could see this towering clock tower jutting up into the sky for what seemed like miles away and now I was here, in its innards, having a good look. Lots of pigeons up there. I never could figure why they didn’t fix the giant magnificent clock or for that matter, the old courthouse.

Years later, somebody had this old landmark torn down and it was replaced with, well, what is now the new Coal County Courthouse. No one checked with me on this disturbing event. I also read lately that the city needs to pay the light bill for the local library — but won’t. So now a private donor pays it. My visiting late brother, Gerald, often had me drive him over to Coalgate to visit this library. He spoke of the libraries’ quality and wished his library up in New Castle, Wyoming was so good.

The trip’s best part was walking with Mary V to Hudson’s Big Country Store. I had seen their “billboard” refrigerators all over but this was my first time to be in the store itself. Arvard and Bill Hudson had outdone themselves when they built this place. It had everything and more than I could ever expect. We decided to eat a burger and then we just walked around. I couldn’t believe all the stuff they had but the best was yet to be. I discovered “the” greatest of marvels — a doughnut making machine. This automated gadget would form up, kick out a round piece of dough, then after many convolutions cut its middle out before another robotic arm placed the new doughnut to be in a flowing boiling trough of grease. Soon, another arm flipped it over and when it reached the end, you had a perfect doughnut. I was nearly faint from what I had seen.

After inspecting the Wigwam Theatre, which was another unbelievable site, we were done. I didn’t meet Eddie Holt that day. We rode the bus back to Centrahoma. What a day. And yes, I ate one of those doughnuts on the bus. Mary V (the last I heard) was alive and well in Bristow, Oklahoma. The prettiest girl from Centrahoma with apologies to the others.

Be sure and go to your church this Sunday. And yes, I still enjoy hearing from readers.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.com