- Submitted by The Greenwood County Historical Museum Staff Oil Field Camp Wives and Mothers
(Continued From Last Week)
Burkett never had a post office; mail was delivered from Hamilton. The Dunham’s used ice, also delivered from Hamilton, several times a week, for their homemade ice chest. Later they purchased a kerosene refrigerator; it had to be lighted each night, and in the summer it made unwanted heat. They bought kerosene for the refrigerator, the oil company supplied free raw gas for heating, cooking, and light. Eventually they had to pay two dollars a month for gas, but there was no limit to the amount they could use for that price. Not until the 1940s did Essie have electricity and buy an electric iron and fans.
Typical of other camp residents, Burkett people also hauled water for household use and for drinking. The Burkett camp began around 1920, and was booming by the time the Dunham’s moved there in 1925. It was a Cities Service camp and around 1941, Phillips took over and the Dunham’s moved to the Scott camp. This would have been about twelve miles west of Burkett, and the Dunham’s worked for Phillips. Scott was southwest of Teter Rock. Then they moved back to Burkett, which was at its peak in the 1940s as a Phillips-owned camp. Oil field activity had declined by the 1950s, and in 1958 the camp was broken up.
Verna Beeman: Seeley Camp
The Seeley camp was the home of Verna Beeman for more than thirty years. She was born in Missouri, moved to Oklahoma and then to El Dorado, when she was around twelve years old. In 1922 she married Vonie Beeman, and later moved to Greenwood County to help his parents run a grocery store and boarding house in the St. Louis oil field camp north of Virgil. A year later both couples headed to Idaho, camping along the way, to buy “cheap, cut-over land” they had heard about. They stayed one day in Idaho, did the family wash, and headed back to Kansas. Vonie Beeman went to work for Cities Service for the next thirty-eight years. Most of those years were in the Seeley camp where the Beeman family also had a grocery store from 1924 to 1937. Verna worked in the store and helped manage it too.
Seeley was one of the larger camps because it had a gas plant. A number of employees from oil companies like Cities Service, Skelly, York State, Magnolia, Phillips, and others lived at Burkett.
Verna described the camp and neighboring camps: “At one time there was another store at Seeley, down by the schoolhouse about a mile south of us, but it burned down. At one time there was a café right across the street from the store. It was kind of like a little town, because there were so many people there. But it started going down when Phillips moved their camp over by Teterville. They called that the “Green” field. At one time, Teterville had a store and post office and a lot of people. It was called the “Green” field because there were three sisters that owned the land, all this land. They had a schoolhouse up at Teterville, and it was not very far from the ‘Green.’” Seeley had a nice school, with peak enrollment numbers about sixty students, as most Seeley had four or five children during that period of the 1920s and 1930s. Recalling Seeley housing, Verna thought of it as “pretty nice.” The houses, constructed by company builders, were usually three rooms and rented for four and five dollars a month, but there were some larger homes as well. The Beeman family lived in a four-room house with a bath.
Verna described housing at Seeley and nearby camps: “The Phillips had nice houses. A four-room house had a bath and inside toilets, because they had water. But, a lot of them had outside toilets, and they were W.P.A. projects. That was when the W.P.A. was working lots of men. They were real nice. The York State camp had all modern homes, had water and everything.”
Water, in short supply, loomed as one of the foremost problems for nearly all of the women who lived in the camps. Farm and ranch women, too, belonged to the sisterhood of women who kept house and reared families without plenty of water.
For Verna, however, water was not too much of a concern. As she said: “We had cans to haul it in and plenty of drinking water because we’d go to the schoolhouse. The schoolhouse had a big cistern, and we got a lot of water there. There was a house on up north that had a good well, and we’d get water there. It was well water. But we never really had any trouble with it, because we had plenty of river water.”
River water had been piped to each house in Seeley by the company for household use: farm families along the line used water from it too. Verna did her washing once a week on a wash board, using water heated outside in boilers. She got her first washer, gasoline powered, in 1933 and changed some years later to an electric washer. Cooking was done with gas because there was plenty from the company plant. Although there was electricity in the camp, ironing was done with gas irons or those heated on a stove.
The grocery store she ran had about the same basic supplies that stores had when this interview took place. In the early years, a large ice box in the store kept perishables cold. When electricity came along, Beeman’s used electrical refrigerators for keeping meats and produce. They did not buy fresh vegetables and fruit from local farmers, but did “take in” eggs which were then crated and sold to a produce business in Madison. Very few eggs were sold through the store because most families had a flock of chickens.
The family had milk cows, bottling milk and cream to sell in the store. That was quite a job for Verna to scrub milk buckets, separator parts and bottles. She got some help in the summer from a high-school-age sister who spent the summer with the Beeman’s.
Besides groceries, Verna stocked a few dry goods: sheets, pillow case and hose, and customers could buy chunks of ice for iceboxes and get gasoline from the pump by the store. Seeley folks bought most of their livestock and poultry feed in Madison.
Verna recalled once how a farm lady came in the store and asked if we wanted to buy some apples. Verna said she bought hers from Emporia. Verna told the lady if someone came in and wanted to buy apples, she would tell them about the farm lady’s apples. The farm lady said “ I don’t want no oil field people.” Verna never told anybody about the apples, as she was oil field people too. That was kind of the way people viewed oil field workers.
A few of their customers did try to get out of camp without paying their grocery bills which were paid monthly. A few never did pay, but the majority of people were honest and dependable customers.
She remembers one of her neighbors coming in the store one morning and getting a half gallon of syrup. He had an old half gallon can with a bail on it to carry the can. He picked up the can to leave and the bail came off. Syrup went every where and Verna had a good laugh.
Card playing was a popular pastime either at the store or in a friend’s home or in two card clubs. One club met during the day and the other met in the evening when both men and women could attend. If any of the boys came home on leave during WWII, the Beeman’s would have a dinner for them. Birtciel’s Garage was the main place for entertainment. In the wintertime they had a stove to keep them warm. On Halloween, the garage was always decorated with corn shocks, kafir corn and all kinds of leaves. They had soup suppers and chili suppers and then they danced. There was always a big crowd.
The Seeley schoolhouse was used for carnivals, suppers and the P.T.A. put on programs and plays. Seeley residents welcomed parties and many were held at Verna’s home. They had lights for social events after dark. One of the parties was a “turkey sandwich” party when their neighbor’s turkey kept getting out of his pen and the neighbor killed his turkey and provided the turkey sandwiches and others brought covered dish food.
(To Be Continued Next Week With Alice McKinght Long: Teterville Camp)
